This game is an interesting combination of multiple mechanics. There's city-building, resource management, action RPG exploration quests, and timed missions. I think it does fairly well on all fronts, though there is some room for improvement.

You run a space station. The goal is to gather resources to make products to keep your staff happy (scientists, fighters, diplomats, etc.) as well as products to attract tourists and keep them happy (you start with human tourists and graduate to various alien species.) You get to set up a neat little 2D floorplan of a space station, with small factories and rest areas. The thing that takes up most of your time is gathering resources, which you get from completing the mission on a planet, then purchasing slots to pick up that planet's resource. You can defeat the planet on higher difficulties in order to get more of each resource at a time.

(an early space station with few unlocked technologies)

I know some people dislike timed missions (pick people, send them out for a task, wait x number of minutes/hours, come back, task is done.) Personally, I liked them, because it gave my officers something to do. You can only have 5 on your "away team," but you can have zillions of staff back at your base. Most of those staff are running the factories and etc. but sending them out on missions seemed like a good use of thei time. (You can also elect diplomats to certain regions to improve your resource harvesting)

It's a cute, quirky little game with adorable art and silly humor.

But.

The combat/missions leave something to be desired. As long as you don't get your people killed (they don't die in combat, by the way, they only "Leave the station" if you overwork them and never let them get any rest), you only need one (maybe 2) away teams. You can blast through many of the missions very quickly once you loot some decent weapons. The planets are all the same, just with different coloring/sprite designs. The core missions have a sort of plot (I am only about halfway through the planets, and got kind of bored at that point) about space pirates and etc. but you do spend a good deal of time conquering planets just to get resources and to level up those resources. Those quests all follow a pattern of "go to this part of the map, defeat the baddies and the boss, gather the things there, come home." There's very little challenge if you stay in your level range (and if you creep even a little higher, everything kills you outright), and you will need to go back and complete easier levels multiple times to get the resources you need. It became kind of grindy/boring after a while, and I found myself not wanting to leave my station at all (but you cannot - eventually you will level up enough that your people demand new/better products which requires better resources which requires more planet missions).

(a planet with a full away team, about to face down some monsters)

Secondly, the space station/tourist mechanic has the unfortunate problem where designing a pretty, nice place for your tourists will actually make your tourists dislike your space station. Decorations take up valuable space and tourists do NOT like to walk very far. Creating nice individual rooms for visitors like a hotel also causes them to walk a great distance, and they are much happier smashed into a big warehouse full of beds and showers with no privacy. You have the ability to build gardens and museums but the tourists are not interested in those at all. They just want to shop. It makes it so the game punishes you for trying to do a good job of making a nice station and using all resources available to you. You're better off reading a steam guide on "most efficient way to manage tourists" and sending them through a conveyor-belt-like process of meeting their needs. I really like city building games and making my place as nice as possible, so this was just disappointing.

So overall...

I spent probably two weeks playing this with every spare minute of free time I had. I loved it. It was a total blast. And then it got repetitive. And I lost all interest. Especially after I took a few hours and designed The Perfect Station, and a few days of playing later, realized none of my tourists were EVER happy. I googled the problem (am I missing a fundamental game component??) and realized I needed to scrap my Perfect Station and create an ugly monster in order to score points with the game. Boo. No fun anymore.

It's a good game, just not a great one. And for about $5 on a steam sale, I got several weeks of joy out of it. (Also, the developers are coming out with a new version called "Galactology" as a whole separate game in July 2016, which will be free to people who buy Spatials this month. Steam sale coming up.... maybe grab a copy?)

(note: screenshots aren't mine - I nabbed them from steam users posting their screenshots. I don't know where mine went!!)