RetroSpace Beginner's Guide: Difficulty, Saving, Cloning and Your First Hours on Aurora 5

If you read nothing else, do these five things:

Most games let you chicken out of a hard mode. RetroSpace does not. The four difficulties — Story, Normal, 1999 and Russ Kurtell — are selected at character creation, and the choice is permanent for that character. There is no settings-menu escape hatch halfway through.

Normal is the tier the developers recommend, and it is the right default for a first run: multiple reviewers found it forgiving, even wishing afterwards that they had started higher. The higher tiers bite mainly through the economy — scarcer resources, higher prices — and harsher saving, which matters in a game where money buys your mutations and your weapon upgrades. Pick 1999 if you like your immersive sims stingy; pick Story if you are here for the station and its story.

You wake in the Stasis Chambers, and the opening hour is a quiet tutorial in everything the game will later demand. Collect your kit in order: the Power Wrench (your main melee weapon, and a tool — it repairs generators and smashes open vents and fans), the A.U.C.S. helmet that provides your HUD, and a flashlight. Fix the generator, solve your first code puzzle, and push on.

The route from there is fixed for the first several hours:

One habit to build from the first corridor: codes are physical objects here. They sit on sticky notes, in audio logs, in terminal messages — and at least one code is written in blood you must spray clean before it can be read, which is what your Universe Cleaner spray bottle is for. Never walk past a note.

RetroSpace launched with the tightest save system of any recent immersive sim, and it was players' single biggest complaint in launch week. As of Janitors' Patch #1 (October 7), the rules are these:

Build your rhythm around that: return to the Haven, stash what you cannot carry, let the hallway autosave fire, then push back out. Treat dangerous experiments — a new area, a big fight, spending your last credits — as things you do right after a Haven visit, not right before one.

Death in RetroSpace is a commute, not a failure state. When you die, you are re-cloned at a Heal-O-Dome — as many times as it takes. But the dome sends you back out with two problems.

Your gear stays with your corpse. Your previous body remains exactly where it fell, carrying your equipment, and the game expects you to go back for it — a Soulslike corpse run (the developers also cite Void Bastards' traits as inspiration). Every death is a small expedition you now owe the station.

Every re-clone adds a degeneration. Each revival stamps you with a random cloning error: uncontrollable sneezing, involuntary swearing, hallucinations, light sensitivity, colour blindness, and worse. They are not cosmetic — sneezing and swearing will blow your stealth at the worst moment — and they stack, up to three at once (there is an achievement for walking around with all three). Death also costs you a cut of your genetic material, the currency that upgrades your mutations.

Two ways to clean a degeneration out:

The short version: fear death less than you expect to, but always budget the walk back.

Reached by portal near the end of the Gardens arc, Janitor's Haven is the hub the whole game revolves around — largely peaceful, and reachable again whenever you need it. It starts almost empty; as you progress, survivor NPCs move in to sell buffs and abilities and hand out side quests.

Everything long-term happens here:

You will also learn to repair terminals here (a wrench tap fixes dead terminals and vending machines station-wide) and pick up a severed head for a biometric scanner door — this is that kind of station.

Three resources organise your growth: credits (cash), Scraps (weapon upgrades; unwanted gear breaks down into them) and genetic material (Mutamod upgrades, harvested from corpses — enemies' and yours). Four systems sit on top of that economy.

Mutamods. Ten permanent body modifications, bought from Dr. Miriam's vending machine — credits to buy, genetic material to upgrade through three levels. Current guides report three can be active at once, and a purchase can never be undone: no uninstall, and the official pitch warns the side effects are unpredictable and irreversible. Every Mutamod pairs its gift with a built-in cost — Moth Light heals you in bright light but slows you while it does. They are entirely optional: a zero-Mutamod run is a recognised way to play.

Weapons and the workbench. Eight weapons can be upgraded — the Power Wrench, Suzie Smallgun, Bertha Shotgun, Sinclair Handcannon, Flare Gun, Bradbury Beamgun, HyperBroom and Steve Hand Turret — using Scraps plus a Blueprint for each (the first is in Nexus Gardens). Upgrades change behaviour as well as numbers — an upgraded pistol's rounds ricochet off walls. The spray bottle and fire extinguisher never upgrade; they are tools from start to finish. Ammo is scarce early, so budget for wrench work.

Scanning. Your helmet's scanner reveals enemy weaknesses — which weapon or element a mutant actually fears — and the game expects you to swap weapons to match, not marry one gun.

Terminals and hacking. There is no lockpicking; the equivalents are keypads and terminals. A terminal's security override takes either a code you have found or a hacking minigame (once you own the Hacking Attachment from the Gardens), rated by skull difficulty. Hacked security can be turned around: turrets make excellent traps and temporary allies.

Aurora 5 does not sit still in time. The station jumps between the present and a more ruined alternate timeline, and the first jump is scripted: it hits at the end of the Medical Section, when lifting the quarantine triggers the Hyper Drive. From then on, the dual timeline becomes a working mechanic — areas, items and some Mutamods exist in timeline-exclusive versions, and you will revisit familiar decks in their decayed other state.

Two honest warnings. First, progression after that point is partly non-linear: there is no single fixed order for the later areas, and any guide that prints one as gospel is guessing. Second, a few side quests must be started before a timeline trip or they are gone for the run — if an NPC in the Haven wants to talk, talk before you jump.

Reviewer accounts put a first run at roughly 10–15 hours — a rushed run can finish nearer seven, and the fan wiki estimates 30-plus hours for full exploration and all 29 achievements. The station rewards wandering; beelining leaves your pockets thin.

The ending structure is simpler than pre-release talk suggested. There are two main endings, decided by a single choice at the navigation terminal at the very end — no earlier branching has been documented, and despite what you may have read before launch, there are not eight endings. What there are is six post-credit stingers: short epilogues scored from how you played (how much you mutated, how often you died, which side quests you finished). Only one stinger plays per run — the highest-priority one you qualify for — so seeing all six is a multi-run project.

On missables, expect the main path to stay open and the side content to be fragile: some NPC side quests close if you advance too far (one errand must be set up before your first timeline trip), one optional boss encounter has to be dealt with before you leave its area for good, and several achievements are whole-run challenges — never be spotted, kill nothing, never wear the helmet, buy no vending-machine food. Decide about those at character creation, alongside your difficulty.

And the map: know going in that it is the game's most-criticised system. Sector maps come from map terminals, the minimap is an attachment you will not find until Nexus Gardens, and even then there are no markers and the panning is clumsy. Your own screenshots and notes are the real map.

Can I change difficulty later? No. Difficulty is chosen at character creation and locked for the whole run — Story, Normal, 1999 or Russ Kurtell. If you want a different tier, you need a new character.

How does saving actually work? One manual save and one autosave, as of Janitors' Patch #1. The Janitor's Haven hallway autosaves constantly, the menu offers Save and Exit, and the Heal-O-Dome is a cloning point — it does not save your progress.

What happens when I die? You are re-cloned at a Heal-O-Dome, unlimited times. Your corpse keeps your equipment where it fell, you lose some genetic material, and you gain a random cloning degeneration — up to three stacked at once. Cure them with the Gene Sucker on your own corpse, or pay at the dome (reported at 50 credits).

How long is the game? Roughly 10–15 hours for a first run by reviewer accounts; a rushed run can be nearer seven, and completionists should budget 30-plus hours.

Can I miss anything permanently? The main story will not lock you out, but some side quests expire if you advance too far, one optional boss encounter must be handled before leaving its area, and only one of the six post-credit stingers plays per run. Whole-run challenge achievements (no kills, never spotted, no helmet) also fail the moment you break their rule.

Is it good on Steam Deck? Steam Deck Verified (badge granted October 2) — though one hands-on report found frame rates inconsistent, so expect playable rather than perfect.