A few surprise shots, a clumsy collision and off I drifted, desperately checking a game menu in an effort to rebuild and plot a course back to the safe zone. The pirates didn’t waste much time on my ship, the Strictly Murder. In the distance, tracer rounds dance around an innocent convoy of traders. My beautiful butterfly of a ship is floating sideways through space, with only one of its thrusters still intact. This time, the single- and multiplayer create-your-own-space-junk of Avorion.

Every week we give Brendan a heap of scrap metal and warp him to the early access quadrants.