RetroSpace walkthrough
RetroSpace is one interconnected station rather than a list of chapters: work outward from the hub, take the shortcuts back as they open, and treat the 29 achievements as the milestone ladder.
RetroSpace gives you one station and one continuous run: no chapter select, no mission list, no way to replay a section in isolation. So "what do I do next" is a fair question — and the game rarely has a single door you have to take. This page is the route and the milestones: the order the station expects, what opens what, and how to tell if you are ahead or behind.
It stops short of a room-by-room list on purpose: most obstacles have more than one solution, so a list of rooms goes stale the moment you take the other door.
How the route is shaped
- One station, more than one door. Aurora 5 is a single interconnected location, not a set of levels, and new areas open shortcuts back into old ones.
- A hub you can always return to. The centre of the station is described as mostly peaceful: it exists so you can retreat and re-plan.
- Two time periods, one hallway. The ship keeps jumping between two points in time, so a corridor that is closed on your first visit may be the way through on your second.
- Death is a trip, not a reset. A clone wakes up when you die and your gear stays on the body you left.
The order that works
- Get your hands before your bearings. You start as a janitor with nothing. Take the Power wrench when you find it, and grab the flashlight before you walk into anything dark.
- Learn the PDA and the inventory here. Both were patched during the demo to work while crouched — the game expects you to read and sneak at once.
- Find the centre. The hub is the first place the station stops hunting you. Bank the safe area, the terminals and the vending machines before pushing outward.
- Push outward one section at a time, and take every shortcut. Each new area opens a way back; the shortcut is the reward and the loot is a bonus.
- Convert the security on your way past. Turrets, terminals and cameras are hostile only until you hack them.
- Expect the run to end twice. The achievement list confirms two endings, Good and Bad, so the last stretch is about which one you have earned.
Launch-week walkthroughs agree on this shape — wake in a stasis or medical area, take the wrench and a flashlight, then head for the centre — but they disagree on door codes, section counts and which room comes first.
Milestones: how to tell you are on track
The 29 Steam achievements double as a progress ladder: each one names something the game counts. Rates are launch-week readings, so use the order rather than the numbers.
| Milestone (unlock rate) | What it asks for |
|---|---|
| Tech-guru / Muta-Freak (5.7% / 1.3%) | Buy every tech gadget, and every Mutamod™ at least once |
| Out of madness (4.7%) | Finish the game on any difficulty |
| Space tourist (4.6%) | Explore all the main sections of the station |
| Too good to be true / Not the best outcome (4.6% / 3.2%) | Reach the Good ending, and the Bad one |
| I'm all out of bubblegum (2.2%) | Upgrade every weapon to maximum |
"Space tourist" and "Out of madness" sit within a tenth of a point of each other: the main sections are the game, so once you have walked all of them you are at the ending.
Enemies, and what counts as one
Three achievements describe the enemy system better than the store page manages:
- Psycho-mode! (0.1%) asks for five kills of every enemy type and excludes bosses, so the two are counted separately.
- Clean hands (0.3%) counts robots and turrets as kills, which is why turning the station's own security against it is a legitimate quiet route.
- Never there (0.1%) asks you to finish without being detected by any kind of enemy, so detection is tracked enemy by enemy, not as one station-wide alarm.
The practical version is the discipline the beginner guide opens with: watch a new enemy for a full cycle before deciding how to deal with it, and prefer the room to the fight. For the station's own hardware, see Stealth, hacking and turning security.
Doors, codes and the map
- The map is something you find, in stages as you explore — someone else's shortcut list is no substitute for ground you have covered.
- Published code lists disagree with each other. This site only prints what it can verify, and every list that does publish them describes the same thing: the code is readable in-game before you need the door.
The guides index lists every page here, and the FAQ answers the launch questions directly.
Still unconfirmed
- How many main sections the station has, and how long a straight run takes.
- Whether 1999 and Russ Kurtell are the only difficulties, or just the two the achievements name.
- How the two time periods switch: at fixed points, at story beats, or without warning.
