(stolen from the facepunch thread) Space Station 13 is a game about surviving a day's shift aboard a barely functional space station with equally functional employees long enough to be able to return home in one piece. The game can best be described as a Trouble in Terrorist Town mixed with Dwarf Fortress but taking place on a space station, as not only do you have to deal with the shit that comes with working on a space station, you also have to deal with antagonists, which can be anything from a traitor to a bunch of shape-shifting aliens, all according to the gamemode currently running. Though don't let this keep you from doing your job - The game hosts a number of positions that you can take. Be a scientist, and research deadly lasers and potentially world ending backpacks! Be an engineer, set up the power, and fuck off into space to create your own little fortress. Be a janitor, and slip people on wet floors! Be a security officer, and be the LAW! Or be the clown, and potentially get blamed for and subsequently lynched when someone lubes the floor, honk.
Depending on the gamemode and the playerbase on the server you play, rounds can last between a couple of minutes to even hours (extremely rare). Though there is no set time limit for a round - They can technically last forever until the emergency evacuation shuttle is called, or until an admin gets bored out of their mind.
Also depending on the server is your experience. One cool thing about Space Station 13 is how modular it is, which means that if you're knowledgeable with the coding language for BYOND, you can create and easily add stuff to the game. This means that nearly every server is different, though most of them is based on the three major codebases, boasting different mechanics. These are Goon, /tg/, and Bay. While Goon is closed-source, the rest are open.
The game originally started out as a private atmospheric simulator back in the early 2000's, but as time passed, the source code was leaked and a bunch of goons from Something Awful managed to get their hands on it to work with it. Eventually, others would jump in and work on the code and make different versions of it, turning the game into the shitty 2D farting spaceman simulator we have today. God bless.
It would be of course boring without some variation, and most servers have these gamemodes:
Boring as fuck, there's no players chosen as antagonists and is really only useful if you want to learn stuff or if you're a hardcore roleplayer. It's shit.
The "standard" gamemode, one or more players are chosen as traitors, and are given objectives as well as tools of their choice to accomplish these. They could try to be smart and stealthy about it, or they could just go on a rampage, and ignore the objectives alltogether. It is entirely up to them. Their objectives can range from killing/marooning someone, to protecting someone, steal a high risk item, and escape alive, or escape alone. There's even an objective to die, though it's rare.
Ever seen the movie "The Thing"? It's like that. One or more players are chosen to be changelings, a shape-shifting alien that can suck your DNA out and transform into others, while also boasting a set of powers that they can unlock, such as a wicked ass armblade, or various type of "stings" that can be used on your victims. Their objectives are usually to get a set number of DNAs from other people, and often to escape while transformed into a specific individual. A variation of this gamemode, dubbed "traitorchan", sees both traitors and changelings in one round, with the chance that one player can be both.
Not really a gamemode in itself, but rather a variation of the aforementioned traitor mode. Instead of being given random objectives, all traitors are given the objective to kill another traitor, while being careful not to be picked off by other traitors. It can be chaotic as all hell as there's often more antagonists in a double agent round than in a standard traitor round.
Subjectively a shitty gamemode, players are chosen to be lead revolutionaires. Their job is to recruit others to their cause by flashing them with flash devices, and to kill the heads of the various departments, as well as the captain of the station. Some people see this as their chance to fuck shit up as much as possible.
Cult is a more organized revolution but tend to be just as shitty. People are chosen as devoted followers to a big ass space daddy Nar-Sie, and they're tasked with converting others to their cause, while sacrificing people to their god, and in some cases, summon him to the station. More often than not though the cult fails due to miscommunication, giving the station security enough time to organize and move on them, or enough time for the chaplain to robust the fuck out of people with his almighty null rod.
The station AI has malfunctioned and is given a new law that supercedes all other laws: to contain an outbreak on the station. The AI and their army of borgs is given the objective to destroy the station, by initiating the self-destruct. Before they can do this, they need to wait for a timer to go down, which will only start the countdown once they've announced they're malfunctioning. Before this, the AI can strategize and hack the APCs spread across the station to lower the total time needed before self-destruct can be initiated, as well as organizing the borgs to take out any problematic personnel. Though the AI benefits from the stealth, any APCs hacked by the AI will bluescreen and therefore serves as a dead giveaway of a malfunctioning AI. That's why it's best to be smart about choosing which APCs to hack.
Awful gamemode in practice. Someone is infected with the blob and will soon burst into an organic mess of tendrils and weird blobby masses. Until then they're free to sabotage and try to find a nice place to burst. Their goal is to grow into a set size, while defending themselves from the crew with blob creatures as well as their own tendrils. It tends to be in the blob's favor due to crew incompetence but if science or cargo is smart enough, they can spell the doom of the blob.
It's revolution but with teams. Two or more players are picked to be gang leaders of their respective gangs, and their task is to grow their gang as well as tag areas of the station as their territory. Their job is to dominate the station with the "Station Dominator", a device that counts down a timer similar to the malf AI one, and the time needed before victory is decided by areas owned by the gang. Unique with gangs is that anyone can be recruited into gangs, even the captain and the loyalty implanted army of security. So basically, it can end with the station turning against each other.
We do not speak of this one.
A player is picked as a wizard and their job is to do some objectives. Pretty standard, but as all wizards, the space wizard has a wide array of spells to choose from. Wizards tends to be awful and you will only encounter a good wizard once in a blue moon. Though it can be pretty fun as wizards can force random events to happen more often, summon guns and spells for everyone, and even turn the floor into lava. Expect chaos and mayhem, and if you are the wizard and want to be friendly, lynching followed by a face full of fart.
Hoh boy. Five players are chosen to be nuclear operatives working for the mysterious Syndicate. Their job is to get dat fukken nuclear authentication disk possessed by the station captain, and plop it into their nuke so they can blow the station into kingdom come. Why they don't have their own disk for this, noone knows.
The operatives are like well-armed traitors, but instead of the measly 20 telecrystals, the gang can get even more from terminals in their base, and can buy all kinds of shit like mechs and Syndicate cyborgs. Pretty cool.
Some Nuke Ops do their mission silently, by faking their ID and trying to get dat fukken disk without anyone knowing its nuclear emergency. Other just bumrush the station and fuck people dry with big laser rifles and bombs. The disk, of course, can be located with a pinpointer that the nukies get from the start.
Once their pet nuke has been armed, the nukies will need to evacuate back to base. If everything went as planned, they survive and the station's blown up. Worst case scenario, the disk is still under protection, and is now leaving the station alongside the crew, denying the nuke ops their hard earned victory.
So you wanna play the game too? Goodie. First, you're going to need to register a BYOND account and install the client:
http://www.byond.com/
In the client, you can see different types of games available. I know that the Naruto RP game is alluring, but you want to play Space Station 13:
If it doesn't appear on the list, try refreshing.
Next, you want to pick a server. Personally, I recommend playing on either Goonstation or Yogstation for your first time, but it is entirely your choice. You can use the server browser on the client or the one here, though some servers are unlisted for various reasons. You can always ask for links to a specific server.
A list of active servers can be found here.
Note that your experience will vary from server to server, with different codebases, playerbases and maps. Make sure to read the rules of the respective servers before playing on them!
Now you're probably wondering what Lifeweb is.
We would do it a disservice by comparing it to Space Station 13.
Though somewhat similar, it is something else.
http://en.lfwb.ru/
Good luck.