The new year is two weeks old, and I’ve begun work in earnest on my next game, Beyond the Chiron Gate.
As I mentioned in my yearly retrospective post, Beyond the Chiron Gate will be a space exploration game in the same vein as Seedship, but larger and more elaborate. My plan is to eventually release it as a paid game on both desktop and mobile. (Patrons will get a free copy, of course–I’ll work out the details of how to do that later.) Like Seedship it’ll be primarily text-based, but it might also involve a small amount of graphics and audio.
The premise: in the near future, a space probe discovers an alien artefact buried beneath the surface of the asteroid Chiron. Scientists discover that it’s a portal to other star systems, a coalition of national space agencies build a manned ship capable of travelling through it. This first gate leads to a network of other gates, allowing the ship to explore the galaxy.
Apart from the alien FTL stargate, which is pure space magic, I’m planning to give the game a hard-sf feel. The planets generated will be as realistic as I can reasonably make them. Aliens, when you eventually encounter them, should feel very non-human.
I’m in the early stages of design and prototyping right now so nothing is certain, but some of the features I’m planning to include are:
- Random events when travelling and when landing on planets
- Individual crew members with their own stats
- The ability to select specific crew members for tasks (e.g. landing parties, EVA missions)
- The ability to upgrade your ship at Chiron Base between missions
- The ability to bring samples and artefacts home
- Vignettes about how the world is changing as a result of your discoveries
- Some kind of first contact minigame when encountering intelligent life
- An overarching mystery about the builders of the stargates
Right now I’m in the process of making a prototype and a design document. My goal is to create a very basic playable prototype (with the some of core systems in place but almost no content) by the end of January, and then take a step back and consider the overall design again (and possibly take a break and develop a different small game or some new events for Seedship). I’ll write another blog post soon. For now, here’s a first screenshot of my placeholder crew having a placeholder conversation.
Thank you all again for your support, and I’ll keep you updated!