Laser focussed
We wanted combat included right from the start. I think it’s because we wanted a sense of danger and tension, and it suited the 3rd person perspective. Right now you get a selection of different weapons, automatic rifles, and slower but more powerful pistols. You can craft grenades and you can craft buffs, including crit hit modifiers, time dilation and damage resistance. A lot of the buffs are crafted from food. We were keen to have farming and watering crops - just because it seemed fun - but using the food as ingredients for buffs, along with more exotic components sometimes - seemed like a nice way to encourage that side of the game and give it meaning. There is a hunger meter, but certain foods in and of itself will give you buffs to help you when going into the “dungeons”. Based on feedback, I’m really looking forward to adding more tools to your arsenal, as well as more enemy types, going forward.
Space Dungeons
I mentioned the asteroid fields, but just as important are the derelict ships and abandoned mines and outposts you come across. Over time we’ll be adding more locations. These have procedurally generated layouts, enemies and loot. So they are kind of similar to a roguelike dungeon in that way. Personally, I like this because it means I don’t know what I’m getting when I venture into them while playtesting! The interiors are dark and foreboding. Later they can get pretty tough, so you need the best weaponry and medpacks to survive. The corridor spaces mix up the combat from the outdoor stuff, with a more claustrophobic space horror feel. It’s for these places that the scavenger has a torch on the helmet! Some of these locations are locked, and you should keep hold of any keys you find around the place.
Gone rogue?
When you enter your world seed as you create a new game, it will affect everything from the types and positions of asteroids in every sector, as well as the layout of the locations. Most importantly, it keeps it different and adds a lot of replayability. Because you jump forward on the galactic map to each of your salvage sectors, I see a lot of cross-over with roguelikes here. I even thought about taking that further and going fully rogue with permadeath, or perhaps rogue-lite. After some thinking, we decided it would just be too punishing to lose your whole base when you died. Instead, you are “recloned” by ScavCorp in the same sector, and you go back to your body to get your stuff. I think it’s a good balance.
Automation lite
From time to time, you’ll receive product orders from your employer ScavCorp. You’ll need to build up your Space Rig, a base of operations to process what trash you have found and refine it to products to sell at the local stock market. There is a factory-style game here, if you are so inclined. You can automate this process, using conveyor pads (which transport items by floating them along pathways), and I made sure you can use splitters with ratio sliders to move the resources around in the amounts you need, to different factory machines. There is scope to get pretty advanced here; however, you could choose to do it by hand if you prefer. You can also automate the input using tractor beams. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts in Early Access about where to take this side of the game.Markets
Once you have your products you can sell them at the Stock Market. Prices here are dynamic, so remember to sell high! And be careful of flooding the market, because the prices will react. I was keen to have this in from the start too. I was certainly inspired, at least initially, by my times playing Elite, but also Slime Rancher has a similar sort of system. It adds an extra dimension to your decision-making about when and what to sell.
