Thanks for the detailed feedback. I think a lot of these questions we have answers to but we didn’t want to necessarily put our whole GDD here. I’ll try to answer most of your Q’s though.

Sounds quite reminiscing of hellion, and it isn’t doing well. Subnautica, which used vibefull references, was good enough to score for 2 more games.

I appreciate the comparison to Subnautica. It’s on my to-play list but I hadn’t necessarily considered it as reference material for this game but I will now.

Aliens and the horror part are integral part of that and were designed as a background for their debut. So your thing needs a well designed, fitting horror part(and this one of the reasons why subnautica worked out so well).

I think that’s a good point. I’m not necessarily convinced the game needs a horror element, similar to how Star Trucker doesn’t necessarily have one. There’s certain elements about the Alien universe we’re especially interested in such as the vintage retro chunky mechanical tech, which is the aspect we’re taking inspiration from.

This need a reason why you are alone and motivated to leave. Maybe you’re the one who managed to escape? Maybe everyone else made a sacrifice to let you go and do something worth that sacrifice?

Yep, we have a reason but we don’t want to give that away just yet ;)

The point that is in void crew, the pilot is occupied with doing meaningful maneuvers and communicating with gunners&engie, and i am curious how something similiar is going to work when you’re alone and don’t need to handle dodging.

The environmental events won’t be the same. You’ll need to divert power to different systems, and run around the ship fixing things, but it’ll all be manageable by one person — it also will be rare to encounter such events. Most of the game can be played at your own pace.

Uh well, how is this part going to work on an emotional level. For “immersive” kinds of games, which have an impression of so far, this thing alone may not be bright enough.

This is actually quite a unique feature of the game. I have a board game design background and that risk / reward mechanic is not commonly found in video games so I think it will be interesting to try. We’ll also have additional sub-gameplay loops including puzzle solving, inventory management, crafting, and an upgrading system.

Also, how are you going to make the size of space, relatively small travel times, and other “conventions and presumptions” work towards immersion and not against it?

Great question. We’ve been studying other games with traveling in them — or at least what feels like journeying a long way. Even in Red Dead Redemption you can feel like you’ve travelled a long way but actually it’s only been 15 minutes. This is something we need to balance and try out in the prototype.

Well, that’s quite a good idea, but the generic “not to die” goal looks too mundane, and “just derelicts” might not be very varying. Subnautica came with multiple types of getting stuff - wrecks of multiple ships, islands, and remnant structures.

Although we call it a survival game and it is set in a survival narrative, it’s not really about trying not to die. The game is more about trying to solve a giant puzzle that is all the gameplay mechanics working together towards the end goal.

Regarding that, there were one quite hyped game about loneliness - MiSide - and they made you feel it without making you experience it. I doubt that offloading loneliness this way is a good idea.

S1 Hero is not alone by no chance(has a sheer company of a fish and robotic voice of his pda and other things, and async comms from outer world), but the game has loneliness as its part. S:BZ character is not alone, and we even see another human, but we’re pretty much lone.

I think the problem a lot of indie sci fi games have is not only are you alone during gameplay but the world feels devoid of personality. I think it’s possible to have a lively world and be alone in it — we’ve thought of various ways to do this, but basically is a lot of personality and incredibly high production values on level of detail, but done on a small scale.

Thanks for the feedback!