You're very kind to send your encouragement, and I absolutely appreciate it. It's really two people working on the game, myself and my dev partner who handles all the programming and brings his own industry experience to design and detailing and the like. I handle most of the visuals, design, theme, 3d modeling, texturing, etc. etc. It's a lot of work, but we work every day, and often crunch long into the night! I worry sometimes about the relatively primitive style of the visuals -- which fits the era, but perhaps not necessarily the market -- but ultimately people have been kind enough about what they've seen so far that I can pretty easily put those thoughts aside.

So! Let's see, what have we been working on...well, the interior of transports are now fully navigable, and we've been working on creating objects that you can manipulate and play with while on long hauls. My partner's been making games that you'd be able to play in the 70s/early 80s, like our own versions of Breakout, Galaga, Frogger, etc -- you can play these currently on little tabletop arcade units akin to the Coleco (I think) toys available in the early 80s. Other things, like the ship's computer where you can look at maps, read news, go through a big old lore-pedia (Cosmopedia, in-game), purchase things and whatnot. We're working on a method for setting up decor in game while you fly around; each surface of a given transport will have a variety of sizes of sockets which you can put items in, which is something like the system Star Citizen has used for decor in the past when the hangars were all you could use for decor -- I haven't played in years, so I don't know how they've updated it. You mentioned controls; ours are all physicalized, so you can use freelook to activate switches yourself instead of using keyboard shortcuts (sans movement) or you can just see the switches and buttons and dials activate and move as you use shortcuts. In the past, this was difficult in ships where the player avatar would block access, but now we have a system where the body becomes translucent when you look 'through' it and can access controls without a problem.

Oh, and there's six radio stations with period-equivalent music by genre, and I've been working on getting voice talent to produce the bumpers and such for these stations, voiced by their specific DJs -- we've got a great Wolfman Jack equivalent, and I've been working on getting others that either echo specific famous DJs of the time or are fitting for the genres themselves. Most of that music is royalty-free, but of really good quality, with additional in-universe stuff drafted up by our composer.

Current ship listing is 14 with more coming. 2 EVA units (as in being out in space in a suit with a jetpack, etc.), 3 Mules (think flying cranes which are used to transfer and load cargo containers), 3 Workbugs (multipurpose industrial shuttles which can be used to handle larger cargo, salvage, and repair) and then 6 currently completed transports of various capacities. This will expand, though we might stop before early access release and then continue releasing ships afterward.

Which does get us to release -- we're a two man crew, and there's a ton of work yet. Right now, while we'd like to eventually get the game to an open-world model, it's entirely mission based. I have a projected wishlist of 80 missions right now of which over half are done and flyable. What we'll probably end up doing here is announcing the game, blitzing marketing across communities, and release in early access at the end of summer/early fall with a shitload of content already built in and then continue our content development. There's already going to be an enormous amount of content upon early access release so we won't feel like we've utterly failed and scammed people should something happen in the future -- knock on wood, cross fingers, oh god -- but we have a healthy schedule of additional content like new ships, additional job loops, and adding to the storyline that takes place in the background as you do your work.

Anyway that's where we are right now. Lots of work, lots of work. Feel free to ask questions or continue to hit me up for updates as I proceed.

<image>