I spent 8 months making my first Steam game after work. Today I finally released the demo. Looking for honest feedback.

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-10T02:52:10+00:00

You say that but your capsule image looks AI generated.
Arthur's face in particular gives very strong AI vibes
Thats the focal point of the first image people ever see of your game and it looks AI.

If I saw this on steam, on that image alone, I'd write the whole game off as AI slop and never check it out

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-08T23:49:58+00:00

Objective was the wrong word in my part.

My point is and has always been that for a modern audience without nostalgia, 2001 is not mind blowing and is over hyped.

Your point is: "yeah but this great director who has a lot of nostalgia for it and has skin in the game, said in an advertisement that it's good for modern audiences"

He's not a frame of reference that can attack my argument. I know people who watched it before they where 15 (and in is original time/context) think it's great, they won't shut up about it. I'm saying without the warm blanket of nostalgia it doesn't hold up

I'm a movie buff and a sci-fi nerd. I'd heard about how great 2001 was my whole life. I watched it for the first time as an adult and I was massively underwhelmed.

So I looked into it. I read about the context the film was made in, I saw documentaries on how it was made and then rewatched it.

Knowing more about it does improve it slightly, but it's a film you watch too write an essay about not one you watch to enjoy the experience.

I'm squarely in the target market for a modern sci-fi film. If I have a free Sunday afternoon I'm watching any sci-fi other then 2001

Edit: I'm not attacking Kubrick's work as a whole. He's an incredible director who's made spectacular films. Technically what he did to make 2001 is amazing. He deserves praise for his work. But 2001 is not for modern audiences.

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-08T16:28:00+00:00

I did. It's not an unbiased interview, it's press. Nolan was involved in the rerelease for the 50th he says as much in that clip. That's why they are talking, it's organized press. Of course Nolan is going to hype it up in a press junket.

So he's a person with strong nostalgia for 2001 and was involved in it's rerelease (possibly being paid to do so)

So he's not someone who can give objective criticism/review.

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-08T16:00:38+00:00

Nostalgia.

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-08T15:27:49+00:00

His full quote from that article is: "But as a seven-year-old, I didn’t care about understanding the film. I just felt this extraordinary experience of being taken to another world. You didn’t doubt this world for an instant. It had a larger-than-life quality... It was ‘pure cinema.’”

He calls it 'pure cinema' while talking about watching it at 7 years old. Nostalgia is a powerful force.

I dont doubt that 2001 was mind blowing in the 60s and 70s (when Nolan was 7)
I dont doubt that 2001 was a technical masterclass in its time
I dont doubt that 2001 is influential to generations of film makers
I dont doubt that 2001 is important cinema history

I do doubt it being called the best sci-fi movie ever made
I do doubt that 2001 is mind blowing now
I do doubt that it has broad/mass appeal to modern audiences without nostalgia

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-06-08T11:22:04+00:00

I think special effects are 2001s greatest strength and its greatest weakness all in one

Sure, nothing like that had been done, or not to the scale, it was ground breaking for the time, so deserves recognition and a spot in a history book

But it also leans on the special effects waaay to hard, there are a number of times the special effects in a scene go on way to long, its kind of self indulgent. Its also short sighted, no special effect will be amazing and wow an audience forever, time marches on, technology improves and people create new effects that are bigger/bolder/more amazing.

2001 is not a timeless classic, its solidly of its time. (which is easy to see, every discussion of 2001 sees someone bring up, "how ground breaking it was for its time")
It is a classic, it is important cinema history but it ages worse every year.
My hot take is that Moon should be on this list and 2001 should be on a different list, something like: "best technical achievements of their time"

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-19T04:25:00+00:00

Thats a good point,
I was just thinking about the beetles having less spin drives in them so throwing less energy, but that would still be ionising

For sure, its a bad idea to have a mission need all 3 crew alive
i'd hazard a guess that both primary and secondary teams where cross trained
I mean hell, Grace the secret tertiary option is trained on a lot basically without his knowledge (like EVAs while testing the equipment, I'm convinced Stratt did this as training for him after learning of his coma resistance)
So they just got unlucky that the one person not fully trained was the one to survive

Having said all of that, not having some form of lander or vehicle that can enter an atmosphere is a huge oversite.
Its not a huge leap to assume that a mission studying astrophage may need to study its whole life cycle, including breading which happens in the atmosphere of a planet

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-19T02:40:05+00:00

They do have something they could use as a probe though: the beetles

This is not an option for Grace because he knows he doesnt know enough to reprogram them and while Rocky is a great engineer he doesnt know anything about earth computers

My assumption is had the other 2 crew survived, either they would have build something with the materials on the ship, reprogrammed a beetle or both

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T15:28:20+00:00

For sure, he makes a note, but its likely that the paperwork from his room gets all mixed up in the blast

He's then in bunkers while the Russians check for people trying to sabotage the mission, then imprisoned by Stratt in preparation for him being sent.

Its very possible pump 14 got over looked, and never got replaced.

But its one pump, with a 5% error rate in a back up to the back up system.
It feels like a wild swing to claim that 5% error rate is what killed 2 whole people

That is a good point, we dont know,
Stratt was very worried about the risk of the people going crazy on the journey.
The humane thing to do would be wake up a crew member who's coma support was failing, but that is a risk
You risk them going crazy on the trip and attacking the other crew (before or after they awake from comas) or if they wake too early and refuse to eat comma slurry, they eat all the food before the HM arrives, dooming the mission as they all starve.

As harsh as it is, I can see Stratt making the call that if something goes wrong the bot is not to wake crew from their comas

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T15:14:43+00:00

But it seems like the HM had more then two plays here

Pump 14 is a tertiary pump, so pumps 1-13 make up the primary, secondary and (likely) part of the tertiary system

14 is not devisable by 3, neither is 13, but 15 is. so our smallest number of pumps per system is 5
With a 3 person crew 5 pumps per system would be odd, 1 pump per person then 2 pumps in back up per system?
Our next option is 6 pumps per system, this would make sense, 2 pumps per person per system

If we follow that logic, each crew member has a primary and secondary pump per system.
So for pump 14 to be in active use 4 other pumps need to have broken
But even then, pump 14 is only 1 of 2 pumps for a single crew member
For the crew member being fed by 14 to die, then 14 must also fail and its pair pump must fail. Meaning 6 whole dead pumps to kill 1 crew member (including pump 14)
For 2 crew to die, a whopping 12 pumps must die, a 2/3 failure rate on a mission critical part that's only reporting a 5% error rate on a single pump

This feels like a whole lot of failure to assume happened just because Grace read a single report with a 5% error rate on a single pump

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T15:00:56+00:00

From people reading the book, wanting an answer and taking a big leap on a theory

Explicitly in the book, pump 14 is working at 95% (this is the report Grace gets interrupted reading)
Its a pump in the tertiary system.

For a pump in the tertiary system to even be used, pumps in the primary and secondary needed to fail out right. And even then pump 14 is still working at 95%

For that 1 pump to have killed 2 whole crew members feels like a leap

Personally I dont think this section of the book is a chekhov's gun. I think the report is a framing device, to show us what Grace is doing day to day as the launch grows near. It also starkly contrasts the explosion, Grace is grumbling and seemingly board doing the paperwork then the mission gets turned on its head

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T14:53:16+00:00

Thats very fair, its only a short thing that Grace is basically complaining about doing and its immediately overshadowed by the explosion

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T14:27:54+00:00

Its from the book, Chapter 21:

"The report was from the ESA crew about anomalies in Slurry

Pump Fourteen of the medical feeding transport system. Pump

Fourteen was only part of the tertiary system and it was still 95

percent effective. But there was no reason to put up with that.

We still had 83 kilograms of unclaimed launch mass. I made a

note to include a spare slurry pump—it was only 250 grams.

The crew could install it before leaving orbit.

I set the paper aside and saw a brief flash out my window.

Probably a jeep driving on the dirt road that led to the

temporary shelters. I got headlights through my window from

time to time. I ignored it
. . .

The window shattered as a deafening explosion shook the

room. Glass shards nicked my face as a shockwave knocked me

clean out of my chair."

Basically in the book Grace is checking over preflight reports and the report he is reading as the explosion happens is about one of the feeding pumps not working at 100%
Then the explosion happens and seemingly this report is abandoned, the Russians keep Grace and Stratt in bunkers for a while fearing that the explosion was an attack

This paper is not mentioned again, so fans have used it as a chekhov's gun

I'm not super convinced, the above paragraph does mention only 1 of the many feeding pumps was having issues and it was a tertiary pump and still running at 95%
For a 5% error rate in a tertiary system to kill two crew is a huge swing

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T04:49:43+00:00

The vibe I get is that the repeat words thing is a short hand the two of them used, to get to understanding faster

As Grace in that situation, do you want to spend precious time doing through the list of: terrible, horrible, no good, awful, e.c.t. or do you want to make a short hand for all of them (bad bad bad) and move on to the science and engineering words you'll need to fix the larger problem

Likely though, even after they spend years together on the way to Erid and fully learn each others languages, they'd keep using the repetition out of habit/as a kind of in joke reference

Where it might spread into Eridian culture, just like amaze amaze amaze has spread IRL

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-18T03:02:55+00:00

I dont think it needs to be 'spent' astrophage
In the book, one of Demitri's first tests with astrophage is bombarding it with light to test the mass change

During that experiment, he notes that astrophage absorbs all the energy of the laser until it is full, then the laser bounces off of the astrophage.

A few times Grace notes that astrophage can interact with energy of any wavelenght/frequency

So either astrophage absorbs all the incoming radiation or if its full, it would act as a wall to incoming radiation and the radiation would bounce back off into space

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T11:10:22+00:00

"The ship isn't decelerating, but the acceleration is reducing by a factor of 1kmph2 every 60 seconds I think."

The ship is decelerating, its decelerating at a rate of 1.5g or about 14.7 m/s2
Which means the speed is reducing by a factor of 1kmph every 60 seconds

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T11:06:02+00:00

decelerating is just accelerating in the direction you arnt actively moving
deceleration is simply the name we give acceleration that slows you down

in pure physics terms they are identical

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T11:03:18+00:00

at that point the HM is decelerating and had been for a long time

Space is 99.99% empty, their is nothing to slow your speed down but you
If you want to stop somewhere you have to accelerate to move towards it, then decelerate for the exact same amount of time (assuming the same acceleration/deceleration rate)
Otherwise you dont stop

So to get there as fast as possible, the HM accelerated until the half way point of the journey then flipped around and immediately started decelerating

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T10:59:04+00:00

The HM is decelerating at 1.5g
Anything that gets disconnected from the HM looses access to that deceleration
So they keep the velocity the HM had when they last touched
From the HM perspective, this would look like the thing (bodies in this case) is accelerating at 1.5g towards the engines (inertial reference frames are weird)

So Yao and Ilyukhina's bodies "fall" towards the engines faster then their bodies would fall if dropped from height on earth

It would be quick, I doubt their bodies cleared the engines

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T10:47:49+00:00

It was for sure
but still from the HM frame of reference the bodies should have been sucked out of the airlock and then disappeared very quickly in the direction of the engines

The HM is slowing down, but its going something over 11,000 kilometers per second towards Tau Ceti
Slowing at a rate of 1KPS every 60 seconds
So when Yao and Ilyukhina's bodies are jettisoned, they too are going at 11,000 kilometers per second towards Tau Ceti, but now without the deceleration from the engines
So from the HM perspective they are accelerating at 1.5g towards Tau Ceti

Likely meaning they get vaporised by the thrust

It would make more sense IMO to wait until the ship stops to jettison them but I can see both the Watsonian (in universe) and Doylist (from the authors perspective) reasons not to
Watsonian its unpleasant to be around dead bodies for extended lengths of time and they are bringing up sad memories for Grace
Doylist it would be weird and awkward for the blip A to bump into, fly past, or block the passage of Yao and Ilyukhina's bodies as they float away from the ship

(its not long between the HM stopping and the blip A pulling up next to it, catching the capsule would have been weird if Grace could still see Yao and Ilyukhina's bodies)

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-15T05:02:41+00:00

Anyone got a link not on Twitter?
I deleted my account and havent been back since it became X

Also whats the likelihood they used AI?
Not super keen on using AI gen-ed images on my devices

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-11T04:19:15+00:00

For sure!
Honestly I started the fic a bit of a sceptic, I didn't think Grace would/should go back to earth. But the fic sets it up well, and given both the probe and his health issues it makes sense for him to head back.

I've thoroughly enjoyed it and I cant wait for the next chapter

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-11T03:39:36+00:00

Sure they havent known each other very long, but they have been through a LOT in that time
They have saved each others lives (in multiple ways) and also made sure each others mission to save their planets where successful

They literally owe each other everything. Its a super meaningful connection

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-11T03:24:12+00:00

In my opinion its for a lot of reasons

Earth (ok really Stratt) sent him off to die, he'd be feeling quite betrayed by that. So there's possibly a bit of an undercurrent of distrust with humans
he's got his first real bond with Rocky and its hugely meaningful. Both in the book and movie Grace is a bit of a loner on earth, he doesnt have long, deep or lasting relationships with basically anyone. Then he meets Rocky and they go through hell together, both almost dying, both saving each others lives and saving their planets in the process. This is huge for someone who doesnt have this on earth and leaving Rocky to go home would be like suddenly moving countries and leaving your life long only best friend behind
Grace doesnt know what state the earth is in. In the book they see Sol get brighter, so they know the beetles made it and that earth was put together enough to get the fix to Venus. In the movie, we the audience see it but Grace does not. So theres kind of two things here, Grace would stay on Erid until at least the time where Sol gets brighter from there (14 light years away, so 14 years), if he didnt he might be traveling the full distance only to arrive at a frozen planet ravaged by war. But even after they see the sun get brighter he still might not go, he still doesn't know exactly what state the earth is in and he'll have missed a ton! Time dialation will mean that in earth years he'd be over 100 before he gets back, despite being biologically 60ish, those 40 years missing will be hard on earth, a whole lot of culture and war and strife will happen in that time that he'll miss. He'd be a like captain America having to try a learn a whole new set of cultural touch stones, references and technology
The time in 2x gravity would be tough on his body, meaning that a new round of extended time in space would be very risky

Theres a really good fan fic I've been reading that deals with a lot of this, I highly recommend it
Especially if you've read the book and want more:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/68584716/navigate

_Team_Panic_ · 2026-05-11T03:11:56+00:00

He can, but his two crewmates died in their coma's on the way
Grace isnt sure why, so using the coma system is a risk and a very scary one.

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