CHALLENGING JOURNEYS
The goal of the game may sound simple enough: reach your destination. However, with every fresh attempt you will face new challenges, as the routes to your destination and the obstacles you must overcome vary each time you play.
When you start a run, a new course to your destination will be plotted so that it is very unlikely that you will encounter the same scenario twice. To survive you will have may choices to make:
- Use different tactics when dealing with enemies – cloak your ship and sneak past or attack with all guns blazing?
- Gather resources for much needed repairs in the local asteroid belt or hunt down well-guarded traders for their precious supplies?
- Explore the mysterious nebula visible in the distance with unknown consequences or stay safe and head straight to the space station for refueling?
- Investigate cosmic anomalies and stellar bodies (wormholes, comets, derelict ship wrecks) or try your luck in the next system?
Obviously as an EVERSPACE™ pilot you need to deal with lots of decisions during your journey. Each and every one will affect how you experience your personal quest to the ultimate goal. Because of this no EVERSPACE™ run is like any other. Ever.
In order to leave the system and jump to the next one, you will need to gather enough fuel to power up the jump drive and at the same time collect credits and resources to craft items to upgrade your ship.
The mix of persistent progression (blueprints and personal wealth) and temporary progression (crafting and equipping your ship during a run), combined with an ever-changing universe and a rewarding story, will offer the incentive to explore every permutation.
Core game loop.
DYING IS REWARDING
We won’t make EVERSPACE™ ultra hardcore and unforgiving. Rather, every time you die you will be able to improve your starting conditions for all the following runs. Permanently increase the capacity of your shields, install better engines, improve sensors, upgrade weapons, and attach armor plates – just to name a few.
Most ship upgrades will be directly visible, while some will have a huge visual impact, e.g. upgrading your wings will lead to an entirely different look.
You will be able to dig into the depths of the upgrade tree. Think of perks and upgrades that can change a lot of things – unlock new abilities and equipment, improve various stats and enable several other benefits that may change your play style.
Furthermore, every death will get you closer to revealing another fragment of the story being told. So dying is part of the progression.
A DEEP STORY
Typically, due to the nature of the genre, rogue-likes don’t have a deep story. We think the genre is just perfect to tell a captivating story in a fresh, non-linear way that unfolds differently every time you pick up the game. So we came up with an engaging plot that makes perfect sense for you to be re-born after every death and come back with a deeper knowledge of what is actually going on and, ultimately, solving the great puzzle. On this we have been working together with Falko Löffler who has been a successful story and game writer for adventure games for many years.
Exemplary player journey.
This will be the first rogue-like space game that brings high production values of this caliber and a deep, captivating story told in an innovative way to your PC.
Concept art for a hangar.
FUN PHYSICS
For us, fun and playability come first and have to fit the type of game. EVERSPACE™ will not be a space simulation. Arcady controls will test your skills and reflexes without the burden of crazy speeds up to 40,000 km/h, inertia, thrust and anti-thrust.
The controls will be intuitive and optimized for mouse and keyboard in the first place. We put a lot of effort into this and we firmly believe EVERSPACE™ has one of the best control schemes since Freelancer. Gamepads and joysticks will be supported once the respective stretch goals are met, as it takes a lot of work. No matter what hardware you will be using, EVERSPACE™ will be easy to pick-up-and-play.
As regards physics, we had lots of fun in playing around with PhysX in UE4 and we will implement some cool gameplay features based on that: using mining lasers will enable you to slice up asteroids to extract valuable resources inside. See it in action:
ADVERSARIES TO DIE FOR
Space is a dangerous place and so are most of your encounters. Though you will meet friends, allies and neutral parties along the way who will employ you on special missions or sell useful equipment, most NPC’s will try to kill you. They might do this in a variety of ways:
- A group of pirates launching from the hangar of a destructible outpost, breaking formation and trying to attack you from different vectors while their chief is giving the orders from a bulky war vessel and firing missiles at you from a safe distance!
- Your ship attacking a frigate which is using different defensive patterns and has multiple destroyable turrets and weak spots that can render the whole ship inoperable when critically hit!
- Scavengers, traversing the system in search of easy prey or uncloaking right behind you!
- Organic life-forms lurking in asteroid fields surrounded by a dense plasma cloud, ready to spring at the next target entering their domain!
- Kamikaze fighters ramming their ships into yours when their hull integrity is low!
Concept art for a gunship.
Concept art for a scout.
DON’T TAKE DAMAGE AT FACE VALUE
The condition of your ship will be more than just a health bar. Damage to the equipment will have noticeable effects on your vessel’s performance and needs to be repaired using valuable resources. The type and severity of damage will influence your decision on what to repair first if resources are scarce. This will put you into challenging situations where you have to live with the damage or repair it with resources that you otherwise could spend on crafting new weapons or devices.
CRAFTING ON THE GO
During a run you can craft weapons, ammunition and devices that improve stats or offer whole new gameplay possibilities. Crafting is easy: all you need is a blueprint and the required resources and you are good to go. Some example scenarios include:
- You are stranded in a desolate asteroid field. Craft a mining rocket to extract fuel out of certain asteroids that will allow you to power up your jump drive to extract yourself.
- Construct a cloaking device or an afterburner to fly past an overly powerful band of warships.
- Build an extension to your laser weapon that enables the shield bypass feature.
Whatever you do, crafting the most suitable item at the right time will greatly increase your chance of survival.
EYE AND EAR CANDY (Unreal Engine)
Using Unreal Engine 4 and the latest technology in visuals and audio, EVERSPACE™ will blow you away. From vast space environments to highly detailed ships and spectacular particle effects – you will be surrounded by magic.
We are creating a mesmerizing vision of space that will leave you in awe. There is only so much realistic space simulation one can take before sinking into depression so consider EVERSPACE™ your Fluoxetine. Happy time!
Unreal Engine 4 allows us to go full “da Vinci” on the graphics with all the latest DirectX 11 & 12 features, including full-scale dynamic lighting, reflections, tessellation and much more.
With GPU powered particles we can render millions of dynamic sparks, bits and pieces at a time like there is no tomorrow. Advanced post effects, such as colour grading, eye adaptation, lens flares and screen space reflections will top it off. All of these give us the ability to realize our vision and make EVERSPACE™ the kind of experience that makes you go “Whoah!”
Again, we are not creating a simulation here. Our top priority is to make it look and sound awesome! Oh, you say there cannot be sound in space? Don’t tell that to our sound director who has created every sound effect with great dedication and passion in Dolby Surround 5.1.
From the makers of the iconic Galaxy on Fire series comes a new breed of space shooter for PC and Xbox One, combining roguelike elements with top-notch visuals and a captivating story.
Order directly to secure your copy of EVERSPACE and get extra goodies! You will receive a special Supporter forums badge, a set of jaw-dropping wallpapers and preferred 1st level support if you buy through our shop.
EVERSPACE is brought to you by
ROCKFISH Games GmbH – Eduardstraße 46-48 – 20257 Hamburg – Germany
Managing Partner: Michael Schade, Christian Lohr
HRB 129051 – VAT DE292576866 – TERMS – IMPRINT – PRIVACY POLICY
info[at]rockfishgames.com | /rockfishgames | @rockfishgames