Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Solux Interactive is an independent game developer company from Kyiv, Ukraine. The company first started in 2014 when two of us participated in Epic's (company which created Unreal Engine) GameJam contests and signed ourselves as 'Solux Interactive'. We created 5 non-commercial games but never distributed them as they generally required some effort to finish. In June 2017 Dmytro 'haarer0' Korniienko (founder and programmer) and Artem 'rutto' Korniienko (3D artist) decided to focus only on game development full time. Vlad 'amHvost' Zabela (game designer) then joined the team and brought with him some fresh ideas for future development. We were also joined by a 2D artist (Vitalii 'Felix' Lukianenko), and another 3D artist (Oleg 'Linch' Kovalenko). Once we have relocated to an office, we decided to stream the whole development process on streaming platforms. Anastasia 'Siia' Didenko joined the team, as a community manager and director of our streaming channels on Twitch, Youtube, Periscope and LiveEdu.
After some discussion, the team decided to start working on one of our earlier GameJam prototypes - a game called 'Eternal Forest' (can be downloaded here, however please keep in mind this game was created only in 72 hours, so it contains a ton of bugs!). In this game the player controls an ethereal spirit, protecting the Elder Tree from evil creatures.
Inspired by the latest news about researching space and plans of colonization of Mars in the near future, we picked up sci-fi terraforming as a theme for the new game. We truly believe mankind may land and establish an extra-terrestrial colony soon and want to highlight this topic to people in any way we can.
We had a lot of internal conversations trying to predict how terraforming might look. What should be done and which technologies would be used to achieve that? In our opinion, the terraforming should happen in a few waves -
- exploration & reconnaissance,
- probing,
- initial part of terraforming process (which involves manned and unmanned robots operating in hostile environment)
- a final phase, when humans can land on the ground and complete the process on the surface.
The word "Ecopoiesis" itself ( from the Greek οἶκος [oikos] - "house", and ποίησις [poiesis] - "production") was suggested by famous biophysicist Robert Haynes. He described this word as "a fabrication of a sustainable ecosystem on a currently lifeless, sterile planet" by making some primary engineering and biological processes in order to complete the initial part of terraforming. Our game focuses on this, 'Ecopoiesis' part.
You can read more about the game below.
Campaign goals
We want to be completely transparent by explaining the campaign goals. This is all about money (as are all the other projects on IndieGoGo). Each month we need to pay a rent for our office, pay for internet, obtain required software, pay subscriptions for different SaaS products (such as Jira/Confluence, etc). None of us have other income and our initial funding is dwindling. This creates issues as we cannot complete development, invest in hardware or software or meet other financial commitments.
Helping us get to as little as US $10,000 (and more is better!) will enable us to survive, thrive and make a successful release of our first commercial game on Steam.
Reasons
As this game is the first commercial project by our combined team, we are faced with simple and quite obvious issues (now they are obvious). The main reason we have used up most of our initial funding was the developing process itself, which took more time as expected. This caused by a several reasons all of which we have learnt from:
Risks
At this moment we have a playable beta version of the game with one planet and 5 finished levels and full gameplay. Later we will put it on Steam and send keys for closed beta to our backers (US $15+). Ecopoiesis will be released with one planet and 20 levels in mid-January. If we receive support from you we may implement more planets (with different gameplays) and more in-game mechanics. It also means we get to keep our development space and keep the team members together.
Work to do
As mentioned above, our main goal is to release the game on Steam with appropriate quality as soon as possible. In addition, and if you can help support us, we plan to:
- Add controllers support
- Add new mission types
- Add better sound effects
- Add more comics (for storytelling)
- Get professional voicepacks for game and OST
- Add new mission types
- Add more planets and new missions (as DLCs)
- Port game on mobiles, tablets*
- Port game on XBox, PS4 and Nintendo Switch*
*Two last points depends on funds we may raise during this campaign and sales on Steam.
How you can help us
There are several ways of helping us:
- Become a backer. Not only will we be very grateful, you will also receive bonuses, like special in-game skins, early (+ beta) and full accesses to the game, free DLCs and OST and more other things.
- Tell your friends about this game and post a message in social networks about us. You can not imagine how good this type of help is!
- Help us to improve 'sci-fi' (or just the 'sci') part of the game. If you have knowledge in astrophysics or biophysics - we always are open to suggestions on how to make this game more realistic :)
- Follow us on Twitch and social networks
Gameplay
Ecopoiesis is a top-down sci-fi action where the player controls a drone which protects the reactor from aliens. The game goal is to terraform a planet by completing 20 missions on it. In most of the levels the player needs to protect the reactor and 'farms' (a separate landing module which also generates oxygen) from aliens. There are different types of aliens, some of them attack reactors and 'farms', others target the drone and special drop pods with upgrades.
Game entities
P-03 "Pytheas" drone is an unmanned robot, remotely controlled by an operator from an orbital station. This model was developed for exploration and maintenance tasks, however after encountering the first contact with aliens, engineers re-programmed its core to emit EMP waves which can destroy ferromagnetic forms of life (aliens).
Reactor is a landing module which generates energy required for creating and supporting an energy dome. It acts like a greenhouse, keeping oxygen and heat inside, running some chemical reactions to separate oxygen from the local atmosphere. After acquiring the required oxygen level, it turns into a passive mode, which only supports the dome (providing no further interest for aliens). Once this phase is over, people can land on the surface under the dome and proceed to terraforming phase 3 (establishing a colony).
TW-02 'Tekton' drones are unmanned worker robots whose task is to place landing beacons for farms that are going to land from a low orbit and maintain the reactor. Due to their low energy consumption and extreme durability, these bots have no value to aliens.
Farm is a module that lands on a placed landing beacon from the space. Farms are used to seed and plant a special kind of vegetation, genetically modified for running photosynthesis many times faster and more effectively than on Earth. After landing, farms begin to spread seeds and to light plants with photosynthetically active radiation (PAR).
Drop pods with tools are also low orbital modules with all the necessary elements and tools required for on-site upgrades and improvements of structures and other robots. Due to their medium energy generation and consumption, they can be targeted by some alien forms of life.
Aliens. Orbital and surface probes detected several magnetic anomalies below the ground. We don't have enough information about these anomalies yet, except that they seem to be a non-intelligent, ferromagnetic species. Some probes were attacked by Ferrites (that's what our scientist call them), probably because of their energy reactors. We need to examine and find a way in which we can defend ourselves from these species.
More others game objects are coming soon, check our updates!
You can find more information on and contact us in different ways:
*We stream on Mon-Fri, 12pm-4pm GMT