Outstation Windows game

Outstation

DarkStone Digital | TBD

A new element has been discovered within the clouds of various nebulas. Throughout the galaxy, a number of mining operations have sprung up to harvest and refine this new element into fuel utilized for space travel bringing a rush for dominance over the budding industry.

This rush to harvest fuel has made the concept of security nearly non-existent leading to massive collaborations of corsairs that patrol the galaxy looking for potential mines to raid and ships to hijack. Once a scout has found a vulnerable target, the group will warp waves of ships to its location to overwhelm and plunder.

Seeing an opportunity to satisfy the desire for money and combat, mercenaries began to offer protection services to mining operations. These mercenary contracts operate on a pay per-kill basis; depositing payment into the mercenary’s account instantly upon destroying a combative ship and often provide a contract completion bonus.

The base play of the game is inspired by classic shoot em up experiences combined the with thematic universe shaping the entire play experience.

Growing up, I played a number of shoot em ups and they all have fantastic game play but not many were really invested in the world they created. Basically, most shoot em ups I played had a setting for the game to take place in and that was about where it stopped. With Outstation, I want the universe of the game to permeate the game play in every way possible and influence the mechanics.

Outstation focuses on a few core concepts: Choose your contract, fulfill that contract for money (C.H.I.P.s), spend that money to improve/repair your ship to work on more challenging contracts.

I’m approaching Outstation with depth over breadth. This means I want to keep what you do easy to learn and understand while giving you a wealth of experiences within those mechanics. Outstation is about being a mercenary in the out.

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Outstation Kickstarter has launched!

Oct 8 2019 News

Well the Kickstarter is up and running and right now is about the time where you start to doubt everything you’ve ever done.

The feeling like your game isn’t good enough to get backing, you didn’t represent it correctly, you didn’t advertise properly. I spent a long time working very hard to build a demo for kickstarter and make the KS page as nice as it could possibly be.

A Risky Choice

I think I’ve taken a bit of a risk derailing the main game to create a demo that is specific to a kickstarter. It gives a sampling of ship customization, combat, and a few other things but at the price of leaving out the contract system and a glimpse at a full contract job. I chose to do this and pepper in multiple ways to go to the kickstarter and reference to try and use my demo to drive traffic from places that wouldn’t go to kickstarter to the KS page. This could be a “haven’t seen this done before” thing that turns out to be great or it could single handedly kill the KS campaign because it doesn’t focus on a vertical slice. So now I need to re-orient the project back to the full game and continue on with full development.

I have multiple plans for during the life of the KS to hopefully help it along and I will be as on top of it as annoyingly possible for people but it needs to be balanced with development again. I have a very short runway and need to finish the game.

Our Secret Below

I’ve been asked about OSB a lot and it’s basically just “are you still working on it?” OSB is still on the development schedule as soon as Outstation is complete. It’s been a rather interesting time as I started Outstation as a small game to fill a gap while I waited to work on the new Welcome to the Game project but as time moves on, I’m finding I don’t want to just put out the simplest of games so I’m pushing to make Outstation more. So hang in there! OSB is next in the hopper.

Wish me luck! I hope you can stop by the Kickstarter.

OUTSTATION KICKSTARTER PAGE