Developing Eternity has been an amazing ride. Creating a strategy game, even a small one like this, has been a long-standing dream, and seeing it come to life has been a real privilege.
And then there’s all the great input from you: players who enjoy strategic, emotionally engaging games where conscience plays a role alongside planning skills. So far, the discussions have been insightful and constructive. You’ve pointed out issues, opportunities, and perspectives we never would have considered on our own. For that, we give you our deepest thanks, for your support and for taking the time to share your feedback!
Building a game like this is a real challenge, even at the “indie” scale. There are countless systems, mechanics, content pieces, artwork, and more to add, test, validate, redo, and then… redo again.
That being said, we thought it would be interesting to share the current state of the project and give you a realistic glimpse of what’s coming Let's start with the past. What is done and playable right now?
- Linked Resources for Life Support. Oxygen consumes water to generate, water consumes oxygen, and food consumes both. Power keeps the generators running. An automatic system redistributes resources across the fleet to the ships that need them most.
- Mining. The game spawns asteroid fields with resources on them. They are finite. Some resources can be mined right at game start, others require tech unlock to be harvestable.
- System jumps. When the fleet or a self-sustaining ship reaches a Jump Gate, it activates and provides the list for linked solar systems. Each system jump has a Hyperdrive Fuel cost.
- Fleet movement. Ships move around, avoid obstacles, dock in planetary orbits, can be deployed in “cinematic” mode (zoomed in, detailed) or normal.
- Life Support Shortage Consequences. Having zero of a resource and not being able to restock from the fleet, leads to dramatic consequences for your ships and crew.
- Ship Modules. In Eternity, everything a ship does is thanks to a specific module that has been installed. So, it is possible to add, remove or research new modules to add to ships.
- Crew Management. Players can transfer crew between ships or they can allocate them to operating ship modules.
- Debris Salvage. Any debris from ships, stations or of unknown origin can be searched for salvage, enabling players to retrieve precious Refined and Fabricated Materials. This is done using a Salvage ship, for which we haven’t completed the final asset yet, so, a placeholder is in the game.
R&D. The tech unlock system is fully functional. Techs are available for research, unlocking new Functionalities, Systems, Ship Modules or Upgrades for existing ones. The current layout is placeholder, but the final one is being worked on.
Next is what is currently being worked on:
- Producing the final Tech Tree screen. It will accommodate all the tech categories and more technologies to unlock, as well as some new surprises.
- Adding more Techs (unlocks, upgrades, blueprints) and Ship Component Blueprints, to the game. The goal is to allow mining more Raw Resources, more Refining Recipes, more Fabrication Blueprints and Starting ship components in the category of Life Support and Scanners.
- Adding the final asset for the Salvage ship. While the 3D model is the definitive one, it is still missing textures and VFX.
- Producing the final Cargo Hold Management screen. Each ship has its own cargo hold, which can store any resource in the game. Resources can be transferred among ships and they stack automatically. While this system has been operational for a while, it lacks a polished UI and integration with the rest of the management interface. Working on it ;)
- Producing the final Management Screen. This interface groups all the functionalities to manage the fleet as whole and ships in particular, from adjusting life-support production, to transferring crewmen between ships, adding new modules, etc. While these functionalities have also been available for a while, the time has come to set them in the final structure for that interface.
- Producing the final Production Screen. This interface allows switching between Refinery and Factory ships, check what recipes are available to each one, initiate refining of resources, manufacturing items and managing those processes (start, pause, cancel). This system is also functioning for a while, but the screen was a blockout. About high time to move it to a new design!
Finally, this is what the Near Future holds:
- Solar System Exploration. Solar Systems will have three states; Explored (everything is visible, all data is known), Identified (some chunks are visible, some data is known) and Unknown (nothing is known). Players will deploy probes, move the fleet and deploy System Scanners (for celestial bodies), Mineral Scanners (asteroid fields) and Ship Transponder Scanners (debris and wrecks) to map solar systems.
- Exploration. Planets, space stations and ship wrecks can be explored for resources ,lore, new ships, blueprints, maps or even people. Each also has randomly assigned Hazards (that make sense for their context) that will hinder player’s efforts. In return, players will set away crews, gear them up to face any hazards and deploy them for some time. The longer the away team stays (up to a limit), the larger and better the rewards, if it stays to end, the player takes full-control of whatever he was exploring.
- Random and Narrative Events phase 1. Players will be presented with decisions, their choices will start shaping the course of their own story, unforeseen predicaments will prompt for some tough calls. This iteration will focus around Ethical Survival Choices, Cosmic Events, Maintenance Events (boons and banes) and some Aspects of Narrative.
- Content pass 2 and 3: Add more blueprints, unlockable technologies, ship components and ships into the game. These two passes will occur at different times and essentially expand the breadth of what the player can do in the game.
- Fleet Politics. With the advent of Ethical Survival Choices and some Aspects of Narrative, it will be possible to introduce a number of features concerning the day-to-day life of the fleet. It starts with Laws of Governance, where players can issue regulations that shape the way their fleet society works. This leads to random Fleet Factions (like Unions, Authoritarian, Religious, Democratic, etc.) forming and random Faction Leaders arising. Players will be able to mute the importance of some of these elements (or maybe even disable them?), if they prefer to focus on other aspects of the game.
- Diplomacy/Combat. With Military ships and military ship components (like reinforced hull armor and weapons that can be mounted on civilian ships), players will be able to transform their fleets into a fierce combat force that can be used for self-defense or as a band of space marauders. Attacks from pirate and raider fleets will be a hazard. There are also other “mixed” fleets seeking survival, such as the player’s. However, with the introduction of Diplomacy, there are plenty of alternatives to combat in the game. Players will be able to convince other survivors to join their fleets or to do entire playthroughs without firing a single shot. They can also use tech upgrades to avoid enemy fleets altogether.
This is where we stand right now. It’s an exciting journey, and we can’t wait to share more of Eternity with all of you!
Stay frosty!