A year ago this month, StarFear was a networked cube in space. Over the last months we've been playtesting internally extensively: adding systems, tweaking balance, and moving inch by hobby inch closer to our vision for the experience we want to share.
What we really want to know: Do other people find this as compelling and fun as we do?
There's no question that every game is made better by the feedback of its players. We're honestly nervous and excited to see what happens next. Every bug report and piece of feedback lands on our desk and may go straight into the next build.
What We're Building For
Two things, above everything else.
Skill expression. When to push. When to extract. Favorite loadouts to match your personality. Where to aim when a sniper is telegraphing and a bomber is drifting into your flank. Every run is a chain of small decisions, and the good players make better chains.
Difficulty that respects you. Hard doesn't mean unfair. When you die — and you will — it should be because you didn't react quickly enough, you missed a shot, or you got greedy. The game didn't cheat you. The combat asks you to improve, and when you do, it feels good..
We're building a game we want to (and are) playing, and that means you can bring your friends. One ship split between roles, or a squadron of up to four. Shared stash, shared risk, shared feeling of elation at extraction.
What's Next
Playtest feedback directly shapes the next few months. We're watching closest:
Are you having fun? Fun games make lasting memories
Where's the friction? We know it isn't AAA and we don't care; we've focused all our energy on gameplay, but we need to see what makes people want to put it down
The current plan is to start with one playtest with a narrow goal and then expand from there. We've got a lot of ideas, but it'd be foolish to spend the time if the core loop isn't solid yet. The majority of the core game systems are already on display but need refinement and extension. Controller support and better economy and game balance. More equipment, more ships, more enemies, more interesting upgrades, and a deeper story.
Someday, when the foundation is broad enough a more persistent mode where your stash persists for weeks as you progress through the game.
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A Little About Us
Tol Eressea, engineer
Ered Wethrin, producer 1992 – XPilot was released. As brothers, we grew up playing Xpilot with our father, a forerunner in client-server multiplayer architecture to nearly all games that exist today, having no idea that it would influence our relationship to gaming and each other for the rest of our lives. July 2017 – Escape From Tarkov went to closed beta. We experienced what we call "gear fear" for the first time, and became obsessed with hoarding mounds of loot that we'd never use while entering raids with a pistol and a dream. This gives rise to the feeling that constraining the extraction genre to FPS only is a missed opportunity. 2024 – We decided to try our hand at making instead of playing. It didn't start very well. Spent almost a year building in the wrong engine and writing our own custom netcode. The complexity in game systems we wanted was too hard for spare time only construction.
The Road Here
Spring 2025 — The Loop. Time to get serious and build something we could release. Switch to Unity for built-in netcode support. Straight to Steam to facilitate sharing test builds. Start. Kill. Extract. And do it together with friends.
Summer 2025 — Put Toys in the Sandbox. The core game is there, but it's the same thing over and over. Item and enemy variety. Proof of concept crewing system because we know we'll want it later. Oh, and a happy milestone: Enemies predictive aiming made a bunch of playtesters upset!
Autumn 2025 — Cognitive Load. Ships start being living, breathing entities, requiring management and awareness. We always wanted the game to be lethal, but system failures increase the tension while giving you an opportunity to recover. Put in a placeholder boss (it's still the same one). Objectives begin to give you direction and purpose.
Winter 2025 — Up the Immersion. Controversial shift to being "in the world" at all times. The Starbase hub provides a place for players to relax and prepare or test their loadouts between missions. Enemies now detect you with sight and "sound" (it's space, after all), and remember where you were. Focus on enemies being more interesting, rather just having more of them.
Spring 2026 — Refinement and Longevity. Fill in the gaps. An upgrades tree with tradeoffs. Equipment mods. Player levels and wanted-level difficulty scaling for pilots wanting to challenge themselves further. Expanding ship selection and crewing capability. Save-and-continue runs. A total level visual rework. Always tuning the tutorial. Analytics. Feedback systems. Getting ready.
Let's Break It Together
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It's nearly time! Lurk. Report bugs. Send us a ten-page design manifesto. Or just have fun. We're here for it. See you out in the black.
— The StarFear team, Tol and Ered