Games

Genre:

The Astrolabe is a top-down pixel RPG sci-fi game for PC. It is created by the company SnipNBird Games and is currently being set up as a Kickstarter to get onto steam.


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Object of the Game:

The Astrolabe is the name of a space station in deep space. This takes place in the far future, when we've explored past our solar system and are now exploring others. Throughout differing solar systems in our galaxy man has created a network of space stations like checkpoints across space. Every space station is its own unit and is self sufficient. Therefore the people who journey to these space stations from earth are taking a one way trip. There's no return trip back. When you choose to work on a space station, you basically trade your soul because you're stuck there for the rest of your life.

You as the main character, along with multiple other people have gone on this space station, but this space station is more like an internship/university, where it's hands on learning. Each student trains under a mentor to specialize in their jobs and roles. The students are in their young 20's, while the mentor's are seasoned workers, often in their 40's or 50's. This space station mainly plays as a learning type of space station where students learn extensive training in their fields for YEARS. In the future, students specialize in their trade far earlier than they do now, which explains why the people aboard the Astrolabe are so young. Yet they are as experienced as people in their 40's today because they specialized in their careers from a young age.

The main character is a botanist, but also a person of many trades. You are a seasoned student who has more training than most of the other students onboard (which explains why you do more). So while a lot of your jobs will rest on farming aboard the spacestation, it'll overlap with many of other students' jobs too. As a botanist, you don't just supply the food for the entirety of the space station, but you also explore planets and take plant samples and find uses for them, as well as plant husbandry. You can also do additional things like mining, archaeology, interior design (for your own house), fishing, hunting, and animal taming. The game is sort of based on Harvest Moon, if you're familiar with those RPG game series, or Stardew Valley.

The main character will have a lot of variety and side jobs to do, as you will have dynamic and interconnected relationships to the other students on board, and based on how you play, the game can go in many directions. While making friends with certain people, you'll instantly make enemies with others who don't like the people you become friends with. It's a strategic game where you try to foresee the consequences of your replies and relationship to other people. You have a goal but there's multiple ways to get there based on who you make friends and enemies with. Thus it is a game that is replayable and ever changing every time you play it and make different choices.

There are 5 bachelors and bachelorettes you can choose from. You choose between being a male or female. If you are a female you'll also have a female "best friend" that will be signed to you from one of the 5 people that attended earth university with you. If you are male you'll be assigned a "best friend" from one of the 5 main male characters who you've been friends with for a long time.

Relationships are a lot more complex than in Harvest Moon, as the game primarily centers around them. You'll often have more than 3 replies, you'll also be able to ask questions of characters and get to know them in certain ways. If you've ever played Nancy Drew games, you'll know what I mean when I say that.

By forming relationships in people you can gain special tools to help you in your space exploration, and yes, there's going to be a lot of space exploration. There are 6 unique planets to explore and exploit resources from. If the game gets a lot of funding, we might even make an expansion pack where you can colonize the planets you explore and set up little towns on them later in the gameplay. Not only do you manage the farm on the space station, but far enough into the game you earn a spaceship and you and a team of people go to different planets and explore the life there. Mostly plant life obviously, but sometimes there will be aggressive species that will hinder your goals and try to kill you. You can also hunt and tame some of these animals and take them back to the space station as "pets."

Aside from the 10 marriable main people, there will be around 100 other random people running the space station. Most of them won't have super in depth personalities, and will be mainly just workers who do random spaceship jobs. There will be a few other characters that will have personalities, like the mentors of every student, as well as some of the shop keepers, the space station "council," etc. We've created a random face generator where I made a bunch of hairstyles, clothes, eyes, mouths, noses, accessories, etc. and programmed it to randomly generate characters for background characters in the space station. With this same system you can also create your own unique character and the program is programmed to not to choose your exact choices so that you will never run into yourself on the space station.

People are good for things aside from relationships. For example (Blayne) will have a drill you'll have to become friends with him in order to borrow it in order to mine on other planets, etc. until you can buy your own. Each character friendship gives the character something. Since you go to other planets within a team, you'll also have to work with people to get out of tough situations and survive the wilds on a foreign planet. Group dynamics and chemistry and all that.

You can also create separate "colonies" on planets where you can grow alien plants in their natural habitats. Or you can take them back to the space station and create pods for them where you have full control over the variables that help them grow. Therefore each plant will be assigned differing measurements, such as how much sun they need, oxygen levels, and humidity, etc. We plan to keep this relatively simple, measuring things in "Low" "Medium" and "High."

The Astrolabe is the name of the space station and is obviously named this because the shape of it represents an Astrolabe (An old measurement device in medieval ages used to measure star patterns and navigation). There are about 6 levels, including "Level 0" which remains locked throughout most of the game and nobody knows what's down there. But one day it will be randomly generated to unlock and you can go explore some creepy stuff down there that I'm not going to say cause I'm not going to spoil it. That part's a surprise.

The Astrolabe is designed to have the layers be smallest at the top so that people on the top levels can look down and see the bottom levels. The very top therefore is the control room that the council have all the controls in. Next, below that comes the Dorms along with the parkland that have trails and gardens for students to hang out. There's also a recreation center there where students can go to the gym and go swimming in the pool and a games room and such. This is also where the dorms rest. The dorms are divided into two sections that are fixated in a circle so that the two dorms face each other-one male, one female. Around that is the surrounding parkland with benches and gardens and trails and such that students can spend their leisure time.

The level underneath this one contains some labs, the hospital, training rooms, cafeterias, etc. And then the level below that has a huge food court area where the market is also kept. There's also a restaurant/bar there, and the whole area is surrounded by windows that you can glance out into space. These are special windows where filters have been installed to create a more earth-like experience. So instead of always seeing darkness, the windows act like days and seasons, to make the passengers feel at home. They get lighter and in the morning hours and let the darkness come through during the night hours. They also change alternating seasons to give the space station a sense of time like it would be back on earth.

This is also where the space ship docking yards are kept. Traders come in from other space stations to trade goods, and it's here that you can also sell your discoveries and your crops too.

The floor under that is where the farms and fields are where you farm your crops. It has two rotating arms that rotate throughout the day that sprinkles down water on the crops so you don't have to water them all by hand. This rotating arm can also be seen from all the other floors when you look down. It represents the needles on an Astrolabe device. You'll also have open space in that area to build and upgrade stuff, such as pods to keep alien plants separate from the crops. There will also be greenhouses of storage and freezers where seeds are stored in case of a plague.

You work alongside your mentor to get the farm stuff done. And she will be very cross with you if you show up late to your job. You sleep in the dorms with the other students but you still have to get to your job on time. You may be required to do odd jobs to upgrade your things.

We also planned that if we ever made downloadable content later for this game, we'd make it so that the colonies you created on the other planets would become towns that you technically started with your plant colonies.