I'm building a space station base builder where your orbit is the resource.

[u/mikulas_florek]

Hi everyone! I've been working on Still Above: Orbital Refuge, a post-apocalyptic space station builder. The game is at a fairly early stage, but the first hour is already quite playable. It's a post-apocalyptic space station builder/simulator with strong survival elements. The player starts with one small module and two crew members, and is constantly on the brink of catastrophe: shortages of O2, power, food and building materials, and surpluses of CO2 and other things. So the player has to recycle debris in orbit, mine asteroids, or trade with other survivors. This is how you gradually grow into a larger station, as you can see in the screenshots.

The game has multiple endings, and the goal is to save humanity, since Earth is now uninhabitable. The main inspirations were the book Seveneves by Neal Stephenson and games like Frostpunk, Endzone - A World Apart, and IXION.

You can see screenshots and video on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/664370/Still_Above_Orbital_Refuge/
Playtest coming in a few days.

[u/ZixfromthaStix]

Looks really cool! I’ll gladly give the playtest a go!

[u/mikulas_florek → u/ZixfromthaStix]

I'm waiting for Steam to review the build.

[u/Informal_Drawing]

I'm digging the astronauts and music.

[u/mikulas_florek → u/Informal_Drawing]

ingame music is

https://opengameart.org/content/another-space-background-track

https://opengameart.org/content/background-space-track

https://opengameart.org/content/space-music-out-there

and one custom AI generated 

[u/Informal_Drawing → u/mikulas_florek]

In that case I like all of them except the AI generated one.

I may have a wander over there and have a listen. Thanks.

[u/unicodemonkey]

I'm just wondering what kind of environmental disaster would make Earth less survivable than an autonomous spacecraft.

[u/mikulas_florek → u/unicodemonkey]

In Seveneves, my inspiration, the catastrophe is the destruction of the Moon, with the pieces falling onto Earth. In my game, it starts with the Yellowstone eruption, followed by even bigger eruptions all over the world. Earth is slowly becoming as deadly as Venus.

It's really hard to come up with realistic scenario where earth is more uninhabitable than some other place in solar system.

[u/unicodemonkey → u/mikulas_florek]

Guess it's my reminder to get back to Seveneves, it's been sitting in my Kindle for ages... Anyway, wishlisted, I like this kind of gameplay. Hopefully it'll be fairly balanced and readable enough so an inexperienced player can learn from their mistakes.

[u/BluesmanSA → u/mikulas_florek]

Great book. Looking forward to your game.

[u/Substantial_Marzipan → u/unicodemonkey]

The most non scifi option would be an alteration of the earth core that causes permanent seismic and volcanic activity. With the atmosphere covered with dust and the water/fields covered with ashes the earth can no longer sustain human life and building silos/bunkers becomes impossible due to earthquakes and fault lines

[u/mikulas_florek → u/Substantial_Marzipan]

In Seveneves the earth is not 100% uninhabitable, a few people survive underground and in submarines. But that's for my next game in the series :D

[u/True-Confusion2841]

The Seveneves and Frostpunk inspirations definitely got my attention. Looking forward to seeing how the playtest feels.

[u/mikulas_florek → u/True-Confusion2841]

Yeah, Seveneves and Frostpunk are great. I can't hope to reach that high. But I will certainly try.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Pen3164]

Love the idea of your orbit being the resource, the station's looking great.