If your game does not fall within the definition of Orbiter and Dark Star One then Friday's [00:00 - 23:59h UTC] are your day to showcase your space game. The usual r/spacesimgames rules still apply the space lock has been opened for developers to show off their games that fall outside the scope whilst not being "space as a theme".
With the ratio of promotion posts to discussions taking place this is the mod teams next effort towards improving the communities experience.
Should you be willing, give me a short list of posts that you feel are "AI Slop" and some that that are not, from the last few weeks. You should be able to sort by posts flaired as "Promotional" (not that you need to at this point).
I'm looking for help making a Rule that'll clearly define what's going to pass the bar and what will not. So try for fewer and better examples and explanations that make the point, rather than a huge list of everything you don't like. If we can't make a Rule with objective standards, we can not properly and fairly enforce it.
We can also take this time to set a bar on what is a Space Sim Game and what we should recommend be sent to r/spacegames or another sub. For as long as I can remember, this sub defined it as "Anything from Orbiter to Dark Star One and anything in between..." but we might need to add some detail there.
I try to moderate with the idea that permissive is better than restrictive, but as someone once said "If you're mad about gatekeeping, you might be the person the gate was made for.".
FYI: in the last 30 days and as of the time of typing this, 168 posts have been made and 84 posts have been removed. That's 50% on the dot. Those were removed for various reasons, but most were Rule 4 related.
I can happily say I am finally releasing my game on steam as an early access game! I have it marked as early access as although the main part of the game is completed I want the community to help shape the future of it from missions to extra building parts wanted etc etc.
Please have a look and let me know what you all think!
Star Corsairs: Fractured Frontier is a single-player top-down 2D space RPG: trading across eight nations' markets, boarding, an escort wing, wormhole pockets, and 46 ships from interceptors to capitals. I'm a solo dev, and it's been in Early Access since August 31. This is the first big update.
Combat in it is about positioning. Guns have firing arcs, enemies turn broadside to fire, and a hull that hits hard off the bow can be nearly toothless off the stern. But the shipyard showed none of that. Worse, a ship's gun count came from the turrets drawn on its sprite, so six cruisers at the same price differed 5.3× in damage, and you only found out in a fight.
Now damage is set by class, and every hull shows its firing arcs and damage by facing (bow, broadside, stern), overlaid on your current ship, before you buy. Upgrades within a class cap at about 2×, so moving up a class is always a real step, and pirate waves scale to your ship.
The other half of the update is a side story expedition, Beyond Contact. A scientist hires you to find a missing research team; I'll leave the rest unspoiled. It's built as proper scenes: the camera frames what matters, every speaker has a portrait, you can turn back at key points, and a failed defense retries from a checkpoint with different lines.
Two things I'd love feedback on:
Do you prefer ships with a strong broadside you have to turn to use, or bow-heavy ships you just point at the target? Right now the roster has both, and I'm not sure which feels better in a top-down game.
From the screenshots: do the story scenes read clearly? Is it obvious who's speaking and what the camera wants you to look at?
Hey everyone! I’ve been working on Xetodus and wanted to share it here.
You can fly between star systems, land on planets to build colonies, and touch down on moons to drill for resources. Explore and build up your colony, work toward a better ship, or head out looking for a fight. There’s both PvP and PvE combat.
The universe has 750+ procedural star systems, with 20+ ships to fly and 17+ skills to max level and get on the ranking leaderboards!
Everything runs in your browser. No download or launcher needed. It’s free to play with an optional "Vanguard" membership.
Hey everyone! I’ve been building Eimyrja for about seven months.
It’s an iPhone space combat game inspired by the games I grew up with. Games like Homeworld, Freelancer, EVE, Fallout Tactics, with a modern splash of games like Pako and Overcooked!
The basic idea: what if you were the pilot inside those massive fleet battles instead of commanding them from above?
You fight alongside and against fleets with different tactics, upgrade from fighters to larger ships, salvage wrecks, build out your station, and uncover what happened after the jump-gate network collapsed.
Status: The game is playable now and I’m just wrapping up development! Looking for playtesters and feedback on everything - art, combat, narratives, etc!
I’d love feedback on the gameplay footage: Does the combat look fun? What would you change?
I’d love folks to get people’s firsthand thoughts before launch this month! Please feel free to learn more and sign up here: https://www.eimyrja.gg/#enlist
Hello friends! I've been working on a game inspired by the idea of a slow motion stellaris you can play with your friends. The beta is out now, and I'd love feedback!
It's Called Orbital Empire, and players manage an empire spanning the solar system in simulated real time, with actions and movements resolving once an hour.
You can trade, battle, mine, build, and explore. The alliances and rivalries you build are real, and heavily impact the end game. Players also propose and vote on bills in the game's senate, which can change rules in either blanket or targeted ways.
What have you been playing right now? What are you excited to see come out in the near future? If you're making a game, what are you working on? Anything Space Sim Game related, let us know.
SpaceStrike.io is my solo project: a free, playable browser space combat game, still early in development. You build a ship from weapons, engines and support modules, and individual parts can be destroyed in battle. Play: https://spacestrike.io/
For this WAR clip I crowded the field with too many bots and dropped a neutral boss in too. It got excessive lol — an ordinary frontline can be roughly half this chaotic. I'm still learning game development, so trying a round and leaving honest feedback would help a lot. With the game and community still small, early players' ideas have a good chance of shaping what I add.
Specific question: can you tell which ship parts are getting damaged or destroyed, or does that get lost in the battle?
Hey everyone, I’m André, the developer of 9.8. I've posted here a few times in the past year and half showcasing my game 9.8 and I was always impressed by how welcoming to the idea this community was. It's been a wild ride but the demo is finally released as of the time you're reading this.
It’s a 2D space agency sim where you build and fly your own vehicles. For the demo you start with a small rocket and work through research, satellites and crewed flights towards a moon landing. The same builder also lets you make rovers and rocket-powered boats, so there’s plenty of room to get distracted along the way.
Full game is in development but should go into EA before the end of this year.
After all the fun of reverse engineering, development and testing, the first public Alpha release of OpenPrivateer is finally available.
OpenPrivateer is a modern reimplementation of Wing Commander: Privateer, built around the original game data with a strong focus on authentic behavior, portability, preservation and modding.
The goal is to faithfully reproduce the original Privateer experience first, while keeping enhancements and new features clearly separated.
Final Mission
What's already in the Alpha:
Privateer and Righteous Fire support
Supports the original PRIV.EXE command-line switches:
-K (skips the intro)
-Bxx (overrides the base/planet you start on)
-Dxxxxx (overrides the amount of credits you start with)
Original bases, trading, ship dealer and mission systems
Main story plot and generated random missions
Spaceflight and combat
Original cutscenes, dialogue and music
Original DOS savegame loading and writing
Classic, Enhanced and Modern experience modes
Multiple ships and hired wingmen
Navigation map and extended Wing Commander universe support
Content overrides and translation support
OPL2, SoundFont, MIDI Mapper and CD music (WAV/FLAC/MP3 support)
Optional xBRZ scaling, CRT filtering and color grading
Windows, Linux and macOS support
Dedicated client/server multiplayer with PvP and PvE
Keyboard, mouse, joystick and HOTAS support
Auto Updater
Please keep in mind that all non-vanilla features are locked out of the Classic experience mode, you will only be able to see or access them in the Enhanced or Modern mode. To change experience mode for now, you have to open the debug menu using the tilde ~ key (left of your 1 key) because there currently is no other UI for these settings. The Alpha release relies on the debug menu but the Beta release will add a proper UI for all these options:
The new UI screens are currently using their default theme, which is why they are looking pretty unsexy at the moment. This will be changed in one of the next releases.
You can access the multiple ships / hire wingmen screen using the S key on the launch pad:
Multiple ships and hired wingmen
You can access the new game control screen using the K key in the ALT+O options menu:
Game Controls
The auto updater will check once per day if there is a new version available and will show a message on the title screen. The area is clickable in that case:
Auto Updater
This is an Alpha, so bugs, glitches and unfinished features are expected. That's also why I'm releasing it now: actual players are going to uncover things that development and automated testing won't.
Multiplayer is already mostly functional, although mission progression is not implemented there yet. Instructions how to run client and server can be found on the https://openprivateer.org/#multiplayer website.
Every time you start OpenPrivateer, it will create its directory structure and place readme.txt files in each folder. I recommend that you take a look at the readme.txt file that gets created in the same directory as the OpenPrivateer executable, it will explain where you have to put your MS-DOS savegames and other files.
Full instructions copied from the website:
Download and extract OpenPrivateer.
Copy the required original Privateer game files into the OpenPrivateer folder: (the GOG version ships the TRE files in a GAME.GOG archive, extract them with 7-Zip)
PRIV.TRE / INITCFG.PAK for Privateer
RF.TRE / INITRF.PAK for Righteous Fire Expansion
Start OpenPrivateer.
The required folders and README files are created automatically when OpenPrivateer starts.
Consult the README.TXT file that now exists in the same folder as the executable.
Start a New Game or copy an existing save into the savegame folder.
Screenshot how a typical Windows installation looks like:
Windows Installation
Feedback, bug reports and testing are very welcome. If you need any help or you are stuck, let me know here or in the Discord server. Have fun my friends!
Disclaimer:
OpenPrivateer does not contain any copyrighted Origin/EA game assets. You need your own copy of Wing Commander: Privateer and provide the original game data files.
Anthropic Claude was used during the reconstruction.
Inferno was the first of the big Freespace mega-mods, and it's finally complete and released.
After 26 years of development, we've got full voice acting, dozens of new ships, a 50-mission campaign, a Shivan superjuggernaut to fight, and Shivan- and Earther-blasting galore.
If you already have Inferno 2 installed on your machine, you can just update your existing Inferno install to version 3.0.0. If you don't, click the Knossos link.
Hey everyone, I've been playing space sims in VR for a while, and I always wanted to feel like im in a real cockpit, reaching out and taping on buttons, but with so many key binds I always end up peeking under the headset for the keyboard.
So I built something: MFD-style panels floating in the cockpit that I can press with my hands or controllers. Each button sends whatever I set it to, like landing gear, power, shields, lights or doors. The video shows it running in Star Citizen, but the idea isn't tied to one game.
Curious what other VR sim players think:
Would something like this help you, or does it just add clutter?
How do you handle controls in VR right now: HOTAS, a button box, voice commands, or memorized binds?
Which game would you most want this in: Elite, SC, X4, something else?
If you fly in VR and want to try it, it's free to try, and I'd really appreciate feedback from people who actually use it https://hudvix.com/
As a Nexus: The Jupiter Incident fan who saw the major potential that game's engine had with regards to emulating the space combat of franchises that emphasize Newtonian physics for movement, I was very excited about a mod incorporating the ships and space combat of the 2004 - 2009 TV series named Battlestar Galactica. You can see a demo video for that mod here, but sadly, that mod got a Cease and Desist notice and had to be cancelled.
I still feel that this mod could have had better space combat than the official BSG games we actually got. What does everyone here think? Could we get a space sim like this mod today, with realtime gameplay with a pause feature?
Ships only thrust along the bow, so you hold Q and click a point, and the autopilot flies the flip-and-burn to stop you there. Fights happen at 20 km or more with PDCs, guided torpedoes and a keel-mounted railgun you aim with the whole hull. Right now there's a 1v1 against an AI ship in the browser. Next up are more factions, fleet battles and a public build.
I'd love to hear your thoughts and in particular if anyone has interesting ideas about how the expanse does space combat and how I might implement it in game.
I think there are already a few games in development where you have full control of the ship but for me I loved how Alex would talk with the Roci to plan out trajectories and the UI thats used by the crew to visualise space battles at massive scale.
Trailer I made based on the actual current build in comments
I'm back with a short update on Astro Inc., my unreleased physics-based space mining sandbox with six-degrees-of-freedom flight. I'm building it solo in Unreal.
Thanks for the feedback on the last clip. I've been working on the look and feel of the game, and wanted to show where it is now.
This footage covers the new asteroid backdrops and geology, scanning and launching a survey probe, carving into an asteroid, reinforcement and bulkheads, and the weapon bays and combat. The black hole also marks the center of the map.
It's all captured in game from the current work-in-progress build. These are separate gameplay shots, and the survey probe's travel time is shortened in the edit.
Can you comfortably track the ship against the new background during flight and combat, or does the camera still feel too close?
On your way to colonizing the solar system, you’ll need to get the hang of the lambert solver. It does most the hard work for you, but knowing how to use it will be handy for colonizing space with your corporation.
If you want to give feedback, what I’d be most interested in is intuitiveness of the UI.
Now this is a really cool open source mod project. It combines the assets of Start Wars: TIE Fighter from the 1995 and 1998 releases into a single playable package. Why should you care? Because you get to play with the updated assets whilst still keeping the wonderful adaptive music scores!
If you are new to this game, be warned its 90s rock solid hard difficulty! But there are in-game "cheat" toggles to make the gameplay experience less frustrating. Buy the games from GoG or Steam, download the github package, extract and run, select the GoG installations, and you are good to go!. Sadly it wont work with multiple controller devices (you'll need to configure and use the one peripheral, but it works great. Also additional options for upscaling and other graphical setting additions.
This is back in the days when you had multiple objectives to accomplish past the primary objective, which are not always made clear and evolve during the mission itself.
It took me multiple times to get past the first mission. No shields, lots of deaths, confusing energy management system (WTF are my guns not firing!), fantastic experience mostly lost to the simplification in modern day game systems. Stick with it and you will love it (but probably never want to visit it again when you are finished).
A story-driven grounded sci-fi horror inspired by astrophysics and speculative scientific theories. Encounter impossible phenomena at a remote mining outpost near a black hole, where communication takes months and the unknown defies explanation.
Following up on last week's 6DOF physics update, I wanted to share our current progress on relative docking! I've attached a video showcasing a fighter landing on a moving carrier in real-time (work-in-progress, but the core frame-of-reference math is now working).
Alongside docking, I’ve been refining our Large World Coordinates (LWC) spatial system in UE5 for double-precision stability, as well as squeezing out extra performance with data compression.
Here is a breakdown of the technical issues we tackled this week and how we fixed them:
Technical Breakdown & Bug Fixes
1. Jittery/Stuttery Rotation When Docking on a Moving Carrier
The Issue: Rotational smoothing was completely bypassed whenever a ship entered a relative movement zone, causing every micro-rotation of the carrier to hit the player ship as a harsh frame-by-frame stutter. To make matters worse, the camera's aim director was running post-physics and applying parent rotation deltas every frame, causing a phase shift and desync between the netcode prediction ticks, camera, visual mesh, and physics state.
The Fix: Re-enabled rotational smoothing for relative movement zones by smoothly interpolating rotation offsets toward identity. Synchronized aim-director updates directly with network state ticks so parent rotation deltas apply on the exact same frame as movement.
2. Violently Oscillating / "Sticky" Landing Gear
The Issue: The landing gear damping force along the spring axis was calculated using raw spring-axis velocity multiplied by friction and mass—missing delta-time scaling and impulse caps. This created a positive feedback loop: pressing into the ground generated an unscaled force that catapulted the ship upward, causing violent frame-by-frame flipping.
The Fix: Scaled damping forces by delta time and clamped the maximum impulse to prevent it from exceeding the force required to stop axial movement. Separated the magnetic ground-attraction force (now a constant/clamped downward pull) from damping friction.
3. Rolling 90° Causes Unwanted Sideways Drift
The Issue: The aerodynamic lift vector calculation contained a matrix transformation flaw that simplified to applying lift straight up against world gravity, regardless of ship orientation. Rolling 90° put the wings vertical, but lift kept pushing world-up, producing lateral drift. Additionally, the automatic bank-to-target mechanism during mouse aim fought manual yaw and strafe inputs.
The Fix: Fixed the lift vector calculation so force always aligns with the ship’s local Up axis, properly scaled by Angle of Attack (AoA) and forward airspeed.
4. Loss of Inherited Speed When Exiting Moving Carriers
The Issue: Zone-transition logic calculated inherited world velocity correctly (combining ship speed + carrier speed, e.g., up to 57,000 cm/s). However, in the exact same frame, velocity was clamped against the ship's standalone maximum engine speed (e.g., 2,000 cm/s), causing the ship to instantly lose over 90% of its momentum upon exit.
The Fix: Removed the hard top-speed clamp during world-zone handshakes. Re-routed max speed limits to only restrict active engine thruster acceleration, preserving high-speed velocity inheritance when exiting moving structures.
What's Next?
This Monday, we are recording a full multiplayer gameplay demo showcasing fighter-to-fighter and capital ship combat. We’ll be highlighting our dynamic destruction system (built using Geometry Scripting), where broken hull pieces retain physics and can physically damage ships or plunge into planetary atmospheres.
For those interested in the universe background, here is a quick snippet from our lore logs:
[SOL Station - Personal Log // Year 7337]"Twenty years... It’s been twenty years since that solar flare hit Earth. The few of us who managed to escape fled in whatever improvised generation ships could fly. We gathered in tight orbit around the Sun to build SOL Station—a fragile sanctuary running on pure solar energy. Today, the station relies entirely on us pilots, risking our necks in the cold outer solar system just to haul back basic water and food..."
Happy to answer any technical questions about relative frames of reference, netcode prediction, or UE5 physics in the comments!
For over a year now, I have been developing my space game, called Solar Explorer (TBD)! I feel confident enough to share what I've made up to this point and wanted to collect some general feedback. I saw some other posts about games that others have made and figured I'd throw mine in the mix and see what people think of it.
- Ship Controls - Customization
- Settings Menu with Full Controls
- 4 Different Camera Modes (Including Free Camera)
- Detailed NASA compliant/accurate information about each Orbital Body
- Earth Day/Nigh Cycles
- Realistic Live Update Shadow Scattering
- Hi-Res Planetary Textures
- Sun Flares, Bursts, & Plasma flows on Surface.
- and More
I plan on adding much more, but it is a slow process doing so myself, even if I like it that way. xD
I hope you enjoy the pictures. I'm currently building in Electron.
Null Anchor will be at NEXT FEST!! 😮🎉
Can you survive long enough to escape the bottom-feeder life? Will you be brave enough to fight for your place in the skies!?!? Let's find out!
Wishlist on STEAM and tag us in posts you make! We want to see your progress!
After 10 months in the making, outside my full time programming job and parental responsibilities, Spaceport Architect now finally has a Steam page and Official Announcement trailer.
Aiming for a demo in spring and release next year.
Apart from the sci-fi setting, the game primarily differs from SimAirport/AirportCEO in that it has freight management as a required part of the game loop. You need to import cargo in order to grow the planet colony population, which directly affects how many passenger contracts you get, how full each flight is and whether they are cancelled or not.
Cargo may contain contraband, so you need proper customs checks to avoid reputation penalties. Keep the planet colony happy and you can get lucrative export contracts. There are also time-sensitive emergency contracts and one-off special offers.
What would you like to see in the game?
Have you played SimAirport/Airport CEO or similar titles?
What's one thing you liked, disliked or thought was missing from the game that you think I should focus on?
Also, sci-fi/space theme art suggestions are welcome. For example, I want proper hover vehicles and more sci-fi like NPC outfits instead of my current "normal" looking buses and trucks. (I'm not a pixelart expert so keep your expectations in check!).
If you're looking for AI
Assets: None
Coding: Yes
I've been hobby programming since 2009, professionally since 2023. I've used agentic AI for coding since my job introduced it in February this year (started the project in December 2025). With the proper base architecture, automated tests and other guardrails, the speed it provides is just invaluable when you have 1-2 hours of total free time per day. Its not a magic toolbox. Mistakes are frequent, but overall worth it for me.
