Prospector (Mathias Kaindl)

Role-playing game set on the surface of a distant moon with a living society, full of underground bases, bio-domes and other places to explore. The player has to deal with lack of resources, equip controlled drones, fight insidious enemies and survive harsh environments with extreme conditions.

Roadmap

Although the game is in development, it is already playable. Estimated playing time is about 30 hours. The current version roughly shows the progress in percentages, so V0.25 means that 25% of the content is in place, including game mechanics, assets, story, etc. The update rate will be about every month.

The following is a list of main items in my backlog, in chronological order:

• Programs (mechanics review, new programs, better icons)
• Machines (mechanics review, enhancements, salvage)
• Special attacks (tools, UI, environment)
• Save/load game screen (extending F5/F9 quick save/load)
• Localization (different font to handle Unicode chars, menu option, SP, FR, JP, CZ)
• Music (hire a composer)
• Farming (mechanics still unknown)
• Bases (beacons, turrets)
• Level editor (for internal use, possibly made public)
• Story (animations, intro)
• PBR optimizations
• Missions view (overview, collected info, known goals)
• Management view (remote control of miners and bases)
• Map travel (between locations, random encounters, secret areas)
• Mini-map (with auto-mapping)
  

Story

Encountering various beings, places and events will slowly reveal the story of this moon and ultimately the fate of the human race. At the beginning, the player is drawn into the game by building a base around his landing shuttle. Once he does, he is encouraged to explore farther and deeper places of this moon.

Exploration

The player lands near a small space trading post, surrounded by abandoned mines, bio-domes, and military bases. However, this is only a fraction of the places that can be visited on this moon. The player can freely travel in the open world, visit living and abandoned places and discover more of the story.

Equipment

During his journey, the player will face various challenges, each requiring a different approach. Drones have a limited equipment capacity, the player must choose the right combination of weapons and tools wisely. Drones can also use nanobots to perform spooky actions at a distance. Not all equipment is available ready-made, most of the time the player will have to craft the best tools himself.

Crafting

The shuttle lander provides basic crafting machinery, but the player can build additional machinery to process raw resources, assemble materials, and craft equipment. If the items cannot be easily combined in the drone inventory, a special blueprint is needed to provide instructions to the processing machines. Some items and blueprints are common and can be obtained from the trading post, some are extremely rare and require precious components.

Mining

Rare resources are usually hidden deep in caves and underground bases. Drones can mine using attached drills, or the player can build a mining machine to process materials much faster.

Combat

Traveling further from the landing area carries risks. There are many hostile bots and creatures whose interests may conflict with the player's. Combat takes place in real time. Player can instruct his drones to change combat behavior or initiate special actions. It is wise to scout enemies before combat and equip drones accordingly.

Controls

• Esc to clear selection or show menu
• F10 to show menu
• F5 to save game
• F9 to load game
• Left Mouse to move, select, activate and interact
• Space to toggle camera follow on selected object
• Right Mouse or arrow keys to pan the view
• Shift to highlight items/areas
• Shift + Left Mouse to inspect items/areas
• E to customize selected drone
• F1(..N) to select your drone(s), press again to center
• 1..8 to use or consume items
• Z, X, C... to execute programs
• D to toggle defend position
• Ctrl + Left Mouse to attack enemy drone
• Q to toggle attacking selected enemy
• Tab to select (next) enemy
• Drag and drop items, hold a second to split a stack or combine stacks
• Ctrl/Shift when dropping an item to stack/split
• Mouse wheel to change number of items to stack/split

Tips

• Your first objective is to get past the lava, just search everywhere, solution is straightforward
• You don't have any weapon on start, avoid fights until you find one
• Your drone has limited inventory capacity, that can be upgraded by modules. Only the first inventory row is available in game - to use access cards or consumables, move them down there
• Modules can specialize your drones for combat, mining, defense, etc. Make sure to unequip first before replacing modules. You can replace modules only in landing shuttle, when you use the Repair machine
• Modules and construction kits can be placed only in the bottom inventory row