Originally started as a fun father/son project for Nick and his 7 year old son, Ethan, ‘Project Sirius’ quickly became a major project that was adopted by RetroPixel Digital. The game was inspired by other video games that Nick and Ethan loved to play, and Nick thought it was a great way to help inspire his son to embrace his creativity. Ethan is 9 now, and is very excited to help design the alien animal species that will appear in the game.

‘Project Sirius’ is a single player open world, massive sci-fi space exploration & action game. Players can create and customize their own characters, own ships and accept missions in order to build up resources. It was originally inspired by wanting to create an expansive universe where players can choose to explore, mine, fight or complete NPC missions. Players are able to land on an infinite number of procedurally generated worlds, each with unique new species that can be scanned and documented (and in some cases avoided), different plants, terrain, biomes, environmental hazards and weather patterns. Planets will have historical monuments that will be tied to the quest and storyline. This allows the player to experience a new experience on each planet.

We’re focusing on realism. Spaceships are essential for the player to travel to different planets and mission areas, but the player will not start with one and will need to work hard to get one. Players will be able to repair ships in the middle of space by either performing tasks inside their ships, or getting out into space to perform exterior repairs. This would also extend out to performance modifications (overclocking, upgrading, etc.). Salvaging other wrecked ships to obtain special technology not otherwise available (for  example, ship cloaking tech). Learning lessons from other popular games in the Sci-Fi, Open World and Action RPG genres, the original idea was to achieve very interactive and rich gameplay by having the player interact with ships, animals, NPC’s and environments.

We’ve decided to go with a single player model for this game, as the networking requirements for a massive multiplayer online game would be out of scope, time consuming and expensive. This will depend on the popularity and success of the first iteration. We don’t want loading screens or blank screens while players get into their ships, but rather give them the ability to walk into a ship or vehicle in the same way they would walk around a station or
planet. This allows players to walk around inside their ship, while in flight, landed, or otherwise. This mechanic is exciting for players, as it offers them a much more immersive experience. Some missions may even require players to space-walk on their ships, or jump from their ships into deep space to recover objects, board other ships etc. Interacting with NPC’s can differ, as the character can choose how to interact with them. They can become friendly with
certain NPC’s, or they can cause conflict, which will alter the NPC’s behavior towards the player, changing the game mechanics and storyline. Completing missions for certain NPC’s can cause conflict between the player and other factions, NPC’s and even law enforcement.

Each planet is procedurally-generated and real-world scale, so players are not limited to any specific area. Alien life will be varied, not only visually, but behaviorally. Some species may attack, some may be friendly and some may run from players. NPC missions may ask for the player to scan and document these species, or the player may be able to just interact with them however they want.

If the player is interested in mining resources, some planets will have  resources not seen on other planets. Mining more valuable resources will be more hazardous or require the player to travel to more hazardous planets in order to gain the resources. These hazards could range from environmental hazards, aggressive animals or even unfriendly NPC’s in the mining area.

This enriches the player’s experience, by requiring them to search for and travel to different planets in order to find certain resources, animals or artifacts.

Some planets will not be accessible unless the player has specialized ships that allow them to travel to them. They may also require specialized armor or tools to be able to survive on the planet’s surface. It will be required to travel to some of these planets for the storyline and quests. Some selected planets (like Earth) will allow players to interact with the ancient pyramids and societies from the 2500 BC era, which ties into the overall story arc.

If a player’s ship is damaged, they may need to get out of the ship and perform manual repairs with a special tool. Depending on the damage to the ship, the player may even need to get out of the ship or into space in order to perform external repairs. This mechanic immerses the player and requires them to interact with the environment in ways that other games don’t do.

Programming. Our team has many years of experience with Unreal Engine and video game design. We have chosen to use some of Unreal Engine 5’s new tools for creating large scale levels and by creating procedurally generated planets, which will allow us to have real life-sized planets that players can land on, fly around and explore without limits. We are identifying pathways to develop localized gravity for ships, stations, planets and even in space (zero gravity), as well as physics for space flight and warp capabilities.

During Conceptualization, our team will explore the implementation of a procedurally generated planet and solar system that allows for fully populated planets. This enables the player to travel anywhere within the planet or solar system without limitations. AI-based behaviors for animals and NPC’s will also be implemented. Animals and NPC’s will have complex behavior trees, allowing them to vary significantly and react in different ways, depending on how the player plays the game. They will be randomly generated around planets and in space, depending on their stats (i.e. a bear-like animal species will only appear in certain forested biomes, and not in a desert biome or ice planet). Tile based open world level streaming is one of the most important features we will implement. Unreal Engine 5 has very advanced tools to help us achieve a seamless playing experience. This means no loading screens during gameplay, which allows for more immersive gameplay.

Project Sirius will attract mostly players who fall into the ‘Ultimate Gamer’ and ‘All-Round Enthusiast’ personas. The game is very immersive, and these personas will enjoy these mechanics. Those who fall into the ‘Popcorn Gamer’ and ‘Backseat Viewer’ personas can enjoy this game also, as the experience is rich and beautiful. It almost plays as if watching a movie, so watching a friend play this game will be exciting to these people.

Players can choose what they want to do throughout the game, whether they  want to focus on exploring planets and gathering data, mining to gather  resources, pirating other ships, or running cargo hauling or bounty hunting missions. Not only will players be able to purchase ships and items in game, but they will also have the ability to sell  them to NPC’s as well.

Building up resources will allow players to buy specialized hardware, vehicles, weapons, tools, ships, ship upgrades, armor, etc. which helps stay engaged. It also gives them a much wider variety of options for gameplay. They will be able to play through the storyline, which will change, depending on what they choose to do. They can also do side missions and quests that relate more to the style of gameplay that they choose.

One player may decide to follow the mining path; finding resources, mining them by hand and selling them to NPC’s. This will allow the player to build up resources that can be used to upgrade their mining tools, suits, and ships to increase the efficiency of their mining. They could then customize their tools, ships and suits even more, making more resources.

Another player may decide that they are more interested in combat. They can run NPC missions, find NPC pirates and build up status and resources. This player would most likely want to focus their efforts on purchasing better weapons, armor and more specialized ships to make their job easier. Whether they become a bounty hunter or a pirate themselves, would determine their status with local law enforcement and factions, affecting their choices for
NPC missions and ability to travel to certain areas and stations. Regardless of which path they choose, players will always have the ability to follow multiple paths, or follow a completely different path later on.

We’ve decided to go with the premium model for this game, which will generate income through initial sales, with the actual pricing to be determined during the conceptualization stage by analyzing price points of other indie developers within the genre that we are pursuing. Releasing additional paid DLC content in the future, adding additional mechanics and levels, etc. to the game, will generate additional streams of revenue, a common approach for the games with procedural expansive worlds that are being continuously developed.

Similar titles from established AAA studios generally range from $60 to $70 in this same genre. Smaller indie studios typically charge from $20 to $40. Due to the scope of our game, we have identified an appropriate price point to be around $40-$45 for ‘Project Sirius’, with the actual price finalized upon conducting sufficient level of market and competitor research. There are a lot of examples of major selling popular video games right now that follow this
same model, with DLCs being an effective tool to both maintain user engagement and an additional revenue stream.