Empyrion is an open world, space survival adventure where you can fly across space & land on planets. Explore, fight, build & survive.
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Empyrion is an open world, space survival adventure where you can fly across space & land on planets. Explore, fight, build & survive.
About this project
"I am excited about this one...it looks pretty cool" - Captain Shack (TheXPGamers)
"It does look really interesting...They got a lot of the features nailed down" - Arron (LastStandGamers)
"Empyrion Takes Galactic Survival a Step Further" - Cliqist
"Kickstart This: ‘Empyrion’ Invites You to Highest Heaven" - Indie Game Magazine
"Empyrion Galactic Survival – Just Another Day in Paradise" - Gamers Honest Truth
"The Galactic Odyssey You’ve Been Craving" - The Pad Games
"Empyrion is a Survivalist Minecraft Set in Space" - Niche Gamer
Empyrion - Galactic Survival has been Greenlit after only 19 days on Steam Greenlight! We would have never expected to get Greenlit so fast. Thank you so much for your support and the 73% (!!!) of Yes-votes.
Empyrion is a 3D open world, space survival adventure in which you can fly across space and land on planets. Build, explore, fight and survive in a hostile galaxy full of hidden dangers.
Empyrion will feature space & planetary exploration, building & construction, mining & resource gathering, survival, crafting, as well as space & land combats. Using the Unity 3D engine, Empyrion uniquely combines elements from space simulations, construction games, survival games and ego-shooters. The game is currently under development by Eleon Game Studios.
GAME FEATURES
SPACE AND PLANET EXPLORATION
An absolute free-roaming experience awaits you: fly across space and land on planets.
The universe is your playground. You can go wherever you want: warp between solar systems, fly from planet to planet, or land on giant asteroids. If you are orbiting a planet and see a mountain on the surface, you can actually descend on the planet and land on the mountain. Then you can get off your ship and freely explore your surroundings. Likewise, if you walk around on the planet and see a moon on the horizon, you can take your spaceship and fly to this moon and land on it.
SURVIVAL
Survival is key. Try to stay alive in a hostile galaxy. Each planet is different with its own challenges. Food and oxygen are rare – be well prepared.
Each planet has its own characteristics and potentially unforgiving conditions. To survive, you have to adapt to a planet’s unique environment. For example, you will discover alien planets with harmful cosmic radiation or acid rain as well as planets with an enormous gravity that sticks you to the ground. The game also simulates different climates and weather conditions.
BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION
You can build everything out of blocks and building parts like in Minecraft: large motherships, small spaceships, space and planetary stations, and facilities such as mining robots and solar panels.
The mothership is your mobile home base that you pilot across the endless space and in which you can freely walk around. Before the journey begins, don’t forget to build a hangar or a landing platform on the mothership for your small spaceships. You will need them for fast attacks, reconnaissance missions and planetary landings. Of course, you also build these small, agile spaceships by yourself.
SPACE AND LAND COMBATS
You will fight a variety of creatures in space and on planets.
Empyrion will feature a variety of enemies reaching from wild creatures on the planets to intelligent alien races that can attack you in space or on a planet. Be proactive because it can be highly rewarding to attack and loot a pirate space station. Perhaps you will find a blueprint for an advanced alien weapon technology?
SINGLE, MULTIPLAYER AND CO-OPERATIVE
In Empyrion, you can play single player or multiplayer (with or against your friends).
Besides single player mode, Empyrion let’s you play multiplayer. For example, you can team up with your friends to play cooperatively: Invite them to join you on your mothership to operate the turrets while you pilot the ship. You can also form a wolf pack with several spaceships and attack pirate space stations or other enemies. Besides co-operative gameplay, you are also able to fight against each other in PvP.
HUGE GALAXY AND OPEN WORLD
Absolute freedom in a vast galaxy: a real free-roaming experience awaits you.
The galaxy is procedurally generated and features hundreds of different solar systems. Each solar system contains several planets with their own characteristics (planet type, gravity, atmosphere, number of moons, terrain, surface, vegetation, climate, and resources). Initially, you face an uncharted universe with only basic information about the planets, their resources, and life forms.
MINING AND RESOURCE GATHERING
For building and construction, you must gather and mine resources.
To obtain your building blocks, you must gather and mine resources that you find on planets and asteroids. Empyrion features different planet types such as desert, ice, lava, barren, oceanic, temperate, and gas planets, each with its specific resources. To successfully gather and mine resources you must adapt to a planet’s unique environment and geography.
TERRAIN DEFORMATION
You can change the terrain as you like. Be strategic!
Each planet will feature a voxel-based terrain. You can entirely modify and deform the terrain: flatten it for your planetary station, dig holes to find resources or build a tunnel system to protect yourself. It’s a true sandbox game!
SIMULATION OF PHYSICS
Empyrion will simulate maneuverability, electricity, airflow, gravity, damage, construction solidity, and much more.
The dynamic airflow simulation, for example, requires you to build your ships and stations airtight to preserve oxygen. Moreover, the shapes of your ships influence their maneuverability and combat ability. In addition, your ships and stations use generators to produce electricity and every device consumes energy from the power grid. Ensure enough power supply, otherwise you will find yourself in the dark with no life support.
EXTENSIVE CRAFTING SYSTEM
Craft your own equipment and weapons.
Using and combining resources, you can craft your own equipment such as engines, generators, sensors, shields, and cloaking devices. You can also craft your land and space combat weapons including rocket launchers, miniguns, shotguns, lasers, and turrets.
BACKGROUND STORY
The search for paradise is as old as humanity. However, by the end of the 24th century, the Earth will be far from being a paradisiacal place…Overpopulation, runaway climate change and natural resource exhaustion had lead to political instability, riots and looting, war over resources, hundreds of millions of refugees, severe droughts, famines, mass extinctions of many species, and ecosystem collapse.
In the year 2402, a team of researchers discovered the wreck of a starship in the Antarctic, hidden up to this time under a thick cover of ice. Apparently, the ship belonged to a technologically highly advanced alien race and was powered by an unknown form of energy. Also a star map was recovered whose symbols were similar to those used in ancient cosmologies to describe “Empyrion” – the land of plenty. The star map seemed to point to a location far away in the Andromeda Galaxy about 2.5 million light-years away.
Given the increasingly desperate situation on Earth, the “United Council of Humanity” decided to focus the remaining resources on Earth on a unified effort to build a fleet of starships with the aim of establishing contact with the mysterious aliens and finding Empyrion. All ships were equipped with an alien energy cell to power their experimental hyperdrives.
Finally, in the year 2473, the fleet of starships is ready and you are the first commander of the frigate “Helios.” After you activate the hyperdrive, however, something goes wrong an unknown force takes control of your ship... Subsequent to reappearance from hyperdrive, your ship is disabled and drifts in the orbit of an unknown planet somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy far away from the destination that was indicated by the map. You have lost contact with all other ships of your fleet. Gravity pulls your disabled ship towards the surface where it crashes.
The impact completely destroys the ship and kills the crew. You are the only survivor. Find a way to leave this hostile planet and uncover the mysteries of Empyrion. Save the Earth before it is too late!
Etymology of Empyrion:
Emyprion (or Empyrean from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek ἔμπυρος empyrus “in the fire”) is the place in the highest heaven beyond the firmament, which in ancient cosmologies was supposed to be occupied by celestial beings made of pure light that are the source of creation.
TECHNOLOGY
We use Unity 3D as our game engine due to its ease of use, flexibility, robust scripting system and large asset store (middleware). We believe that middleware is the key to finishing a game for a small, independent game studio. By purchasing assets that have been tested rather than starting from scratch, we reduce the development risk and increase efficiency. With this approach, we speed up development and free up capacity to focus on the gameplay.
MORE INFORMATION
Website: http://empyriongame.com
YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/EmpyrionGame
Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmpyrionGame
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmpyrionGame
Google+: https://plus.google.com/+EmpyriongameGalacticSurvival
WHY KICKSTARTER?
Empyrion is the game that we have always dreamed of doing and that we feel very passionate about. We always had a very clear vision for the game and your support will allow us to turn it into a reality! It took about 2 years to build the game engine and the prototype and now we need Kickstarter to complete its development.
The success of this campaign is important for us because we are a small and independent game studio. We don’t want to rely on external funding from publishers because we want to stay independent and develop a novel and innovative game.
We want you - the community - to contribute and let us know what you want to see in the game. We want the community to be one of the driving forces of this game, and the best way to achieve this goal is to remain independent. This is why we need your help!
THE TEAM
Eleon Game Studios is an independent game studio based in London (UK) and Rastatt (Germany) that was founded by Olivier “John” Paroz, Uwe Kuehner and Eric "Luke" Lucas.
We are professionals of game and/or software development where the average team member has more than 10 years of industry experience. In addition to our core team, we have several repeating collaborators and freelancers working for us.
Two years ago, we decided to embark on an adventure and start the development of a game that uniquely combines elements from space simulations, ego-shooters, construction games and survival games. We were always disappointed that space simulations do not offer the possibility to land on planets, while ego-shooters do not allow you to get on a spaceship, leave the planet and explore a vast galaxy. In addition, we like the gameplay offered by recent survival games as well as the freedom and creativity of games like Minecraft or Space Engineers which allow you to design and build objects such as spaceships and bases freely.
Guided by our vision of creating a game that uniquely combines all of these elements, we started the development of “Empyrion – Galactic Survival.” Help us make that vision come true!
BUDGET BREAKDOWN
We are relying on Kickstarter in order to fund the next stage of development until the Alpha release (March 2015) via Early Access. With the help of Kickstarter we will be able to speed up the development and deliver the game much sooner. The net revenue (gross revenue minus Kickstarter expenses) we raise with our campaign will be directly invested in the development of the game and will be allocated as illustrated in the diagram below.
As you can see, the funding that we will (hopefully) obtain from Kickstarter will be mainly invested into salaries. Our highest priority is improving graphics. To significantly polish the graphics, we plan to hire a professional artist on a full-time basis. In addition, some of our core members will be able to quit their jobs and work on the game full time. Finally, we need the funding to pay expensive software licenses (monthly subscription) and middleware.
TIME SCHEDULE
As a backer you can get early access to the game while it is being developed and help us shape Empyrion – Galactic Survival. We are planning to release the Alpha version of the game in March 2015 ("early access") and the Beta version is scheduled for August 2015. We are targeting December 2015 for the release of the finished game. The below roadmap illustrates our tentative and ambitious time schedule.
REWARDS
Full Game
Our goal was to create a simple and transparent reward system. Everyone who contributes enough to qualify for the first reward (£7/$11) in our Kickstarter campaign will receive the Alpha version of the game and has free access to any updates until the final release of Empyrion – Galactic Survival. All higher tiers also include the Alpha version and all further updates (Beta, finished game). It will be digital download only. We plan to sell the finished game at around $30, which means that, as a backer, you can save up to 65% when you support us on Kickstarter.
Note: Currency Conversion Rates are an estimate based on exchange rates on October 10, 2014. Final conversion rate may vary.
Indie Game Magazine
Some tiers include a digital copy of the "Indie Game Magazine" (value US$ 3) or even a full-year digital subscription to it (value US$ 30) as a gift. The Indie Game Magazine (IGM) is an independently owned Indie Game web publication that strives to provide the hottest Indie Game news, reviews and commentary for the most creative video games on the planet (http://indiegamemag.com).
USB Card
Some tiers include an exclusively designed USB card with a copy of Empyrion - Galactic Survival on it.
T-Shirt
We offer a T-shirt that is exclusively designed for the Kickstarter campaign and only available for backers. The T-shirts will be available in all the major sizes (S, M, L, XL and XXL) and for both genders. You can choose between black, navy blue and grey.
- Please note that the T-Shirts and USB cards will be shipped when the finished game is released.
- Don't worry about shipping costs! We take care of everything and will cover the shipping costs.
Naming and Designing of In-Game Content
Backers of higher tiers will be have the ability to give names to moons, planets and solar systems. In addition, you will have the ability to design in-game content within feasibility and parameter constraints. For example, you can design moons (choose its gravity, terrain and resources), planets (choose planet type, number of moons, atmosphere, gravity, terrain, vegetation, climate and resources), and solar systems (choose sun color and design up to 5 planets and moons in your system).
Disclaimer:
- The names you choose for the in-game content (moon, planet or solar system) will be reviewed and approved by Eleon Game Studios. They have to comply with legal and ethical standards; trademarks will not be allowed.
- The in-game content that you name or design may be far away when you start the game. Make progress to find and explore them! We will provide you with some kind of proof (e.g., coordinates) to show that they actually exist.
- The in-game content that you name or design may not yet be included in the first Alpha release.
WHY FUND EMPYRION?
We believe that Empyrion offers an experience unlike other games because it uniquely combines the best elements from several game genres. If the idea of a game where you can fly across space, explore randomly generated planets, build your own ships and bases, fight with or against other players, explore a huge galaxy, craft your equipment and weapons, modify the terrain, gather resources and struggle for survival gets you excited, then become part of our community and an essential ingredient of the success of Empyrion. Help us make this game a reality!
Risks and challenges
We are aware that “Empyrion – Galactic Survival” is an ambitious project for a small development team. We are also aware that Kickstarter projects sometimes don't get finished and backers are concerned about this fact (you should be!). But this project will be finished because:
1. Most of the basic gameplay systems are already in place and the largest technological risks have already been dealt with. The footage in the trailer video is entirely captured in-game. Thus, as you can see we already have a functioning prototype of the game and the trailer represents the current graphics and gameplay of Empyrion. Nevertheless, our prototype needs to be refined (above all, we need to polish the graphics) and developed into a complete game.
2. We rely on middleware that has been tested in order to reduce development risk and speed up development.
3. The project is largely scalable so that we will be able to release a stripped down Alpha version of our game. This early access version will represent a simplified gameplay but yet it will retain the core elements and design concepts of the finished game.
4. We have a highly motivated, experienced and competent team of industry professionals that has the experience to deliver quality with limited resources and in short time frames.
As with any large and ambitious project, however, there are potential problems that could arise during the development of Empyrion. Given that most of the large, risky gameplay systems are already in place, the biggest risk is that the game could take longer than anticipated and cannot be released in time. But with your support, we can minimize this risk and we are highly confident that we can deliver the finished game on schedule.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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Nothing - there is no risk for you! Funding on Kickstarter is all-or-nothing meaning that Kickstarter does not take any money if the funding goal is not reached. As for the game, we will decide after the campaign and then announce publicly what to do next
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No. What you see in the diagram above are the net revenue we allocated to the different areas. The net revenue is given by gross revenue minus Kickstarter fees (5%) and payment processing fees (3-5%).
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The budget is not calculated for such a long time. The funding we will obtain from Kickstarter is only intended to finance the next stage of development until the Alpha release (March 2015) via Early Access.
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Early Access means that you can buy a playable but not yet final version of Empyrion, while the game is still under active development. By buying the Alpha version of Empyrion, you are actively supporting its development.
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Currently, we are working hard on a demo version of Empyrion that will be exclusively used for marketing. So soon you will see more gameplay of Empyrion on YouTube.
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We are planning to release the Alpha version of the game on Steam in March 2015 (Early Access). It will be digital download only.
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Given that we plan to release Empyrion on Steam, you will require the Steam client to play Empyrion. The dedicated servers will not require the Steam client.
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In the beginning, we are focusing on releasing the game on Windows PC (at least the first builds) and the dedicated servers for Linux. Given that we develop on Unity 3d - a cross-platform game creation system which allows to publish to over 10 platforms (Mac, Linux, PlayStation, Xbox etc.) - we will try our best to make Empyrion available on a maximum number of platforms over time.
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We are open to modders! However, it will require additional time and effort to polish developer tools and make them intuitive for modders. Therefore, the extent of mod support we will be able to provide is a question of priority, cost and time. Currently, our highest priority is getting the demo done and then polish the game for the Alpha release. Let's delay the discussion regarding mod support until when the Alpha version is released.
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In the beginning, we are focusing on the English version but after the Alpha has been released we plan to translate the game also into other languages such as French, Spanish, German and more.
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Currently, we invest all our resources into the demo version of Empyrion. Seriously managing a forum requires a lot of time. Be assured, we will post a forum soon! In the meantime, you can discuss game related stuff on the following sites:
- Community forum: http://empyriononline.com
- Empyrion Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/empyriongame
- TigSource forum: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php…
- Unity 3d forum: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/empyrion-galactic-survival-the-space-survival-game-you-have-been-waiting-for.271086/
- SpaceSimCentral: http://spacesimcentral.com/ssc/topic/4629-empyrion-galactic-survival/ -
Currently, we are testing different approaches. In the first built, there will probably be a brief loading sequence but our aim is to make the transition relatively smooth.
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We are planning to have planets of different sizes. The larger ones will be about 150 km^2 which means that a player would need more than 60min to circle the entire planet at the equator by foot.
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In principle, there is no limit regarding the size. However, the gameplay mechanics will impose a natural limit on the size of your ships because you must take into account that you need thrusters to move your ships. Bigger ships mean more weight and therefore you need more thrusters. Yet, the more thrusters you have the more fuel you need and eventually you reach a critical size (weight) beyond which it becomes difficult to operate your ship.
Rewards
Funding period
- (42 days)