About
Off Grid is a stealth and hacking game where data is your most powerful weapon. Off Grid forgoes combat for hacking tools and ingenuity, and is extensively moddable.
Unique gameplay mechanics allow you to manipulate the world and people around you with the data they unwittingly leave behind. You can truly hack and manipulate objects in the environment.
Off Grid will be available on PC, Mac and Linux. It's a hacking game made to be played with a controller. No previous hacking knowledge required. ;)
The seemingly normal Off Grid world is a dystopia governed by an overreaching state, always seeking to know more about the daily movements, thoughts, and search history of the general public.
You play a technophobe single dad, Joe, who is oblivious to the prying and spying, corporate-sponsored government.
It is within this surveillance state that you must figure out how to game the system undetected. Your motivation is simple: your tech-savvy daughter, Jen, has been forcibly taken from home by government agents.
Moments before your daughter was bundled away, she gave you a pair of smart glasses for your birthday.
An unidentified source gets in touch to help you install a new security-focused operating system, and gives you a few tools which will help you gain access to networks that might contain clues as to what is going on.
Key to gameplay is the Spectrum app, which allows you to see data on networks - like a breadcrumb trail.
Copy, delete, and resend data as you find it: spoof messages to guards and secretaries to confuse them, or simply embarrass them by stealing their personal data and send it to the printer network for all to see.
You are shown how to use SSH to access information held on internet connected smart appliances, such as hand dryers and fridges by exploiting zero-day backdoors in their firmware, in order to mess with their settings or glean information.
Target devices and data by utilising an array of apps and hacking tools acquired throughout your mission.
As your toolset increases, so do the options available to you, and the multitude of ways you can socially engineer targets which stand between you and your goal.
For instance:
Create a distraction by increasing the espresso dosages on the coffee machine and hack the smart radio to only play BanginTunezFM at full crank, resulting in an impromptu staff dance party in the lobby.
And much, much more!
You can get a feel for the game in this playthrough and interview on the Twitch Stage at EGX:
Players, modders, and hackers will be able to use the game to create new and interesting levels with stories about surveillance, hacking and the Internet of Things.
Off Grid is heavily moddable, with an exposed Lua API allowing anyone to edit the game. Level editing tools enable anyone with the Unity engine free personal edition and build mods with the same tools the development team use.
With this level of control, players can build their own content: levels, hackable devices, apps, hacking tools, and stories - and share them with other players - a huge opportunity for players to make and experience topical and contemporary stories as they emerge in the IRL world of hacking and surveillance.
Together we are Semaeopus, the award-winning UK-based indie team behind Off Grid. Founders Rich Metson and Pontus Schönberg come to games from technical backgrounds. Rich was a technical artist in film and TV. Pontus, a web developer and multimedia designer, moved into Unity development and has been making apps and games for the last 5 years. They are joined by veteran AAA programmer, Steve Allen, and multi-tasking biz & community dev, Sarah Asberry.
We have also harnessed a seriously talented group of contractors that include Jonas Jensen, Lyndon Holland, Silvia Bartoli, Sophie Knowles, and Josh Walton, who provide sound, composition and art. There’s well over 55 years of combined digital and videogames experience behind us.
Some of the titles we’ve worked on collectively:
We are immensely proud of Off Grid - we hope you’ll join us on the last leg of our journey!
Off Grid is a highly atmospheric game and huge amount of this is down to the amazing work our sound team has been doing. Created by Jonas Jensen and Lyndon Holland (BAFTA winning composer of Virginia), Off Grid's audible universe comprises of two worlds: that of the oppressed city and the freedom and danger of the net itself.
The Off Grid OST is made with passion and precision, and we plan to have it work as a standalone album. Secure your copy in the rewards!
Off Grid is a game of fairly ambitious scope, but fortunately, we have been funded to do most of the heavy lifting already, and have the technical foundations of the game in place!
Everything’s on the up so far:
- We’ve been backed by both the UK Games Fund and Creative England.
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Off Grid was named one of the top 10 best games at Eurogamer Expo last September.
- Our studio, Semaeopus, was listed in CE50 as one of the top 50 creative companies in England in April, and was recently nominated for the 'Smart Studio' award by the UK Games Fund
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Off Grid was listed as #1 in the IndieMaster section of August’s GamesMaster magazine.
We now need your support to ensure we get Off Grid completed to the standard it deserves.
We are NEARLY over the finish line - this campaign will help make it better!
We have two main goals with this campaign:
1. Help cover the remaining development costs for art and sound.
We have core design and development costs covered, but this campaign's success will help us to expand upon the Off Grid universe. We have more interesting characters and environments to create, fill with lush audio soundscapes, voice over and an expanded original soundtrack.
2. Go into open production.
We have always been pretty open with production (just look at the last 2+ years of sprint reports on our devblog!) and this Kickstarter is an opportunity to get our community more directly involved via open development. The funding will help us to expand upon how we are doing this and dedicate resources to gaining and implementing feedback from an actively involved audience (that’s you!).
This campaign will allow you to help us shape the game, from now to release.
Yes, the funding is super important, but your active involvement is even more so! We are delivering Off Grid come hell or high water, but we need your participation to help us make it shine.
Join us here in the comments, or via
steam | discord | dev blog | twitter | reddit | twitch | instagram | facebook
Are you a journalist, you tuber or streamer? Get in touch! press@semaeopus.com
Risks and challenges
Pluses:
The core team has been working together for several years now. We even won an award this year, having been named one of the CE50 Top 50 creative and innovative companies in England, and we've just been nominated for another! We’re solely dedicated to the development of Off Grid. Our freelancers are lined up and locked in.
The game has been in active, full time development since 2016 (have a read of the devblog). The systems are in place, there’s a playable demo of the game already. It’s been showcased in several events and won awards. We want to continue this trend!
Minuses:
We’re a small team. A serious illness or otherwise unavoidable, prolonged absence will likely have a knock-on effect and cause delays. Two of us are parents - we work hard, but kids come with responsibilities!
It is the company’s first commercial release, but our team includes veterans that have shipped multiple games, both indie and AAA.
Should we lose a team member or freelancer to another project, a delay would be likely. Rest assured, however, that our team has YEARS invested into Off Grid and cannot wait to see it released! Plus… we’ve so many ideas for expansions and DLC! ;)
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