Lodestar: Stygian Skies announced

Well shucks, folks–here we have another interesting project by a developer who can clearly code incredibly complicated stuff, but who hasn’t figured out the most basic rule of game marketing: you have to actually email people about your game. Seriously, I just stumbled onto this one by pure luck in a random internet comments thread (and a bit late to help out the developer, as we’ll see below).

Lodestar: Stygian Skies is described as “a 3D voxel, sci-fi, tactical turn-based combat/exploration game, rich with lore and procedural elements.” The game takes place in a ternary star system on a cluster of planets protected from the stars’ intense radiation by alien technology. That’s my summary; the official premise is a little more…technical.

The game is set in the distant future on a planet residing within a cataclysmic variable star system. LSS falls loosely into the category of hard science fiction, and will include xeno-drones, re-purposed quasi humans, adaptive sub-quantum xenobiological nanotechnology, genocidal paraterraforming, and quantum mass weapons. All power is derived from the alien technology and traditional electricity is unstable due to the massive electromagnetic fields produced by the CV star system.

Right. That.

In keeping with the theme of inaccessibility, Lodestar is being developed in Linux, for Linux. (A Windows release is planned as well, but not until it comes out for the Big L.)

Lodestar had a Kickstarter, but the developer was unable to raise the required funds in time. Regardless, he has kept on plugging, posting regular updates on his developer blog. You can currently pre-order the game for $8, which will give you early access to the game once an alpha build becomes available.