NovaDawn Studios

2021 is here (and this post is a bit later than we hoped)! At NovaDawn we’re not just celebrating the end of 2020, but also just over 1 year of EXIM development.

Even though EXIM has been an idea for a lot longer than a year, we’ve been working on it as our sole project since December 2019. We still have a long way to go and didn’t reach all of the goals we really hoped we’d complete last year (including posting more on this blog…) but when we created those goals, we had no idea 2020 wouldn’t be the most encouraging year for a new project. Our big goal for the year is to create a playable demo, which means the game will be nearing it’s alpha stage. In order to do that though, we have smaller goals in the meantime.

Now that we’re well into the January sprint we’re looking to get some pre-alpha gameplay up and running. With basic versions of the UI’s and some of the systems already in place, the focus is on fine tuning our initial plans and getting them to a point that we can get a feel for them as a player.

We’re also hoping to start finalising all character designs so we can confidently create more sprites and models. We announced our first character earlier this month, Annie (if you missed it you can read the post here!), and with her we also revealed some of our plans for the game in terms of look and some functionality.

EXIM, like the games that inspired it, is a VN for the most part, but with aspects that we hope will make it more exciting for a general audience. Third person exploration in 3D environments and animated cutscenes will help us breathe more life into the characters and step away from the point and click detective formula to try new ideas.

Even though we still have a lot of work to do we hope to have some more posts coming in the near future, revealing more characters and taking a closer look at our design process and how all of our characters come into existence.

We’ll also start diving into some aspects of our pre-alpha gameplay, starting with the crucial point in each chapter; the Inquiry that uncovers the culprit and decides their fate.

Bubbly and excitable, Annie hasn’t always been this way and was originally envisioned as a down to earth electrician called Colette. Of all the characters Annie has had some of the biggest changes since the initial vision for her. She was designed as a practical middle aged woman, who although not antagonistic, kept to herself. However, we realised early on that we needed more characters with chipper personalities, finding that too many were cynical or middle ground. As one of the more amenable crewmates Annie seemed to fit the bill for some big changes.

She was one of the few characters to have a major colour overhaul, giving her a brighter more colourful “bubble-gum” palette that fits in nicely with some of the other engineers onboard the ship (who you’ll meet later on).

In a cast of colourful characters she was standing out for the wrong reasons, appearing somewhat bland when stacked up against other characters, something that didn’t line up with the changes we wanted to make for her. The change in palette, personality and profession meant Annie was one of the first to receive a redesign. We decided to lower her age (there are still plenty of older female characters that take centre stage) and making her appear more quirky, so that her personality was immediately obvious.

Despite trying to stay away from tropes, with the number of characters at the beginning of the game, and the amount of time the player would initially get to spend with each one before potentially having to decide their fate, it felt important that even if players couldn’t remember individual character names they still left an impression. This meant that early in development we accepted that we couldn’t completely avoid established archetypes, initially fitting some of the characters into stereotypes the player would find recognisable while leaving them room to grow. For Annie it made sense to play into the eccentric hacker girl archetype, expressing both her creativity and ingenuity from the moment she appears on screen.

Though her different way of seeing things can sometimes be misinterpreted and cause problems, Annie’s often unique take on things makes her willing to see different viewpoints and explore wilder theories. While she’s usually on the more excitable side of things, she takes problems in her stride and get’s to work when things get serious.

With the project finally announced it’s time for us to start giving you some insight into the development!

We plan to start posting updates soon, but since we want to go more in depth with our process, we thought it might also be interesting for some if we delved into our decisions when it comes to less visible aspects of the game development process, like internal goals and PR strategy. (This will also probably be very boring for some people. Sorry if you’re those people).

Going forward, alongside posts that take an indepth look into specific aspects of development, we’ll also be making semi-regular general updates. Like this one! In the future we hope to have a graphic outlining our progress on the game as a whole, but for our first general update we’re still working out how to show our progress in a meaningful way.

Our development cycle works in sprints where we set a long list of goals that we plan to try and achieve during that sprint. Typically they work on a 2-month then 1-month alternating pattern. Right now we’re in our November to December sprint and have goals like getting our first trial up and running and completing all of the characters' almost-final designs.

On the subject of character designs, we plan to start posting character profiles and reveals in the very near future. Previously, when it’s come to announcing characters for games, we’ve gone with a very straight forward approach, simply revealing their name, appearance and description, but with just over 20 characters we imagined stale and repetitive announcements would get boring very fast. We’ll still post and have these condensed profiles available on our website as and when they’re announced, but we also wanted to dive into the thoughts behind the designs and their evolution over time. 

With the game being very story focussed there will be some things that we’ll have to avoid talking about so as not to give anything away, but I still hope that with the character reveals we can give a glimpse into our process and how we make design and narrative decisions as a small indie studio. 

As much as we want this blog to garner interest for EXIM, we also want to provide resources and explanations for some of the things we learned whilst developing our game, so other small indies can potentially learn from our triumphs and our shortfalls.  

As well as avoiding some topics, there are other measures we’ve put in place to avoid spoilers for the game, after all, at it’s heart EXIM is a murder mystery game. We’re trying to make the story mean more than just plot twists, and make the journey as interesting as the reveal, but want to keep the story close to our chest to make it as exciting as it can be. 

To avoid any possible implications, we wanted to release characters in an order where we aren’t swayed by their importance to the story. We found when making a decision that no matter what order we chose we would always be unconsciously swayed by the knowledge we had about these characters. We mentioned Danganronpa as one of our inspirations, and for anyone who is familiar with the series, we have a similar setup. The victim and culprit of each chapter is picked from the pool of existing characters, and revealing somebody as a victim can sometimes be just as shocking as revealing a culprit. As a result, a character's perceived importance could sway the audience's opinion of them.

Today we’re proud to announce the development of Exim!

Exim is a game of death, deduction and debate with a complex branching narrative. Drawing inspiration from games and series like Danganronpa, Ace Attorney and AI: The Somnium FIles, you’ll need to use your detective skills and argue your case to find the culprits to a string of murders. Part Visual Novel and part third person exploration, the game features an immersive narrative experience with a world that reacts to your choices, meaning you might have to live with, or die by, the outcome of your decisions.

The game takes place in the somewhat distant future. A colonization mission, one of the first to leave the solar system, is taking place and you – along with a collection of elite colonists – have been chosen for the mission. Unfortunately, due to a miscalculation, you and your fellow crew have been awakened from cryostasis to discover yourselves stranded on an uninhabitable planet with a damaged ship and only a handful of survivors. With dwindling resources and the threat of imminent asphyxiation on a remote planet, you and the other crew members must repair the ship, prepare yourself for rescue, and avoid the stresses the situation puts upon you all.

And then a body is discovered, the only possible culprit being one of your crew mates.

When the worst occurs, it’s up to you to find evidence, build your argument then weed out the cause and the perpetrator. Be aware though, your choices and accusations may have dire consequences for those around you – the situation is never as black and white as you think.

Development is already under way, with a solid start on some of the games systems, design and plot, and we’ll have more to show you in due course. We’ve still got a long way to go, but wanted to give you insight into our process, as well as updates on the game.

We hope you’ll stick around and look forward to sharing our game with you!

Hi everyone, we have some exciting news on the way about a new game that we’re currently developing, so we wanted to clear up some possible questions first.

The majority of our followers will be here as a result of Elysian Fields and though we haven’t discarded EF as a future project, there’s a lot we want to do with the game that we hope we’ll be able to do justice in the future. However, we decided it was for the best to put the project on hold for the time being.

After we tried our hand at Kickstarter last year and didn’t manage to meet our funding goal, despite doing well and being incredibly thankful for everyone who helped, we took a step back, and unfortunately with the ongoing state of the world at the moment, rekindling the passion we had has been difficult. We don’t want to create EF whilst believing it wouldn’t be the best it can be.

The new game that’s currently in development is still undoubtedly ambitious for a 2 man team, but feels a lot more familiar to us. Inspired by some of our favourite games, it’s almost the opposite of Elysian Fields, most obviously in tone, but it’s helped us to find a drive to create during these “unprecedented times”.

We’ve had this game on the backburner for over a year now, originally as a side project, so we’re excited to finally feel ready to announce it. We’re still a long way off completion but want to keep a development blog. It’ll be less formal than our Elysian Fields updates, and for the time being at least, we’ll be posting as we have updates and ideas, instead of sticking to a strict schedule.

This change will hopefully decrease the stress we were feeling over rushing work to meet our self-imposed fortnightly targets and may even eventually lead to more frequent but smaller updates. As a result it’s taking us a little longer to complete aspects of the game, but we’re already seeing our work reach a higher quality than EF and hope that as development continues, this will only improve with time.

We hope everyone is staying safe and finding time for themselves amidst the current chaos, and we look forward to making our announcement as soon as we’re ready!

We made an announcement on our last post, but with only 4 days to go before Elysian Fields goes live on Kickstarter, we thought it’s about time we make it official.

UPDATE: Elyisan Fields is now live on Kickstarter 

Back us on Kickstarter here!

It’s been a few months since we introduced Elysian Fields and a lot has happened since then. As we make the final preparations for the Kickstarter it’s time to take a quick look at what’s happened in Elysian Fields since our first post.

The art style has had a revamp, taking on a cel-shaded style, giving more details to our crops and animals – most evident in our sheep and bushes. In addition, our chickens are a little more active, even if hopping is still their favourite mode of transport.

The Plorb is looking a lot more inhabitable, and is on it’s way to being the perfect home for some new residents. Perhaps one of them could be you to help run it all?

Space exploration has become a little more challenging and now that your initial rocket is coloured and ready to go, it’s time to take on some of the universe’s less friendly occupants.

Space isn’t all hostile though, and there’s still plenty of friends to find out there. Even though we’ve already introduced you to a few potential friends, we have a lot more for you to meet, with details of a few of them coming out soon.

Check out our Kickstarter for more information!

Be sure the stick around for an extra announcement at the end!

Elysian Fields is designed around the combination of two game types, the casual farming simulator, and the space exploration role playing(-ish) game. While both elements are very different, they do tie together -money and resources earned from farming can be used to further explore space, while exploration may uncover ever more weird and wonderful crops and animals to futher improve your farm. Today, we’ll be covering the space side of Elysian Fields.

Transport in the great expanse

Well, to move around in space, you probably need a space ship. Luckily, due to the nature of the solar system one thousand years in the future, space ships and parts for them are plenty, so why not build your own?

Your starting ship, small, speedy and can defend itself

Elysian Fields will feature a ship building system, where you can find, buy and/or create ship components, which you can then put together and style however you want to build a ship that’s uniquely yours. Want a rocket ship? How about something from your favourite sci-fi? How about representing your favourite chicken? If you can imagine it, you can probably build some facsimile of it. But what if you don’t want to build anything and you just want to get out there? There are tons of blueprints you can also find and buy which you can use to make pre-designed and tested ships, or use them as the basis for something truly unique!

Where to?

Where to indeed? The solar system is vast, but there are only really so many places you actually want to visit, so everyone in Elysian Fields is limited to these sectors of space. You try to fly into the great unknown? Your ship will just bounce you right on back. That’s not to say you’ll ever hit the edge of a sector though, as they can be quite massive! Elysian Fields consists of a large number of sectors, and each sector may contain one or multiple plorbs you can visit, resources to mine, enemies to fight and secrets to discover. You can travel to each sector by flying through a portal, forming a portal network. And if that’s too much hassle, you can probably eventually upgrade your ship far enough to feature a built in fast travel system, who knows?

A portal to elsewhere, with Solbreak ‘nearby’. Distance in space can be deceptive.

In any case, while sectors are indeed quite vast, Elysian Fields ensures that there’s always an ‘up’ and a ‘down’ in that sector, so flying a ship is more like flying a plane or piloting a submarine. It makes navigation easier without you spinning and rolling every which way. Over time, you’ll come to recognise landmarks in these sectors as well, which should further aid in navigation, and inhabitants may leave helpful beacons scattered around as waypoints and markers.

But we haven’t really answered the main question have we. Where to? Well, wherever you want, of course! Elysian Fields starts out with a pretty linear progression just to ease you into it. From the start of your journey, you can only really travel to the Phobos sector, whereupon you find Solbreak and its inhabitants. From here, you can get quests to explore elsewhere, and while you do need to pass some quests to unlock some further out sectors, you don’t really need anyone’s permission to go where you want. Well, except for…

Enemies!

The solar system of the future isn’t the safest place around (ignoring all the usual permanent vacuum and cosmic ray stuff, anyway), and a rouge faction of AI machines patrol various sectors with the sole intent to cause trouble. Seriously, sometime in the recent past, a collection of AIs had their programming corrupted and they promptly became the equivalent of high school bullies, harassing organic beings and even other machines. I guess it’s time to teach them a lesson.

One of their drones has spotted you!

If you enter the (shockingly close range) awareness of a drone, they will almost definitely start combat. From here on, they’ll be shooting at you, so it’s probably best to shoot back at them. Unlike normal exploration, you’re now limited to moving vertically and horizontally, and can aim independently of where you’re moving. And really, all you need to do is shoot the enemy while dodging their attacks! Thin out their numbers and the battle is won, with you claiming their spoils in the form of cash and resources. If your ship is destroyed, you’ll be booted back to the nearest spaceport where you can repair, rearm and get out there once more!

From the start of the game, you will only get some basic plasma cannons – suitable for basic defence and mining asteroids, but not much else. Later on, though, you could potentially equip your ship with advanced weapons and tools, such as homing missiles, lasers and more exotic things to make battling easier.

Oh, and don’t worry about the AIs. They were remotely piloting their drones, and destroying the drones just gives them what feels like a kick in the pants. Hopefully they reconsider their ways. They probably won’t though. They’re not too bright.

And another thing

As an extra announcement, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be starting a Kickstarter for Elysian Fields soon, aiming for a start date of the 21st of August! This will be to raise the funds necessary to polish up the game to a standard we are proud with, as well as set up necessary distribution platforms and pay for various licenses. This Kickstarter isn’t just for us though, as we have a number of backer rewards that we hope you’ll be excited for. And, if the Kickstarter proves to be extremely popular, we can add additional features to improve Elysian Fields well beyond our initial plans.

In any case, we’ll provide more details nearer the time. But for now, we hope you’ve enjoyed this quick look into the space exploration side of Elysian Fields. Until next time!

Elvina ‘Silver Eye’ Gale

The infamous human pirate known as Silver Eye, Elvina has gained quite the reputation over her relatively short time as a pirate. Attacked by a band of roaming thieves at a young age, this young pirate vowed to become one of the strongest in Mars space – and in just a few short years – she did. By collecting a large crew of outcasts from all species, she amassed one of the strongest multi-species pirate groups around, leading to her immense infamy and respect among the other pirate clans.

Elvina and her crew tends to reside around the pirate neutral zone, Firefly. Firefly is a plorb that was originally used as a manufacturing hub, before degrading into a hive of piracy. The various clans decided to make Firefly a neutral zone, granting pirates, renegades and thugs from all factions the ability to discuss matters, trade, and generally interact without the fear of getting a plasma bolt thrown their way. The nearby asteroid fields? Not so much.

Qzard En Dee V’a’ll

Qzard is an Ursovon, shunned by his people for his rejection of their militaristic ways, who found himself alongside Elvina during her early days. Qzard instantly became her protector, body guard and adviser, leading to his current role as her first mate and HR manager. Together, they built up Elvina’s crew and reputation, and he continues to be her calming presence and a source of sound judgement.

Shu Ul’athol

Now, managing your own plorb is great and all, but basic plot setups aren’t fantastic, and things can certainly be improved. How, you ask? By using you’re collected resources to make upgrades of course!

In Elysian Fields, almost everything can be upgraded, be it animal pens and crop fields, to your ship, yourself and even your own workshop tools! To upgrade, simply head over to your workshop with some materials in hand – say from managing your farms or mining in space – and get to work!

A very early version of your future workshop

Your workshop contains a number of machines, left over from the old owner of this plorb, including a saw bench for handling wooden materials, a furnace and metal working station for handling metals, an electronics bench for handling circuitry and a 3D material printer for creating complex products. Luckily, most of this work is automated – all you need to use these machines are the raw materials, a recipe and some time. Select your recipe, wait a short while, and enjoy your new products!

Some examples of upgrades would include such things as better fences for animal pens, soil monitors for fields and automatic resource collectors to remove the tedium of visiting each plot in turn. Unfortunately, your workshop machines as they start out are not perfect, and some recipes prove far too complex, so why not upgrade those as well? Obviously you can just buy upgrades from the market, but these feature a massive price markup, and some upgrades can only be created by your own hands at any rate, so it’s best to invest in your own workshop. And who knows, you might make some new discoveries along the way?

A rough implementation of the crafting interface, showing some basic crafting.

Products are not just for upgrading, though. Raw resources that have been refined tend to be worth more than their raw counterpart, and if you plan on maximizing profit on the trading markets, it would be wise to at least refine your metal ores into metal ingots. Upgrades themselves also tend to be worth more than their constituent parts, but the market buys them at a greatly reduced value if it even buys them at all, so it’s probably not worth the effort for a tiny bit of extra cash unless you happen to have surplus.

So that’s it for this week. We know this was a small update, but crafting and upgrading are planned to play a pretty large role in Elysian Fields, primarily facilitating the farming side of the game, rather than the ship exploration part, although some ship upgrades will also require crafting, and many crafting resources require ship exploration, such as mining asteroids or raiding treasure plorbs. Wait, but what are treasure plorbs? You’ll have to find out in a future update!

Tonight we bring you our first video of some actual Elysian Fields gameplay!

Whilst adventuring there are plenty of friends to find scattered throughout the cosmos (but we’ll talk more about exploration later on). They may wish to trade, have mission offers, or just want a good chat.

Once you land on a new or familiar plorb, Elysian Fields switches to a VN style dialogue and menu system. For example, the video shows off Solbreak, and talking to Inovo in particular. Even though parts of the game still need a lot of work, the core mechanics of the dialogue and trading system probably won’t change too much, even if the design gets an overhaul.

Internally, we’re using Bolt, a visual scripting tool for Unity, to make creating branching dialogue and options easy to handle, as well as handle any additional logic dialogue may cause (Transferring items, starting a mission etc). As development continues, we hope to add more dynamic sprites, and already have a system underway to handle complex animated sprites when we we’re ready to add them.

Trading

Almost everyone on Solbreak is open to trading, but as you explore the various sectors some people may be less inclined. Some people may even only be willing to buy and sell special or rare items with you, or they may even buy goods at a massive markup from the common markets, meaning that travelling to the edge of the universe might be worth the journey.

In addition, Elysian Fields will feature shifting markets, meaning that over time items may become more valuable, or there may be a sudden demand for certain products. Of course the opposite is also true. If you manage to sell 50,000 eggs in a week, the prices will drop to meet the new demand. Who needs cryptocurrency when the egg market is this volatile?

That’s all for this week, but there’s more info coming soon!

Background

Inovo is a young human woman and self titled “plastic witch” (or simply “plastiwitch”) residing on the small plorb township of Solbreak, making her a somewhat outsider in the eyes of society. She is obsessed with the history of the solar system and its many artefacts, especially those made from various plastics. Why plastic? In the thousands of years since out time, plastic has become an extremely rare substance given the numerous invasions and occupations by alien species. Most plastic and plastic-like products of what can be found are arguably useless remnants from earlier times. This doesn’t stop Inovo, though, and she’s dead set on acquiring plastics and turning them into something useful, hence her title. “Plasticians”, the official title for people like her, could be considered something akin to alchemists of the past, except instead of dealing with lead and gold she deals with polypropylene and silicone (Which she also considers a kind of plastic).

History

Inovo was born on one of the capital plorbs found in the oribit of what was once Earth, and quickly gained a thirst for knowledge on the history of the solar system. Eventually, she managed to land a place on the University of Europa studying human history, and during a social gathering it’s where she met you. You soon became fast friends, but before long you both graduated and went your own ways throughout the solar system, you lingering around Jupiter while Inovo moving back solwards, eventually ending up at the burgeoning town of Solbreak. You wouldn’t see Inovo again until you finally built up your funds and bought your own plorb – Elysian Fields.

Current Life

Elysian Fields is set approximately 1000 years into the future from our present time. After 11 different alien occupations and invasions, our solar system is very different. Many of the planets we recognise have been destroyed creating Micro-planets called Plorbs.

After saving up you’ve finally got enough to nab yourself a farming plorb in a sector known as Elysian Fields, but due to your price range it’s a little run down.

Today we’re going to take a closer look at the world of Elysian Fields.

Locations

Elysian Fields

Elysian Fields currently contains only one Plorb, run down and spit up into crumbling climates, this plorb is your new home to grow, improve and cultivate.

Solbreak

A small human settlement in the Phobos zone, designed to feel like old Earth. The closest Plorb to Elysian Fields, Solbreak is the first port of call for farming goods and ship upgrades.

Firefly

Very early Concept of Firefly

Known as arguably one of the “safest” cities in the entire solar system, anyone who doesn’t know firefly would never guess the plorb is inhabited by bandits, outlaws, thieves and pirates.

A strict ceasefire put in place centuries ago still operates on Firefly, unfortunately the dense cluster of asteroids surrounding the tiny planet didn’t sign the peace treaty.

Species

Ursovons

A large species known for their militaristic intelligence were the first Alien race to make contact with earth entirely by accident.

Also known for their ability to only see colours on the blue-purple spectrum, this species declared war on earth and prepared to destroy the planet before realising that it was all a big misunderstanding, and their enemy was several stars away. Some are still embarrassed about the whole incident to this day.

A typical Ursovon and Jallan as they’re typically seen across the Galaxy

Jallans

A peaceful race of aquatic like creatures that only discovered space travel as a species as recently as humans. Despite only becoming acquainted with humans in the last century, they have made themselves known as good traders and philanthropists, but nobody can really say anything about their home planet. Most have come to see them as a somewhat secretive race, but some people believe their home planet may have been destroyed centuries ago.

Character concepts for an Ursovon and Jallan that have made their home on Firefly

Aestheticans

Despite looking almost exactly identical, humans quickly discovered that this species is split into several warring nations, however their quarrels are less militaristic and more… fashion based.

This species prides themselves on their looks, and the clothing choices of an individual is the easiest way for a human to determine what faction the member belongs to.

Farming is one of the two main gameplay components of Elysian Fields, and arguably the more calmer and grounded of two. Naturally, as the name implies, this involves elements of farming on your little planet orb (Plorb). This includes maintaining things such as crops, orchards and farm animals, both land and water based.

So, how do you farm? Simple! Your plorb features various regions (Unlockable over time with money and resources), and each region has a number of empty plots, ripe for specialization. There are four base plot times you can specialize into:

Fields – For planted crops

A field full of fruit bushes

Orchards – For tree based crops

An apple orchard, with a weird new variety of apple

Pens – For land based animals

A chicken pen!

Ponds – For water based animals

A duck pond!

Once you’ve specialized a plot, it’s time to fill it! You have a sizable inventory that can be filled full of stuff (Don’t worry, you can’t hurt your back, even if you’re carrying eight trees, fourteen chickens and some space ship parts. Space technology solves that!), and from that you can plant or place that stuff into the various plots. Crops, when planted, slowly grow over time and can be harvested when they’re fully grown, while animals will slowly produce resources over time like eggs and wool. Don’t worry about your little animal pals, you cannot harm them when getting resources, we’re in the distant future and all animals produce sustainable regenerating products!

But your job isn’t over when you’ve planted your crops and placed your animals. You still have to make sure the soil is properly fertilized for your plants to grow bigger, and animals need to be fed and returned to their pens should they escape. Unfed and unmaintained animals will eventually leave your plorb entirely of their own volition, so you’ve got to make sure they remain happy (Animals won’t die, they’ll just migrate to a plorb with better accommodation. You’re more like a landlord to them). Animals also slowly age over time, and retired farm animals eventually leave to go towards a farm animal retirement sanctuary, so be sure to raise their children and grand children too!

A very early version of the plot controller for an orchard

Still, we want the farming aspect to be relatively low maintenance for you, and you can reduce that maintenance further using money and resources gained. Using these, you can manufacture upgrades for your plots, which improve general plot health – taller fences to stop your sheep escaping and sprinklers for your crops, for example – and even start automating things such as automatically harvesting and replanting crops. Be aware though, automation isn’t a straight upgrade – there’s nothing like a person’s direct maintenance for the best yields.

Over time things can and will change. You might want to swap an orchard out for an animal pen, for example, and you’re able to do that at any time – minus a small cost. Eventually, though, you’ll start getting into the more lucrative resources, such as electric sheep wool (Do they dream of androids?), flaming hog lava (Great for heating!) and the mysterious ‘void’ resources. Animals and crops can be swapped out at any time, although be aware that pens and ponds only really accept one type of animal, while crops are placed in rows that can be mixed and matched. With proper maintenance and control, your dusty little orb can become a farming powerhouse, netting you tons of cash and resources, which can then be used to manage the space exploration section of the game, but that’s for another post.

We hope this has been a bit insightful into part of what we want Elysian Fields to be. What we’ve written here is what we’re aiming towards at the moment, but things may change if we find other things to be more fun. We hope to bring you even more details about Elysian Fields soon.

Take to the stars, care for and cultivate your own micro planets, or explore the expanse of space. In Elysian Fields your adventure is up to you.

Elysian Fields is a Farming Adventure set over a thousand years in the future, where many planets have been destroyed, replaced by mini-planets and black holes. You’ve managed to acquire a Plorb (A ‘planet orb’) all of your own, and now it’s your job to care for it and its inhabitants.

Farm your plorb and care for its occupants, then blast off from planetside life and set sail for a sea of stars and cities. Trade with scattered humans and aliens, fight off space-pirates and discover new worlds. The universe is your oyster.

Gameplay

Cultivate

Care for your crops and animals, some familiar and others from further afield.

Crops

A starfruit tree

Some of the in-game crops

A field of purples

Friends

Duckling

Models in game

Just a sheep

Ducks having a well-deserved bath

Rebuild

Restore your Plorb to its former glory. Craft solutions and improvements to expand and better look after your planets occupants.

Plorb development

Initial Plorb design

More refined Plorb design

The plorb as it currently appears in-game

Proposed design

The proposed final design for the Home Plorb

Explore

Set sail for the stars and discover new lands, new species and make questionable friends and rivals.

In-Game screenshot of space travel

Friends?

Early Alien concept designs

Progress

We’re still in the early stages of development on Elysian Fields, but already we’re making big steps and have some early gameplay prototypes up and running.

With all going to plan, we hope to have an early access version of Elysian Fields available by the end of the year.

Chickens!