Good news everyone!

We're team Falling Spaceman. A team consisting of a programmer (with an extra programmer giving advice every now and then), a 3D artist, and a technical artist. Fun fact: none of us knew each other before the start of this game jam. We apologize very much for the lack of updates, we've been very busy working on the game (we actually started writing this post three days ago, but we kept getting distracted). Our artist is hard at work on some 3D content, the programmer (me) is working on the guts of the game, and the technical artist is developing our UI. Most of the game consists of a minimalistic UI-looking design for two reasons: firstly, we want to drive home you are a guy looking at a computer screen. Second, it's so we can focus as a team on ways to solidify gameplay mechanics.

We decided early that a lot of people in this game jam would probably see 'exploration' as being a form of frontier, so we expected to see a lot of spaceships and submarines. We opted to take the road less travelled, and make something many people might not think of as exploration: we are making a game about hacking, exploring networks and planets, as well as taking down an evil organization.

We've decided the (current) title of the game will be:

"No Hacker's Sky"

TL;DR: You play as a hacker who wants to disclose what an evil space mining corporation is really doing in space.

In our game, you are both a space enthusiast and a “security expert”. You start out by hacking into the network of a huge space mining corporation called Extrasolar Mining Corp (EMC), who has deployed probes, satellites and manned stations on distant planets and moons. As you progress through their large network you learn more and more about the fact that they have hired scientists for evil. The scientists were paid off to declare that EMC’s activities were not damaging the local ecosystems of the off world areas they were mining - and performing various secret experiments - on. You set out to hack into progressively more hardened network areas, eventually leading to control of satellites and drones on distant planets. You intend to discover the truth, and take down the evil organization.

Here's some of the art we have so far (everything is still WIP).

Current look of the node map (you can switch the blue color to other colors by commands), command prompt, and node world, all in-game. You can see some in-game planets and drones if you look further down in this post:

• Command prompt. Current features include being able to TAB through available a combination of commands and arguments (Shift + TAB to cycle backwards). If you have already written something, it'll try to pick a similar one, IE. if you write "he" and press TAB, it'll write "help", and if you write "nav" and press TAB, it'll pick the first command + argument in the list of "nav" arguments, presumably "nav options", which takes you to the domain holding options commands. Arrow key up and down cycles through the previous things you wrote.

So, this command prompt is a very central part of the game. We haven't gone very much in-depth with all the uses of it, but you'll use this for things like looking through hacked emails, navigating the node maps (can also be done with mouse), and more. * Current state of the node map. The "Node" nodes have been hacked and can fully be accessed. The grey "?" nodes are unexplored/not-hacked-yet nodes, no access to them yet. The black "?" node is an unexplored always-visible node. The always-visible node will feature things like a big loot room, where big amounts of passwords and data can be collected from. * First node world.. You have to enter a node to hack and gain access to other nodes. This is a concept (in-game) of how the worlds may look like. Here it's a simple platforming puzzle, with the twist of you having to manually activate and deactivate the platforms. Basically they'll all be hidden at first, and you have to use the computer to activate/deactivate them with commands. * The computer.

Node Map and Hacking Mockups (will look different in-game), including some of the "Tool Programs" (hound, rogue and cat):

• Network nodes map. This is the 'overall view', where you see each network you have access to. The networks then contain smaller nodes, in the form of entities, or single systems, such as computers and surveillance cameras.
• Entity nodes view, with tooltips.
• Entity node access view. Basically each node will have a set of things you can access, depending on what kind of node it is.

(And now the tool programs, still mockups)

• Cat
• Cat has found some new things!
• Hound will sniff out dangerous nodes, where traps may lay ahead, that would alert system admins of your presence.
• Hound is scanning. Yes, you'll be able to change the colors of both command prompt text, and the general GUI colors.
• Hound has sniffed something out!
• Rogue can be used to find and disarm traps in adjacent nodes.
• Rogue has found something!
• Rogue is trying to disarm the trap.
• Rogue failed!
• Rogue succeeded!

Drones:

• Explorer Drone: Render, In-Game.
• Flying Drone (Concept): Render, In-Game.
• Security Drone:Render, In-Game.

Planets:

• Red Planet (gonna be much bigger):
  • Render of planet.
  • the base.
  • Super Death Lazor. An orbital laser EMC is using for experiments.
  • Laser In-Game.
  • In-Game.
• Snow Planet (concept):
  • The planet.
  • The base (it's big).
  • Hangar.
  • Control room (remember, concept, sitll WIP).
  • The elevator.

EMC (Extrasolar Mining Corp) Logo:

• Concepts (we chose the top left one).
• 2D Logo.
• 3D Logo.

Hope you like everything so far! Let us know what you think.

We are probably going to continue working on it after the game jam has ended, since we can easily add lots and lots of things to the game. Stay tuned for updates!