Generally there’s a lot less happening during peace-time than when at war. And this game was always ultimately about that down time in between the things you see in other games.

You see, Apsis Online was always supposed to be a simulation first. And you, dear player, were simply meant to exist in it. So that naturally and at some point you may have felt the need to affect it in ways not just unique to you, but in such a way that the same uniqueness of your response further randomized the simulation. If that makes sense!

This has made development a pain in my ass for at least 7 years because most of the time I have had to work on these systems without much actually happening. Or while just thinking about what could be happening. All while being varying amounts of work away from actually making those things possible. And to be honest with you, I have had multiple moments in which I had no idea what I was even making anymore.

The first occurrence of such a crisis was sometime around the second or third patch following Apsis’ release on Early Access. By September (‘23) I had been over six months unemployed after being laid off by a game studio I did MMO economics for. Although a big contract for my own small publisher over the Summer lea to some breathing room, nonetheless it was the getting closer to the holidays.

I was well out-of-funds and making deals with the devil. The hosting situation was shaky and not helpful. Have you ever worked on something knowing that’s all you could do? Not knowing how that would work out either. That’s game development in general but under duress it hits different for sure.

During that time I made sweeping changes to gameplay and many improvements to the engine itself. Did you know that it can power more than just games? Some features extend to mobile apps, websites and other exotic things. It is this fact that allowed development to continue at all. I wouldn’t be programming at all if building an engine wasn’t a thing.

But it was a death march. And what’s crazy is when Apsis Online entered development I didn’t have nieces and nephews and now I have multiple. One of them is in middle school. I had no apartment, I still have no life. And the whole time this project was lost in space.

So while things did turn a corner recently, each turn has always led to the kind of dead end that I typically would eagerly invent a way to overcome. But not this time. This post is the cyanide pill. I wish I had better news.

It was a good fun run and I’d like to thank all the players who came around to checking out this weird little game with bad uptime. Although you would be surprised at how often AO was either online or offline. Also, the single player campaign is always playable for those who haven't beat that.

Here’s some stats: Most concurrent users was maybe 3. Total registered users over 10ish years is probably ~250. Half of that came from Steam. Which made the launch DOA immediately and sent my publisher into a frenzy of making up for it (by pulling a bunch of engine tech from this). I just couldn’t get it together enough for sustained tests with the maxed out feature-set. And I’ve increasingly felt like well – other projects are simply doing it better these days.

There's so much more to say, to the point of it being a multi-part postmortem but I'll spare you the extra extra details. See you in space, cowboys and girls!

**

Jax Calder made it home to find his world a different place. With every style and custom unfamiliar. His way of life had melted into the zeitgeist of today and became something else. Just like they said it would. Nothing could stay the same forever. Had he? He didn’t really know. As it had been just him for so much longer than it seemed.

The only thing left to do, he supposed, was to live. Which was strange too since that’s what he thought he was doing. In fact, you couldn’t convince him otherwise.

Actually, it was his time in space that made him feel most alive. So much so that he suddenly wanted to go back. But the hiss of the airlock jarred Jax back to the present, the sun hitting his face now, the actual sun, Sol. Not some star.

“You survived” they would later say.

Is that what they call this he thought.

PS: The game will be taken off sale as soon as ur Steam guardian grants that request.