Greeting Scavengers!
After almost 3 years’ work, Sarah and I are hyped that Space Trash Scavenger is finally launching into Early Access today!
Space Trash Scavenger is all about collecting space trash from a bygone era, in an abandoned corner of the galaxy called the Outer Reach. It’s up to you to build your own Space Rig, process that trash, and sell it on for profit.
At its heart, it’s an open-world survival crafting game. But we tried to bring something new to the genre, by setting it in a series of toybox-sized, partially procedurally generated asteroid fields - where local “Mario Galaxy” type gravity mechanics come into play.
I’ve already given an overview of what we wanted to do in Dev Blog 1 and talked about how we thought about spatial dynamics in Dev Blog 2.
But there’s more to talk about. Space Trash is a 3rd person action game. Combat plays a big part in this game. And then there is the automation too. And NPCs. So let’s dive into it!
Laser focussed
We wanted combat included right from the start. I think it’s because we wanted a sense of danger and tension, and it suited the 3rd person perspective. Right now you get a selection of different weapons, automatic rifles, and slower but more powerful pistols. You can craft grenades and you can craft buffs, including crit hit modifiers, time dilation and damage resistance.
A lot of the buffs are crafted from food. We were keen to have farming and watering crops - just because it seemed fun - but using the food as ingredients for buffs, along with more exotic components sometimes - seemed like a nice way to encourage that side of the game and give it meaning. There is a hunger meter, but certain foods in and of itself will give you buffs to help you when going into the “dungeons”.
Based on feedback, I’m really looking forward to adding more tools to your arsenal, as well as more enemy types, going forward.
Space Dungeons
I mentioned the asteroid fields, but just as important are the derelict ships and abandoned mines and outposts you come across. Over time we’ll be adding more locations. These have procedurally generated layouts, enemies and loot. So they are kind of similar to a roguelike dungeon in that way. Personally, I like this because it means I don’t know what I’m getting when I venture into them while playtesting!
The interiors are dark and foreboding. Later they can get pretty tough, so you need the best weaponry and medpacks to survive. The corridor spaces mix up the combat from the outdoor stuff, with a more claustrophobic space horror feel. It’s for these places that the scavenger has a torch on the helmet! Some of these locations are locked, and you should keep hold of any keys you find around the place.
Gone rogue?
When you enter your world seed as you create a new game, it will affect everything from the types and positions of asteroids in every sector, as well as the layout of the locations. Most importantly, it keeps it different and adds a lot of replayability.
Because you jump forward on the galactic map to each of your salvage sectors, I see a lot of cross-over with roguelikes here. I even thought about taking that further and going fully rogue with permadeath, or perhaps rogue-lite. After some thinking, we decided it would just be too punishing to lose your whole base when you died. Instead, you are “recloned” by ScavCorp in the same sector, and you go back to your body to get your stuff. I think it’s a good balance.
Automation lite
From time to time, you’ll receive product orders from your employer ScavCorp. You’ll need to build up your Space Rig, a base of operations to process what trash you have found and refine it to products to sell at the local stock market.
There is a factory-style game here, if you are so inclined. You can automate this process, using conveyor pads (which transport items by floating them along pathways), and I made sure you can use splitters with ratio sliders to move the resources around in the amounts you need, to different factory machines.
There is scope to get pretty advanced here; however, you could choose to do it by hand if you prefer. You can also automate the input using tractor beams. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts in Early Access about where to take this side of the game.
Markets
Once you have your products you can sell them at the Stock Market. Prices here are dynamic, so remember to sell high! And be careful of flooding the market, because the prices will react. I was keen to have this in from the start too. I was certainly inspired, at least initially, by my times playing Elite, but also Slime Rancher has a similar sort of system. It adds an extra dimension to your decision-making about when and what to sell.
NPCs and Quests
It’s our goal to have the game feel good through the interplay of its main systems of scavenging, building, crafting, selling, combat and exploration. But we do want there to be some story elements, and we want there to be other people to meet and discover on your journey through the Outer Reach. We’ve added a few NPCs to the game already. Over time we’re looking forward to adding more, with more quest types and revealing more background story through these characters.
See you in the Outer Reach!
Early Access is a chance to hear your thoughts and make the game as best we can. So please do give us your feedback. Just hit F1 in the game to open a feedback form if you have any thoughts.
Or join the discord, where I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts and chat things over, or leave comments in the forum.
Hope you can join us on our journey towards 1.0.
Al and Sarah