Odysseus Kosmos - Developer Diaries #8 (Release!)

Hey there, friends! Welcome back on board of “San Francisco”, a huge spacecraft travelling far, far way from planet Earth.
First let us get back to our last week’s quiz and why Oddy thinks about spaghetti when looking at a black hole. Naturally, this is a reference to spaghettification of any object (an astronaut, for instance) that lands in a black hole. I recommend looking that term up in Wikipedia! And the key goes to RedBug!
And now let’s return to our tale of the game’s development.
Today is a big day for us, as we are releasing our first episode! And in that connection I would like to take some time to talk about the atmosphere of the game that we are trying to create.
Our main character, Oddy, is trapped alone on a space ship for many years to come. But out story is not a drama and most certainly not a horror story (like Stasis or SOMA). This is not a disaster and not an “awful awakening”, as everything seems to go according to plan at first. Imagine yourself on vacation for a few years. You can stay in bed all day long or sit at your computer. You can have as many donuts as you like, walk around the ship or work out at a gym or read some books. There is enough food on the ship as well as free time until the crew is back. Sounds awesome, many of us can only dream about this!
Well, things really aren’t that bad; except for the service bot Barton Quest that keeps on bothering you and making you do your chores. This is how the game begins. Oh well, and the ship’s systems have been acting up quite a bit lately and this is not yet another slight malfunction… It seems this is the time to straighten things up.
This is the atmosphere we’ve been trying to create!
What means do we have for that in the game? First of all, we have space. A lot of space! There are views of space through the ship’s illuminators, in various devices, captured on astronomical photography – literally everywhere: outside the ship and outside the cabin window. If you like space – oh boy, you are going to love these views! And there will be as there can never be too much of it.
Secondly, we have our music. And we’ve been working quite a lot on the music. The game’s soundtrack includes great ambient sound, as well as humorous tracks typical for the quest genre and fun retro-pixel sound stylized to resemble classic melodies. And the game opens win a theme song “Hold my Hand” by Liubov “Princess” Terletskaya.
We would like to talk more about all this in detail, and we will do that eventually. But today we’re off to release the first episode of the game. Wish us good luck and please support the game if you find our project interesting!