Independent developer Zero Gravity today revealed that their upcoming first-person multiplayer space survival game Hellion will launch onto Steam early access in January 2017. It’s an ambitious project for the Serbian independent developer and many multiplayer games have come and gone under the banner of early access without huge success.
“Hellion is a fusion of survival and space simulation genres that pits players against the deadly environment as well as one another. Set across a single solar system, they will need to survive extreme temperatures, deadly radiation and scavenge for basic resources like air, water, fuel and other items to survive”, said Marko Smiljanic, Creative Director of Zero Gravity. “To discover Hellion’s secrets, players will need to find a spaceship and venture beyond the confines of their station to search for intel, resources, and valuable equipment. To do so, they will have to find a way to coexist and cooperate with other players, or at least cooperate until they have outworn their usefulness”.
Hellion’s sandbox space survival game tasks players to explore Hellion, a devastated solar system, the graveyard of mankind’s first interstellar colony. Players will have a chance to dive into the harsh reality of space in their salvaged ship and explore derelict spaceships and ruined outposts, as they try to uncover the truth behind the devastation and conflict that destroyed humanity’s hopes.
The developers plan to put in a host of features into the game including the likes of a complex resource gathering system, a detailed crafting system, unique damage and degradation models for systems and equipment, complex maintenance systems for ships, stations and equipment, all of which are fully modular and customizable.
To pull off this project will be no small feat especially for the studio’s debut title. The developers have also talked about an immersive back story that players can investigate to uncover the secrets of the system. How all these features translate into a multiplayer game is still unknown but we’ll get to see in January.
