Be sure the stick around for an extra announcement at the end!

Elysian Fields is designed around the combination of two game types, the casual farming simulator, and the space exploration role playing(-ish) game. While both elements are very different, they do tie together -money and resources earned from farming can be used to further explore space, while exploration may uncover ever more weird and wonderful crops and animals to futher improve your farm. Today, we’ll be covering the space side of Elysian Fields.

Transport in the great expanse

Well, to move around in space, you probably need a space ship. Luckily, due to the nature of the solar system one thousand years in the future, space ships and parts for them are plenty, so why not build your own?

Elysian Fields will feature a ship building system, where you can find, buy and/or create ship components, which you can then put together and style however you want to build a ship that’s uniquely yours. Want a rocket ship? How about something from your favourite sci-fi? How about representing your favourite chicken? If you can imagine it, you can probably build some facsimile of it. But what if you don’t want to build anything and you just want to get out there? There are tons of blueprints you can also find and buy which you can use to make pre-designed and tested ships, or use them as the basis for something truly unique!

Where to?

Where to indeed? The solar system is vast, but there are only really so many places you actually want to visit, so everyone in Elysian Fields is limited to these sectors of space. You try to fly into the great unknown? Your ship will just bounce you right on back. That’s not to say you’ll ever hit the edge of a sector though, as they can be quite massive! Elysian Fields consists of a large number of sectors, and each sector may contain one or multiple plorbs you can visit, resources to mine, enemies to fight and secrets to discover. You can travel to each sector by flying through a portal, forming a portal network. And if that’s too much hassle, you can probably eventually upgrade your ship far enough to feature a built in fast travel system, who knows?

In any case, while sectors are indeed quite vast, Elysian Fields ensures that there’s always an ‘up’ and a ‘down’ in that sector, so flying a ship is more like flying a plane or piloting a submarine. It makes navigation easier without you spinning and rolling every which way. Over time, you’ll come to recognise landmarks in these sectors as well, which should further aid in navigation, and inhabitants may leave helpful beacons scattered around as waypoints and markers.

But we haven’t really answered the main question have we. Where to? Well, wherever you want, of course! Elysian Fields starts out with a pretty linear progression just to ease you into it. From the start of your journey, you can only really travel to the Phobos sector, whereupon you find Solbreak and its inhabitants. From here, you can get quests to explore elsewhere, and while you do need to pass some quests to unlock some further out sectors, you don’t really need anyone’s permission to go where you want. Well, except for…

Enemies!

The solar system of the future isn’t the safest place around (ignoring all the usual permanent vacuum and cosmic ray stuff, anyway), and a rouge faction of AI machines patrol various sectors with the sole intent to cause trouble. Seriously, sometime in the recent past, a collection of AIs had their programming corrupted and they promptly became the equivalent of high school bullies, harassing organic beings and even other machines. I guess it’s time to teach them a lesson.

If you enter the (shockingly close range) awareness of a drone, they will almost definitely start combat. From here on, they’ll be shooting at you, so it’s probably best to shoot back at them. Unlike normal exploration, you’re now limited to moving vertically and horizontally, and can aim independently of where you’re moving. And really, all you need to do is shoot the enemy while dodging their attacks! Thin out their numbers and the battle is won, with you claiming their spoils in the form of cash and resources. If your ship is destroyed, you’ll be booted back to the nearest spaceport where you can repair, rearm and get out there once more!

From the start of the game, you will only get some basic plasma cannons – suitable for basic defence and mining asteroids, but not much else. Later on, though, you could potentially equip your ship with advanced weapons and tools, such as homing missiles, lasers and more exotic things to make battling easier.

Oh, and don’t worry about the AIs. They were remotely piloting their drones, and destroying the drones just gives them what feels like a kick in the pants. Hopefully they reconsider their ways. They probably won’t though. They’re not too bright.

And another thing

As an extra announcement, we’re excited to announce that we’ll be starting a Kickstarter for Elysian Fields soon, aiming for a start date of the 21st of August! This will be to raise the funds necessary to polish up the game to a standard we are proud with, as well as set up necessary distribution platforms and pay for various licenses. This Kickstarter isn’t just for us though, as we have a number of backer rewards that we hope you’ll be excited for. And, if the Kickstarter proves to be extremely popular, we can add additional features to improve Elysian Fields well beyond our initial plans.

In any case, we’ll provide more details nearer the time. But for now, we hope you’ve enjoyed this quick look into the space exploration side of Elysian Fields. Until next time!

– Novadawn Studios