Gameplay: Is there an end game?

[Crunchy Frog]

I am curious to buy this game but am not sure what the entire story is all about. Is there an ending possible or do you struggle and die over and over?

[Phaxtolgia]

ATM it's an endless game. The game does give you occasional objectives to do to keep you pre-occupied, and some can be quite challenging; such as comandeering a ship without using a generator, or luring a monster in your ship to scan it, etc.

[darkdisciple1313]

That's why it's best to play with perma-kill as an option, because getting to bug out and reload (even without getting to reboard the ship you just left because you were getting your drones' butts kicked) is fairly boring after awhile. I've had playthroughs where I've survived some 250 days, others where I haven't even made it through the second ship.

Best way to make this seem to have an actual end is to tinker with the options until you find one that suits your play style. They're just drones, after all, so if they bite the dust because of some stupid decision (and I've made tons), meh. Granted, I rename my drones with monikers such as Thing One and Thing Four, so I have no attachment to them. Your experiences may vary.

[Patola [Linux]]

Yay! Just saved money by researching whether is had an ending. No ending, no purchase, sorry developers!

[gnomepickle]

You're missing out, end game or not it's a fantastic experience. I'm actually glad there's no way to "beat" the game because the replay value is worth the price alone. That being said it's a niche title that you'll either really love or really hate.

[Misfits Attic]

Yeah, so having an authored storyline in a roguelike can be a bit tricky. We didn't want to force players to follow a story if they didn't want to, and we didn't want to force an ordering to it, or make it that there was just one path. We wanted it to fit the procedural generation of the various galaxies, ships, etc.

This led us down the path of various threads that you could follow, allowing any run to be a good one for a particular thread depending on the RNG, ship types near you, etc. And then there was adding in a more personal storyline directed at reminding the player that they were truly alone.

A final neat ending just didn't feel like it fit the game. Each thread has a certain closure to it, but the "what exactly happened" is left to the player. Though the back story of "how did I get here" is has a more targeted answer.

End of the day these are the choices you make, and with the amount of hours required to get through the story there wasn't time for playtesting/feedback on it. I'm actually really proud of how we did it and how it turned out. So it's such a comfort to see people on this thread that appreciated it, because we spent a fair amount of time & energy on it.

One of the joys of indie dev is being able to go with your gut and let it ride :)

[Sir Prize]

i actually love the fact theres no "ending". youre alone in space, some event happened and you dont know what, was it a grey goo scenario? an epidemic of sorts? total wipeout from a hostile entity? who knows? theres no one left to ask, all you want to do is live and keep on moving

[Misfits Attic]

@Silvaplex512 Yeah, it's really hard when you're a really small team. We wanted to make the ships more interesting aesthetically, but there were always issues I felt were more core to solve or put time into. Maybe someday I can make another version :)

@sir prize: yeah, that's a bit of what I was going after, and I just couldn't find a satisfying way to put a bow on it.