The long wait during the pandemic springtime is over and it’s finally time to reveal more pieces of the game world. Even though corona has forced us to work differently, mostly from home, we definitely haven’t been twiddling our thumbs all this time. Our brilliant Chief Creative Officer Mike Pohjola and game designer Ama Laine have been working hard all this time and as a result we are finally able to reveal the preliminary story draft for the Out of Orbit universe.
It’s the year 2220 and the world has suffered untold catastrophes and as a result humanity has united under one democratic world government. Humans are divided by values, locations, and beliefs, but there is still a sense of unity and common purpose. We have built small self-sufficient towns on Europa, Titan, and Ceres, but the rest of the universe remains unexplored.
This is the rough premise of the game’s current setting but the world has been thought through from different lenses as well. There are reasons behind all design choices and Mike opens up the idea and starting points through which the game world was born:
“When the Corona crisis started, we had to think about what the world will be like after that and what the state of mind of the people will be. It is, of course, impossible to predict, but it was possible to find out what usually happens after such collective traumas.
Humanity experiences unity and needs comfort. On the downside, some long for a strong leader and turn against minorities. All this has already been seen, but the development will probably continue. Unlike in the 2010s, we don’t need dystopia for our fiction but utopia.
We wondered what it would be like to have a bright future where humanity works together for a common goal. And what the threat of the story could represent. The game world and the style guide of bright art nouveau was created from these points of view.“
At the beginning of the game the players are a crew on a small United Earth science station on an asteroid in the Kuiper belt. The station is there for exploring the asteroid belt, and unraveling the mysteries of Solar System’s formation and origin.
It is during this expedition that something surprises the crew and out of the blue, the station is attacked! By whom? There’s not supposed to be anyone this far at the edges of the system. Nevertheless, a ship that can only be called an Unidentified Flying Object is firing on the asteroid.
And this is where your game experience begins.
There’s much more to come as we dive a bit deeper into the futuristic world of Out of Orbit. We’ll have a peek on the structure of the Earth Factions and the style guides, so stay tuned!
