You probably know Chucklefish as the indie publisher that helped bring Stardew Valley to the world, and Stardew is undoubtedly their biggest success story, but it’s not their only one. Starbound, Wargroove, Witchbrook, and Inmost are all fantastic games in their respective genres, and now Chucklefish is getting into the sim genre with Starmancer.
In Starmancer, you play as a space station AI with total control over everything you survey. The game plays out a bit like The Sims, only your little human lab rats are way easier to kill. Or turn into goo, or cannibals, or goo cannibals.
Although we should point out that you don’t have to play as the evil AI equivalent of 2001: A Space Odyssey, that option is available to you if you prefer your stations to be devoid of human life. It’ll just mean fewer mouths to feed.
As the station AI, you manage everything from crew comfort and health to food stores, as well as internal and external defense. Save your station from hostile soldiers or from escape lab experiments by building internal defense turrets that’ll fill unauthorized entities full of holes.
You can get a sense of how Starmancer will play out by checking out the trailer below, which recently aired during E3’s indie showcase.
Starmancer comes courtesy of two-person dev team Ominux Games who recently shared their plans to enter Steam Early Access on August 5.
”We have high-level plans for post-launch (weapons, livestock, bots, genetic augmentation), but our most important goal is to be as flexible as possible and address the least fun areas of the game," wrote Ominux on Steam. “The element of fun adds a constant, unknowable cost. It’s not easy to play your own game and figure out what’s fun and not fun. We need players to help.
Ominux will take their Early Access time to solicit player feedback on what they can do to improve Starmancer’s systems, with fun always being at the forefront of every decision. You can wishlist the game now on Steam and get ready to murder your entire space station’s crew on August 5.
