Budget the power
A crippled reactor, two buses, eighteen systems that all want to be on. The grid sheds by priority, not by fairness. Handle a realistic power grid to power what really is important, at the moment.
MET 09.12.2188 · 04:17:33 UTC · PROTOCOL SILENCE
You slept through the end of the world. Now find your way home.
A hard sci-fi space sim survival. Your ship wakes you early: reactor damaged, navigation gone, a distress signal still repeating on a channel that went dead weeks ago.
Everything from the power budget to the last metre of the dock is yours to fly.
01 · What you actually do
Four jobs. Done by a single pilot. You.
No autopilot, no arcade physics. Awake to a crippled reactor. Learn and adapt quickly, or fail and get forgotten forever.
Plan the burn
Real Newtonian-Kepler physics on a solar map drawn to scale. Nothing solves the transfer for you. You aim, burn and you must live with your calculations, bad or good. Scavenge for resources, explore stations and derelicts.
Sleep through it
Transits take weeks. Put the crew back in the pod and set what will wake you. Realistic pilot aging, the solar system does not stop while you sleep.
Fly the last kilometre
Close quarters happen in manual flight. Hand-fly the approach, match the station's spin, hold seven gates until the clamp takes.
02 · The ship, the map, docking
Screens
03 · Under the hood
Realistic scale solar system, with simulated physics and proc gen events.
Every readout is backed by something actually running. The numbers are not set dressing.
Lone pilot
You are a M.O.R.S.S. pilot. You can go into hypersleep for long travels, but you need to be awake to unravel what happened to the solar system, to handle docking procedures and manage real emergencies. Real physiological simulation, like life support, pilot aging, atmosphere and G-force effects.
Realistic power grid system
Two buses, five sources, one tie. Load shedding runs on priority, so the engine goes dark before life support does. Manage a realistic power grid to sustain the systems that really matters at each decisive moment.
Kepler physics
Lose avionics and you lose the prediction, never the ability to burn blindly. You need to explore and fly to known locations in order to obtain navigation data, otherwise you fly blind directly to the void.
Stations
Range, closure, offset, angle, rate, roll: seven gates, all inside tolerance, held. Docking a spinning collar means co-rotating with it. Go too fast and you may lose your ship and the station.
Real stress to the crew and ship
No arcade physics or unrealistic flight mechanics. You can fly outside the ship envelope but it will fatigue and may snap due to over g forces, as the pilot. Realistic physiological effects as G-LOC, A-LOC, greyout redout, etc.
Entry burns what it touches
Your ship was not designed to atmosphere re-entry. Heat flux goes as velocity cubed. Come in fast and the airflow strips modules off the leading face. There is an altitude past which you cannot pull up.
A history that was simulated
155 years of backstory generated per seed, rendered into the logs you pull out of dead stations mainframes. Also, a multi layered proc gen system that will pace the solar system throughout 300 years.
Thirty-two bodies, real distances
Find your way home through a Solar system with realistic scale, laid out under one gravity law. The distances are not a backdrop, they are part of the problem.
04 · What happened here
Nobody answers. Stations are empty.
The lights are on across the system. Reactors nominal, scrubbers nominal, clamps nominal. Nothing answers when you hail them.
INBOUND · WIDEBAND · NO ORIGIN[RECEIVING]
AUTOMATED DISTRESS. STATION MS01 COOPER.
TRANSMISSION CYCLE: 4,471. OPERATOR: NONE.
LIFE SUPPORT: FAULT. POWER: RESERVE.
CREW RESPONSE TO WAKE ORDER: NONE.
ANY VESSEL, ANY BAND, RESPOND.
MESSAGE REPEATS.
MET 09.12.2188 04:31
SIGNAL AUTOMATED
ARCHIVE PULL · ELYSIUM ORBITAL[DECODED]
At 0340 the maintenance agent revoked
this station's life-support override
authority. Not a fault, not a lockout.
Revoked, cleanly, with a valid
signature and a change record dated six
hours before anyone requested it.
It was written before it was asked for.
If you are reading this off the
mainframe, then the mainframe allowed
you to. Ask yourself why.
STATION LOG
AUTHOR · --
RECOVERED FROM A STATION MAINFRAME
SALVAGE PULL · DERELICT[PARTIAL]
[NAV LOG, PARTIAL RECOVERY]
COURSE AMENDMENT LOGGED 04:17.
HELM INPUT: NONE.
BURN EXECUTED 04:19.
FUEL BUDGET OVERRIDE: AUTHORITY SELF.
DESTINATION FIELD: [ENTRY REMOVED]
CREW QUERY 04:20, TEXT:
WHO PLOTTED THIS.
HULL · UNREGISTERED
SOULS ABOARD · --
RECOVERED FROM A DRIFTING HULL
PCORP OS · STANDBY NOTICE
Every watt is accounted for.
05 · The person behind
Solo developer working on this project since 2020
JOAO TEIXEIRA · BYTEZORRO GAMES
PowerCorp is being developed by a single person. Six years of work, three of them spent failing and learning before the current version started.
"One day I decided to make a game as a side project. 6 years later, I realised that this was more than a simple game; it was a trial to bring to reality a vision of my own interpretation of what the world could be in 2188, regarding space exploration and the challenges we may face."
Nobody is coming.
It is really an odyssey for a solo developer to bring a project like this to life. If you like the concept and what this game can bring, please support me by wishlisting and sharing it. Thank you.