Die in space with better QoL
Ostranauts is a “hardcore noir space-sim”, in which you scavenge shipwrecks in order to expand and customise your own ship. Every system onboard your vessel can be interacted with via its own panel of buttons and displays, and it’s all but inevitable that you will die due to your own incompetence or carelessness. The only hope is that the death is interesting.
I badly want to create a captain, hire a crew, build a ship, and go die in space, but as soon as I see a UI with 18 buttons on it, and have no immediate idea what they do, I’m out. Even if, beyond those quality-of-life issues, Natehad plenty of kind words for Ostranauts around its initial launch.
Hopefully Kitfox can help. They’re the publisher behind the recent Steam release ofDwarf Fortress, who helped take that game from ASCII art and obtuse keyboard controls to something much friendlier, without compromising the spirit or depth of the simulation. They’re also currently working on the 1.0 release of Caves Of Qud, due later this year, which is a similarly inscrutable roguelike that has been in development for fifteen years.
Or maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part. Ostranauts is already more visual and legible than both Dwarf Fortress and Caves Of Qud, and there’s no specific mention of work to make the game graspablein the announcement of the partnership with Kitfox.
