Deep in the Void
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
The Game is still in early development. Many of the planed features are yet to be implemented. Expect Bugs.
Alpha Trailer
Story
Deep in the Void plays in a Sci-fi Universe where you, the Player, were part of a Space Expedition with others from your home World. On your way from Platina X-27 to Frek Z-Y your expedition fleet was mysteriously pulled out of your Warp drive, destroying most of the fleet and heavily damaging your ship.
Fortunately for you, during the incident you were doing an Inspection on a mining Vessel. After a couple of hours, you wake up and start to realize your situation. The mining ship's Artificial Intelligence “Cora” has started an emergency procedure and activated an emergency Station.
The Ai gives you control over the mining vessel and gives you first Instructions. She tries to scan the surroundings and tells you to start mining the asteroids close to the Station.
The goal of the Player is to construct infrastructure to help save survivors that are still alive and lost in the void. Defend yourself and your colony from enemies. The end goal of the Game is to construct a Warp Drive Device to rescue you and your people.
Beginning
The ship of the Player is broken, because of this his ability to move is restricted. The ship also shows vital damage to its hull. The Player is greeted by the Artificial Intelligence. She tells you about the Incident and gives you your first tasks.
Gather Resources
He gets the task to start gathering resources, so that he can repair his mining vessel. When the player shoots his Laser at an Asteroid, he will get Ore from “Ore Asteroids” which look darker and Ice from “Ice Asteroids” which look blueish, white.
Emergency Station
The Emergency Station provides a cargo to store all Resources. It is also the Science lab, with which the Player can repair his ship, and start to gather knowledge about different Buildings.
Building Interface
When the Player traverses through the Science tree and researches the “captain's interface”, he will be able to access the “Build UI”
Factories & Furnaces
Factories & Furnaces are the Core elements in “Deep in the Void”.
With these Buildings, it is possible to automate the construction processes and later get more Technologies and Defensive Weaponry.
Recipe List
With the Recipe List the Player is able to build a verity of different Components to craft more Advanced Mechanisms like other Buildings
Build a Space Colony
The Goal of the Game is to expand your Colony and ready your defenses against hordes of Aliens.
Radio wave Pollution
Another Core Mechanic is the Radio wave Pollution. Aliens are attracted to the radio wave pollution. Their goal is to destroy you and your Colony, because they hate everything that emits those waves. Radio wave pollution is being emitted when constructing and maintaining buildings
Defending your Colony
Once the Radio wave Pollution gets high enough, nearby aliens will form an organized attack against you. The Player needs to make sure that Turrets have been researched and are ready to fend off the Threat. The Mining laser of the Player's Vessel is enough against the earliest waves, but too weak once the attacks get larger.
Planed Features
The Game is still in early development and many of the planed features are yet to be implemented.
- More complex and challenging logistics, beyond cargo drones simply delivering everything where it needs to be automatically.
- Different enemy types and enemy bases which need to be destroyed to make room for expansion. Alien technology can be salvaged from enemy bases.
- Many more buildings and technologies.
- Population and Crew mechanics. Most buildings will require a crew and they need water to be sustained. You can find survivor pods in space to increase your population.
- The ability to manufacture and command AI controlled space ships.
- Energy system. Solar Power, Nuclear Energy and more exotic technologies.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $4.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
So guys, any progress now? Hows going your venture? :)
How's the update going? Just curious, don't want to put pressure or anything,
Same, hoping this stays in development if the dev wants.
Hey ColdShoulderMedia,
we have currently paused the Game development because of a different venture, which will help us to acquire Money.
With that, we can create a Game Studio and hire some people to speed up the process.
The Game still is something we keep track of and is a project from our hearts. I can guarantee you that we will finish the game eventually.
Thanks for showing us that there are people waiting for the release, we will make sure to speed up our current venture as fast as we can, so we can get back to creating Deep in the Void.
I wish you a great Weekend!
With kind regards
Thomas & Johannes
Hey Elmortti,
we have currently paused the Game development because of a different venture, which will help us to acquire Money. With that, we can create a Game Studio and hire some people to speed up the process.
The Game still is something we keep track of and is a project from our hearts. I can guarantee you that we will finish the game eventually.
Thanks for showing us that there are people waiting for the release, we will make sure to speed up our current venture as fast as we can, so we can get back to creating Deep in the Void.
I wish you a great Weekend!
With kind regards
Thomas & Johannes
When you select an object for construction in space, the building located under the selected element is activated. Apparently, you need to divide the game into layers, each for its own "window" and limit zones for specific layers.
Hey,
I did pick up this game while it was free. For a free game, it was worth diving into if you like base-building colony sims. I played for an hour before feeling like I was satisfied.
Strengths:
> Great aesthetic, how you need to search the map with your mouse to find things is an immersive (possibly unintended) feature. Instantly hooked in the first minutes.
> Tutorial will actually cover most of what you need to know.
> Automation is very easy to set up, no math or belting required.
> The design that defenses create pollution which creates more monsters that require more defenses is a natural escalation curve.
Weaknesses:
> The sound effects were great but the volume wasn't. Each package that gets delivered makes a beeping noise so when you sit next to the core... A lot of robots. And the alarm was really loud too.
> Tutorial did not cover how to properly use the factories, so I didn't know what the checkmark or production limit does.
> Needs a lot more upgrades and possibly legacy (upgrades that you keep forever) upgrades to work towards.
Other Dev Suggestions:
> Currently I don't think Oxygen does anything, so why am I stockpiling 1000s from Ice?
> The Production Limit also doesn't actually limit how many are made in total, so I spend most of the mid-late game babysitting factories for the right amount of stuff.
The effectiveness of a Furnace / Factory is based on how close it is to the core. A Furnace right beside the core feels twice as effective as a Furnace farther away. This may not be true, but that's what it feels like.
> This is an okay feature, as on paper the bigger your factory, the less efficient it will be. But you need to give players the ability to pick up their buildings after they become aware of this/expand.
> There should be some indicators such as a trail (only visible while placing the building) between the core & the building w/ a stat on how long it will take for packages to transport & the throughput.
A strength of this game is you don't need to be an electrician, wiring factory belts together to maximize throughput. However, this game will benefit a lot from being able to see the paths the deliveries take and the ability to manipulate them!
> Make it possible for the player to path the ore packages to the furnaces, then the furnaces to the factories. Should still be simple, shouldn't need to worry about paths overlapping the packages since they don't have a collision.
Hello RoseTheFox,
thank you very much for writing such a great Review of the Game!
A lot of the Sound design is subject to change. We didn't want to leave sounds out in the early development process because it does give a lot of needed Feedback.
For the next Update I will find some way to introduce the Player better to the Recipe Mechanics, how you have said it's a much-needed Feature to help the player fully understand what to do.
I have already completely redone the whole Research System and i am now able to add way more upgrades. I will take a look in getting some Upgrades that you can constantly upgrade. It is a good solution of having a Resource drain.
Oxygen is a resource that is already there for a missing feature that will be also implemented in the near Future. There will be another variable for the player, which are "Humans". The player has to give his Population different Jobs, with that you are able to micromanage even more. So if you need more output on the Miners, Furnaces or Factories you can choose so. The new Logistic System which will also be coming soon needs Humans to Transport Resources between Space Stations.
I will take a look into the Production limit and see if it works as we intended it to do so.
The Effectiveness of the Factories depend on the Distance to the Emergency Station is going to change with the Logistic System. The Resources will not be transported automatically like they are now. The Cargo Drones will be a feature that the player could have in the End-Game. The Player will link different Buildings together and form a Space Station with those buildings, the resources are transported easily between the connected buildings. So what you will be ending up with is a lot of different Space Station, where each one in producing something specific. After that you will bring the advanced component to the Main Station where you construct things like new Buildings and other things.
In the end, you talked about that the strength is that you don't need to be an electrician to be able to play the Game properly.
The game will get more complex than it is currently, but we also try to not make it as difficult as it is in different games in the Genre. I think when the Logistic Update will come out, you will get a better view of what I was trying to explain.
I wish you a great Week and a lot of fun with our Future Updates!
Hello,
thank you kindly for a free game. I like space and base building games so this was right up my alley. I played the game for about an hour. I liked the movement of the ship and the blasts of sentry towers. The game has a potential but there are some bugs/flaws;
1. Splashing logo every time you go to main menu gets old really fast, especially because you can's skip past it instantly. This would be fine if there wasn't a bigger problem.
2. Main menu music IS TOO DAMN LOUD and doesn't feel like it fits into the game, what's worse you can't mute it.
3. The game doesn't message very well functions of furnace and factory. What I mean by that is it took me a while to notice you can change recipies.
4. Scroling and clicking isn't limited to an opened window but it's global. What I mean by that is I open the main station window to research a technology and furnace menu opens because it was under the window.
6. Production limit doesn't limit the total inventory number just local one.
5. Build menu could have available number of buildable stations.
6. Sentry towers feel like they're shooting depth charges.
7. If you build furnace/factoryies close to one another collision model doesn't match up with the size of the icon.
8. After building a few stations/towers (around 100) the game became a slide show. I suspect constant refreshing of main station menu the number of cargo pods and sentry tower missiles.
9. Final gripe I played this game for an hour, buildt up a huge base and didn't find a single surviror to save :(.
Don't take my criticisms to heart I just want to play more of this game.
Hey TaurusSI,
Thank you very much for taking your time to give us some constructive Feedback! We are aware that there has to be done a lot more polishing and feature adding to make this Game better.
Now let me get to answer your Feedbacks:
1. I will put this on the to-do List, I can definitely understand why it is annoying. I will make it go away instantly by its self.
2. The Music is still a placeholder and will need to change as well. I will add a Mute Main Menu Sound to the Options Menu
3. That's right. The feature with the Recipes came in with the latest update and doesn't yet explain the player the feature correctly. I am still not sure how to do it better than explaining it with the missions. But I will think about it more when I get to the implementation.
4. I fixed this already. The Change will come with the next Update.
6.1. I will be taking a look into that. We had something in mind when we implemented the feature, I am not sure if it bugged out or if the way we did it isn't the one he had in mind.
5. True! I will be implementing that.
6.2. Not completely sure what you are tying to tell me with that.
7. This is also something that I have to redo properly. The way it is handled right now is just giving a lot of weird bugs. So I have to think of a different way to code it. But thanks for pointing that out!
8. We are working on making the game more fun for the Player. Some of these things I am working on right now.
9. True, that feature is still needed to be implemented and will be also one of those features I mentioned in 8. The Player will find Emergency Capsules with Humans inside them. He can collect them and bring them to the Base. The Player then needs to give these Roles, so they can work at the different Buildings. (Humans will be another Resource which is needed to keep the Colony growing)
We would never take Constructive Feedback in a bad way. Thank you very much for the nice Presentation of your first Impression. I hope we can give you a way better experience in our Future Updates.
I wish you a great Week!
Thanks for a fast answer I'm glad my remarks were of assistance. And I wish you a great week as well.
The depth charge comment was a reference to how slow the projectiles fired by the turrets are. They explode behind their intended target. The only damage they do is usually to the craft following the intended target.
Projectiles moving faster relative to the enemy ships or perhaps beam weapons of a different color than the enemy's? Or are these researchable upgrades eventually? Missile speed, beam weapon, fire rate, DPS, lots to research.
BTW, mine ran at <2 fps once a decent base got going and the enemies were not being destroyed.
When will saving come? Also, I see the games huge potential and want to see what it will become, good luck!
Hey Elmortti,
thank you very much for the kind words!
The Save/Load Feature currently in Development, so it will probably come out with the next Update!
I wish you a great Sunday and a lot of fun with the Game!
thanks, otherwise but the button download was not there,
But now you can download it right?
yeah =•^~^•=
I really like the looks of Deep In The Void. 😺
I think it has a lot of potential and hope you keep working on it.
I made an Early Preview video featuring some of my gameplay:
https://youtu.be/KdtDcv4AgAM
Hey Glidercat!
Thank you so much for the kind words!
We have seen your video and are really happy about it!
Currently, we are working every Hour of Free time we have on the Game. In the next Days we will make a Big Update:
We have fixed a lot of Bugs and missing polish. As well as redone the whole Item/Inventory/Craft System.
We also have restructured and rewritten a lot of Systems like the Audio, Quest system to be better to work with.
After this update, we will be working on the Logistic System. We already have nice ideas and I think you will like them.
You are always welcome to have a chat (Voice or Chat) with us on our Discord: https://discord.gg/7dYshZ5TsD
That sounds great. Keep up the great work on the game! 😺
Will the ability to save/continue a game without having to start over every time be part of this upcoming big update? This one seems important for me.
Hey Vesperknight,
sadly that feature will not come in this Update, but it will come in the Next one!
can you give a link on the game page, i'll wait
Hey Mr TbSite,
i am not sure if i understood you correctly.
Here is the link to the Game Page: https://whacklandstudios.itch.io/deep-in-the-void
If you had something else in mind, then please correct me.
The game seems nice. I couldn't play it much yet, but i do plan to.
Have you planned a save and load option or is it supposed to be played in one sitting? Oh, and do you have plans to add subtitles?
Also, I noticed the spelling of resource is incorrect, it is ressource in the game.
And uh, isn't the amount of initial resources way too high, everything is beyond 9500 and cables and gears are 170 and 190 respectively.
i am using linux build btw.
Oh, and a way to locate the emergency station would be nice, if i decide to go really far away for some reason.
Hey, thank you for trying out the game! Good to know that the dev version with huge initial resources has snuck into the linux build ;)
Saving and loading is very high on our priority list and will be implemented before new gameplay features.
Subtitles will surely be in the game at some point, but they are not very high on the priority list. The player should be able to understand what to do from just the mission text in the top right ideally.
We are working on fixing the worst offending bugs and balancing issues at the moment and will release an update soon which will hopefully make the current experience smoother.
For some reason, I didn't get a "repair" button when I upgraded. Not sure what went wrong, I did everything by what the game told me to do. Also, when stuff gets destroyed by the aliens, the aliens just kinda sit there and don't do anything. They seem to be impossible to kill as well.
Other than that, the game was pretty fun! I'll check back on it occasionally.
Thank you for your interest in the game. The missing repair button is known and will be fixed in the next update. The Alien AI is still temporary, so we accept it the way it is for now.
Wow looks great, thank you so much <3
We are very happy that you liked our Game!
We wish you a lot more fun in the Future.
Have a great Week!
I really dig this and can see some great potential! I'm looking forward to seeing future versions.
There are a bunch small things that need to be worked on, bugs and QoL stuff, but I'm sure you've already got a lot of work ahead of you already.
Thank you! We are getting a lot of positive feedback at the moment. It really feels great and absolutely boosts our motivation!
Seeing the comments I guess this must be just me, but the camera is too close to the ship where I can only see the nearest surroundings. At first I thought it was intended, as the ship damage might affect the navigation, but after repairing the ship it remained the same.*An unlockable zoom might even be a nice touch to add to the immersion, similar to Upgrade Complete where everything is upgradable.
Anyway, the game looks very promising, I found it fun even with (or due to?) the added handicap. I didn't get beyond the repairs because I couldn't find the Repair button and I was already at 20 HP.
* Edit: It turned out to be that you cannot zoom in or out without a mouse. I gave it another try and it is pretty fun even incomplete and with a few bugs (which is understandable in this early stage).
This is exactly what we released the game early for. We didn't even think about people playing without a scroll wheel. Because of your and other peoples feedback, we decided to increase the priority of accessibility features for the next update.
Thank you and I look forward to reading what you think of future updates.
Great idea, factorio in space. Love it. Look forward to seeing a full release on steam down the road.
Some suggestions:
**Needs ship strafing on Q and E.
**Needs a ship inventory and Base inventory, Maybe change top UI (health, ore, ice) to 2 bars:
BASE - Ore # Metal # Ice # (etc...)
SHIP - Free # Ore # Metal # (etc... as above except only show the items that are in your cargo).
**Minimap in bottom right corner
**Keep beacons white at all times, add a light on each point that changes from green to red in the direction of enemies. This would give a clear indication of which direction you are being attacked from.
**There seems to be a bug where if a beacon is destroyed all enemies freeze and become invincible.
The item/cargo system overhaul is the main thing we are working on at the moment for the next version. There will be an inventory system similar to what gamers are used to.
Strafing is probably a good idea, we will try it out. If its cool, it will be in the next release.
Thanks for the feedback!
I'm editing that post as I found new things. Lol didn't realise you had already replied.
Anyway, great game - love it. I feel I've pretty much hit the end of playability as it is but 100% looking forward to future releases.
Nice game, there is a few ehh things but that's what feedback is for.
To begin with I really aprreciated the fact that the surround sound is relative to the ship orientation (yes I love the littlest things) and the game is very promising but here are the problems :
-As an european I had to change my keyboard to QWERTY to play this game adding controls would be nice
-The movement is very slow (the broken reactor is cool though) it would be nice if you made the turning speed faster, and maybe (just a stupid idea of mine) imitate space at the beginning by removing friction (and making it faster as a tradeoff) and add a research to get stabilisators (to make it easier to control once you repaired your ship)
-And maybe saves but maybe it's in progress the game is still new after all
Otherwise great game can't wait to see more
Thank you for the feedback!
Is the keyboard issue because WASD is different on your native layout? Accessibility is not a priority for us quite yet, but will definitely be there for the Steam early access release later this year.
We experimented with different movement speeds and decided the one in this release felt nice and chunky. You will be able to upgrade all aspects of the ships movement in the future, but there will be more automation the further you go up the tech tree. The ship and its location will become less central to the gameplay once you unlock more advanced technologies.
Save/Load is a must of course and will come.
Chucked $5 towards this even though it's not quite my jam (but close!). Just wanted to show some support for a cool concept and bolster the supply of survival/building/exploration/factory style games. :)
Man, this means the world to us! Your donation is the first money we have ever earned with our game. You are going on a list, and we will make sure to provide you with keys for our future release on steam! Thank you so much!
space pirats and zombies? now with less pirates and zombies, more building? cool cool.
Hey reddyy,
yeah SPAZ is a game we took some inspiration from, aswell as aspects of the Factory genre and the RTS genre will come aswell into play.
Greetings from Reddit! I tried the game so far and very much like what's there. It's a good basis for a space base building game with fun logistics and some enemy stuff.
I am certainly aware that this game is in very early development, so I won't bug you with every detail (pun intended). For the important parts tho: Very much enjoyed the disabled engine on the ship in the beginning, but so far I feel like the movement mechanic does not upgrade enough with the ever expanding size of the operation, and could probably use some tweaking to be a bit more fun in general. Maybe the turning could be made a bit more snappier?
Besides that, the AI-Voice, music and sound effects were really great, and helped to immerse me in the usually chill game play in a space sci-fi world! Honestly very impressive, since sound design is often overlooked.
General design language is also very appealing to me, as well as all the little effects and animations.
I will certainly come back later and eagerly await updates!
Hello Max,
wow! Thank you so much for the Feedback. This actually gave me so much joy! After waking up 5 Minutes ago I can start this day with a boost in motivation! Thank you for that.
The movement will definitely be better in the future with more ship upgrades.
Aswell as new upgrades like a turret on the spaceship which can we controlled by the player.
Automatic item collecter with tractor beams and many more.
Making the movement snappier ist actually a really great idea to improve the gameplay for the player and I think it will not kill the immersion because the player upgraded this feature himself und thats why its understandable.
I wish you a great week and hope you will enjoy the future updates!