Stellarscape 3500 Design Document

Stellarscape 3500:

Many months ago, I found a game called Endless Sky. Its free on Steam, and I recommend that you play it. This game inspired me to make my own space game with a similar feel. Originally, the game was going to be a successor to Endless Sky with similar mechanics. However, as I developed the idea further, my plans changed to include a text based game in an entirely new setting.

Originally, I was going to build a game in the year 7000, titled Stellarscape 7000. However, I soon came to the conclusion that making a game earlier in the future would be much more fun, so the concept for Stellarscape 3500 was born. After some rough concept design and experimentation with various interactive fiction game engines, I have decided that Inform 7 is the best text based game engine to use for this project. I will continue trying to make the game using this engine, but if I find that the engine is not enough for the job, I will probably attempt to make my own interactive fiction engine.

The main features of the game will include:
* Several hundred star systems to explore, along with interesting lore and descriptions to read for everything.
* Sandbox gameplay, where players can do pretty much anything as far as spaceships are concerned, from leading a pirate gang, to fighting as a mercenary, to even playing as a merchant.
* Entirely text based gameplay, with no graphics or sounds.
* Several optional questlines that the player can follow in order to learn more about lore, and to have an impact on the game world.
* A dynamic factions system, where factions can fight for control over different star systems, and the player can change relations with different factions through his/her actions.