INTRODUCTION
GEARSTORM is a militarized science fiction sandbox in which players cooperate and compete to colonize and fortify their positions on a hostile alien planet. GearStorm takes place on an open,procedural, and entirely destructible world. Here players can advance and customize their technology to improve their chances against each other and the Phage – a deadly nano-virus that is decimating human population.
BACKSTORY
In the year, 2185, the human race is in its final death throes. Earth itself is a desolate waste, ravaged by decades of war. War, more malignant, more savage than any conceived of before. War fueled by diverging ideologies, waning resources, and drastic technology advances of the 21st century. For years, humanity bathed itself in blood, fire and death.The final death knell came in the form of the Phage. A virulent genetically-engineered biological weapon that weaponized the infected into rageful bio-mechanical horrors that spread the plague and death. The unstoppable Phage spread like wildfire through man and beast alike. With no way to undo what was done, the remnants of humankind retreated into bunkers, or walled cities, and fortresses. But even these, one by one fell to the Phage.
With Earth all but lost, a glimmer of hope was discovered. Automated Kepler systems that had been in operation for nearly a century discovered an extremely unlikely, human habitable extraterrestrial world. These probes reported amazing findings dozens of light-years away on a planet dubbed as Apollyon. Apollyon was a small earth-like planet with isolated continents in a large ocean. These islands showed signs of ecosystems, flora and fauna.
The mad rush to escape this hellish Earth, lead to tragic mishap and loss. Previous attempts to send manned generation ships to Apollyon failed either due to infighting or mechanical failure. In a final act of desperation, small, unmanned probes, fitted with advanced bio-printers were launched to seed Apollyon to save the species. These probes were encoded with the DNA and mental recordings of the finest of our remnants and cast off towards the planet.
You are one of these ghosts, a fabricant sent to an alien world to renew humanity. You carry the hopes and legacy of us all. Remember us.
ABOUT OUR GAME
GearStorm is made by a group of dedicated independent developers. We are focused on game-play options and ambitious depth of play, not look and feel. We will spend resources getting our assets, terrain and effects to look good enough for players to appreciate and to be tactical useful, but we will not polish all of the graphics to the point of hyper-realism or to the level of the large studios. To do so would increase costs and shift our resources away from adding things to do in the game. Also, really expensive effects and graphics would limit our world size, number of assets and AI we could support on the screen at the same time. We will value large maps, more things to do and larger battles over the best effects, graphics and sounds.
We won’t be a twitch, spawn-and-die game. We will have advanced combat with a deep damage and repair system, not the typical, hectic, simple combat you get from many shooters today. our combat will be driven by competition for resources, defending one’s territory, status, political strife and just survival. When in combat, things like jumping around and shooting as fast as you can will likely not determine the outcome. Careful approach, using cover and concealment, accuracy and fire discipline will rule. There will be exceptions to all of this, of course, especially with a flamethrower!