Story

You are Jessica Rainer, the only survivor of the crashed Heracles Mars expedition, sent to investigate the mysterious disappearance of the very first Mars expedition, Hermes.

Gameplay

Exploration. Lacuna Passage is an open-world adventure. 25 square miles of treacherous Martian terrain littered with clues about the disappearance of the Hermes Mars Expedition.

Investigation. Photograph and document your journey. Follow the clues and piece together your own explanation to the events that unfolded on the red planet. Perhaps you can even find a way home. Share your discoveries, photo journals, and theories with other players online.

Navigation. Pay close attention to your instruments and keep track of your surroundings. The game will not hold your hand with arbitrary objective markers and many key locations will need to be manually recorded for reference. Careless explorers are sure to get themselves lost.

Survival. Food, water, and oxygen are in short supply on the planet’s surface. Even sleep is important in maintaining your stamina (and your sanity). Depicting a realistic passing of time is also important to the general theme of survival. Essentially the player is faced with defining their own goals. You can try to see how many days you can survive alone on Mars or you can try to see how fast you can solve the mysteries of the planet. Death in itself is not necessarily a fail condition in the game. Depending on your experience it may be a perfectly suitable ending to the story you have crafted for Jessica Rainer.

From Concept to Prototype

Of course, all of this conceptual content would be nothing without some substantial prototyping. Over the last few months I have been working hard on some crucial systems that will stand as the foundation for the experience inherent to Lacuna Passage.