DayZ creator Dean Hall has announced Stationeers, a game about constructing and operating a space station on your tod or with chums. No, don’t confuse this with Ion, his effectively-cancelled space sim. Stationeers promises complex simulation of station workings, and it’s encouraging that Hall cites the phenomenal (and phenomenally complex) Space Station 13 as an influence. It’s due to hit early access “soon” but is playable at EGX Rezzed so I assume some of the RPS rabble we sent to That London will swing by for a bash at some point.

Eurogamer relay this blurb:

“Inspired by the beloved Space Station 13, Stationeers puts you in control of the construction and management of a space station either by yourself in single-player, or online with your friends. Complex systems around atmospherics, power generation, medical, agriculture, food, and gravity require your thought and management at all times.”

But what will it do with that simulation? What makes SS13 truly interesting to me is the storytelling and roleplaying bits built up around its simulation, the odd roles and secret missions players can have and how those interact with the simulation. I’m only going off a teensy blurb and a couple of screenshots, mind. And building and running a station could be a lark in itself with plenty of accidents and emergent tomfoolery.

And yup, this will be an early access game. “I seriously thought after DayZ I wouldn’t do Early Access again,” Hall told EG.

“But I talked a lot with Tynan Sylvester from RimWorld and Felipe who made Kerbal Space Program, and I realised [KSP] would be totally different if it was made entirely behind closed doors. And I think a lot of my ideas are terrible, so the community are part of filtering that. “If you look at the early days of the [DayZ] mod, that’s what we want to replicate.”

Note that is the DayZ mod specifically he’s pointing out, not the commercial remake Bohemia Interactive are still working away on. The mod’s development moved quickly and often clumsily but its energy was interesting.

A Steam page with more information on Stationeers should be here but isn’t yet. This is a relatively small project for RocketWerkz, with six of their forty-odd people working on it. They’re a busy lot.