What is Beyond Dying Skies?

You have crash-landed on an alien planet in search of the next habitable world for humanity. Pollution, global warming, and socioeconomic issues are leading to the destruction of Earth. The government has hired you to save humanity from the brink of extinction by finding new worlds in outer space that are suitable to sustain human life. However your survival is now at stake as you fight against the elements trying to repair your spacecraft so you can return home!

Beyond Dying Skies is a free and open source (FOSS), 3D FPS-RPG game in active development primarily for the GNU/Linux operating system. It supports the GNU/Clang C++ toolchain and builds for Linux and Windows operating systems. It contains voxel, survival elements fused with a technologically enhanced futuristic setting. The game focuses on exploration of randomly generated worlds along with crafting items to enhance the ability of your character. The game is not merely survival, crafting sandbox, or RPG but a hybrid of all three. The game focuses on skillful movement similar to old school FPS shooters from the early 1990s, a progressive RPG like leveling system, and permadeath like mechanics similar to old school RPGs.

The FPS-RPG element needs to be emphasized. This isn't a game with a ton of art/music/developer man hours but a simplistic, efficiency focused fusion of a few good ideas. This game is tiny only 20MB! The idea originally was inspired from the glut of survival games on the market (none being fully FOSS by the way). Those games felt grindy and heavily focused on attaining "wealth" i.e game hours invested in the game to make any progress. This quickly became unsustainable and I quickly lost interest. I later asked the question why isn't this concept an RPG with jet packs, grappling hooks and an obsessive focus on blowing things up? Why not give the player some skillful movement like we had back in the 1990s? What could a single player game look like in 2018? Why does every game need to be multiplayer to be interesting? These questions motivated me to explore what is possible and what is reality.

Check out this week's development blog here.

Check out the updated crafting recipe tables here.