Low-Fi Space Trading: Objects In Space

It's awfully exciting when spaceships zip blasting their zapguns and looping de loop, but if you like your space action tense and preferably entirely avoided, you might fancy keeping an eye on Objects in Space [official site]. It's a space trading game heavy on long-range encounters and stealth, more lurking nuclear submarines than dogfighting aircraft. All we have to go on for now is a handful of screenshots showing a '70s sci-fi style and some descriptions of plans, but what plans!

In the vast depths of space, detecting threats will be hugely important, as will throwing off other people. You might dive into a dangerous asteroid belt to obscure sensors, enter polar orbits to muddle signatures, equip fancy engines reducing their tell-tale signs, or cranking up your jump drive to flee. Being found is bad.

It's all very low-tech, with computers that whirr up and beep, including communications more along the lines of BBSs than holograms. As the game's light on graphics, it's going heavy on text. "We've designed and penned a huge universe, and we've got a team of nine writers producing stories & content for the game," say developers Flat Earth Games, "from conversations with passengers to in-game poetry, from narrative quests to tabloid journalism." Expect lots of political trickery and factionalism too.

Flat Earth Games are them lot behind Metrocide, by the way. They're making Objects in Space for Windows, Mac, and Linux.