Eterium’s two-man development team hopes to emulate classic games like X-Wing and Wing Commander.
There was a time when the space flight simulator reigned supreme. Those days have been long gone, but there have been voices, recently, from within the industry hoping to give this classic genre a new lease on life. Whereas games like Chris Roberts’ Star Citizen are striving to restore the genre with multi-million dollar budgets however, others are hoping to do the same on a smaller scale. Eterium, a space flight sim being developed by a two-man indie team, is one such project.
Hoping to channel franchises like Wing Commander and X-Wing, Eterium’s developers are hoping to deliver a “complex game based on games from a time when people read the manual.” While the game currently has no planned released date, it was recently added to Steam’s Greenlight service. The game’s description on Greenlight promises features like fully customizable controllers, advanced artificial intelligence, dynamic difficult settings, procedural mission generation and advanced ship damage systems, among others.
A demo and a trailer are both currently available for Eterium and it looks as though it does a fairly good job replicating the gameplay of the genre’s classic franchises. Just from watching the trailer there are moments that very closely resemble bits of other games. The visuals of launching from your mothership, for instance, look like they were ripped straight from the later Wing Commander games. Eterium’s combat also strikes a particularly close resemblance to that series. Granted, the game isn’t the best looking, especially during its story sequences, but we’re hoping its rough edges will someday belie a quality experience grounded in old school trappings.
Source: Siliconera
