In Gauge Space

Only legends remains about the disaster eons ago, when the discovery of the Mighty Ones broke the community in two races, jeopardizing the whole existence and dividing the Multiverse to the myriad of tangled branes that shine in the dark sky. Since then, the races gathered in small colonies. They have hardly manage to survive and matter itself have become the most precious resource.

You are learning how to master a Matter Harvester in a dangerous pass between two colonies when a fabulous event change your fate forever. Piloting your fairly armoured ship you will end up involved in a war caused, again, by the unexpected discovery of a new force that can change the course of the Multiverse.  You will get stronger; you will get bolder; and your ship will be equipped with powerful arsenal and some experimental devices, morphing your mind and transforming you in a key player in the ultimate fate of Gauge Space. You will become the ultimate pilot and the future of the Multiverse  will lay in your shoulders. 

• Experience the singularities of piloting a ship in different 2d manifolds and feel the effect of external forces in a way you never felt before. 
• A tactical shot'em up where you take decisions and control your ally strategies. 
• A breathtaking campaign with at least twelve astonishing levels, with different set of objective, tactics, weapons, enemies and geometries that will blow your concept of localization. 
• Expect a surprise in every level. Lots of different dynamics, abilities, weapons and enemies of all power and sizes. You’ll have to beat all of them to master your ship. 
• Different behavioural enemy and ally IA’s: clever, stupid, psychotic, coward, selfish or cooperative.
• Easy dialogue interface to interact with every single non-playable character.
• Take quick decisions that will change the course of the whole Multiverse, and find the answers beyond. 

In Gauge Space is a shoot’em up, an exciting story and a new paradigm for how we play with space.

Our ancestors used fables as a tools to connect the environment to their everyday life. Fables are fantastic tales that contain some true, not in the forms but in the underlying concepts, that hit straight our imagination. The concepts managed by nowadays science are so far away from our cultural knowledge that is quite difficult to stick them to our society. Popular science is not enough to hit most of the audience. We need to create thrilling stories that connect them to our emotions, no matter how far they are from reality.

The Multiverse where this game takes place is born from an imaginary reflection without any connection to actual science. But it steals some concepts unknown in the popular culture to show how the existence could change if some basic rules of our universe were slightly different. This fable try to give a glimpse of concepts as manifolds, symmetry breaking, CP violation, non euclidean spaces and particles. Some basic concepts of the multiverse are directly related to the real world. But overall, remember: this is a game intended to be enjoyed and every design decision is taken towards this direction.

The Mighty Ones: Their discovery by an exploration team changed the fate of the beings forever. They were first prized as eternal sources of energy but their mystical power finally led to fanatical worship: Could they be sentient beings? Did they had free will? Were they sleeping Gods? The way they treated both races arouse suspicions among them. Was the other race dammed by the mighty ones? Were they trying to send a hidden message? The growing tensions exploded. The symmetry of the universe was broken, and war began. After the war the mighty ones disappeared and none has ever seen again. Some say that they still shine among the branes in the neverending sky.

Branes: At the end of the war the three-dimensional space was broken in bunch of two-dimensional branes curled up in different shapes. Since then, matter is able to extend in the third dimension, but the brane attract them so hard that it’s impossible to leave it. From your presumably flat eternal brane, the others shine in the sky like stars and constellations. Some of them shaped into spheres, but others had more intricate patterns and shapes you thought impossible.

Races: Before the war there was a single community living together and in peace. But the symmetry breaking caused by the mighty ones divided the community in both races between those attracted and those rejected by them. The war ended not in peace, but disrupted for the lost of contact between them when the third dimension collapsed. Leaving a desolated battlefield in between.

Matter: Everything is made of matter and matter itself is a scarce resource after the war. Thus, it's misuse is considered the worst capital crime. Just the thought of damaging or destroying any kind of device built up from matter disturbs anyone's moral system. Thus, any kind of weapon is forbidden. You begin your journey as a Matter Shredder, piloting a ship able to shred big bunches of raw matter found in inhospitable regions of your brane and collect them for the colony.

Jumps: Forbidden texts talk about a dark power once used by the ancients. Using a huge amount of matter, a sophisticated ritual allowed them to jump between branes. However, all experts agree to reject any attempt to research in that direction, in order to preserve this limited resource.

Your ship begins as a simple Matter Harvester, heavily armoured but fairly armed. Your tool set consists in a small weapon designed to shred the raw matter and a sweeper that constantly collect the remaining dust. During the campaign, this dust can be used to repair or upgrade your ship, and activate other powers.

Movement: Your ship is able to move over the brane thanks to a bidimensional set of thrusters, orient it's power by an aerodynamic yaw rotation and perform a few evasive manoeuvres.

Weapons: Your starting set of arms will soon be enhanced by a modification of the collector device that will allow the player steal the weapons of the fallen enemies. This way the player can simultaneously dispose a hull-locked basic weapon, a front additional stealed weapon with unlimited ammo and powerful wing additional weapons with limited ammo.

Shield and Hull: The defensive armour of the ship consist in an energy shield that can absorb any blast damage and most kinetical projectiles but not direct collisions. The shield can absorb a maximum amount of damage and it’s capable of regenerate itself using the system energy. Once the shield is discharged damage will be irreversibly absorbed by the hull of the ship and side-arms can be destroyed

System Energy: The supplatory power of for the ship comes from an unified energy generator and battery set that stores the energy used for blast weapons , turbo burst manoeuvres and shield re-charger system.

Cockpit and LCom: Each pilot drives the ship from the inside of a cockpit. All information about the ship is broadcast by an advanced life communication system (LCom) consisting in transcribed dialogue and life image from the cockpit. LCom is automatically activated whenever you have need to interact with any other pilot.

This game is a shoot’em up, inspired in classics such as Asteroids, Wing Commander, Critical Mass and Nintendo’s B-Wing to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Starfox / Lylat Wars and most recent Geometry wars.
 

The campaign consists in a set of connected levels with an objective tree and different states of victory. We intend to reduce the cutscenes between levels, turning the scene changing in a checkpoint of our adventure. The story will be told during gameplay; decisions taken during the roar of the struggle. You will have to think quick, and you will fail sometimes, leading to a less fortunate winning state.

Objectives will involve escort , defense, interception, destruction or even racing and much more that cannot be classified in such general terms. Some of them will require special abilities or tactical approaches to be accomplished.

You take control of your ship and simultaneously take simple orders to your team about how to behave thanks to a simple and not annoying interface and timing system.

The player just need a gamepad to control such number of inputs. Two analog sticks will allow to control the translation movement and yaw-burst separately. Two trigger buttons will shoot front and wing arms. The four action buttons will be used for the dialog options while the shoulders will activate the lateral evasive maneuvers.


Enjoy this gameplay screencast!