Project Working Title: Beyond the Stellaris—— An Odyssey of Major Tom
Project Description: Beyond the Stellaris is a virtual game in which the player is allowed to explore various unvisited planets in a mysterious stellar system or even more. The game aimed to provide users with 2 layers of interface: the stellar system, and the planet after landed. In general, the player may choose to land on a particular planet in the current system or initiate the FTL jump to a new system. After landing, the player may get a chance to see the breathtaking outer-space landscape, and fascinating new life forms, which are all randomly generated via a pre-setted library of potential elements.
As planned, the system layer of the interface will be set from the perspective of the spaceship while the player serves as the pilot. The character will be under the players’ control once the ship lands on one of the planets.
The project is inspired by the so-called “NASA Punk” art style, which is promoted by the game Star Field produced by Bethesda Studio and includes a wide range of artworks, such as Space Oddity by David Bowie and movies like Interstellar and The Martian. A major characteristic of these kinds of art is the eulogizing of the exploration spirit of mankind, which is partly owing to the infection of space racing during the Cold War era. Such a “golden age” where all superpowers on the earth focused on pushing the frontier of human beings seems quite attractive to Sci-Fi lovers, especially in an era where everyone is living in a total mass of the vortex of postmodernism. Anyway, space might have already become a familiar place for our descendants after 1k years. Still, the further one goes, the less joy of first sight one may have. Pure enthusiasm for exploration may face its challenge along with the commercialization of space flight. That’s the reason why I would like to send those living in 1k years later a relatively naive imagination of outer space, to invoke their desire towards exploration and remind them of their old days when they stared at the night sky, imagining what was beyond the sky of the SOL-III.
Link to the slide:https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nU1OxAUMt4VBZ3k9gWSgpO9dl21iXUXAHsaJQPm1lSI/edit?usp=sharing