Concept

Developer Quotes[]

NorthStar will most definitely be a science fiction game which focuses on exploration and trade.

NorthStar is exploring the stars, encountering unknown races, establishing and defending trade routes and trading posts, etc.

Firefly comparison? I suppose, but I am just as happy about that as when people feel SotS reminds them of B5. Great company to be in.

Like X or Freelancer/Privateer?...somewhat...in basic theme I suppose...but to us space trading games have been drifting farther and farther from being about the lone starship captain and more and more about being a thinly disguised space flight sim a'la wingcommander.

I liked privateer a lot...and freelancer as well...but with each progression it seemed like trading was less and less important and all missions were spacecombat battles. Which was fun, but not the half of the Han Solo experience I was looking for.

We want to bring back the feel of captaining a big ship in a tense situation and NOT making everything a flight sim which is kinda done to death at this point. Your freighter should dodge and weave and duck behind asteroids but full fighter manouvers in first person always took me, personally, out of the "Space Trader" fiction completly.

To us, the essence of the space trader was Han Solo. Yes, the falcon was a hot ship, but it wasn't supposed to be fighting star destroyers all the time or taking on endless jobs to shoot down space pirates...it was about the dealing with lowlife scum, hidden cargo panels, taking odd jobs on the surface of worlds, gunfights as well as dogfights. Shooting up things in space is fun for a bit, but actually watching the cops wander by your hidden cargo panel and wondering whether you should dive for cover and start blasting now? Thats the feel, tension and gameplay we want to bring back to the genre.

NorthStar is about putting the rogue back in your wingcommander

Less wing commander more actual tramp freighter crew type experiences. This game is about making being a trader interesting exciting and satisfying...it is NOT about throwing ever bigger and sillier things at you so that you don't notice that you have been doing the exact same thing 3000 times with different nouns inserted into the mission description.

We're not planning to set it in the SotS universe: we already have several other games in mind for the SotS franchise and we'd like to develop another completely unique SF milieu.

SotS is about being alien as much as it is human — NorthStar is more about the things humans are all about and the variety they come in. Think in terms of the difference between B5 and Firefly in terms of focus and the kinds of stories being told.

Currently NorthStar will have co–operative multi–player. Whether that will revolve around entering someone else’s game with an entire ship and crew or actually taking over the role of one of their crew, is yet to be resolved.

NorthStar will use the Kerberos inhouse RPG engine, Chimera, which is being developed over multiple projects.

We always design around expansions and in the case of Northstar, expect to see a unique twist in the form of Adventure Packs.

full space engine...ship encounters...hiding amongst asteroids...the whole ball o wax. 3-D space, 2-D move commands to keep it fast and simple.