Announcing: Station 015

Hello everyone!

Welcome to Station 015, probably the last place you want to be right now.  Everyone's dead, lots of important bits of machinery have broken in the chaos and there's a bunch of deadly mutants running around trying to hunt and kill you.  Enjoy your stay!

OK, jokes aside, what is this all about, really?  Station 015 is the next game from GameBeast Productions, aka, me.  It is to be a first-person sci-fi horror, set on a space station that has faced a catastrophe that left nearly all of the crew dead.  Except you.

Well, maybe some others managed to escape too, but never mind that.  Either way, the fact still remains - you are trapped and alone, facing off against the very cause of that catastrophe.  That being, a whole bunch of former crew members who have been horrifically mutated to the point of being completely unrecognisable.  While the details of these mutations will be kept a secret for now, I will mention that the mutations have rendered the monsters completely blind.  That does give you a faint glimmer of hope for your escape, you'll just have to keep quiet while you're at it.

So, what's the deal with this new game?  Well, this first post is both an announcement and also a "development update #0" of sorts.  I will save the technical details for the next post, but to end this update I will reveal a (very bare-bones) roadmap for the future of the project.  As of writing this, Station 015 is a very heavily in-development prototype, with not even the first level being finished yet and many important features still to be implemented.  With that in mind, here is the current plan.

• Initial Prototype (Q1 2025):
  • The first level, complete with core gameplay mechanics - a teaser for what is to come
  • A basic second level, featuring a single puzzle that must be completed whilst a monster is lurking - effectively a demonstration of the monster and how it will work in the final game
  • The current goal (and what I am working towards now) is to have this prototype ready by March.  Once done, all of the essential features will be added to it (think options menus, saving and loading and anything else to make it a bit more presentable) - this will constitute the first demo release, so there will actually be something for you to try out and give feedback on
• Complete Demo (Q3 2025):
  • The first three levels, demonstrating the core gameplay loop that will make up the final game
  • The introduction of several different types of monster, showcasing the different approaches required to avoid them and solve puzzles
  • I would like to have this done by September.  It will represent a much more polished version of the initial prototype, being closer to the final game in terms of quality.  This will be released as an update to the previous demo
• Alpha Release (Q4 2025):
  • This will effectively be the same as the demo at first, however it will also include the next level to differentiate them
  • This alpha will be continually updated as additional levels and features are implemented, until everything is pretty much done
  • Hopefully this will be out by December next year.  It will be made available in the form of a Steam Playtest release
• Beta Release (Q2 2026):
  • This will be provided as an update to the Steam Playtest/Alpha release.  At this point things are getting too far into the future to really predict when they will be done, but once the game is feature-complete there will be a three-month testing phase to get the game into a good enough shape to fully publish it
• Final Release (Q3/4 2026):
  • The finished game, complete with all of the features that have been planned already (and possibly many more that haven't been thought of yet!)

It goes without saying that this is a very rough estimate, and everything here is subject to change.  Of course, I can't predict how much time I'll get to work on the game next year (and especially not in two years' time), so for now instead of hoping that I'll be able to stick to these arbitrary deadlines I will keep expectations realistic by saying that I will expect to be delaying the game at least a couple of times.  But, as with Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men, while things may take longer than desired they will still happen one way or another.

Anyway, that's it for this announcement.  I don't know when the next update will be, as there just isn't enough game yet for me to start posting more regularly, but it will likely come once I've finished the first level and there is actually some gameplay to show off.

Until then though, thanks for reading!