UI and the visuals look great. But just like any ship customization's you have to try them out to see how they act and if balancing is decent. Balancing has got to be one of the toughest jobs in game design.

UI and the visuals look great. But just like any ship customization's you have to try them out to see how they act and if balancing is decent. Balancing has got to be one of the toughest jobs in game design.

Thanks for the comment on the visuals!  You are absolutely correct that balancing is not an easy thing to get right.  We're lucky to have a team member who has professional experience with QA, and his only responsibilities are to find bugs and test balance.  Hopefully that combined with tester feedback will let us balance everything well.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-25/ and they will be at long last heading towards Steam EA. http://store.steampowered.com/app/376620

 

After a long wait, we’re finally prepared to start our alpha testing in earnest. One of the final steps was deciding the best way for our testers to get access to the latest updates and fixes as we finish them.  We realized the easiest way to do that is to take advantage of being Greenlit and release them directly through Steam!  We’ll be in contact with our alpha testers in the coming weeks with more details on the process and how to access the Project Orion alpha on Steam.

As part of preparing for Steam distribution of test builds, we’ve also released our Steam store page!  This marks a big internal milestone for us as it shows just how far we’ve come.  It’s been a long road, and there is still plenty of work ahead, but the feeling that comes from hitting these milestones really is one of the most rewarding parts of the development process. Along with this we’ve also updated all the screenshots in our Media page, and a new gameplay trailer is in the works.

 

One of the bigger changes we’ve decided on for this month relates to aim assist.  Originally the game had no aim assist whatsoever, and while that was OK for players who had experience with flight and shooters in general, others found it very difficult to even hit their targets.  To help newer players we introduced a limited form of aim assist that was tied to difficulty.  We were never fully happy with that solution from a realism point of view so we’ve decided to change it.

Have they put a leading target indicator in as I noticed it was missing from the videos we have seen. also a match target speed key would help.

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-25/ and they will be at long last heading towards Steam EA. http://store.steampowered.com/app/376620

 

Have they put a leading target indicator in as I noticed it was missing from the videos we have seen. also a match target speed key would help.

Target lead indicator is definitely coming now that we've decided to have weapons that have no aim assist or target tracking abilities.  All the logic is actually already there as we use it in the aim assist system, we just need to handle the visual component.  We implemented a match speed button a little while back and it does really help when you're trying to follow enemy ships.

I should also clarify our Steam news. While we have launched the Steam page we currently have no plans to do Early Access.  We just don't feel right with the whole concept behind it and we think it would hurt development more than help at this point.

We will be sending Steam keys to our Alpha-tier Kickstarter backers and those who pre-ordered through our website very soon. These keys will allow them to download test builds directly through Steam as we release them.

I should also clarify our Steam news. While we have launched the Steam page we currently have no plans to do Early Access.  We just don't feel right with the whole concept behind it and we think it would hurt development more than help at this point.

Personally I thank you for this, too many developers are doing early access and then staying in that state for years sometimes.

Alpha now on Steam.

New blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-26/

I been playing the Alpha over the last week and I'm pretty impressed with what they have done so far, although their are only 2 mission to play through and the first one throws you into a big battle. So expect to die a number of times until you get used to the keyboard layout which is standard one apart from the tab key which I keep thinking is the afterburner key but in fact is the camera change key, note that all key can be changed in the options.

The game does have an auto spin as default but it can be turned off in the options and I also found it was necessary to reduce the mouse speed as well.

One thing I don't like is if you fly through the red honeycomb the game will give you a number of second to return to the battle and if you don't it kills you and it game over. 

No crashes which was bit of surprise given that it an Alpha and my only technical problem was that the game did not like my monitor settings and old graphic card so I ended up playing it on the low setting and with an odd screen format but it ran silky smooth and once they get around to optimizing it some more I should be able to go back up.

As it an Alpha not all the equipment loadout was in place and the UI still need some work on it, but it's a great start and I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the game.

I wont say much about the story as so not to spoil for anyone apart from the fact that they have not gone down the usual space cadet story so beloved of theses games (at least that's my impression so far) and the voice acting pretty good as well. 

New dev blog out https://www.projectoriongame.com/dev-blog-27/ looking forward to seeing more of it.

I been off Steam for a about a year so I have not being doing any updates and sadly this is one of the games which does not appear to have had any updates in about the same time. hopefully they will come back.

Their website is dead, so I think the project is dead 🙁

Look like I lost another £50 on that one, well not the first time it's happened.

Just been checking some of my old dead Steam games and was surprised to find an announcement from the dev from Sept last year, stating that the game is dead but that they were releasing it for free. Look for it on Steam under the name Arkin, don't think their was many missions, maybe only two IIRC.

Hello everyone,

This update may come as a surprise for most of you as we expect this project has long been forgotten at this point. We dropped off the map over two years ago and this update is intended to provide some closure to the project.

What’s the reason for this update?

In the interest of our fans, and ourselves, we felt the project needed some form of closure. To that end we’ve released Arkin as is. It’s available for free with a description that states the project is no longer active. This is not the end we wanted for the project but it’s the best outcome we can provide at this point.

What happened?

As development began to stretch far beyond our initial estimates, working on Arkin became more and more of a burden. No one was being paid for their time and life’s many other obligations began to take precedence. This led to a point about two years ago where work finally stopped and the team has not spoken since. The project was left in a state of limbo.

What now?

As of now, the project is formally cancelled. This is not the ending we wanted or anticipated, but unfortunately this is where we’ve ended up. We apologize to all the people who believed in us and were looking forward to playing Arkin.