Helium Rain is now on Steam Greenlight ! Here's our Greenlight trailer, you can see what the game really looks like. It's all in-game content.
 

That's the part where we need your help getting the game published ! 😀  
Here's the Greenlight page.
 

Any chance of ejecting the reactor as last ditch weapon assuming you can get the ship out of the blast area (also known as the Sheridan maneuver)

Not sure about that ! But well, I'll keep that idea in mind. We're not sure what kind of gameplay we'll add once the game is available.

Great trailer guys 😎 love the look of the game. 😎

Looks absolutely gorgeous.  Just upvoted on Greenlight.  I just love that it's set in a jovian system, that's very original.  Can't imagine this not getting on Steam.

Thanks guys !

Also voted!! Best of Luck!!!

Thanks guys ! At this point we're doing great, we've been in the top 100 since yesterday. I hope we succeed ! 

Hello guys ! 

We're doing great on Greenlight, thanks to your votes.

We've just posted a big recap of frequently asked questions, along with some new content. Take a look ! 

On the development side, we've got a running economy, much better damage effects (see above) and sounds, and we're working on more stations. 

 

 

Small ships use cryogenic rocket fuel like we use in today's rockets, largest ships are nuclear-powered.

While we are on the subject of realism, nuclear power is not a propulsion mechanism.  Conservation of momentum means that you have to actually expel something out the back of the ship to move it.  (This is a HUGE problem by the way, in real life propulsion is such a difficult problem that I think we are usually better off having at least one "miraculous" propulsion technology in most works of science fiction.)  Nuclear powered space ships might have reactors that last for hundreds of years, but they have every bit as much difficulty with propulsive fuel as everything else.  Admittedly, it gets depressing to spend much time thinking about the propulsion problem.

No energy source is a propulsion mecanism. As you said both energy and mass to expel.

We often thought the nuclear power as:

- electricty generator to power ion thruster or other electrics propulsion systems.

- heat generator for nuclear thermal rocket : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_thermal_rocket

However there is others engine design where the nuclear fuel is both energy source and mass to expel. For example :

- Pulse nuclear propulsion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propulsion%29

- Fission fragment rocket https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket

As i said in my previous post, in Helium Rain we assume that fusion reaction is usable. As all the gameplay append around one planet and its moons, there is no need of a lot of delta-v but only high thrust to perform hohmann transfer or to fight.

For large ships we use fusion reaction (Helium-3 + Deuterium) and expel the produced Helium and protons at very high speed. It's call Helium-3 direct thrurst propulsion:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_rocket#Electricity_generation_vs._direct_thrust

This kind of propulsion is not yet available but it's not "miraculous". It don't allow use to teleport to another star or to ignore inertia.

If you want something a lot less realistic, you can look at the design of our fighters : where are the huge tanks needed to store the liquid hydrogen ?

We've been Greenlit on Steam ! Thank you ! 

Nice, did not think you would have any problems getting it and look forward to seeing more of the game.

Congratulations.  Looking forward to it.

Hi guys ! It's been a long time ! 

We've been working hard since the Greenlight. Now that the release is closer, we've started doing internal tests with a private alpha version. We've received dozens of bug reports about crashes or game-breaking issues, but we've also made the game much better. We've written a devblog about this and other new things.

We've also expanded the in-game universe with two new moons, Adena and Asta. Moons act as separated areas, because the travel time is longer between moons than between sectors on the same orbit, so while you can't land on the moon, it still has an impact on gameplay. 

Oh, and we're printing ship names on the hull as well ! 

Nice one Stranger,looking forward to seeing the game when you hit Steam. :good:

If you don't mind I will re post that video of the game from the blog, even though it's in French it gives a better look at what the game is like.

Thanks !

We've got a new cockpit for military ships. It's wider, cleaner, much more open than the existing freighter cockpit. Here's a shot from the bridge of a Leviathan destroyer.

Here is a small demo of what happens when every part on the ship is overheating - something that won't happen a lot, but still fun to try.

We've posted a brief update about the game status on Steam. basically, we're not going to do Early Access anymore, we'll get straight to release this fall. Check it out for more details 🙂

I always think Steams early access is a bit of a double edge sword for indie devs although it give a game great exposure you will always get muppets leaving negative review.

Look forward to seeing the game Stranger when you decide to release it.

Hi guys ! Here are some new screenshots from the game.

We've been heavily working on the core game mechanics (traveling, menus, switching ships etc), and we're going to move on with the strategic AI. We have a realistic economy, so we need to ensure it stays in a working state, right now we have actual economical crises 😛 

Nice 😎 any new video.

We don't have new videos, no. I want to do one soon, but it's very time-consuming.

If you do get some free time maybe some short videos (1 or 2 minutes) about different aspects of the game eg ships,combat, trade, space ect instead of one long one.

We do have screenshots, though. Here is one with some added details... 

Aaaand some more UI !

That's no moon. That's a space station !

We've added a lengthy devblog article about economy and trading. Check it out !

Nice 😎 how the release schedule, still on for this year or has it been pushed back?.