We had to push the release to early 2017. The bulk of the team is just two people, and we're trying to do this right, so it takes time.

Looking really nice ! Good job guys, keep it up !

Thanks !

We just finished an updated trailer to show what the game really looks like now. Enjoy !

Looking Awesome Stranger 😎  really liking the art style the game has.

Stranger. What are the min specs going to be? Looks really nice btw 😉 Reminds a bit of X Rebirth 🙂

Thanks !

The "min" specs are quite hard to define. I'm working with an older Intel i7 and a GTX 970, so that's the spec for the max settings.

The CPU is the complicated part, because it's so intensive right now. We're working on optimization a lot these days, but basically we simulate everything - every engine, thruster, weapon does some processing at every frame... So it's hard to say, but the goal is to have the game run on any Intel i5 CPU.

Cheers mate 😉

Hi guys ! Here is a short preview of our collision avoidance system. 15 ships flying around each other at high speed - no casualties !

Want to see every playable ship in the game ?

Want to see every playable ship in the game ?

Sure. With more specs about them 🙂

Hello guys !

We've [entered the competition for Indie Game of the Year at IndieDB]> http://www.indiedb.com/games/helium-rain <"entered the competition for Indie Game of the Year at IndieDB"). If you're interested in the game, vote for us - you can also vote for other space sims, but well. At least vote for something ? ¯_(ツ)_/¯ We've prepared a large write-up of our latest efforts. Basically the combat is finished, so we're moving on with quests ! We hope the game will be released by Q2 2017.

Aaaaand [here it is]( http://www.indiedb.com/games/helium-rain/news/helium-rain-combat-gameplay "here it is") ! 😀

Hi ! We've started a discussion on the Steam forums about our next ship. We have three variations to pick from - what do you think ?

[Take a look ! ]( http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/596486326/152390648093020101/ "Take a look ! ")

Hi guys !

We're almost done on the game, and we now have a Steam store page up. [Take a look here !]( http://store.steampowered.com/app/681330/Helium_Rain/)

Our latest trailer shows a bit more of the final game 🙂

Helium Rain is looking really good in this trailer, the game has definitely come a long way and I am sure you cannot wait to release in August 18th. Congrats!

Nice to see the game finally in early access.

I forgot to mention this, but this game has the hardest docking since the original Elite. 🙂

It's happening !
We'll be releasing Helium Rain out of Early Access on October 11. Tell your friends ! This is a big day for us.

New update should be out tomorrow https://steamcommunity.com/games/681330/announcements/detail/2826464524706988505 and they have adjusted the manual docking which is not too surprising as it could be tricky too pull off.

Helium Rain has had fairly big update https://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=681330

From Steam
It's been a month since our last major update, and we've some news for you today !

New military contracts
We've upgraded military contracts in depth. Previously, a military contract meant only one thing - war. You would attack a faction on another faction's orders, and end up at war with the target, making this business unsustainable.

This changes with our new mercenary-type contracts, where you will be free to attack your target at no reputation loss. Some variations of military contracts have also been introduced, including a new sector attack / sector defense contract. We hope this will let you play as pirates in a financially rewarding way. Good hunting !

Game updates
Unreal Engine was upgraded from 4.19 to 4.20, enhancing support for some hardware that used to not start the game.

We've also fixed a few bugs. We're always on the lookout for issues, so please report us anything weird !

New Russian localization
Helium Rain is a small-scale project that doesn't have a large publisher's backing - we haven't invested into localization. However, dedicated player Alexander Pyrov took the problem in its own hands, and decided to localize the game in Russian. All our Russian players can now enjoy his work in the game !

While we haven't set up an easy localization tool, we'll gladly include fan-made localization in the game. Contact us if you're ready to tackle a database of 12,000 words in your own language !

Modding support
Modding games has been a staple of PC gaming for decades. As it happens, I have myself learned game development by modding games. We've always developed Helium Rain with modding support in mind, and while we can't officially announce anything yet, we've made sure this new release has the technical structure required for clean mod support through Steamworks.

Here's more about how modding Helium Rain is planned to work.
Preliminary documentation is available on our Wiki.
A dedicated modding kit is in development, based on the Unreal Engine 4 editor.
A new executable,"HeliumRainLauncher", is now installed with the game and will collect Steamworks mods you've subscribed to before starting the game. This is currently not launched by Steam, and will be enabled when the modding kit releases. Feel free to start it to make sure it doesn't crash.
We look forward to announcing mod support once we've completed our development kit !

That's it for today ! We hope you have fun with the game. As usual, thank you for supporting us with this project.