However, you won’t want to spend your whole time in space. There are planets to explore, each with their own residents who you can do jobs for or even befriend. Some of these people might even have the right skills to help you crew your ship and complement your own skills.
How you choose to live your life is up to you. Be a hero, a rogue or a reputable businessperson. Whatever your choice, the stars will hold adventures aplenty.
SPACEWARD HO
There are twenty systems to travel to. Each one with its own economy and risk level. Warp between systems and traverse the sometimes dangerous path to the systems space port - which can be either planetside or on a space station orbiting a less hospitable planet. Prepare to defend yourself against pirates, especially in the riskier but more lucrative systems. On the other hand, if you engage in piracy yourself, prepare to have the added challenge of the local police ships who will happily put an end to your illegal activities. Additionally, most systems also have an asteroid belt that needs to be successfully navigated through (never tell me the odds).
PLANETSIDE
While on the planets or on board the space stations, you can buy and sell commodities, refuel, or repair and upgrade your ship. But there's more to do than that. There are many residents who have their own stories to be explored. You can talk to them, do quests for them, or give them gifts - all of which will progress (or perhaps regress) your relationships with the characters. You might even make a special friend - or maybe even one in every port. It's up to you.Each settlement has unique activities to undertake. You might be able to buy rare goods, or engage in gambling, or did someone say "cat racing"?
There are also some additional locations on some planets, giving you an opportunity to have further adventures: old ruins, bandit camps, etc. You need to learn about these locations through talking to residents, doing quests or exploring the space ports.
HOME IS WHERE YOUR SHIP IS
Your ship is your home. You can upgrade some of the systems to get better combat performance, or speed, but it is your only ship. You wouldn't trade it for all the coffee on Ryser. However, you have your living quarters on board, which you can customise to suit your style. Collect various decorations and artefacts, or a new bed. Make your home the comfiest place for you.
ECONOMY
The economy within the system is simple but dynamic. Events beyond your control can have a temporary impact on the prices in a system. A pandemic on one planet may cause a increased demand for medical supplies, while a recession on a high tech planet could cause cheap prices for their manufactured medical supplies. You can take advantage of the situation and ferry supplies between these two planets. But these conditions are only temporary so you need to act fast.THE OUTER REGIONS
The outer regions of each system are worth exploring too, but it is a gamble. You might find valuable resources to mine, or an old wreckage of a cruiser to explore, but be casreful, because you could just easily find yourself in an ambush by pirates.CHARACTER CUSTOMISATION
The player character is completely customisable, with their custom portrait appearing during dialogue sequences in the game. You can customise their face, skin, hair, nose, mouth, eyes and other features.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay in Orion's End is designed to be very diverse but uncomplicated, incorporating gameplay from retro games but with with more modern influences. Shoot 'em up gameplay in space, and shoot outs on planets. Minigames at settlements, and life sim social encounters with the local residents. All of the mechanics are designed to be simple enough to just pick up and play. There's no steep learning curves or complicated systems. There are lots of things to do, but not all of them are necessary to enjoy the game. Do what you enjoy doing most.
🎮 Full Controller Support
Happy New Year everyone!\n\nIt might seem like progress has been painfully slow for Orions End, and in some ways it really has been. Thats the price of being a solo part-time dev, unfortunately.
The changes when implementing the new building system broke some old systems. So I have spent the last six weeks fixing some existing systems, and adding more to others that have been neglected for too long. Now I feel that the game is at the place where normal progress can resume. Im really happy about that.
While Ive been very quiet for a long time, I hope to be able to share progress much more often in 2026.
Below is an example of the work Ive been doing since the last update:
1) Better ground textures: A small change, but I think it makes the world feel less flat.
2) Raised terrain now has ground texture that matches the normal ground. Again, a small change, but its a step towards the worlds looking better.
3) Better lighting for buildings: External walls can now feature lights and neon signs. This is a step towards being able to implement city planets again. Each architectural style now has 3 types: an internal, external and an external commercial/neon style.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/42632333/d835332d0bbdbb2bc8fb7a0192d1aaece6df0e9f.png\"][/img]
4) Fixed the planet mini-map to display all the important features again.
5) Changes to the flight model to incorporate the Kinetic Dampeners basically a braking system, that adjusts the speed / manoeuvrability while you are flying or in combat. This works for player and npc ships.
6) NPC Ship Combat tweaked: Using the new flight model, the combat code has been changed to make the npcs have better control of their ships. So far, it seems a lot better, but it will be improved gradually through development.
7) A new in-game manual, in the style of old PS1 games, can be accessed from the ship library and the titlescreen menu. Its missing a lot of pages, and is still a work in progress.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/42632333/712cd3981ba66e788a64e8a36733e99d5e8f6ec8.png\"][/img]
8) Signs on shops now use the first alien language. The icon on the sign lets you know what the shop is, but the language is actually decipherable into English once you work out what each letter is. Languages will feature more in the game later on.
9) Lots of bug fixes.
10) Removed spacestations until I can convert them to the new planet system. This will be worth it though, because it will allow for customisable spacestations too.
11) Improved the ship systems customisation mechanics, with controller tips on screen to make it easier.
12) Durability to the ship components is now functional. So, now you can arrange the ships components to overclock the individual systems and get better performance (warp range, weapon strength etc) but with the cost of wear and tear on the components - which would eventually lead to them malfunctioning or breaking down. So, its not a long term system improvement you would make but it could allow, say, a longer warp jump if you had limited fuel.
I converted over to using Linux as my main computer and the transition was pretty smooth with development continuing pretty much as normal with only a few annoyances. However, I have had issues with the controller working on the Linux build. That may cause major issues with being able to deliver a fully working Linux build. This and some smaller frustrations in the development while on Linux has led me back to Windows for now. Until the controller issue is fixed or I can find a workaround, I will focus mostly on a Windows build.
The existing trailer is outdated now. It shows some old systems that are now improved, and others that are temporarily removed from the current build. I will update the trailer in the coming month or so hopefully, and show more gameplay footage on social media which I have neglected completely in the last six months.
Im working my hardest to get the game to a stable and enjoyable point where I could consider Early Access, but I want to release it with enough activities to do and with enough polish that players will enjoy playing it.
Thanks for checking in. Have a great 2026, and travel safely.
Dave
Minimum Setup
- OS: Linux Mint 20.3
- Processor: Intel Pentium Dual T3200Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics
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