Following news earlier this month that he and Improbable had abandoned work on ambitious multiplayer game Ion, DayZ creator Dean Hall has revealed his latest project: Stationeers, a space station "construction and management" sim that can be played "in single-player or online with your friends."
Announced at EGX Rezzed in London and revealed by Eurogamer, Stationeers is said to be inspired by Space Station 13 whereby "complex systems around atmospherics, power generation, medical, agriculture, food, and gravity require your thought and management at all times." Despite the size of Hall's RocketWerkz studio, just six people are working on Stationeers.
Speaking to Eurogamer ahead of Rezzed, where Stationeers is playable, Hall said: "We don't want people to turn up and think it's a first-person, hardcore shooter, 3000 player game because that's not what it is. It's a hardcore, niche game in an area I've been interested in for a decade. We're working on big, crazy stuff at the studio as well—this is not it. It's still something I'm very passionate about; I have been spending a lot of time on this project."
Although without a release date as yet, Stationeers will launch into Early Access in the coming months. Hall suggests he hadn't planned to use Early Access again in light of DayZ, however on the advice of RimWorld's Tynan Sylvester and Kerbal Space Program's Felipe Falanghe decided opening up the project to its community was important.
"I think a lot of my ideas are terrible, so the community are part of filtering that," Hall tells EG. "If you look at the early days of the [DayZ] mod, that's what we want to replicate. "The most important thing I can do is not release s*** stuff and not make the same mistakes again."
