High Concept
You are a lone Vanguard operative, dropped from orbit onto derelict frontier worlds overrun by reactivated Mirminoid machines. Deploy from your ship, fight through salvage-rich ruins, survive a hostile planet and its threats, and extract with your loot — or lose everything you carried in.
The player should feel like a capable but vulnerable specialist operating far from help. The first five minutes must land the fantasy: a cinematic drop, a tense firefight, a threat that forces a decision, and a run for the extraction point. Success feels earned; failure feels fair.
Design Pillars
Tense Solitude
You are alone on a dead world. Encounters are deliberate and dangerous; the quiet between them is just as loaded.
Risk vs. Reward
Everything you carry is at stake. One more crate is always a gamble against oxygen, ammo, and the walk back.
Punchy, Readable Combat
Game feel first — clear hit feedback, satisfying ragdoll deaths, honest hit registration.
Atmosphere & Dread
Weather, lighting and sound carry the mood of an oppressive alien frontier.
Hardcore & Honest
Hidden boss health, real consequences, minimal hand-holding. The game respects the player by never lying to them — tension comes from stakes, not from cheating.
Core Gameplay Loop
Prep in the hub, commit to a drop, survive the raid, and make it back. The demo loop is tuned tight — deploy → fight → boss → extract — so the first session sells the game.
Manage loadout, inventory & stash · craft and trade at the Kiosk · spend Nanites · accept contracts · pick a world and drop site at the cockpit console.
The dropship VG-CORMORANT makes atmospheric entry. Its cargo door opens on a cinematic and you step onto the surface.
Explore salvage-rich zones · fight Mirminoid machines · complete objectives · manage Health, Oxygen & Stamina.
A phased machine threat forces a decision — push through or fall back. Its health is hidden; you read the fight by feel.
Reach the dropship, pull the lever, seal the door and lift off. Keep everything you carried — or die and lose the run's loot.
Setting & Narrative
Humanity's reach has thinned to a scatter of mining outposts and relays along the KX cluster and the systems beyond it — Talos Reach among them. Many are now derelict: abandoned, storm-battered, and crawling with their own reactivated security machines, the Mirminoids. You work for Vanguard Command, running solo salvage-and-recon drops into these worlds.
Each world is defined by an intel profile: threat level, atmosphere & gravity, surface temperature, day-cycle length, weather, visibility, and hostile presence — all read before the player commits.
Characters & Factions
| Entity | Role |
|---|---|
| The Operative (you) | A lone Vanguard field agent. Silent protagonist. |
| JARVIS | Onboard AI — reliable, sarcastic, "almost never wrong about supply estimates." A primary contract-giver and the player's constant voice. |
| Vanguard Command | The operative's employer & mission authority. Issues deployments and the top-level story arc. |
| Mirminoids | The antagonist faction — dormant machine security turned hostile to all intruders. |
Reputation / Trust
The player builds a Trust Level with each contract-giver, progressing through named tiers that unlock deeper contracts and story beats:
The Player Character
Frames
Two selectable operative frames, chosen and previewed in the profile screen — both fully playable and sharing one control scheme, with extensive cosmetic camo customization (16 mech / 7 operative camos, whole-frame recolor including gear).
Operative
The standard human-scale field agent — nimble, versatile.
Mech
A heavier armored frame — a sturdier silhouette on the field.
Movement
- Walk / run / sprint (drains Stamina)
- Crouch with weapon-aware arm posing
- Jump · fall · land, with robust grounded detection so props and surfaces read correctly underfoot
- Dodge-roll — Ctrl+W A S D — a directional evade with brief i-frames, a consistent controlled distance, and a Stamina cost
Player Vitals
| Stat | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| HEALTH | Damage reduces it; death ends the run. Optional armor cuts incoming damage. Low-health alarm & screen effects. |
| OXYGEN | Depletes on raids (worse in bad weather); regenerates in safe zones. Never runs out in the hub / menu. Refillable via canisters. |
| STAMINA | Spent by sprinting and dodging; regenerates over time. Gates aggressive movement. |
Combat
Weapons
Ranged firearms (pistol, rifle, and beyond) with ammunition types. Weapons carry per-instance state (loaded ammo) and support traits, adaptation, and damage modifiers. Aiming, firing and reloading are the core verbs.
Game Feel — the "juice" pass
- Hit FX — impact sparks on every enemy hit, including the mini-boss
- Screen shake on firing and impacts
- Death juice — ragdoll impulse + spark-shower death FX; hit markers on confirmed hits
- Enemy flinch removed on purpose — feedback comes from FX, not stagger, to keep enemies threatening
Boss Design
The demo features a Mech mini-boss — a phased encounter built on the enemy AI framework (walks, aggros, deals damage, high HP, dies with a death animation). Boss health is intentionally hidden to preserve tension; feedback lands through FX rather than a bar.
Bestiary — Mirminoids
Reactivated machine security, built on a shared archetype + AI framework. Hostile presence is surfaced pre-drop as species + density, so the player reads the danger before committing.
| Unit | Role | Threat |
|---|---|---|
| Drone | Basic roaming melee / harasser. | Roaming |
| Ranged | Fires at range with random spread — leaves room to dodge or take cover. | Ranged |
| Bombardier | Explosive threat; area damage. | Explosive |
| Communicator | Support / coordination role. | Support |
| Turret | Fixed emplacement; killable via a child hitbox, droops on death. | Static |
| Mech Mini-Boss | Phased escalation encounter (see §06). | Boss |
Enemies path via NavMesh, aggro on the player, and drop loot as lootable corpses (see §09).
Deployment & Extraction
Orbital Deployment
Deployment is driven from the ship's cockpit console — a full-screen holographic “VANGUARD COMMAND · ORBITAL DEPLOYMENT” interface: a worlds list, each with a planetary intel panel; selectable drop sites; and DEPLOY, which plays the "INITIATING DROP" sequence with an ABORT option before the raid loads.
✓ Uplink Sync → Dropship Release → Vector → Atmospheric Entry
Arrival
The VG-CORMORANT performs an atmospheric entry; its cargo door opens on a cinematic and the player steps out facing the hostile world — the first "wishlist moment."
Extraction
To leave, return to the dropship and pull the launch lever: the cargo door seals and the ship lifts off. Extracting banks the run's loot; dying mid-raid loses it — the core extraction tension.
Loot, Inventory & Economy
Carry & Stash
Grid system with distinct containers — Backpack (~20 slots), Quickbar, Loadout, and a persistent hub Stash. Drag-and-drop, stacking, and item context actions.
Under-Foot Physics
Dropping an item spawns a physics prop at the player's feet that settles on the ground and won't get kicked around. Dropping a stack opens a quantity picker.
Crates & Corpses
Crates highlight on approach — press E to open a loot UI. Defeated enemies become lootable corpses, despawning after they're emptied. Loot tables drive yields.
Nanites · Craft · Trade
Nanites are the core currency, earned from salvage & contracts. Craft gear at the ship; buy/sell at the hub Kiosk.
Quests & Contracts
Story Quests
A curated arc (~30 planned; Vanguard + JARVIS lines) carrying narrative and trust progression. Objective verbs: KillEnemy, CollectItem, hold-E channelled repair / download / sabotage, fetch → hand over, and deliver-to-point.
Timed Contracts
Live bounties in three slots — 3-hour / daily / weekly — each with a deadline & cooldown, persisted per profile. Accept at the quest board, re-roll a slot for Nanites, and track active contracts in the inventory journal.
World & Environment
Invisible Walls
Each map is bounded by a hard, non-damaging polygon wall shaped to the play area (concave-capable). It never reads as an obvious box.
Toxic Pools
Standing in the visible liquid deals armor-piercing damage over time; the dry edges are safe — damage keys off actually being in the pool.
Dynamic Systems
Clear / Fog / Rain / Dust Squalls cycle, affecting visibility and oxygen use. Surfaced pre-drop with a "next shift" countdown; the raid locks to current weather on deploy.
Worlds also advertise a day-cycle length (e.g. "26h Cycle") as part of their intel flavor.
UI / UX & Art Direction
A cohesive military-sci-fi command aesthetic — the same visual language this document borrows.
Vanguard Command
Command-console identity across every screen — holographic, diegetic readouts.
Cyan on Navy
Dark navy panels with a signature cyan accent #46C8FF; amber and red for warnings and threat.
Hexes & Chamfers
Hexagon command glyphs; chamfered panels (top-left / bottom-right cuts); crisp keycap chips for input prompts.
Rajdhani + Mono
Rajdhani for display / labels; JetBrains Mono for codes & data readouts; a clean body face for prose.
Technical & Audio
Technical Overview
- Engine — Unity 6, Universal Render Pipeline
- Art — stylized low-poly sci-fi (Synty family) with custom rigging/retargeting and per-frame camo systems
- AI — NavMesh pathfinding + a shared Mirminoid archetype / AI framework
- Character — CharacterController-driven, velocity-based locomotion with Animation Rigging for procedural weapon IK
- Persistence — profile data (nanites, timed contracts, unlocks) saved across sessions
Audio
- Diegetic ship & UI sound — console interactions, engine spool-up on deploy, door mechanics
- Combat SFX (fire, impacts, deaths) tied to the game-feel pass
- Ambient weather beds (rain, wind, dust) supporting atmosphere; category-based pickup sounds
Scope & Roadmap
Everything is filtered through one question: does it strengthen the first five minutes and the one tight tense loop?
Demo — Steam Next Fest, Oct 2026
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| Cinematic deploy → fight → mini-boss → extract loop | In |
| Core combat feel — hit FX, shake, ragdoll juice, reliable hit-reg | In |
| Orbital deployment flow + dropship arrival / extraction | In |
| Inventory, loot (crates + corpses), drop system, quantity picker | In |
| Contracts (story + timed rotating bounties), Trust levels | In |
| Weather, world boundary, hazards, oxygen / stamina pressure | In |
| Character frames + camo customization | In |
| Mini-boss full multi-phase attack telegraphs | Planned |
| Broader story-quest content (12 of ~30 authored) | Planned |
| Weakpoints · visible boss HP · enemy flinch | Deferred |
Post-demo directions
Deeper world variety, an expanded bestiary and boss roster, richer progression & economy, more story arcs, and additional biomes and hazards.
Business, Marketing & Risks
Premium · Steam
Premium PC release; the Next Fest demo is the wishlist driver. North-star for the demo: wishlists via a polished, high-feel first session.
@lonesignal.ofcl
IG (plus TikTok / YouTube). Visual before/after and cinematic loops perform; UI/mechanic explainers underperform — lean cinematic & atmospheric.
Balance
"Hardcore/honest" must stay fair — oxygen / stamina / ammo pressure needs careful tuning so tension never tips into frustration.
Open Risks
- Content breadth vs. polish — the demo favors one deep loop; full story content is post-demo
- Boss expressiveness — the mini-boss needs bespoke attack animations to reach its intended readability
- Enemy pathfinding coverage — NavMesh registration on raid maps must be verified so enemies path correctly