Update #10: GRAND EXPANSIONS SPOTLIGHT!

Hi Spacers!

With just 5 days left in the campaign, we’re bringing you something you’ve all been waiting for: the Grand Expansion Spotlight! Ready to explore what’s in store and uncover all the exciting details? Let’s go!

GRAND EXPANSIONS SPOTLIGHT

Will this be the longest Update ever? I don’t know. I hope not, these big Enormity spotlights are pushing it in terms of size, and I know people always complain about the length of our ‘unending’ campaign scroll! Yet, I’ve got a lot of ground to cover, one, two, three… six campaign expansions? Six completely different expansions, each introducing new Intruders, bosses and Suits, new mechanics and design paradigm shifts.

So, where to begin… I’ll go in the order they have appeared in the KS campaign, starting with the Scourge. But first, let’s talk a bit about my holistic approach to design. I believe everything within a game should fit with everything else and compliment it. I know, doesn’t sound particularly groundbreaking. The key thing here is the intensity of the connection. I design games as if I were writing an Agatha Christie murder mystery novel. EVERYTHING must fit. EVERYTHING is important. Everything, even the seemingly most inconsequential detail. This extends beyond mechanics, to the game’s story, lore, art, even UI. If something is there, it was meant to be there.

Why am I talking about this in relation to Enormity’s expansions? Well, during pre-production, I created this simple graph. It shows the basic inter-relations between the many factions we’ve introduced in the Core Game AS WELL AS the Expansions. I’ve done this because I wanted every content piece to more or less work with every other piece, and with lore built around thousand-year-old feuds and eons-long universe-scale processes, so I could ensure we could do it organically.

All this is to say that, beyond offering their own narrative campaigns, each of the Expansions will seamlessly connect with the Core Game, offering an even richer base game experience. What’s more, the Expansions also connect with each other, through themes, topics, mysteries, alien species. The Snatcher, the Scourge Campaign and the Grey Death one all intersect at the crossroads of DNA. The Empire and the Blasphemous Species are locked in an ages-old conflict. The Gatekeeper, the Fly, and the Ratcatcher all share a connection to some sort of ‘teleportation’. The Empire, the Mothman and Halla have connections to the suns… and so on.

So, not only will the Expansions work with the Core Game. They will also work with other Expansions.

Ok, enough preamble!

Scourge Campaign

In the Scourge, you will face an infection of the ‘wall rats’ –which spread like an airborne disease, and then grow to maturity inside you, into tentacle-like monsters. The gestation process is painful and confusing, as the alien biology slowly overtakes your own, forcing you to change your behavior, even to turn on your own companions, similarly to what some species of the cordyceps fungi do to ants. This will be represented by the Infection mechanic, which will influence both your character and their abilities. Not only will you have to fight against the rapidly multiplying wall rats, you will have to look for a cure – if there is one. Otherwise, you may turn rat, and no soul blackbox will save you, as the virus can corrupt your RNA.

The horror of the wall rats doesn’t end on infection. Once they burst, they begin to roam the ship – they can squeeze through any crack, even through the microscopic spaces of your suits, effectively ignoring out-of-bounds spaces and red lines on Location maps. They congregate, create pairs, then groups – ‘rat-kings’ – and grow to enormous sizes, changing the Shepherd’s center of gravity with their sheer mass, effectively steering the ship off course… In groups, they also begin to show signs of an evolving intelligence, possibly a hive mind.

The cure, in the form of the Ratcatcher, may be worse than the disease, though. Belonging to an unknown species, this creature – or mechanoid – possesses impressive telephasing and teleportation abilities, with which it can keep up with its prey, the wall rats and all those showing signs of infection. Indeed, their sophisticated equipment is capable of breaking down all organic matter into its simplest inert form. Can you get your hands on these miraculous devices? Of course… If you’re strong enough. If you’re brave, or insane, you can even harvest the wall rats themselves for the wall hack serum, which will allow you to mimic the creatures’ ability to squeeze through walls.

That serum will come in handy, as the Scourge campaign takes place in the tight, dark service corridors of the Shepherd’s underbelly, in all the greasy, stuffy and hot crawlspaces and vents, in the dirty, disgusting sewage disposal systems and in all the spaces between spaces – inside the metaphorical ‘walls’. Some of the Locations may even be cut-off from the rest entirely!

Up above, with the shift in the ship’s mass, the artificial gravity generators will start to malfunction, making traversing many decks an exercise in zero-G.

Do you have what it takes to find a cure, deal with the ship-wide infection, prevent the birth of a hive superintelligence and deal with a relic of an ancient star-spanning civilization that tried to play god, the Ratcatcher itself?

For your sake, I hope you do.

Grey Death Campaign

There was once a mighty species whose dominion spread far and wide among the stars. They faced many difficulties, many challenges, many dangers. In the end, what defeated them was the law of diminishing returns. The species reached its apex, both technologically and biologically. Then, it stagnated. Could not advance further without breaking the universe itself… and could not evolve any further.

In time – incalculable from the point of view of humanity – their DNA degenerated beyond repair. Was it their fault? Did they make some mistake in the countless eons of their ascension? It mattered not. They were a dying species.

Most accepted this fate with dignity and passed away. The Splicer and his ilk did not. If their DNA could not provide answers, maybe some other would. In their search for a cure, they have crossed all boundaries, spawned a million diseases, including the titular Grey Death. This is only one of the many diseases your Spacers can succumb to, from now on viruses is something you have to live with – or not.

The Grey Death campaign takes place on the Shepherd, in the restricted blacksite section of the R&D deck where some of Old Earth’s corporations conducted banned research, free from the shackles of international law and trivial morality. Now, the blacksite belongs to the Splicer; all it needs is new subjects.

The Splicer can kidnap Spacers to experiment on them. Harvest their DNA or splice in some alien one. The results are unpredictable. Death is the best of fates. Each kidnapped Spacer will add to the Splicer’s database, making it stronger. If the Spacer somehow survives, they will be released back into the population, their memory of the event erased.

This is another terrifying ability of the Splicer – they can alter or fabricate memories. Make you forget you have even encountered them, forget abilities, forget your progression tree, forget your purpose.  Make you forget how it truly looks like…

Splicing Spacers is only the beginning. Soon, you may start encountering spliced specimens of other Intruder species! And, if you somehow get your hands on the Splicers ‘clinic’, against your better judgment you may try splicing yourself: modify your own DNA to give yourselves new abilities or traits. Beware, you run the risk of spontaneous mutations.

The Splicer may work alone, but it has a legion of servants at its disposal: the Lepers, other members of its species who have succumbed to the Grey Death. Now, as mindless thralls, they serve their master.

The Rotting Order Campaign Expansion

The Rotting Monolith appears out of nowhere, its two-dimensional shape playing tricks on you, creating an impossible plane. The Gatekeeper emerges as if from a vertical water surface, and sails through the air, challenging the fundamental forces of the universe itself. There is purpose in its every movement. It’s looking for something, or someone, to render judgement. It is also running from something terrible, something kept beyond the gate for an eternity. Yet, with strange aeons, even eternity is finite. It is ending before your eyes. The seals begin to break.

With the coming of the Gatekeeper, the fabric of reality onboard the Shepherd begins to unravel.

First, tears in space-time start to appear, hazardous holes in the universe itself, endangering the Shepherd’s structural integrity and slowly ripping it apart, making for an environmental hazard, as well as a grand campaign-scale mechanic, that can pull two disparate Locations together… or break them apart!

Then are the rifts, through which you can instantaneously travel across the Location, or the ship itself – if you are willing to face what lurks at the threshold of the gate. If you get lost, you may end up in the R-Dimension, a domain few leave with their sanity intact.

The Gatekeeper is one of the most dangerous Intruders, thanks to its potent psionic powers and the ability to manipulate reality, with its Glitch powers. Glitch? Is the Shepherd just some kind of virtual simulation? Is the universe itself one? Questions such as these can cause extreme disassociation and bring one to the precipice of madness.

Gatekeepers are often accompanied by a retinue of the Coffin Golems, presumably its brethren, kept on life support on the brink of death, so they can pilot the deadly contraptions. In fact, the Gatekeepers feel repugnance towards all forms of synthetic life, cloning (like your Body Sleeve system) and DNA tampering, which often puts them at odds with Splicers and Snatchers.

When a Gatekeeper shows up, you’d best run. If you don’t value your life, you may challenge it.

If you outwit the Gatekeeper, you may nab one of its keys to reality. Where will this door lead you?

If you defeat it, with the access to its vast knowledge, you may be able to unlock your own psionic potential, or, using salvaged interfaces from the Coffin Golems, create your own crude cyberimplants. There are also energy blades to play with.

And if you humble the Gatekeeper, maybe they will ask you to help stand watch over the seals of the gate. Will you accept and join the Order?

One thing you shouldn’t do is to enter the Rotting Monolith. Or to make sacrifices to it – although you know that some tribes of the Goatmen do just that, and get rewarded with deep insight and disturbing powers. But at what cost?

Ghosts of Halla Campaign Expansion

NCEs. Non-corporeal entities. For what the ghosts are, you have no answer. Hallucinations? Photonic afterimages of some exotic stellar event? A planet out of phase with the rest of the universe? Science cannot help you at this point.

Maybe they are what they appear to be. Ghosts. Souls. Are souls real? Divine and indivisible? What does it mean for your soul blackbox and the Body Sleeve system? Can your bodies be hijacked? Can you be possessed? Is a space exorcism in order?

Ghosts of Halla introduces our first off-world Locations, the surface of the titular planet – a necropolis world – caught in a perpetual twilight, clouded in thick mists and whipped by fierce rainstorms, and your search for the origins of human life on Earth. Yes, you also didn’t expect this turn of events, not on the other side of the Galaxy, on this forsaken rock. You have a feeling you are not wanted here, and that, if you stay long, you may never leave.

Halla is full of secrets and ancient technology, both for the taking, either through careful excavation or hasty graverobbing. But watch out where you dig, if you are uncareful, you may disturb the resting places of the Hallans, and bring upon yourselves a quantum curse – another figment of your imagination, right? Right?

The ghosts take the form of Earthborne EVA suits. Mimicry. That’s how you try to explain it. To ward away your doubts.  

Your Sanity will be tested in this place, and your trials may even rekindle some sort of divine awe in your hearts, making you reconnect with some of Old Earth’s faiths. Does a salt circle ward off the wraiths? And if so, what does it tell you about the nature of your beliefs, and science itself?

The Ghosts of Halla are seemingly unstoppable. Indestructible, incorporeal, vengeful. They come at you from all sides. And what of the Phantom, the grim reaper of Halla, wielding some kind of alien rifle, one it uses as a scythe?

You’ve been warned. If you go to Halla, you will die.

The Glorious Empire of the Thousand Suns Campaign Expansion

In the Glorious Empire of the Thousand Suns, the titular alien Empire comes knocking at your door. Their soldiers will invade the Shepherd in full force, throngs of devoted Bloodhounds, under the watchful eye of revered Templars. They want to convert you but, if that fails, they will cleanse the ship and claim it in the name of their God-Emperor, sitting on a high stone throne on some alien world a thousand light years from here.

The Empire will pose a unique challenge for the Spacers. With nigh-infinite resources and manpower at its disposal, the pressure it will put on you will be enormous. Their unique military doctrine and squad tactics will put you on the backfoot and make you rethink your approach to the game. The skirmishes against the Empire do not use Blips or hidden movement – because the Empire does not need to hide, only cowards and sinners do!

The imperial armor and weaponry are state-of-the-art, decades ahead of whatever you can muster on the Shepherd. Their suits are fully powered, giving even the smaller Bloodhounds immense physical strength. Their sonic firearms are extremely powerful and ignore most types of protection. And all of this Gear is DNA-locked! You cannot use any of it until you break the code – where’s a Snatcher, Splicer or Ratcatcher when you need one?

You’d think that the Empire conquers its opponents through sheer brutal force, but that is not necessarily the case. The Empire offers absolution, a life in the light of an alien god. Many take up that offer willingly. Many choose to serve. As often as they dish out righteous retribution, the Templars also offer confession and atonement. You know this is just psychological warfare, propaganda. But… what if… it is true…? An alien god… think about it. Is it not better to serve such a being than go through life aimlessly?

Some of you claim its more than propaganda. That it’s subliminal indoctrination. Some sort of resonance field or an advanced sonic weapon capable infiltrating and subverting your own thoughts. True or not, the Glorious Empire introduces new types Flatlines, such as Conversion, where your Spacer decides to turn on their comrades and swear allegiance to the God-Emperor. Similarly, during extraction runs, you may even meet some converted Spacers, zealots to the cause.

This motif carries over to the overall campaign. The Empire will try to break you, in more ways than one. If it cannot defeat you militarily, it will try propaganda, and, failing that, it will offer you peace, and a way home. And the worst thing is, they can make good on this promise.

And, if everything else fails, there is always plan E. The Extermination Protocol, utilizing a stillborn of the Sun.

Blasphemous Species Campaign Expansion

Blasphemous Species is the last campaign we’ve unveiled. It deals with an incursion onboard the Shephard of a coalition of several alien species, united in three things: the mourning of their lost homeworlds and the diaspora, their faith in the Black Gods of the Cosmos, and their hatred for the Empire.

This expansion shows the other side of the major conflict taking place in this corner of the galaxy. Unfortunately, the Goatmen are not your friends. They may work against the imperials, but the loss of their homeworlds and their harsh life in the void of stars, aboard generational spaceships has made them bitter, and their outlook warped.

You, and the Shepherd, are just scrap for salvage to them. They will take your possessions, they will sacrifice you to their dark deities, and they will break the ship for parts. Just like the Empire, Goatmen utilize unique combat tactics, making you switch your gears – and Gear – yet again. Their weaponry, though often archaic or jerry-rigged, is quite powerful, and you will make good use of it, once you learn to use it.

The Goatmen are fanatical pirates led by shaman-captains. They utilize powerful tek-hexes, and their dark rituals and concoctions can turn sentient beings into hulking monsters, like the monstrous Wendigo. You too can partake in the former and ingest the latter, but the consequences are unforeseen, and potentially dangerous.

 Through those same rituals, the Goatmen call on their forlorn homeworlds, on the swamps, the marshes, and the dank caverns of their ancestors. And, against all common sense, those worlds answer back, intrude on the Shepherd: the air becomes cold, humid and brackish, corridors fill with dark soil that sprouts black alien trees bearing bitter black fruit. 

You try to explain it all. The vegetation is just some kind of terraforming device used as a siege engine, the rituals are just DNA-tampering, and the tek-hexes simple hacks transmitted through the Shepherd’s wireless networks. Maybe.

Maybe.

 Or maybe you have reached the outer limits of the known stars, and crossed the threshold into the unknown – and unknowable.

‘Til next time!

And that’s all for today! Wow, that was a lot, wasn’t it?

Remember to cast your votes for your reward for the Community Stretch Goal - David, Torched, or Shadowman - in the comments under this update or on Facebook. And while you’re voting, don’t forget to share your ideas on how you would defeat them - we love hearing your creative strategies!  The results will be announced on Sunday, so there’s still time to make your decision!

At the moment, David leads the way, with Torched following closely behind!  Will Shadowman make a comeback? It’s all up to you!

We’ll see you in the comments!