About This Game

BossConstructor is a game about building and flying your own spaceship!

Building your ship

The core feature of the game is its editor which allows you to freely assemble your own ships using a variety of modules. The way you build your ships determines how they behave and what they are capable of doing. Since every module costs money, weight and energy, designing a good ship is a challenging yet rewarding task.

Expedition

The game will feature a number of missions which test your design and piloting skills. The missions include combat and survival missions as well as mining missions. The expedition mode lets you explore a procedurally generated galaxy inhabited by the von-Neumann, an evolving AI species. You begin with a basic ship and advance as you discover new enemy species and scavenge for more powerful components to improve your ship.
If you prefer to design your ship without contraints, you can do so in the free mission/sandbox mode which lets you play any of the game's missions with any ship.

Artificial intelligence

Being a single player game, a lot of attention is given to the game's artificial intelligence system. The von-Neumann enemies you encounter in the expedition mode are created using elaborate artificial evolutions, in which a vast number of mutating ships have competed for survival. Several bonus game modes allow you to lean back and watch how different AI species compete with each other for survival.

Previews based on the current version

"From the start, there is a level of polish which is sufficient to make this game simply look better than anything people might tout as 'crap, weak, waste of money' which I can assure you it's not. Currently, you are able to design and build a ship or fleet of ships with which to shower your rain of destruction.", Allpcgame
http://www.allpcgame.net/2014/11/bossconstructor-review-and-more.html

"There are a lot of sandbox games around, but BossConstructor ticks a lot of the right boxes. I am a massive sucker for spaceship games, and when I get to design my ship in a simple, but rewarding way that's great. I like to customize, but some games make it overly complicated where as BossConstructor keeps it simple and fun.", Liam Dawe, Gaming On Linux
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/design-battle-with-your-own-spaceship-in-bossconstructor.4541

"At the time of writing the game is still in very early stages – the story mode and missions sections are works in progress – yet BossConstructor is already looking like an effective scratch for that space-faring itch. All the tools are there for budding captains to design their very own mega-ship and explore the stars.", Alex Hamilton, Game Grin
http://www.gamegrin.com/previews/bossconstructor-preview/

Update: Current state

The game has now been in early access for about 5 weeks and has received 25 patches. Yay! These patches fixed most of the game's known bugs and added a ton of new features to the game. While not yet feature complete, the game is already stable, playable and fun. :)

FAQ

Q: When is the game going to be available?
A: The game is currently in Early Access. I plan to complete the game in 2015

Q: Which platforms are supported?
A: The game supports Windows, Linux, SteamOS and MacOS. Currently Mac users need to manually install Java (free).

Q: Will there be a multiplayer mode?
A: Unfortunately implementing multiplayer support is very complex. Therefore I focus on providing a solid single player experience.

Q: What types of ships can you build?
A: Any ship built based on the modules is valid as long as the modules do not overlap. You can build ships with moving parts as well as ships consisting of multiple ship parts (which can be controlled individually).

Q: How large can the ships be?
A: You can add modules to your ship as long as they fit within the editor's boundaries (14x14). If you want to build even larger ships, you can do so by expanding the editor's boundaries in the game's settings file - since this can negatively impact the games performance as well as the game balance, this is a 'hidden' option.

Q: How many module types are there?
A: There are currently 25-30 module types in the game. More modules will be added in the future.

Q: How does the artificial evolution work?
A: The artificial evolution works by simulating a huge tournament in which mutated versions of existing ships compete with each other. The most successful ships, i.e. the ships which have dealt most damage to their enemies, proceed to the next round while the losers are eliminated.