About This Game

Archean is an immersive Engineering Sandbox and Space Sim.
Your journey begins on Earth... 3 billion years in the past, in the Archean eon.

This is a challenging sandbox that can be played solo or with friends.
It also happens to be a full scale Space Sim.

Current Features

• Engineering / build sandbox
  
• Resource gathering and crafting
  
• Solo or Multiplayer with dedicated servers
  
• Open World with full size Earth and Moon
  
• Space Sim with orbital mechanics
  
• Aerodynamics simulation
  
• In-game coding with the XenonCode language
  
• Workshop integration
  
• Creative and Adventure modes
  
• Fully ray-traced graphics

Future Updates

• Survival mode
  
• Vehicle destruction and PVP
  
• Pressurization system
  
• Full scale solar system (with all the planets and moons)
  
• Weather system
  
• LOTS more content
  
• SDK for modders

This game (and custom engine) is developed by a single programmer in a small team of two.

Immersive Engineering Sandbox

We offer a very advanced, high precision build and engineering system with small resizable blocks from 25 cm to 4 meters.
In this game, you have to connect components with actual cables/pipes for power, data and fluids.
Build in-game live in an immersive way, not in an editor.
Code your own logic in virtual computers, using pure code or a node-based visual programming system.

XenonCode

We have developed a new programming language designed to be easy to learn and optimal for in-game virtual computers.
The game has a built-in cooperative editor with syntax highlighting and multi-cursor support, as well as a node-based visual editor to facilitate scripting.

Adventure Mode

In this mode, you begin with nothing in your backpack. You have to gather resources and craft everything you need.
You start by hand, picking up rocks, build mining rigs, build automated machines and so on.
Some resources are underwater, some are at the highest mountain peaks.
It's up to you to build vehicles that can get there.
The ultimate goal is to reach the Moon.

Native Ray-Tracing

Our innovative renderer is fully ray-traced with a great performance.
This is not a eye-candy, it's actually a necessary feature for this game to even exist, because of its dynamic nature.
Since the content will be mostly user-created and it's set to be moddable out-of-the-box, we cannot afford any artist-driven baked lighting, and with the full scale aspects with customizable solar system, we need the sun(s) lighting to be completely dynamic based on the real-time scenario, instead of tweaking shadow maps and reflection probes manually like other games do.
Also, we do believe that ray-tracing is the future of graphics, it's just that most games don't use it properly, or at least not in an optimal way, because their renderer has to fallback on rasterization for backward compatibility.
In our case, we have built our renderer from scratch to natively do ray-tracing without relying on rasterization, at the expense of not supporting NON-RTX customers.
A fully ray-traced renderer (that is, not a hybrid like most other games) actually runs faster than rasterization for highly complex dynamic scenes.
Hybrid renderers cannot take advantage of that because they have to run both algorithms to draw a single frame.
In our case, using just ray-tracing actually makes the game run faster than if we were to use just rasterization.
Don't worry, the performance is great, the game runs smoothly!
The entire scene is rendered in a single ray-tracing pass with many recursive light bounces.
This allows for realistic hard shadows, perfectly reflective mirrors and physically correct refractions.
Just make sure you have an NVIDIA RTX graphics card and you're good to go.

The Archean Eon

The game is set 3 billion years in the past.
The Earth is rotating faster, making for 12-hour days instead of our familiar 24.
The sun is a bit dimmer and the moon orbits a lot closer to earth and is geosynchronous.
The continents are mostly grouped together on one side and there is a super volcano.
There is also no oxygen, the atmosphere is mostly CO2, and it's quite hot on the surface.
Life is barely starting to take place on Earth.

Time

The game takes a realistic approach to time, there is no time warp and no pause.
This is because we have a focus on multiplayer and the planets are actually rotating and revolving around the sun.
Two players would not be able to interact realistically with each other if their times were to run at different rates.

Procedural Terrain Generation

The entire surface of the Earth (and the moon) is procedurally generated, at full scale, down to 1mm precision.

Underwater

Since the Earth's surface is mostly water, we have to handle underwater environments.
Being fully ray-traced we can simulate refractions and reflections realistically.
The game simulates buoyancy, so you can build boats and submarines.

Space Sim

The final goal of this game is to be a Full Scale Space Sim with the entire solar system.
At the moment we have the Earth and the Moon, Orbital Mechanics and Re-Entry effects based on velocity.
There is no artificial speed limit, so you can actually orbit realistically at 8 km/s.
You can also dock with your friend's ship while in orbit, if you're good.


We have great plans for this game, and we swear by our 5 commandments:

1. Thou shall obey physics

It's NOT arcade-style and we do not underestimate our players.
You must understand science or be willing to learn some physics.
The game features realistic 6-dof space physics without any artificial speed limit.
As far as we know, it's the only multiplayer space sim where you can dock with your friend's space station while in space at Full Orbital Velocity.
This game is NOT meant to be a dogfight-style space shooter because that would not be practical with realistic physics.

2. Thou shall not see "Loading..."

Seamless transitions, no loading screens, EVER!
From ground to orbit to another planet... it's all seamless.
The game also happens to "load" pretty much instantly... For reference, in our Quadcopter video, the recording started BEFORE the game's executable was launched.

3. Thou shall not hit a wall

No fake boundaries. No skyboxes. No predefined paths.
IT's a true Open World game, and it's all full scale.
If you see a mountain, it's not a texture... You can just walk there and climb it if you have the courage... But I would just build a Rover or some kind of aircraft to get there faster.
The moon that you see from the surface of Earth is the actual moon's terrain that you will land on, if you manage to build a good enough rocket, that is.
The stars you see are individually rendered points in 3D space. It's not a skybox. But let's be honest you won't ever be able to reach another star.

4. Thou shall not be Thee

Immersive, first person controls and no cutscenes.
There will NEVER be a point where the player loses control of their avatar to a cutscene or to some long animation.
This game will keep a focus on First Person Immersion.
Even though there is a 3rd person view available, it's mostly for taking screenshots, the game is not meant to be played this way.

5: Thou shall make sense

Everything has a realistic purpose based on science.
Nothing should be fake, and in-game technologies must be at least plausible with some math behind it.
This means that there is no such thing as magical artificial gravity.
There are only two ways to have gravity in your spaceship when you're in space:

• Constant Acceleration: Players inside an accelerating ship do feel gravity realistically, and there is no artificial sublight speed limit as opposed to most (if not all) other multiplayer space sims.
  
• Centrifugal Forces: Yes you can also build a rotating station and you will have realistic "gravity" sensation like you would expect.

Also, there will be no Faster Than Light space travel.
The math for a plausible Warp Drive would not allow that, but will let you multiply your acceleration quite a bit, in a way that you can travel up to 99% the speed of light.