Hyperspace Deck Command: 2024 Progress Report

Hey there, aspiring deck commanders.

As the year comes to a close I thought I give you all a quick update on how the game is doing. The current plan is to do an open alpha test early next year. I then want to put together another demo for the second Next Fest in 2025 and ideally the full release will happen soon after that.

Here is what got done this year.

Run Systems

After the first demo release I worked on a lot of overarching run systems, like shops and upgrades you can attach to cards to give them additional effects.

The upgrade system will carry a lot of weight in terms of how you build your deck, handling not only a wide variety of card improvement but also card removal and duplication, through specific upgrades found in their own separate events.

Upgrades can be stored and you can apply them whenever you are outside a combat encounter. So you’ll be able to save removal and duplication for later if you have no good use for these action at the moment you get access to them.

Starting Deck Selection

The rest of the year I mostly spent with defining the games player factions, their dual status effects and their cards. The game is planned to have 5 playable factions, 4 of which are now pretty much done, with some still needing a few more cards to fully flesh out their deck. This matters mostly for when playing one-faction decks, but decks can also mix two factions and most of the time you’ll want that to get greater flexibility.

Deck factions are determined by which commander and megaship you select to start with. Your commander also provides tactical cards and a construct unit. Your megaship determines your basic attack cards. Further you get to select a randomized flagship and an auxiliary vessel as backup. All of these deck elements have 3 variants per faction, allowing for a nice bit of build variety even when just selecting your starting deck.

Floatoid Deck

The second faction I implemented after Low-Tech are the Floatoids. Since the events of Swirl Watch they have liberated their new homeworld and have become a small but well regarded member species of the galactic community. As hinted in the other games they excel as smallcraft pilots and in Hyperspace Deck Command they provide carrier focused decks that attack with fighters and bombers.

These are basically damage over time effects, just with a lot of visual fluff to them. Wings of craft launch each time you apply the effects, they do attack runs each turn and when the DoTs tick down that is illustrated by ship point defense shooting down crafts. When applied to your own ships, fighters become escorts that will dogfight with enemy small crafts, allowing you to counter enemy DoTs.

Many Floatoid ships are carriers that do not attack directly, instead they create one-time-use attack cards that can be played without advancing a turn, essentially allowing them to target any unit in the system. As you might expect, carriers are best kept in your backline and need to be protected by more durable units. The Floatoids themselves do not field many heavy ships, but can extend their lifetime with repair bots that restore hull every turn. Those can also serve as lifesteal salvagers when applied to enemies.

Much of the tech the Floatoids discovered in Swirl Watch is also still in use. Advanced stealth coatings can prevent their ships from being targeted and reactor entanglement is still being used to transmit damage or EMP effects between ships.

Trade Union Deck

After that I worked on another faction that I don’t want to spoil too much untill the alpha drops. They are a multi-species trade union that works closely with the galactic community, but still uses comparatively low level tech.

Contempter Deck

I moved on to faction 4, which might again be familiar if you played any of the other Hyperspace Games. The Contempter return once more, but in the millennia that have passed since the previous games they have entered an age of reform, becoming a mostly well behaved GC member. Their warring days are long over, but the events of Hyperspace Deck Command require them to reactivate some of their now ancient invasion fleets. Some of their tech is so outdated that it can seriously interfere with your runs, by producing useless or negative cards you have to manage.

They still focus on brute force and heavy armor, starting with somewhat unwieldy decks full of special strikes and they have a large variety of direct attack cards available. The hull displacer effect allow them to extend the already big hp pools of their ships, or to weaken enemies by reducing their max hp. Mines argument their defenses with damage dealt to attackers.

Their third effect allows you to send boarders to ships. Once your boarding force exceed the ship’s max hp you take it over wholesale. Boarded ships attack friendlies, which will always try to retaliate against the occupied vessel. Applied to your own ships, boarders act as a security force that can fight of enemy borders, making this another effect that can counter itself.

Many Contempter ships you can field are updated versions of crafts seen in Red-Tether.

Still To Do

Up next I want to set up enough enemy encounter for what I’d consider a full run, as well as an unlock system for some basic progression. After that the game will move into the first alpha test. Then I still need to add faction 5, way more enemy encounters, additional upgrades and artifacts to find, as a well as some minor features like a card index and additional shops.

There is still a lot to do but I’m confident that HDC will be ready for release within the next 6 months.

Cheers!

Stefan – Sleeper Games