Void Mission: a sci-fi action roguelike game in Common Lisp

"Void Mission" is a sci-fi action roguelike divided into three episodes. The action takes place in a 2-D pixeled future in which you fly a transforming humanoid/jet suit in both exterior space and interior environments while firing projectile and/or energy weapons at enemies and simultaneously avoiding their fire. The story is largely told through text, represented in the game as data files, emails, or voice communications with a non-player character. Gameplay is tied into the story with missions that require balancing combat with exploration and puzzle solving.

Void Mission's game play is that of a rogue-like with simplified controls. Only the four cardinal directions are available for movement and firing, and the player can only carry or use a few (i.e. between 1 and 5) items at a time. The player also has fewer stats than in a typical roguelike, but various upgrades make sure that character development is still central.

Void Mission is slated for FREE release on Windows, Mac OSX (Intel only), and GNU/Linux on August 10 2010.

Please visit the game's IndieDB page for updates during development.

My games page has links to my other games.

• Opening story movie on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsNBCSa9Ils
• Gameplay video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsEEcrV8Qc8

It's 2061. If only there were enough endurium!

It's been known for decades that Humanity's reach within the Milky Way is limited only by the supply of endurium, its rare and precious fuel. The energy crises of C.E. 2021 and C.E. 2027-2031 caused global economic, social, and environmental disruption, and with this disorganization came the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the government and corporate elites.

Early attempts at control and regulation of endurium met with initial success. The space-faring nations—Russia, China, India, Japan, Brazil, and the United States—along with the ESA (European Space Agency), could quite naturally claim endurium for themselves. But economies of scale and espionage in spaceflight technology eventually brought smaller deposits and endurium dust streams throughout the interstellar neighborhood within the reach of multinational corporations and various non-state actors. The largest of these formed what they called a "sovereign", open, and successful market in endurium, spaceflight technology, and various otherwise-controlled materials. The split between the Spacefaring Nations on the one hand, and the United Nations on the other, threatens to break into full-scale interstellar war; as Earth's environment continues to decay, the demand for endurium has reached a critical point.

A new high-powered telescope operated by Xiomacs Corporation detects a pattern of gas streamers radiating high in the ultraviolet, within a cavernous void in galactic space. Subsequent observations show that the streamers are emitted from a string of black holes. The scientists, seeing the pattern's obviously artificial nature, guess at a propulsion method being used to drive a spacecraft, and begin to look for something at the trail's leading edge. A year later one of the flare-ups is observed, and the calculations fall into place: the source of the black holes is an object about as massive as Jupiter, but much smaller and far more dense. And it has been accelerating for 1.2 billion years by riding on streams of gas being ejected from the black holes at relativistic speeds. It is given the name DVO1, for Deep Void Object 1.