Developer Blog 1: The Origins of the Setting

Background

Perpendicularity is a narrative-heavy survival game set aboard a critically-damaged space station. It is intended to make the player feel the danger and isolation inherent to its premise, while exploring a scientifically plausible near-future setting. We wanted to place a strong emphasis on managing both physical and mental resources, while navigating a hostile environment.

The design of the setting was guided by our desire to have a well-researched hard sci-fi setting, with plausible dangers and obstacles. The lead designer was interested in radiation in particular as a threat, along with isolation and the ever-ticking timer of ones resources running low.

The Setting

Because radiation was planned to be a major threat, we immediately thought of Jupiter as a setting for the game. Jupiter’s magnetosphere is strong enough to capture charged particles and trap them indefinitely, creating dangerous Van Allen belts, able to kill an unprotected human within hours. The space station the game takes place within therefore relies on electromagnetic shielding to keep the crew safe.

Any scenario where humanity is reliant on tools that can break or fail like this is a great way to emphasize survival elements, while giving our lead writer and lead designer freedom to come up with some creative ideas which explore the constraints inherent in a space setting.

Jupiter had a few other advantages as a setting. The moons of Jupiter are a plausible location for long-term settlement of space, due to their relative abundance of resources, and the ease with which permanent structures could be constructed simply by tunneling into their icy surfaces. A manned mission to Jupiter could also feasibly be achieved with technology currently in development, and larger-scale colonization could become possible within a century. This makes it easier to keep the setting grounded in reality, without too much hand-waving.

As part of a long-term strategy for colonization of the solar system, Jovian colonies could provide the main assets and infrastructure required to expand outward, and allow humanity to become a truly multiplanetary civilization.

So, due to both team member interest in Jovian colonization, and its ability to provide the ideal conditions for the dangers and isolation we wished to explore, we decided that a space station in orbit above a Jovian moon would be ideal for the setting.

The Tyr Program

We chose to set the story during the construction of a colony on Europa, a moon well within Jupiter’s Van Allen belts, where the threat of radiation is high.

From there, the lead designer worked out what would be necessary for permanent colonization of the Jovian moons.

Her concept involved multiple missions undertaken by massive, kilometer-long colony ships, assembled in orbit, using resources manufactured on the moon or shipped up from Earth. These would be propelled by pulsed fusion drives, to achieve the Delta-V required for an expedient transfer to Jupiter.

Upon arrival, the colony ships would be partially disassembled, with some modules shipped down to the surface by landers, or reassembled into a new configuration for orbital habitation.

This lead to the concept of the game being set aboard a former colony ship, repurposed as an orbiting logistics hub, where astronauts could live while ground bases were being constructed. This allowed us to lean into our original goal of a threatening situation rooted in both plausible science and a hostile environment.

Geopolitics

By this point, the setting was mostly fleshed out relative to the requirements of gameplay, but it lead to a lot of discussion about the possible politics required to make such an endeavor plausible.

We determined that in order to take on a project on the scale of Jovian colonization, Earth’s nations would need to have moved beyond the current status quo of competition and strife aimed at short-term gains.

We wanted to capture the optimistic attitudes of people towards space exploration held during the 1970s and 1980s, and so aimed for a hopeful depiction of the future. In Perpendicularity’s setting, the assumption is therefore that, after widespread destabilization and upheaval due to climate change, humanity reorganizes itself into a more equitable society, with a substantial redistribution of geopolitical power.

Countries are organized into a few loose coalitions with common ideals, and while many modern-day nations remain essentially intact, borders have become more fluid, and cooperation between the various global powers has allowed for scientific projects of unprecedented scale to be undertaken.

The Current Status

It is 2104, and humanity stands in an uneasy alliance, its coalitions of nations working towards an ambition goal: the Tyr Program, a project to establish permanent settlements on the Jovian moons.

After decades of work, six missions have successfully been launched, and a seventh is set to arrive to Europa within days.

But with trouble quickly approaching, and soon, the bravery and ingenuity of the Tyr Program astronauts will be put to the test.