The Lights in the Sky is a first person story driven resource management game. Players take the role of an unnamed protagonist living in the technologically advanced city of Sol.
While Sol initially appears to be a walled city with a strange sky players learn over the course of the game of the reality. Approximately five hundred years in the past scientists stood on the brink of the world falling apart; over population and mismanagement of resources had lead humanity to destroy our habitat. With limited resources however they could only restart natural life on the planet once. Fearing that the desperate populace would simply destroy their last salvation they created one hundred machine cities, cities on tracks loaded with the last resources they could spare. Believing that we were beyond saving they loaded each city with an amnesiac population. Each machine city had an AI and a three goals, first to roam the world keeping its populace alive for as long as possible. Second to facilitate a society as dictated by its assigned role and finally, once it was unable to reliably continue to sustain life it would elect a Navigator who would be told to get the city to a predetermined location, each city has a fraction of the information needed to find this location so it is necessary to interaction with other cities to get to the location. The AI would assess the Navigator as they progressed to the location in the hope that they would display the qualities which could lead humanity and its world out of the current cataclysm. If the AI believed this to be the case then it would activate a process to restart natural life on the planet.
The player is the Navigator of his or her city and must manage their resources and (unknowingly) prove themselves worthy of rebooting our planet.
There are three key mechanics which are used to manage Sol. The first is the players tattoo. The tattoo represents the night sky, referring to the ability in the past of people to navigate by the stars but in this instance also being a nanotechnology that gives the player the rights to control the machine-city. There are many choices to be made as the player progresses, from how they solve problems to their interactions with the people of their city all of this is watched by the machine cities AI activating nodes in the tattoo which correspond to constellations. Once a full constellation is lit the AI can grant access to new facilities in the city, assisting the player in their journey.
The second is the resource management of the game. Machine city has limited resources in its silos, it is able to identify and collect resources scattered around the world at the players behest however it takes time to move to these and there is still the end game goals to be reached. Players must constantly manage their resources using both internal systems and research which can be developed using collected minerals as well as locating external resources found on the world map.
The final mechanic players must manage is that of their people. The people of the city and those of other cities you come into contact have to be managed in one way or another. Players have a great deal of freedom in how they let this play out, they can be open and honest with the people, use force to enact their will, manipulate from the shadows or even keep the workings of the city a secret from the unsuspecting populace operating entirely alone. There are many different ways to approach each situation however mismanaging the populace can have adverse effects such as rioting or assassination attempts.
As players manage these mechanics they will need to navigate Sol via a world map located at the heart of the city, choosing how they will proceed and manage the various events that their movements will lead to such as other cities. Players will be able to interact with cities they come across in a variety of ways both personally or by sending other characters to them to do such things as infiltrating them to steal information, attacking them, talking to them diplomatically or scavenging parts from a damaged or destroyed city.
A variety of difficulties will be available with the penultimate difficulty allowing only one save and only one life for the player (any death is game over permanently)
The Lights in the Sky aims to give players a lot of choice, letting them run an experimental city in almost any way they want. Players may feel tension if they choose to personally invade another city using stealth, they may feel afraid around a rebellious crowd or powerful as they stand at the head of supportive military state.
Players may feel the exhilaration of taking on a mission on another city themselves or the tactical satisfaction of having sent the right person for the job. The mind-set and experiences that the player will have vary hugely depending on the approaches the player chooses in dealing with the problems presented to them which is the real draw of the game. Players can approach every problem in the way they feel is best, the aim of this is to make players become attached to their city in the same way they might become attached to an RPG character but on a much deeper level filled with responsibility.
●Play the way you want, many choices with many different ways to approach them
●RPG character building with a city, see how each person reacts to your choices
●Extremely punishing difficulties for those who want a strategic challenge
●Rewarding resource management, see up close whether your people flourish or die.
