Hi Hi Dev here
All fair questions.
Are there any particular sci-fi influences?
My elevator pitch would be Battlestar Galactica with a side order of Firefly and a side order of humour. If all that sounds a bit counter-intuitive it's due to the multi threaded nature of the game where I've tried to design the game in such a way that the player ends up with the experience they want from it.
So, although the physics are grounded (no laser weapons - it's all kinetic; no teleporters, stuff breaks down etc) and the main plot beats remain the same, the player can end up playing either a rather serious or not so serious game depending on their choices and paths.
Some characters are more professional or darker than others - and following down their storylines will give you one type of game. Some are more light hearted in design, and following theirs gives the same game with a different slant. There are paths where you can play as the ultimate military professional but equally you can play as a casual slacker who doesn't want to be on this stupid mission in the first place.... It's really up to you. As an example, at the end of Chapter Three we have 18 rather different paths with the projected total for Chapter Ten to be 116.
Choices matter and all content is optional. You can be a complete dick to people but push it too far and they will kill you. Not hyperbole, if you act too much like a dick one of them shoots you in the face and you is ded.
She's not wrong. Absolutely nothing to stop you playing the MC as a bastard (indeed it can be quite fun!) but the characters tend to act as realistically as I can make them. So an element of care is required. Certainly, trying any blackmail path has to be done with some caution, less you end as an "accident" statistic...
there is currently a big warning label that says "you may as well wait for the next release,"
Obviously I want as many people to play this game as possible, but I started out making this game with...well, nothing really
Well, nothing bar an idea and some Jaffa cakes. No prior experience, no real hardware. Zip. So, although I spent a good six months prior to launch on plotting, design etc and the game has been lauded in various polls for it's writing and storytelling etc - the graphics are...not great. They're not terrible for sure. I've seen much worse, but that's not the point. At the start I was limited to what I could produce with a 2GB 1050 card - which isn't much. With the mighty powah of a single 6GB 1060 card I can now do much better (there are a few examples scattered around in the previous dozen of so pages) and so I'm remastering the whole thing.
So my honest advice as the Dev is...don't play it. Not yet. Give it a few weeks and then try it where the experience will be significantly better.