Approaching Infinity

Embark on the limitless cosmic adventure that is "Approaching Infinity," a procedurally generated space exploration roguelike with a nostalgic feel and modern sensibilities.

Think "Star Trek the roguelike", or "turn-based Star Control 2".

Upgrade your ship, outfit your officers, and navigate through a dangerous galaxy filled with alien factions, mysterious artifacts, and tactical turn-based battles. Every playthrough is a unique story waiting to be written.

Be who you want in each new universe! Use the robust character creator to tweak every part of your appearance. Or hit randomize a few times, load a preset, or completely ignore it. Then choose from 10 space-themed character classes, each with unique game-altering skills. 

(Don’t worry: Later you’ll be able to recruit up to 5 more officers of different disciplines to round out your team.)

Is up to you!

14 major factions have full quest lines you can immerse yourself in: learn their history, secure their future… or work against them!

You start with a quest to "find out what happened to the human colony", but it’s optional. You can fight or make peace, mine asteroids, buy and sell commodities, survey planets, extort freighters, smuggle illegal goods, engage in diplomacy, collect powerful artifacts, choose a side in the galactic conflict, craft, become famous (or infamous), harvest rare plants, grok creatures, destroy the universe, become a god, salvage shipwrecks, avenge humanity…

Or don’t.

It’s a galactic sandbox where you can dedicate yourself to a specific role or mission, or just drift from place to place, doing odd jobs and selling your excess loot.

Follow the stories (quest lines) of 12 major alien races, 8 of which lead to unique victories. There are 2 more ways to win that you can discover on your travels. Or you can ignore those goals and explore forever, leveling up your crew and gear to god-like proportions!

(We recently conducted a survey in the Discord: Half of players go for a faction victory, the other half try to see how far they can go.)

Victory is not assured in this dangerous broken galaxy. Death could be waiting just beyond that nebula, behind a tree, or around the next bend in that underground tunnel. It is most assuredly waiting for you in shipwrecks and star temples.

But if you crave exploration and role play more than hard-core challenge, then fear not! Simply select "adventure mode" and death will be no more than an inconvenience on your journey through the stars.

Not everything is as it seems, and some objectives are hidden. There are mysteries to discover and problems to solve with your own wits. 

As both a developer and a player, I’ve always loved procedural generation’s ability to supply fresh, unpredictable challenges. Approaching Infinity leverages proc-gen extensively to ensure that every sector, planet, cave, item, and encounter can surprise you. Explorers rejoice!

Approaching Infinity walks a line between deeply-simulated vs. streamlined systems.

For example, fire is fairly "simulated": You can burn trees with your flamethrower, and the fires will spread. It catches faster on planets with high oxygen content, and goes out immediately with high CO2, or vacuum. And if you’re on fire, stepping on water will put it out, although we don’t track the temperature and wetness of every tile…

But when it comes to time and distance, these concepts are mostly abstract, streamlined and "game-ified": a sector of space, with all its stars and planets, is displayed on the same size map as one interior deck of a shipwreck, or the explorable planetary landing zone around your shuttle. And the time it takes to move in any of these places is "one turn".

No drunk cats here. But you can shoot a hole in the wall of a pressurized shipwreck and everything (including you) will move in the direction of the escaping air.

The dividing line is "fun": ignore reality where simulation would be tedious, but embrace it when it can be used creatively.

Approaching Infinity is my life’s work, and it was conceived, prototyped, and kickstarted in 2013. It was published exclusively by Shrapnel games in 2015. I finally got the rights back to it in 2020 and brought it to Steam Early Access, where I’ve been improving it ever since, moving towards the 2.0 release.

This passion project is the perfect expression of my eternal love of science fiction and strategic RPGs.

I will continue to add content to Approaching Infinity as long as I am able, including both free updates and big DLCs. There are still so many stories waiting to be written. I don’t plan to make a sequel. I will continue to expand this game as I have done for the last 12 years. Join me in my great sci-fi odyssey!