Text-based. Exploration/detective work basically, in a similar vein to Myriad. Some puzzles and setting-affective choices as well as normal game mechanics that are a lot more loose than normal.
Fully handcrafted areas.
The setting is a weird hybrid of sci-fi and fantasy that sort of exists on a gradient, with eldritch horror on the fantasy extreme.
The setting is an inhabited solar system at the crux of a major trade route. Routecorp noticed that ships entering it were lost/rerouted/whatever so sent some scouts to figure out wtf was going on, and those scouts also disappeared. Robots can sort of exist here and anyone present within the system can, but otherwise it's blocked off.
The star at the center (known as Hedronia) is surrounded by a Dyson swarm of platonic solids (known as Hedrons) that's slowly eating into it -- these seem to be intelligent and will eat anything that comes too close. Hedrons are also present throughout the solar system, affecting the inhabited planets in various magical ways.
You are a robot sentience bonded to a hedron and so are able to navigate the magical areas unlike actual robots. If you die, you get digitized and reappear on your ship. Your ship can also Digitize and reappear in The Oort if it's destroyed. Handwavy sci-fantasy stuff here.
Your mission is to collect the other planetary Hedrons and try to find a way to enter Hedronia. Routecorp thinks they own you because of extensive programming, but your hedron has given you considerable free will. They can't make additional versions of you because they only had one hedron to work with -- the hedron being accessible in the oort probably wasn't an accident.
Everything in the game is classed as one of the following:
Mundane -- normal universe materials, operates by science
Eldritch -- pure magical materials, fairly chaotic.
Hyrbid -- a blend of the two that follows its own set of rules. This is what you are.
Areas in the game stick to this classification system -- with darksides being eldritch until the planetary hedrons are removed, most areas of the game being a hybrid and regular land / some outposts being mundane. Space stations are usually mundane.
Each planet has a number of areas -- these are interconnected regions that all follow the same magical rules. As an open world these are all available from the outset, as are all the planets. The Inner Belt, Hedonia and Darksides are not. Each area contain a Hedron, otherwise it feels like wasted content.
The planets are all orbitally and tidally locked, exposing permanent Darksides to the Oort. You can explore the Darksides prior to retrieving the planet's Hedrons but they're highly confusing and eldritch, probably procedural in some capacity. There's nothing there worth doing.
Some planets also have moons, magical satellites (known as Astra) and mundane space stations. You see all of this from the outset and can choose what to explore.
Your ship's Fabricator allows you to make soft clones of any item/fixture in the game that you've Analyzed. Analysis is also important to finding clues about what to do or deeper mysteries -- you can do it to absolutely everything. This is a core gameplay mechanic and reinforces the exploration/worldbuilding angles as well.
This isn't a resource-intensive game -- you don't have to collect things and there aren't artificial limits, though there are limits to what your Fabricator can put out and how much you can store in your ship at a time. Becoming immensely wealthy isn't as useful as you'd think -- different areas have limited things they'll buy, they have different currencies, and currency also has to be stored.
Each area has its own set of stories that you can interact with and make choices in. If it's a hedron area you'll get a hedron by the end no matter what and because of the linking it doesn't lose its magical potency -- however your actions do definitely matter here in determining the final state of the area. Areas are self-contained.
Outro -- The farthest planet. Fully Mundane. Has a lot of robot infrastructure and a hedron lodged in the planet's core -- will need a salamant and some drilling infrastructure to get it.
Red Sands -- a desert planet lit by a red Astra. Very habitable all things considered -- the desert world of the game. Pyramids, mesas, etc.
Nox -- A dark planet that nonetheless contains human life due to magic. Airless as well, low gravity, etc. Very barren and the magic here sort of makes that livable.
Large Worlds
Neptune X-4 -- a water giant. Very water-themed where the water is more liquid. Yes, this isn't how ice giants work, theres magic involved. A couple areas are closer to how a Neptune would actually work -- one magical and one mundane.
Empyrea -- a gas giant. Things like floating islands make sense here. Also moons
Outer Belt -- a mundane asteroid belt with a couple magical asteroids. One of them is a big cave network.
Inner Planets
The Freeze -- A desolate ice world.
Paradise -- A Goldilocks terra. Off the top of my head I know there's a rivers/lakes area and a giant tree. Probably a lot of areas here, considering its habitability.
Chemhell -- a hellish Venus analogue. Volcanic, acid storms, etc.
Inner Belt -- horribly eldritch asteroid belt. Very important to story progression -- this is where you drop off Hedrons you've collected.
Hedronia -- the sun itself. Chaotic and impassable until after you've returned the Hedrons.
Each area is self-contained -- its puzzles and clues, things you need to analyze/fabricate/sell/buy, etc.
Each puzzle has multiple solutions, or multiple ways of getting the appropriate item, etc. Like with the hedron at Outro's core, you can use either a Salamant or a Drillrig.
A lot of the game is material heavy but there aren't resource limits the way there are in other games -- you can fabricate whatever in whatever amount you can store (with the exception of biological resources which need to be farmed). There is, however, a fuckton of things you can analyze and only a few of them serve a purpose.
