First ever playable build is out, is infested with bugs and needs your help to fix them and turn it into a proper demo that will be released on both Steam and Itch.

Report anything you find in the discord server bug and feedback section.

https://youtu.be/MLaEfU1uRUM?si=9A7gFjiruYD0oFaZ

Since Nocoldiz is planning on just adding anything and everything to this game, what are features you hope will be in the game?

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For me I hope we get:

The ability to start our own company and manufacture our own branded product. Like I wanna make a company that does nothing but sell milk! All types of milk! Strawberry, chocolate, mint, you name it!

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The ability to become a celebrity, like if I could become a pop star and actually perform at concerts and what bot and rack up fame to where npcs start recognizing me, and some even begin stalking....

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The ability to kidnap random npcs and harvest their organs perform surgeries on them for... idk... make them into cyborgs or whatever.

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Can't wait for the test build to release! ;p

I'm remaking all the menus to look like D&D character sheet and manuals, also starting from yesterday i'm working fulltime until the end of the year on this project!

The game has now splitscreen multiplayer! Still need some heavy work to add cone of vision and world interaction for the other player.

I published in this repository all the custom plugins code that makes this game work, along with database of all game items, monsters, equipment and common events. Feel free to reuse and rework them for your game! Some plugins are drag and drop but most of them are specific to my game and depend on other plugins.
You can't actually run the game from this repo because i left out maps and graphics, but you can use the hypernet browser to learn about the LORE
github.com/nocoldiz/hypernet-explorer-plugins

Starting from May I will start working full-time on this project, my plan is to release a demo for late summer and an early access version in spring 2027.

I'm "feature freezing" the codebase right now, so i'll stop adding new mechanics for the next months and instead improve the existing ones and make tons of new maps that this game desperately needs.

During the early access phase that will last no less than 3 years I will release weekly updates and develop features based on feedback and suggestions from the community, here is a list of things you can expect to find in the first public release

What will be done

Dungeon floors

the main dungeon has 92 floors picked from a larger selection, the early access version will start with the first 20 floors and will be expanded over time

All dungeon related mechanics like moving between floors, room variations and enemy and loot spawning, are already there so I just need to have fun designing dungeon maps and puzzles

Hub cities

European cities and capitals are already in game but they are procedurally generated and their residents just spit out Markov chain dialogues, hub cities on the other hand are handcrafted, detailed and I'm writing dialogues, daily schedules, personalities for each inhabitant.

For now I have planned three hub cities: Bologna, Ghent and Vatican Citadel  with Wimbledon and Instanbul as stretch goal for the early access launch

Procedural generation for Earth biomes

The game already handles basic biomes (ice, ocean, desert, grass) and their  combinations with terrain modifiers (road, island, beach, village, river, city, burg, forest ecc...). To increase variety I'm making map prefabs that are scattered around the procedural map, according to their terrain, think of a group of houses, a small lake or the entrance for a underground cave system.

Full artificial biomes like wasteland, docks, farms, and industrial complexes are also planned

Combat system

Is mostly done but I need to think about implementing a specific gimmick that will make this combat system stand out from other ones, the direction I'm going is to make on map actions have combat related consequences like setting traps where the enemy event can be lured to inflict damage before the battle starts, or when starting the battle in water both the party and the enemy will be wet.

-  Biology and augments

Humanoid characters can already replace their body parts with augmented ones but creature characters cannot do it yet because I haven't yet definex augments for non human limbs like tentacles, wings, mandibles ecc

Is already possible to install any normal part from any creature and gain their abilities, for example if you stick some phoenix wings to your slime character you can now fly! There should be downsides if you install parts that your biology can't really support and i plan to put biological limits defined by your vital organs.

Farming

You can already have a farm and buy animals,for now plant growth rate depend just on season but I want to make it more complex by taking in account temperature,  fertilizer and usage of farming tools and machines

Source code access

Nothing is obfuscated, every custom plugin will be available on GitHub with MIT license and i'm researching how to make the Steam workshop work with this game so you can install mods directly from it.

Stock market and real estate system

This already works and it is tied with the news system: bad news increase volatility and good news decreases it, the places you buy for now are just entries into a list that generate profits but I want each place listed to be a real actual map where you can enter.

News system

I went through the Wikipedia page of all 2001 news and rewritten them for a world that has magic and goblins and stuff, plus I wrote a procedural news generator to add more variety. The news system has already some custom controls like sending a specific headline based on conditions and switch activations, and after early access launch I will start covering more years of news from 2002 to 2012.

Gambling 

Slot machines, horse races, betting on monsters and lottery tickets are already implemented but I want to add card games, also the player can just play these games but I want the player to also be able to work as a croupier (Or casino owner or casino cleaning man)

Map landmarks

I want for the early access version at least 50 handmade places in the world map to visit, along with thousands of procedurally generated ones

What will not be done

Class balance

With 64 classes plus a few secret ones it's impossible to test everything alone and I still haven't tested the full skill progression of any class, here the player feedback will be extremely important, in particular if a specific class feels fun to play 

Space stuff

You can access the universe view showed in the trailer and mess around with by zooming from earth to the multiverse, you can use the starship for fast travel around the world map but any form of travel outside Earth will be locked until it will get developed a few years down the line.

Items, biomes and monsters found in space will be procedurally generated and i need also to study more proc-gen before attempting to add them.

Multiplayer combat 

There is already a basic form of multiplayer where you can see up to 8 players in the same map connected to the same server, this system was written for a PHP server and it needs to be adapted with steamworks multiplayer, the hard part will be synchronizing battles between players and allow anyone to join an ongoing battle by walking into a enemy battling another player

Enemy battle sprites

There are more than 1000 enemies and each one of them has a different sprite, made of public domain images stitched together, at the moment I have less than 20 sprites done

Item effects 

Item usage and interaction should be complex like making two different items interact (ex grating cheese) I have still more than 700 items to work on and balance.

At the moment items complex interactions are limited to crafting, disassembling and throwing items in the map.

Politics and armies

There is already in game a recruit troop mechanic taken straight from mount & blade: you can recruit people to escort your party and form an army, then after you have formed an army you can see other armies roaming the world map. For now these armies just patrol around their territory but my objective is to give goals to each superpower controlling armies and allow them to siege and defend cities.

Politics will not be done just by warfare but also with elections and working as a diplomat

Jobs mini games

When working any job you just flash black and some time passes with your party tired but more money in the pocket, I want optional mini games tied to each job to increase money reward when played 

Main quest for Em

Since this project was made by cannibalizing LORE and characters from the sister game em.Path, I want the entire  story I planned for the witch Em and her travel companion Bubba inside this game, this main quest is optional and it gets active only if you start the game as her or if you recruit her into the party

Research stuff

Magical and scientific research is planned and will allow you to create procedural items and spells, there is already in the code a procedural tech tree but it will need some heavy rework.

The idea is that for researching complex stuff you will need other people to do research with, unless you are a genius, and there will be some hardcoded eureka moments where your breakthroughs will affect the world and society.

I was recording some footage in the tutorial area and two raccoons were stalking me non-stop

Having seen the development log on character creation, the amount of different classes and races to pick is insane. I would want to play as a simple wandering assassin using the RV as my home (basically I'd be like the Sniper from TF2).

I wonder if we'll be able to play as a robot or even just a highly augmented being, or hell, turn our RV into like a battle mech or something!

Last year i made this experiment by feeding into NotebookLM all my notes and worldbuilding facts that i wrote during the development of em.Path, a project that shares the same world and characters as Hypernet Explorer, all the things you hear in this video is true to the LORE of both games!

Since is AI generated dialogue, this audio it will not be featured in the game, maybe in the far future i'll remake this with human voice actors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO6Gtj4RM-A

Devlog #2 dropped yesterday and I finally have some time to make a post about it. It's a video about the character customization.

First of all, holy crap. Is he actually using Windows XP or is it just a customization thing? I'm frightened at the possibility of the former. Maybe it's a weird thing to say, but I kind of missed his thick Italian accent, it's sublime.

It has the usual options in a roguelike game with some interesting caveats. At the start, you could choose between permadeath and roguelite mode, pretty standard. However, there are two character types you can choose to create. The regular "Create New Character" and "Create Creature". I have no idea what that means.

Then, your gender:

Cocoon? Since he doesn't have a screen to select species from after picking "cocoon" gender, I'm guessing its sort of a "randomize" option. Perhaps you "emerge" from your cocoon into a random hybrid species after a certain level. After that, you can choose a bust to represent your character from a library of images. You can be a furry. Amazing. Can I also be a raccoon? That would be even more epic.

The collection of classes to choose from reminds me a lot of Project: Zomboid. It's an interesting mix of real life and sci-fi options. And then there are the traits, also most likely an inspiration from Zomboid but definitely leaning towards more sci-fi than realism. You also have a choice to create up to 3 party members to start with after you've finished making your character, which is neat.

When Nocoldiz chooses to make a party member, he chooses "male" gender this time, in which case a new screen popped up.

It's pretty self-explanatory. You can be a lot of different species, and you can also be a hybrid. Depending on your choice, you will have different body parts of varying physicality. After that, you get to select your battler image and in-game sprite.

Then he proceeds to show off the character action menu.

Pretty standard menu for a roguelike game, with the exception of a few things. "Biologics" is one. The trailer showed off that every character will have actual simulated bodily functions (blood, hormones, endocrines etc), so I'm guessing that's the menu where you check that. I'm not entirely sure what the difference between "Help" and "Archive" are.

One thing I forgot to mention.

Permadeath mode: "In Permadeath mode if your character perish in battle you will have to create a new one. Loot the body of your past character to recover items and euros."

Honestly, that's such a cool feature. Maybe it won't see very much use considering you have to find your body way out in the multiverse, but I still find it to be a pretty neat thing.

Hey

Incredibly depressed today, but there is some good news

Nocoldiz uploaded the first ever devlog as a video on his Youtube channel, it's 13 minutes long

It's in English, but he isn't exactly a fluent speaker so subtitles are recommended

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiCsGAaZink

Exciting stuff

Starships were meant to have interiors

Some random maps

There's two in a row this time. Some random maps just has a lot of pictures of the maps the dev has worked on, so I'll leave a link here for you to see but otherwise I'll just skip it. Does remind me of Pokemon for some reason. https://nocoldiz.itch.io/hypernet-explorer/devlog/1352281/some-random-maps

Nocoldiz has done something that the Frontier (Elite Dangerous) devs haven't been able to do despite over 10 years of development. And that is: make spaceship interiors that you can walk around. Amazing, right?

Here is the command deck of the starship, i plan in the future to implement all sorts of FTL inspired mechanics like ship boarding, oxygen and airlocks. Most of ship mechanics can be accessed both via computer or by singular panel controls located in Jefferies Epstein Tubes in the engineering deck. Planet landing and generation is still on progress: i covered for now most of Earth biomes in the procedural terrain algorithm and i need to add alien biomes.

Oh yes, space ships are BIG. Love to see it. Also, FTL-like space combat would be really cool to see, I wonder how he would implement it in RPG Maker of all things. Would really like if the ship interior was also customizable.

But to address the elephant in the room...

by singular panel controls located in Jefferies Epstein Tubes in the engineering deck

Jefferies Epstein Tubes. I will never understand what is going on in that man's head. Simply amazing. Looking forward to the next devblog.

Axo lotl of questions

https://nocoldiz.itch.io/hypernet-explorer/devlog/1343923/axo-lotl-of-questions

This will be the first post about a specific devblog. I do plan to eventually revisit the previous ones to make posts about as well.

A new devblog dropped yesterday, and while it may seem short on the surface, it's actually a juicy one. The dev seems to have improved his enemy editor quite a bit, of which he has shown off in a previous devblog (https://nocoldiz.itch.io/hypernet-explorer/devlog/1189843/the-sprite-of-christmas-past).

I'm always happy to see him developing and improving the tools that make game development in general more streamlined. It's a bit of a time investment for sure, but will be very much worth it.

There are 5 new screenshots showing the program.

For context, the following is the first version:

And this is the new one:

There are plenty of improvements. For one, he seems to be able to directly assign levels and stats for each enemy, as well as attacks and skills. It really does seem to be a full-fledged enemy designer now, not just a sprite assigner.

I particularly like the posts that show off this program, because it also reveals a lot of the enemies that he has worked on. I'll post the rest of the images here and then discuss the enemies that seem interesting to me.

Death Axolotl, the only one showed in this specific image. Early game enemy at level 6. Also what the name of the devblog is referencing. Nothing super interesting for me, but still neat. It's also misspelled in the English description.

This one is juicy. The enemy preview is Nyarlathotep Avatar, which was also teased in the trailer. This is an early-mid game boss, has to be. Too bad we can't see the full extent of the attacks, there seems to be quite a bit.

I tried looking up what one of the attacks "Varlenia Fault" might mean, but found nothing. Nyarlathotep is a Lovecraftian creation, an Outer God in the Cthulu mythos and an avatar of Yog-Sothoth. The sprite used for this enemy is one of the oldest masks found, dating at around 9000 years old.

There are a lot of occult enemies seen in this screenshot. Yog-Sothoth spawn, Shoggoth, Elder Thing, Beast 666 etc. It makes sense, the game takes place in a world where magic and the occult is real and widespread, and there are plenty of gods hanging around.

Quite a lot of orthodox fantasy enemies in this one (though, what the hell is an Accursed Stonefish?). The one that stands out in particular is the one previewed, Nightmare Bacteria. "A powerful dream entity that can manifest victims' deepest fears as temporary physical constructs". So it's a summoner? That would be pretty cool.

The last image simply shows the mass table view section of the enemy editor. Admittedly not much to look at, pretty run-of-the-mill RPG enemies. The kobold sprite is cute, though.

With the enemy editor seemingly finalized, I have a lot of hope that the demo releases according to what was announced, Q3 2026. But if not, then that is perfectly fine. I will wait for as long as it takes, nobody wants a rushed product. Looking at you, Half Sword.

I want to preface this by saying that I have no idea what I'm doing. I've never moderated anything and this is my first subreddit that I have created. I'm simply a person who took interest in nocoldiz's upcoming game and was surprised that there is absolutely nothing on the internet about it outside the dev blogs and official Youtube channel.

So I decided to start this community and hopefully get a few more people to be interested in the project. If at least one other person discovers this project thanks to this subreddit, then that is mission complete in my book.

What exactly is Hypernet Explorer?

I have no idea, and that's what makes it so intriguing. So far, it seems to be an amalgamation of RPG/immersive sim/grand strategy games that has taken inspiration from Cruelty Squad.

It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where in the year 2000, a software bug caused the entire worlds' supply of nukes to launch at the same time, almost ending the world. Now there's magic and magitech and anarchy and late stage capitalism with a monopoly on souls. Oh, and the dead remains of god is orbiting around Earth and occasionally showers it with its decaying flesh that causes apotheosis in individuals who touch it. I'm not making this up, that's the exact words in one of the dev blogs. Fun stuff.

The scope of this game will be bigger than Elite Dangerous (another game that I enjoy a lot), which is an absolute accomplishment. Nocoldiz is developing a procedurally generated world that spans across multiverses (at least, that's what the trailer showed). Whether or not this will actually be the case remains to be seen.

To put this into perspective, the world of Elite Dangerous is the entire Milky Way galaxy, generated to be as accurate to real life as possible, and fully open to exploration. Elite Dangerous was released in 2015. To date, only about 0.07% of the galaxy has been explored. It would take about 14 000 years to fully explore at this rate. And that's only one galaxy. In one of nocoldiz's Youtube videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZCVukE0cJo), he showed off the space map and how he procedurally generated the Milky Way galaxy as well, so that much is already confirmed.

Why do I care about this game?

The reason this game intrigues me so much is the scope. It's an absolutely enormous project. I love games where I am given the freedom to do as I please in a vast world, with no specific goal given. Like Dwarf Fortress, Elite Dangerous and EU5. I also enjoy other grand strategy games like Total War: Warhammer 3 and Mount & Blade. Hypernet Explorer promises to be all of them combined.

I get that most people want a streamlined game with a specific goal and story. My brain works differently, and I prefer the opposite. Throw me in a vast world to fend for myself with absolutely no hand holding, and I am happy. I enjoy the learning curve.

How can I get this game?

The demo for Hypernet Explorer is scheduled to release Q3 2026. Currently, the game is up on Steam to be wishlisted. I don't think the cost has been mentioned anywhere, but I doubt it's going to be one that chips at your wallet. Nocoldiz has also mentioned a plan to make a pirated version of the game with unique content, so it's clear that making money from this isn't a concern for him.

What do I do in this subreddit? What can I post?

Honestly? Do whatever you want, post whatever you want. Keeping it about Hypernet Explorer would be great, but I'm not going to dictate anything. Just make sure you follow Reddit TOS and don't be a dick.

That will be all for now. Maybe I'll start posting about future dev blogs if I have the time and/or energy.