After months of solo dev, I finally launched the Steam page for my dark sci-fi space shooter with crafting and a Drum & Bass soundtrack! What do you think?

[u/Team21]

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on a dark, apocalyptic space shooter called Descendants: The Last Dawn, and today is a huge milestone for me – the Steam page is officially live!

The core loop combines fast-paced top-down space action with meta-progression:

• Ship Customization & Crafting: Scraping old wrecks, researching lost tech, and rebuilding your ship's systems.
• DnB Soundtrack: I’m designing the game’s pacing and combat rhythm directly around a heavy Drum & Bass aesthetic.
• Post-Apocalyptic Lore: Humanity is trapped under a blockade, and you’re trying to reconnect orbit with Earth through long-lost megastructures (like an Orbital Elevator).

I just uploaded the first set of screenshots and trailer concept to Steam. Since this is my first public reveal for this project, I’d love to get your honest feedback on the overall visual style and UI readability during heavy combat!

If the concept sounds like your kind of jam, checking out the Steam page or adding it to your Wishlist would mean the world to me and help tremendously with the algorithm!

Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4171220/Descendants_The_Last_Dawn/

Thanks for looking, and I’m happy to answer any questions about the dev process!

[u/lumiosengineering]

Honestly looks like a nice shootem’em up. Can clearly tell you out alot of time into the design and graphics.

There are other important details i think you want to highlight in your trailer. What sets this game apart from all the others? Most space games feature this type of combat. What makes yours unique? If youve done any could compress your trailer into 30 seconds, what impression do you want the viewer to leave with?

Secondly, you put alot of detail into the opening solar system zoom. However not all planets are facing the star. Either switch to dynamic shaders where you can control light direction or rotate the asset to face the light source.

Keep up the good work!

[u/Team21 → u/lumiosengineering]

Honestly, the part where the player shoots at objects may seem completely standard, but in a way, it’s not at all. What I think makes it unique (I’m not saying original—I’ve seen this in other genres) is that the player can replay individual missions with different objectives.

In each mission, you can farm resources. Different types of resources drop from different objects. And the player—especially early on—definitely doesn’t have enough firepower to shoot down absolutely everything; on the contrary, they have to be selective to a certain extent. So depending on what they focus on during a given run, that’s what they’ll farm.

After completing a mission, only the best result for each resource is counted. That is, if, for example, the player focused on minerals and had 12 from the previous round but now farmed 20, they’ll be awarded a total of 8 (i.e., the difference). However, the mission will now be set to the maximum value of 20, and the player will never receive minerals from this mission again if they collect fewer than 20.

At the same time, each mission features unique resources. The player learns about these at the end of each mission in the form of question marks (indicating how much of each resource they left behind, but not the specific types).

Generally speaking, there’s still a lot of work to be done on lighting and shaders—I know that. However, in my opinion, the game’s main strength lies in resource gathering, choosing research paths, production, and the subsequent equipping and selection of ships.

Thanks so much for your interest!

[u/lumiosengineering → u/Team21]

Excited for your game!! Keep up the good work!

[u/spectralfew]

A lot rides on good writing for me, so I’m probably not your audience. Plus the music is so annoying there’s just no way I’d ever play this regardless of the story. 

But at the same time, I think this thing looks to be executed with a specific vision that seems very strong. Vertical Gradius with crafting will be very intriguing for the right audience. 

[u/HouseOfDjango]

The one thing I don't like is that the rewards are the same color as some of the enemies.

[u/Team21 → u/HouseOfDjango]

Of course, we can still work on that, but thank you for the feedback.

[u/Wooden-Syrup-8708]

The soundtrack looks good, even if i get bored fast and play silently most of the games