Future looking bright for Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo for side-scrolling sci-fi adventure coming to Steam on June 30th

Normally in futuristic sci-fi, any attempts to recolonize other planets involve select groups of specialists (or just as likely, rich people who can afford it) aboard ark-like vessels constructed for long hauls through deep space. That leaves a lot of people on the outside looking in, of course, so why not just steal a ship and populate your own new planet instead? This is the assignment for the ragtag crew of From Hell Studio's upcoming Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts. 

It's 2121, and after a calamitous event known as the Day of the Collapse, the galaxy has been oppressively ruled by a mega-company called NexxusCorp. However, a resistance movement has sprung up called the Cicadas, who have been plotting against NexxusCorp ever since, carrying out hundreds of successful sabotage missions. Now the goal is even bigger and it's time for the Titan Mission: infiltrate a lunar complex, kidnap a leading terrafomist expert, steal the prototype interstellar starship Dragon X13, and set course for Proxima B on Alpha Centauri to help establish the first off-world human settlement. Leading the mission is Agatha Hope – highly accomplished and just as fiercely motivated after NexxusCorp killed her family. She'll need help in order to succeed, but it turns out that managing the egos and personalities of a motley crew of brilliant but "self-interested" fellow resistance fighters may just be the biggest challenge of all. 

Controlled by either keyboard/mouse or gamepad, Hope is a stylish "minimalist" side-scrolling adventure in which you must guide Agatha through the Lunar 3 complex and (spoiler alert!) her newly liberated but unfamiliar spaceship, solving puzzles, completing minigames and interacting with her voiceless, faceless crew members along the way. Joining her – or potentially opposing her – are genetically enhanced master strategist Roberto Rodriguez; best friend and cyber-medicine specialist Sabah Dagher; computer genius and former spy Donny Backman; the team's remote handler Daisy McClory (aka Killswitch); and Mariko Nishimura, the abducted specialist who "may be a liability" if she can't be persuaded to cooperate. 

To accomplish the mission and keep the team intact, you will need to "talk your way out of trouble, and when that fails, use your wits to solve puzzles, and take advantage of 22nd century tools to breach experimental technology." That will involve downloading new programs for such tasks as bypassing biometric security measures, cracking codes, or hacking network maps. You'll also solve puzzles the old-fashioned way by collecting inventory items needed to progress, but a slick icon-based interface will indicate where they can be used when interacting with the appropriate hotspots, eliminating any use-everything-on-everthing guesswork. Your choices and actions matter too, affecting both relationships and mission success, perhaps even having life-or-death consequences if you're not careful.  

Created by two Venezuelan indie developers, Azrael Arocha and Wil Alvarez, the game was originally announced as episodic but is now being built as a single standalone adventure. The full version of Hope: A Sky Full of Ghosts is still a way off, but a playable demo is on its way soon, due to launch on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux on June 30th.