The Long Journey Home features "exploration everywhere"

We had a chat with creative director Andreas Suika the intriguing space exploration game The Long Journey Home. Procedural generation, alien diplomacy, resource management, and much more.

One fascinating part of the game is how communication and dialogue is not only a game mechanic, but it's also deeply built into the rest of the game.

"We started really with a prototype how people can communicate if they haven't the same language," says Suika. "I'm not native English, so to communicate and bring over your message is already hard in this world. So we thought this could be a good basis. So that like an Italian guy and a Japanese guy try to communicate and it goes completely wrong."

"We wanted that in the game, so we tried to have a system where you build sentences, small ones. You can ask about things, you can talk about things, you can show things, you can insight, you can praise things and then in the dialogue and how the aliens react is really based on their traits and how they are. It's not multiple choice, and you will be learning new words with time so you can even 'explore' the dialogue, and find quests there so you can show some one something special and they say 'oh, I know that you have to go to that planet, there's an old man he can maybe help you'. To have this kind of exploration everywhere in the game, so there comes that fun and to have the feeling of I'm alone and nobody understands me and I can do something wrong if I'm not aware how they are and who they are."

Another interesting aspect is how your ship is great at the start and you're objective rather than expanding it is to try and keep it from falling apart.

"The resource management is not really in the depths of you have to micro-manage everything, but it's really like we wanted to have it all about the feeling of being alone and trying to get home," says Suika. "We did something, normally in an RPG it's like you are small at the beginning and you are big at the end."

"For us it's more you have a big ship at the beginning and it's falling apart and you're trying to keep it together and for that you need resources, you put new devices in your ship and you don't have weapons in the beginning, you don't have a shield in the beginning but you can get them from the aliens and it can give you some advantages. For example a shield is also has 'communication' means, there is a race in the game that acts really positive if you raise your shields before you call them because it shows power. We built everything around that and that's the meaning of the resource management is to have communication means with the aliens, trading is also not just you sell that and that's it, you have to barter with them, so they offer you money and you can say, no I want more, more, more and maybe they get totally pissed, maybe for them it's a diplomatic incident if you over do it, so you have to learn how to use your resources, your devices, your items and your crew in a good way."

The Long Journey Home is planned for release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One late in 2016.