Today, I want to introduce Anoxia Station, an intriguing strategy game that takes players into the depths of the Earth. I recently discovered it and am already eager to try it out.
In the wake of a catastrophic supervolcano eruption, Earth’s surface has become a barren wasteland, forcing humanity to seek refuge underground. Set in a dystopian 1988, Anoxia Station places players in the role of managing a mining station deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Tasked with extracting essential resources, they must make life-or-death decisions to ensure the survival of the crew and the remnants of mankind. The game blends strategy and horror elements, immersing players in a dark, atmospheric experience where every choice can have dire consequences.
In Anoxia Station, players lead a diverse crew of Terranauts, comprising specialists from rival nations such as the Soviet Union, the United States, and Japan, each with their own hidden agendas. Navigating the perils of extreme heat, radiation, and the ever-shifting rock in randomized maps offers a unique challenge with every playthrough. The haunting isometric visuals depict the beauty and terror of the underground world, from vast salt caves to rivers of moonmilk. As players delve deeper in search of a fabled oil deposit that could save humanity, the greatest threat may come not from the hostile environment but from within the crew itself.
Anoxia Station is a PC game developed by Yakov Butuzoff and published by Abylight Studios. It has no release date yet. Below is more info, screens, and a trailer, and here is the Steam page.
ABOUT THIS GAME
Anoxia Station is a mining management game set in a dystopian near-past. A supervolcanic eruption devastated the Earth’s surface, rendering it uninhabitable. Nations now teeter on the brink of extinction relying on the Terranauts – miners sent into the hellish depths of this dying world-. Their mission: extract petroleum, crucial to sustaining humanity’s essential infrastructures and survival.
It’s 1988 and humanity fights on, as the Earth’s state deteriorates. Your crew is part of an international group of Terranauts sent to a demilitarized neutral zone. Heading into extreme depths and braving intense radiation, heat, and shifting rock, they discover an enormous abandoned mining station and information about a massive deposit of crude oil that could fuel humanity’s salvation.
But first they need to find the deposit. That means enduring conditions in the most inhospitable place known to man, while mining resources to support themselves and the remnants of mankind. The extraction must never halt, no matter the cost.
Mining Beyond the Extreme
Your goal is to rip apart the dark depths of Earth, producing resources to keep your workers alive and humanity surviving another day. Against you are extreme pressure, heat, radiation, and other incomprehensible dangers lurking deep beneath the decaying surface, across randomized maps that make every playthrough unique.Every turn brings new challenges, forcing difficult decisions and careful consideration of circumstances. Every injury or death reduces the size of your crew permanently, while the pressure pulls them ever closer to the brink of snapping and endangering the whole station.
Each strip-mined and secured sector brings the entire crew closer to the fabled oil deposit. But the deeper you go, the more dangerous the environment becomes, bringing new dangers, new rules of survival, and new discoveries to make for the sake of mankind.
The Darkness Within
The end of the world did not end humanity or its wars. Your crew might bring together specialists from the Soviet Union, the United States, the German Democratic Republic, Japan and beyond, old rivalries die hard. Everyone has their own agenda and ambitions, even in the dark deep beneath the surface.Choose the leader of the mining station and their crews. The team you set up alters the game – specially their secret goals. As the station continues its search, the greatest enemy might turn out to be your fellow man.
Remember, you´ll need to keep them alive. Crewmen might become despicable, but if they fall, entire production lines might be extinguished, spelling hardship, if not death for the whole mission.
Decayed Beauty
The forbidden depths of the Earth are a place of beauty, where pressure, heat, and titanic natural forces created wonders: caves made of quartz crystals, giant lakes of magma, vast salt caves and rivers of moonmilk, all depicted in a uniquely isometric style grounded in real physical processes.The soundscape evokes the horror of working in this environment, a mix of the deafening roars of shifting rock, the harsh sounds of mining and welding, the distant clicking of something clearly inhuman, and a familiar scream.
Nobody from the surface will hear you scream. Whatever you do down here though, may save them.
