To make a profit, you could opt to trade cargo between eerie space stations, or become a space pirate and steal cargo. You can join the police force, or become a bounty hunter and track and destroy the most wanted criminals in the galaxy. You can mine asteroids, act as a high speed courier or taxi paying customers from sector to sector.

Flatspace aims to be the most comprehensive game of it's type and feels like a simulation, while retaining a fast paced arcade feel to the combat. The graphics are fully 3D and use the HECToR 3D engine to generate spectacular effects. Additional language versions will be made available as soon as possible.

Upgrades
As a space captain you can fly any of over a hundred ships in the Flatspace universe, providing you can afford the price tag.

Ships can be customised to your will or requirements with many different fittings. Weapons, shield units, generators, trackers and scanners, tractor beams and capture equipment, stun beams, mines and missiles and many more.

Crew
Many ships can have extra crew members (or robots if you prefer). Extra cabin space for passengers is often provided.

Larger ships also have gun turrets, which can be equipped with a weapon of your choice. As captain you assign crew to duty based on their training. Your personnel can have many skills from laser weaponry and cookery, to plastic surgery and bomb disposal.

Ships can also contain other fighters. Some spectacular battles can take place when two carriers decide to fight.

Artificial Intelligence
Every vessel in the game universe exists and is constantly monitored. The computer controlled ships can do everything the player ships can, and make profits or losses. The galaxy's most wanted criminals are real ships that evolved to be the best, not random names on a list.

Influences
The game is partly influenced by Rogue like games and in particular my favourites Nethack and ADOM. Some of the features of those games are present here including a map you must reveal, and many random elements to make every game different. The player has a choice of character that determines initial equipment. Like many rogue like games, a graveyard shows past games together with details like who killed you, and how. Your quest is for the fractional space galactic hyperdrive, an item assembled in parts as in many role playing games.

Like Elite II: Frontier you can take on missions from furniture delivery to assassinations. The choice (and risk) is yours to make. There are a lot of options and a huge number of ships and upgrades to choose from. You can opt to play in a utopian crime free universe with very little crime and no piracy, or a more dangerous place where only police and pirates exist in an eternal struggle.

The arcade control method is based on the system used in some of my old arcade games such as Roton and Xenex on the Amiga, and the top down view point was partly inspired by the game Starscape, which proved that a serious game could exist in that perspective.