NeonXSZ begins descent to Steam August 22
NeonXSZ, the latter three letters of which are pronounced "excesses," will launch on Steam via Early Access on August 22. The game puts players in the cockpit of a ship within cyberspace, joining a war between viruses and machines. While just entering beta, NeonXSZ is "already fully playable for 100-plus hours," according to the single-person developer, Intravenous Software.
NeonXSZ features "dozens of ships" complete with more than 850 upgrades, emphasizing treasure-collecting and enemy-blasting gameplay akin to that of classic "6DoF" FPS games like Descent and twitchy shooters such as Quake. The procedurally-generated, open world in NeonXSZ includes "approximately one thousand AI dudes" from four different factions, each at odds with one another. Those enemies drop parts of their hulls, upgrades and weaponry, so loot gathered from players' conquests is not randomized. The alpha version of NeonXSZ arrived on the Desura store in September 2013 for PC, Mac and Linux.
Intravenous Software says the first 30 hours of the game are considered "content complete," and are fine-tuned thanks to 18 months of alpha testing. The developer began creating the game on a part-time basis in December 2011. Two weeks into development, the founder's small business was robbed and was forced to close, turning NeonXSZ into a full-time project. According to the game's site, the only element of its development that wasn't created by one person is the soundtrack, which is provided by musician Python Blue.
[Image: Intravenous Software]
