Where to get it

Steam

2013 · Zero Point Software · First-person shooter · Indie

Interstellar Marines

PlayStation console exclusive

nterstellar Marines resurrects the old school tactical FPS, offering a unique blend of co-op, role-playing and nonlinear gameplay. Set in a believable future, you take on the role as an elite soldier handpicked to join Project IM, a top secret military program being assembled to protect mankind from all dangers outside our solar system.

Released: 2 July 2013
Platforms: Linux PlayStation 3 Windows macOS
Genres: First-person shooter Indie Role-playing Science Shooter Simulation Tactical
Developers: Zero Point Software
Publishers: Zero Point Software
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: First person Virtual Reality
Themes: Action Science fiction
Languages: English
Time to beat: 2hmain story65hcompletionist

About

Interstellar Marines is a discontinued science fiction first-person shooter video game that was developed by indie studio Zero Point Software until 2019. It was added to Steam Greenlight on September 3, 2012 and later released on Steam Early Access on July 2, 2013.

Interstellar Marines was being developed in four acts, formerly planned as individual titles. The first act, code-named "Prologue", was in development and took place in a future military training facility that staged multiplayer, single-player, and cooperative training scenarios. Multiplayer was the first feature of Prologue to be built, doubling as both a tech foundation for future co-op missions and as a playable Early Access release on Steam. The first co-op mission, titled The NeuroGen Incident, was released on September 26, 2014 which built much of the technology needed for intended future co-op campaigns.

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Gameplay

The player controls an individual Marine from a first person perspective with functions for walking, running, jumping, crouching, peeking over cover, leaning, sprinting, and sliding. The Marine suite has regenerative armor and the Marine will be disabled when the armor is fully damaged. The Marine's suit also measures oxygen saturation levels, which increase due to activity and affect the player's aim stability as the level increases. The Marine has three weapons available, a pistol, submachine gun, and assault rifle.

The SMG and AR can have a suppressor attached and have three fire modes, semi-auto, burst, and full-auto, while the pistol only fires in semi-auto mode. Each weapon features a tactical flashlight and a laser sight. Game modes feature PvE and PvP encounters. In PvE, players fight against several types of Combat Training Robots (CTRs), androids which can carry weapons or can charge at the player with a weaponless melee attack.

Development

Development of Interstellar Marines began in May, 2005 under the working title Project IM. It was announced in November, 2005 and was described by the developers as "a AAA, FPS, sci-fi, action and adventure game." It was initially planned for release on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with the game being built using Epic Games' Unreal Engine. A demo was completed in 2007 and Zero Point Software met with publishers at GDC in 2008, but, during the 2008 financial crisis, investors later pulled out. Development restarted with the Unity game engine in 2009.

The game was initially funded by player pre-orders and an external investor. This mitigated the need for publisher backing whilst attempting to produce a game of higher quality than is typically released by independent developers. Zero Point Software called their early crowdfunding model "AAA Indie". Players would pre-order the game while it was still in early development and gain access to demos or the current game build in its entirety.