The hero of our story is a “simple” janitor. A worker who just wanted a normal day at work when something went wrong. The ship derailed and by the time he woke up, the Aurora 5 had sunk into the total madness of space-time.

He must use all his skills and abilities to get out alive, or better still, steer the ship back on course.


The janitors are trained to keep the city-ships clean and tidy while most of its inhabitants sleep in deep stasis. Janitors are maintenance and cleaning staff in one, trained to work quietly and invisibly, using secret passageways or hiding in the shadows, so that their work never disturbs sleeping or awake passengers.


As chaos erupts, our hero must utilize the very skills that made him an effective janitor.

One of the most important pieces of special equipment janitors have is the A.U.C.S helmet, which not only tells them their current duties, vital signs, and equipment status, but also the surrounding light levels, and therefore their visibility. It is an essential tool in the eyes of every janitor.

Although janitors can do their job without a helmet, the Aurora Board does not recommend ignoring it (but you can do so if you want to)

Although the janitors mostly hide in the shadows and travel by secret passages, some of them, once the madness has taken over the ship, rely on the power of weapons and mutations rather than hiding.

In such cases, they use homemade gadgets - in addition to Mutamod(s)™ - or weapons from the defense forces, or, in a desperate emergency, their primary tool: the power wrench!


The power wrench or the “board-allowed multifunctional, heavy-duty, extendable maintenance tool” is the janitor’s best friend. This handy tool is suitable for a wide range of tasks and can be outfitted with a variety of accessories. Although there have been cases where a janitor has used the tool in self-defense, it is important to remember that a power wrench is not a weapon! And using it as a such, especially against a passenger, is a serious offense and will result in immediate off-ship teleportation.


Sadly, in the chaos after the incident, an organization of renegade janitors and civilians called the "Brothers of the Wrench" emerged. This illegal grouping uses the power wrench not only as a weapon, but worships it as a sacred object that holds the combined power to both build and destroy, and as such, is the solution to all problems. What exactly they mean by this is anyone's guess, but the radicals of the group are growing in strength and currently control most of the engineering section of the ship.

The Aurora Board of course strongly dissociates itself from the organization and its methods or narrative!


Janitors are not just ordinary workers. They are all highly skilled and highly dedicated individuals who have accepted the job with the knowledge that they will probably never see the new homeland of mankind as the slumbering passengers will. Yet they are dedicated, knowing that only with their help will the ship stations eventually reach their destination, hundreds of years away.

The janitors are not just laborers, but a brotherhood, a tight-knit fellowship, bound together forever by a common purpose, and a shared creed. (and a very strong conditioning program)

So... are you ready to be one of them someday? Will you undertake perhaps the hardest job in the world for the greater good, for the survival of humanity? It's up to you...

Wishlist RetroSpace, spread the word, be awesome, and stay funky!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/2067820/RetroSpace/

The Wild Gentlemen

In January 2023, exactly one year ago, we announced the RetroSpace project. We didn't know what to expect when we unveiled our funky, groovy, crazy and surely surprising (yet strangely familiar?) trailer.

We wanted to come up with a game that was completely new and bold, yet somehow nostalgic, something we'd never played before but felt like we still knew from somewhere. Perhaps in an alternate timeline, RetroSpace has emerged as a rival to Half-Life and System Shock 2? Who knows?

In any case, our debut trailer gave us an explosive start! And on our social sites (especially Twitter, which some people now call X...) we produced numbers that we still can't believe to this day, because we never paid a single space-dollar for advertising.

Do people just love what we do? That's it? Well... Yeah. Simple as that. Which is nice!


First of all, once we announced the game, we were very keen to make development as open as possible.

Not only do we give you a behind-the-scenes look at development, sometimes with hilariously lame and janky devroom videos, but we also often ask followers for their opinions on very serious design decisions.

Ragdoll or animated death? Interactive or static map? Endless hoarding or inventory system Tetris? Whatever the question is, the most important thing for us is to make the game you want to play! (as long as it matches what we want, of course... Muhaha!)


It was also important for us to show how things are made and how they end up in the game. So we often showed the amazing works of our artists from the first sketches to the final product.


Then, as the year went on and more and more of you followed us here on Steam and on social media, the requests and offers started to come in.

We were lucky enough to be featured at RealmsDeep 2023, IGN-hosted Fear Fest, and the Indie Horror Showcase, to name a few, but we also made it to the top of PitchYaGame. These are all fantastic achievements that we couldn't have dreamed of at first (not even under stasis!)

At the Indie Cup, we received 3 major nominations, Critics' Choice Award, Most Promising Game Award, and Most Anticipated Game Award. And that's groovy as hell! If all this wasn't enough, we were even mentioned by the one and only Charlatan Wonder in the year-end Immsim round-up.

Finally, we summed up the big achievements of the year, and we were surprised by what we saw. We were like... Funk! Those are some serious numbers, man!


Oh, my, If you only knew, my friend...
2024 will be the year of RetroSpace! What can be expected? A public demo? That's for sure. But if all goes well, maybe an Early Access release too! A Kickstarter? That's also likely. Or... maybe much, much, much more! (wink, wink)

A lot of the work is still to be done, we're just getting the rockets fired up, and we all know how deep the black hole's ... ... ... hole is (or we don't, but maybe the game will tell us that too). Anyway... you can't imagine how grateful we are that with your help we've been able to achieve all this.

We are honored to have such a great community already! Keep on growing (or... ehm... mutating), and keep on loving RetroSpace as much as we love you, Janitors!

And never forget:
"In space, no one can hear you GROOVE!"