Osiris: New Dawn

Gameplay and plot

Osiris: New Dawn is set in the year 2046, in which humans are starting to venture into interplanetary travel. The player is sent to the Gliese 581 system by the United Nations of Earth (U.N.E.) as a member of the second colonization team. The team is sent out to study the planets to see if they are habitable. The spacecraft malfunctions due to the light speed travel and crashes onto a deserted planet, which becomes the player's starting planet. In order to survive, the player must build a base while trying to prevail over the "unpredictable weather conditions".

Pre-release

Osiris: New Dawn was developed by Fenix Fire Entertainment, a two-man team. Development started five years before it was first shown at the 2016 PAX West convention, where a single-player demo was presented. Fenix Fire's lead developer, Brian McRae, mentioned in an interview that instead of setting out with the desire to make a survival game, he started by addressing the setting. He took inspiration from many science fiction movies, including Prometheus (2012), Gravity (2013), and The Martian (2015). McRae said he hates survival games. The team's first priority was to make the player feel immersed in the game's environment. McRae said he wanted the player to feel "pushed and inspired by the [survival] systems", and referenced The Martian when he said players will have to "Matt Damon yourself out of it". When Osiris: New Dawn was compared to No Man's Sky, one of the developers said that unlike No Man's Sky, they "want people to know what they’re getting".

The game was published by Reverb Triple XP, an initiative of Reverb Communications. Reverb also represents Ark: Survival Evolved, another survival video game. The developers said Reverb helped with the crafting elements of the game. The developers mentioned they were from a "Nintendo background", and said they liked the ease of use in Nintendo games and how people were able to "just jump right in and everything is intuitive". McRae said it was an amazing feeling being able to share the game with people who shared their "fascination with near-future space exploration".

On September 16, 2016, it was announced that Osiris: New Dawn was going to be released onto the Steam Early Access program. It was released on September 28, 2016, and the developers have plans to release the game onto PS4 and Xbox One sometime in 2017.

Early access release

The game was released onto Steam's Early Access program on September 28, 2016, accompanied by a new trailer. When it was released, the developers were still working on refining and broadening the gameplay. In a press release, Brian McRae said the game's release was the "very beginning of this epic journey", and noted their plans to continue to update and expand the game based on player's feedback.

Pre-release and early access

Prior to its release, Osiris: New Dawn was awarded the "PAX West Best Survival Game" from MMOGames and the "PAX West Best Indie MMO" from MMORPG. While the game was in early access, it received both positive and mixed reviews from critics.

On the day of release, the game rose to the top of Steam's current best sellers.