Approaching Infinity

Approaching Infinity is a procedurally generated, turn-based space exploration roguelike. You upgrade your ship, equip officers and travel through a dangerous galaxy of alien factions, mysterious artifacts and tactical battles. Each playthrough generates new sectors, planets, caves, items and encounters, creating different challenges and stories.

Create your crew

A character creator lets you adjust your appearance, choose a preset, randomize it or skip customization. You can then choose from 10 space-themed classes, each with game-altering skills. Later, you can recruit up to five more officers from different disciplines to round out your team.

Explore the galaxy

You begin with an optional quest to find out what happened to the human colony. You can pursue a specific role or mission, or roam from place to place taking odd jobs and selling excess loot. Your choices include fighting or making peace, mining asteroids, trading commodities, surveying planets, extorting freighters, smuggling illegal goods, conducting diplomacy, collecting artifacts, crafting, harvesting rare plants, studying creatures, salvaging shipwrecks and choosing a side in the galactic conflict.

Fourteen major factions have full quest lines, and you can learn their histories, help secure their futures or work against them. The stories of 12 major alien races also have quest lines; eight lead to unique victories. Two other ways to win can be discovered as you travel. You can instead ignore victory goals and keep exploring, leveling up your crew and gear.

Battles and survival

Combat is turn-based, and the galaxy is dangerous: threats can be waiting in nebulae, underground tunnels, shipwrecks and star temples. Hidden objectives, mysteries and problems to solve with your own wits are also scattered across the game. Adventure mode makes death an inconvenience rather than a permanent end to your journey.

A reactive universe

The game combines simulated systems with streamlined rules. Fire can spread between trees, catches faster on planets with high oxygen, and goes out immediately in high CO2 or vacuum. Water puts out a character who is on fire. If you shoot a hole in the wall of a pressurized shipwreck, escaping air moves everything, including you, in its direction.

Time and distance are more abstract: a space sector, a shipwreck deck and a planetary landing zone each appear on maps of the same size, and moving in any of these places takes one turn.