Aurora Nova is a story-driven, scifi, Roguelike deckbuilder where the player is a member of a highly-advanced species struggling to avoid extinction. Upgrade your vessels and their capabilities. Encounter unique events throughout the galaxy as you prepare to fight the greatest threat the Milky Way has ever seen.
Mechanically, Aurora Nova is most like Slay the Spire. Though aspects of the battle system will be very familiar to fans of Banners of Ruin. Moreover, the story settings and stakes are similar to Mass Effect or Starcraft!
THE TL:DR GAMEPLAY LOOP
Choose a ship and recruit additional ships to your task force
Collect cards, augmentations, card upgrades, ship upgrades
Fight three enemy factions while trying varying deck strategies
Defeat the final boss to earn a finalized campaign "loadout"
Use your loadouts earned from singleplayer victories in multiplayer
HUMANITY IS OVERRATED!
You don’t play as a human, like almost all other scifi stories out there.
You play as a Ranokk - an ancient and highly-advanced species that is battling against extermination.
NEW & UNIQUE APPROACH TO MULTIPLAYER
This is NOT like a traditional TCG multiplayer.
You aren’t customizing a deck before multiplayer battles. Your deck is immutable, and what’s in it is determined by your actions in the single-player campaign!
At the end of every campaign, your earned cards, ships, upgrades, augmentations, and items are stored as a “loadout”, with each loadout acting like a separate multiplayer profile.
Every time you beat the campaign, a new loadout like this is saved for use in multiplayer.
Choose from ANY of your previous loadouts from your history of campaign victories. Your ships, cards, upgrades, and augmentations will be loaded into battle against other real people and their winning loadouts.
Find out who really had the most powerful winning strategies!
- CAMPAIGN -
Command up to three ships in a task force of highly advanced alien spaceships. Unlock new ship classes with varying abilities and roles that evolve as the game goes on.
Wield ...
... a heavy hitting ability-caster, like the Riftwalker Class Dreadnaught
… a bastion of armor and weaponry like the Bonethresher Class Battleship
... an overwhelming offensive force like the Swarm Class Carrier
… a reliable multi-role stalwart like the Relentless Class Destroyer
… a defensive ability-caster and healer like the Archangel Class Auxiliary
Assemble your task force. Gather weaponry and abilities through cards. Modify your ship's capabilities with special technology called Augmentations. React to a changing battlefield with an array of collectible items. Enhance your ship's attributes to make them stronger and deadlier.
You will be a force on the battlefield. But your enemies are numerous and diverse.
Three aligned enemy factions and their varied warships will be brought to bear against your Ranokk task force. The Galactic Union vessels rely on conventional weapons that pack a punch. The Accretions use exotic weaponry that forces you to consider varied approaches to battle. And the Gigans, giant spacefaring behemoths, have enigmatic ways of warping the battlefield and tearing your vessels apart.
Achieve victory by learning your enemy's tactics and weaknesses. Turn your enemy factions against one another. Learn what the Accretions are planning. Stop them at all costs.
- STORY -
(All story missions are completely skippable if you are primarily a fan of the roguelike deckbuilder elements. You are able to choose rewards based on the paths that can be taken through each story mission.)
You are a Ranokk; part of a very advanced species that was nearly wiped out by a species called the Accretions millions of years ago. Over eons, your species recovered its technology and secretly grew in population. Returning to the stars, the Ranokk thrived once more.
Though always wary of encountering the genocidal Accretions, the Ranokk “Core” leadership decided that it is now finally time to interact with the many other species that formed the Galactic Union.
You will personally lead the military escort accompanying the Ranokk emissaries as they make the momentous journey to the seat of the Galactic Council. The Ranokk will hide no more.
But an insidious force lies at the heart of the Galactic Union, plucking strings and moving pawns from a position of near complete secrecy. A force that the Galactic Union calls the “Ancients”. You will find that these enigmatic creatures know of the Ranokk – and they intend to finish what they started when they heralded the Ranokk apocalypse millions of years ago.
- SINGLEPLAYER SCENARIOS -
Mix and match your task force, cards, augmentations, items, and more against any enemy formation you can think of to create custom battles. Use it to try scenarios that would never happen in single player, or test new strategies, and learn how to do better by planning for future campaign scenarios.