Helium Rain (itch)

Build your fleet, trade, explore and conquer

Helium Rain is a single-player space simulation that places you at the helm of a spacefaring company. Trade resources, buy ships and stations to fulfill contracts ! Dock at stations to buy and sell you wares or upgrade your ship, upgrade your technology to be more efficient and militarize your fleet to prevent piracy. 

You will need to master both real-time action and long-term strategy: destroying a freighter has a direct impact on the economy, while declaring war will make your spaceflight environment slightly more hostile...

• 13 playable ships with weapon and engine upgrades
  Build and fly fleets of fighters, bombers, cargos, corvettes or capital ships. Buy new engines and weapons. 
• Fast-paced combat with Newtonian flight, localized damage and joystick support
  There is no speed limit in Helium Rain. You can fly at half a mile a second while aiming backwards. Aim for critical systems in order to disable ships, kill their crew or capture targets, and don't fly into asteroids.
• Complex economy model
  Take advantage of a complex simulation of space trade to be the most competitive company. 
• A planetary system to explore
  Explore around 25 sectors orbiting the gas giant Nema and its moons.
• Procedural contracts, world exploration, technology upgrades
  Pick contracts and build your empire to become the largest company.
• Quick-action skirmish mode
  Setup your fleet, pick an opponent and go into fighting action right away !

A world that feels real

Your ships have generators, radiators, weapons, engines, cargo bays or life support systems - they all work together. Every thruster on your ship plays a role. Aim for engines to pin down your enemies, or send them spinning around by destroying power stations. Most ships have more than thirty individual parts ! You can customize the most important parts of your ships - your main engines, attitude control thrusters, weapons and hull colors.

Your competitors are independent factions, companies with the same goal as yours - ruling the system. They will try to undercut you, or even attack you if you become a threat to them. But don't be too quick to destroy them, as war can break the supply of resources you depend on ! Attacking freighters will destroy resources, with the potential to cause an economic crisis.

Recommended system

• 64-bits Windows or Linux system (32-bits systems are not supported)
• Intel Core i5 or equivalent
• GTX 970 or equivalent
• 4GB of RAM
• 5GB of free disk space

Linux-specific support

Linux is fully supported, with the following caveats.

• AMD users should launch the game with the "-vulkan" command-line parameter (full command "HeliumRain.sh -vulkan"), using the open-source radeonsi driver.
• NVidia users can encounter a NVidia driver regression causing the game to render entirely white. Until this is fixed by NVidia, affected users should prefix the launch command with "__GL_GlslUseCollapsedArrays=0" (full command "__GL_GlslUseCollapsedArrays=0 ./HeliumRain.sh"). We anticipate this issue to be resolved soon.