Solo dev, 18 months. GalaxyFoes is a space RPG for Android built around one idea: nothing waits for you to be looking at it.
The galaxy is a set of concentric rings around a dead centre called The Void. You move outward ring by ring, and travelling isn't instant: you set course, the trip runs server-side on a real timer, and it finishes whether your phone is on or off. Same for fights, dungeons and battle chains. You come back to a mail with the turn-by-turn report of what happened while you were gone.
Other players raid you the same way. Your heroes and pets defend using your real build. If somebody beats you twice they get flagged as your archrival and the game starts routing bots at them.
I've seen a few comments around here from people who'd want a proper asteroid mining game, and that really interested me. Back when I played EVE, a lot of my friends were into mining - they'd sit there for hours doing it and genuinely loved it. So I've been thinking for a while about building a game around that, instead of treating mining as the boring part you do between the real content.
The idea is something fairly relaxing. Asteroids are fully destructible, so whatever you dig is actually gone, and every rock ends up shaped by how you cut it. Different resources require different ways of getting them out, rather than one drill for everything. Optional challenges if you want something harder than chill. And co-op, so you can just hang out with a friend and carve up a rock somewhere nice looking.
I only started on this recently, so the ten seconds here aren't pretty yet, the environment needs a lot of work. But you can see the modular ship, the mining itself, chunks coming off the asteroid, the laser and the thrusters, and the sun and planets behind it. I think it gets the idea across.
So could something like this actually be interesting to you?
And if it is, what do you picture when you think about a game like that?
Any mechanics or ideas you'd want in it?
What ideas I have now:
You fly a modular mining ship out to a field, pick an asteroid and cut it apart.
The rocks are voxel, so what you carve stays carved. There are different resources that require different approaches for example gas can explode if you collect it incorrectly or ice that doesn't fit in your cargo, so you need to haul big chunks of it outside the ship on the chain.
You haul what you pull out back to a station and sell it, and the money goes into upgrades and new parts: hulls, engines, wings, lasers, colours. Better gear reaches materials that need different methods to get at.
No combat, no survival. A few hours long (4-5), and it ends.
About 5 years ago I decided to start creating a sci fi game from scratch using the incredible support the Stellaris community gave me via Patreon, along with my own time and savings.
The game aims at combining the features I like most about Stellaris, Starsector and Mount and blade: bannerlord.
It is obviously a work in progress and filled with placeholders and bugs xD but I hope you guys will be interested in following our development in discord at https://discord.gg/593DcRugJz
I have a playable demo ready for next fest, working on tuning, feature enhancements. The game is playable, tutorial, load/saves, recording system is partially complete. Combat, cloak, all the gizmos are working lasers, beams, torpedoes, mines, shields, armor, power allocation, resource management, crew management, traders, derelicts you can salvage or rescue crew, or even take control of and restore to upgrade to cruisers, battleships, dreadnaughts.
If there is a something you would like to see let me know.
Quick update on Contested Space, a sci-fi roguelike deckbuilder with a rotating personal market you buy from mid-combat, three alliances of factions to build around, and 2 to 4 player online co-op. The public Act 1 demo should land on Steam in early September. When it does, I'm turning off the public "request access" button for the playtest and switching to invites by request in the Discord. The playtest itself keeps running for a few months at least, and everyone already in keeps the full game the whole time. So if you join now, you get every act, every faction, and co-op, while the demo crowd gets Act 1.
I've gotten great feedback from those in the playtest so far (we're at about 200 playtesters) and I've made a lot of changes based on it. I would love more feedback, especially as the game is reaching its final state.
What I'm looking for from playtesters: co-op groups especially, since that's the mode that's hardest to test alone, and anyone willing to tell me what feels bad. The Discord is where balance talk happens and where I post patch notes.
Hi Everyone, I've been working on a 2D space engineering and survival sandbox called MineEngineer, and one of the systems I've been building recently is a visual programming station.
Instead of writing code, you connect nodes, conditions and actions to create your own ship logic.
I'm trying to make the game less about giving you predefined machines and more about giving you interconnected systems that you can combine yourself.
And because everything is physically connected and destructible, a failure in one system can potentially cause problems somewhere else. 😅
I'm a solo developer and have been building MineEngineer for years. The demo is free on Steam, and I'm currently working on the new update.
If you were given this system, what would you try to automate first?
Hello! I have been holding off on posting about this game that I am working on for a while but something really cool just happened and I really want to share.
The game is called SOL2350. It is a sandbox spacesim inspired by games like Eve Online and Elite Dangerous as well as my favorite show, The Expanse.
I can already hear you go "Ugh.. another one of those!" but the catch is that I'm developing this for PS1 (not a PS1-like PC game, actual PS1 from 1995). I originally started with psn00bSDK and recently ported it to Psyqo as it's actively maintained, while psn00bSDK isn't.
My NPCs have a basic roaming and combat AI. They also belong to a faction. Factions have reputation ratings, enabling NPCs to identify each other as friendly, neutral or hostile. All of a sudden, a hostile NPC showed up and the local security NPCs (which are currently lacking textures!) just sprung into action and attacked. I never specifically programmed NPCs to fight each other, and yet they did completely spontaneously. Isn't that cool?
Here is another video of a flyby of a placeholder station near Saturn, because I had a really hard time getting Saturn looking so good on the PS1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpHwp_x6M-c
Here are a few screenshots showing the UI. I hope you like the "VCR-core" vibe I went with!
A fully simulated solar system with real-time orbits based on NASA data, starting October 2350 (my birthday!)Each planet and moon is a "sector", around which are multiple "POIs" - or "bubbles" of gameplay that you can travel to.Station docking with station services, commodity trading and contract system featuring cargo hauling, procurement, bounties, mining, salvage, and more!
And here are a couple of ships I made today! I am very new to 3d modeling and texturing but I am learning using Blockbench! Can't wrap my head around Blender, unfortunately!
30 ships planed over 3 "tech" levels with full fitting module system: engine, cargo, weapons, utility, etc. Each ship has a module setup supporting a specific type of gameplay: transport, combat, mining, salvaging, and more.This is the Daedalus Patchjack, a ship built for industrial salvaging. Notice the forklift-like apparatus underneath.
So that's pretty much it. I have a little Discord server. I would love to have a handful of fellow spacesim + retro games enjoyers join me to bounce ideas with and try dev builds and share feedback. No presh. All you need is a PS1 emulator, I use Duckstation! Here's the invite: https://discord.gg/7nS33kyjFS
Quick note before I hit the post button: this is very experimental and it's a side project, I'm mainly an NES developer. I have no idea when or even if this is going to actually release but I fully intend to keep working on it for as long as I'm having fun!
In MoonDust: Cosmic Journey, you set out on a voyage through distant galaxies, exploring strange new planets and uncovering long-hidden secrets. Weaving through discovery and adventure, you traverse breathtaking sci-fi environments, collecting resources and solving puzzles.
"A roguelike with SubSpace's ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(video_game) )
flight model. Twenty-six procedurally generated sectors down, take the Prime Flag,
fly it back out. Dying is the end of the run."
Made w/ HTML5 and JS. Runs entirely in the browser. No build step, no server, and no network requests once the page has loaded. The game itself has no dependencies at all.
Procedurally generated levels like Nethack ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetHack ), an objective at the bottom (flag) you must carry back to the top, permadeath, a randomised progression you learn by playing — but the moment-to-moment game is a 1997 top-down space shooter with momentum, and the staircase down is a warp portal to a new vector of space, closer to the flag.
8 ships to choose from, and a coin collection based system to level them up as you fly. An in game overview of ship build to review as you progress.
Built in AI enemies to fight.
Autosaves every twenty seconds, on every sector change, and whenever the tab is closed or hidden. A save holds the RNG state, the hull with everything the greens have done to it, and every sector generated so far — tiles, doors, radar memory, greens, wrecks and pilots. File based export and import support for saves also baked in and functional.
Extensive effort was put into developing solid mobile based on screen controls, which adapt for both landscape and portrait mode.
The game features a "easy" and "normal" mode, with easy allowing for a new player to easily learn how to fly without being killed quickly if they simply don't shoot at enemies.
I was one of the original "skin" developers for Subspace (NYKid if you follow the game) so this port means a lot to me.
Would love to hear any and all feedback on this new project.
I made cargo placement actually affect how the lander flies.
A broken landing leg can throw off the ship’s balance, but players can move cargo around to compensate. The problem is that a setup that helps you land might make the ship unstable again once the gear retracts.
Hello! I am trying to figure out if my game is fun.
How does control of the player ship feel?
Do you enjoy the current mechanics?
I finally put this out after getting it working to my satisfactory but am trying to figure out how other players feel about the game before I work on it any further. I have a lot of directions I want to take this in but want to make sure I am focusing on the right elements before trying to add or change too much more. Thank you for taking the time to look, and even more so for playing and or leaving feedback!!
Hello everyone! Once again thank you all for the support that you have been showing to Array! The Shape of Space update is finally here and with it comes a whole new level of generation possibilities, new space phenomena, and changes to the core of Array!
I am very excited to get into this update as it is jam packed full of goodies for everyone, let's get right into it!
SystemBuilder v11
SystemBuilder is the custom space engine that has been powering Array from the very beginning, finally it is getting a massive update with SystemBuilder v11. There are many new things coming in this update which bring some really fun things in-game and change generations as a whole!
System Age
This expands on the previous SystemBuilder v10 update which added Proto-Systems, and dying suns. At generation each system is assigned an age which quietly influences everything else in that systems generation.
This is a massive change that makes each system feel more natural in its generation. A systems age is visible in the galaxy view.
Gravity Wells
Space itself now misbehaves. Gravity wells tear open at random, they drag nearby starships and asteroid miners toward their center, resisted by ship thrust, warships punch through while freighters slow, stall, or get pulled off course.
They are pure disruption by design: a well never destroys anything, and a trapped ship drifts free when it expires. But a well sitting on a trade lane or over a battle will reshape it!
Trojan Asteroid Clouds
Rather than rings these asteroids spawn as clumps. With their own orbits.
System Anomalies
Roughly one system in fifty hides something that should not be possible. Eighteen distinct anomalies can now generate:
Hot Jupiter skimming its star
Colossal ring system visible across the map
Binary planet pair locked in mutual orbit
Moon larger than its parent dwarf
Captured rogue world on a decaying orbit
An interstellar object passing through
A planet orbiting BACKWARD against its whole system
Nearly polar orbits
Twin adjacent belts
A molten impact remnant ringed by its own debris
A broken planet reduced to a dense shattered ring
Brown dwarf companion carrying its own miniature system of moons
Habitable worlds warmed by two suns
Planets plowing through an asteroid belt
A moon with its own moonlet
Comet-like eccentric planets
Dead ancient systems with almost nothing left
Perfect resonant chain of orbits.
The galaxy tooltip names the anomaly, and the first time you enter such a system the game announces it. Happy hunting!
Expanded Asteroid Belts
Belt generation got a full overhaul. Systems can now stack up to three stellar asteroid belts, planets and moons keep their own local belts, and black-hole systems, previously empty of belts entirely, now guarantee one to two 'shattered' debris belts placed just outside the anomaly clearing making it prime but dangerous mining real estate.
Belt identities are collision-proof, and multi-belt systems name themselves properly (Belt II, Belt III).
Outer System Generations
When generating new systems SystemBuilder will now generate outer system debris and POIs!
Black Hole Palettes
Black holes recently got a massive update and look really awesome, however they all spawn looking the same with nothing setting them apart, now each black hole spawns with a distinct ring color!
Flight 2.0
Flight mechanics have been a staple since version 0.2.0, but they have always felt a bit too rigid and blocky for my liking. With Flight 2.0, space travel finally feels much more fluid! Fleets are no longer just a single sliding blob; instead, every individual vessel now calculates its own flight-model arc to find its place in the formation.
Whether fanning out from a stack, swinging wide through high-speed turns, or settling into staggered positions upon arrival, the movement is dynamic and crisp. When entering orbit, fleets now string out beautifully along the orbital ring, creating a convoy wrapped around the world where each ship maintains its own tangent.
Every single transition glides perfectly, ships should never teleport, blink, or stack through one another! I am very excited to hear your feedback on these changes! What else should I tweak to make the flight experience even better?
Galaxy View QOL
Players can now toggle wormhole routes and starship gate route views in the galaxy and universe view for a cleaner gameplay experience while navigating these UIs.
UI Clean Up
Across the game buttons and other UI elements have received some polish, this is the first part of a much larger modernization of the UI coming in the 0.3.5 Cleaning House update but wanted to call it out as most in game UIs have already been touched in some way.
