New mailing list idea
There are a lot of people around me and my family that like to know what it is that I do, and how things are going with my game company. For them I have this email list in Mailchimp.
I’m going to change some things to this email list. Currently it is just ‘the same’ as this blog, but I find it hard to come up with a good email each time because I know people read the email list for different reasons than these blog posts.
So I’m going to stop sending them a summary of this blogpost, but instead focus more on the ‘what people close to me want to know’.
The email list content is thus going to be more centered around running the company and the impact it has on me and my family, while this blogpost is more focused on game updates and less about detailed personal/family matters.
Holidays
I had some great holidays the past 3 weeks. It was a good mixture of relaxing at home, go out camping, building a nice garden shed, and meditating on my companies future and the next game to build.
Manage the Universe – my new game
Previous update I shared that my new game will be centered around the following
space, inception, sleeves, management, adventure, 3D pixel-art, replay-ability.
The name of the game is ‘Manage the Universe’ for now. It will be most of all a strategy game mixed with the management style of games. I thought this name to be quite fitting for the genre and the content.
It’s basic gameplay is that you are a person that have to play the game on 6 different levels to achieve the end goal, and the end goal is to rule the universe.
At level 1 you are a mere peasant, roaming an inhabited planet and you have to help your environment to advance.
At level 2 you are a governor of a province, and try to get along with your neighboring provinces.
At level 3 you start becoming a space oriented world organization, seeking for help and answers on your near planets and stars.
At level 4 you start to really get a grip on space and build massive fleets to conquer the stars and find other civilizations.
At level 5 you organize with other civilizations into federations and establish a galaxy wide order, while striving for supremacy.
At level 6 you start a secret order, have a base, and recruit followers. This to unravel a mysterious fate that is brought upon your galaxy.
The thing is: you can play all levels at once. Every planet is visit-able, every civilization has its history and is plans for the future. You can play small fleet battles with early space crafts or massive end-of-times size space battles with planet-destroying capable dreadnoughts.
This game will be about feeling powerful, discovery and strategically play your ‘cards’. The challenge is to not to win, but to advance.
It will also be about allowing you to play the way you want: want to stay doing level 5 stuff only? Ok. Want to start a new game at level 5 immediately? Ok. Want to use the same randomized seeds over and over again? Ok. Reset the universe mid-game and get to keep most of your stuff? Ok. At least that is how I want to play my games…
Aesthetics and my new game
During my holidays I build this shed:
I really love doing all kinds of creative works. I tried to create this shed with a mixture of functionality and beauty, and all from only an image I had in my head.
In the end I think the treated wood wood nicely contrasts with the darkgrey paint, the thick beams give it some posture, and the angles help to blend it more into the garden and keep a sense of depth. It is only the roof that I’m not that fond of, its finish was hard to be done nicely.
With my new game ‘Manage the Universe’ I want to spend more time on the aesthetics than I did on previous titles. A bit like the before mentioned garden shed: a mixture of functionality and beauty. Functionality is something I really like myself so my games will always be heavily influenced by that, beauty is something I long for but don’t understand (yet).
Animal Winter – update
I’m working on this title I came to call ‘Animal Winter’, as a side project to have something completely different to wrap my mind around.
This is the latest advancement:
It is now a ‘proper’ endless runner with a never ending generated environment. I use so called ‘segments’ that the game dynamically stitched together.
And the stitching doing its work:
GameFeelings 