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Throwback: Spaceship Sim (2018)

 


In 2018 I wanted to play a simple spaceship simulator game. A game where you start out with a simple one-room shuttle and upgrade it during your space exploring adventures. I couldn't find such a game, at least not for Playstation and the games I did find on Steam were too complicated or didn't have the style I was looking for. So I decided to make it myself. I did quite some artwork, but as a game it wasn't even 1%. So eventually I got tired and abandoned the project. I still do really like the ideas and the (ship) designs, as simple as they may be.


Years later I found SteamWorld Heist, which was actually already out when I was toying with my ideas, but I just didn't come across it at the time. SWH had a lot of what I wanted to do: show a ship flying from the outside and then open it up and see what happens inside. It didn't really have upgrades for the ship though, that came in SteamWorld Heist II, but by then they had traded the spaceship for a submarine and the upgrades were mainly better engines, better weapons etc. So outside stuff and not a lot of visual changes (if any). But what I loved from SWH, the first one, was the docking to other ships. It was so satisfying watching the ships connect and then seeing the bulkhead doors open up. Ah man, that's what inspired me to pick up game art and game dev again. If I could ever make something that's close to that, I would be very happy. By the way, the whole of SWH and SWH II are great games. And also the SteamWorld Dig games are so much fun. These guys (Image & Form Games) really inspire me.

But back to MY Spaceship Sim! My idea was to have a modular (there that word is again) spaceship design where you can add 'rooms' to make the spaceship bigger. First from a one-room shuttle to two or three 'rooms' in a row and after that adding more levels the bigger the ship became. I think I had some inspiration from Fallout Shelter and the 'Avenger' from the XCOM-games. I also had some ideas about a crafting system to be able to craft items and/or new rooms.


The rooms would be filled with people, robots and aliens, all running around, doing their things.


I created special designs for my sons. Cloud, the youngest (10 at the time), loved his panda teddybear PanPan, so I created a PanPan spaceship. Vash, the oldest (15 back then), was already into metal and especially Slipknot, so for him I created the all-black (and a little bit of purple) Slipstream.

Looking through these designs I get inspired again. I might put this on my list of ideas to pick up (again).

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