Welcome!
So you decided to try your luck among the stars? No problem. Oh, well. There might be one problem. We cannot guarantee when or where you will land. Are you ready to take the risk?
The above text might be part of my game, which I’m currently developing. It is a new endeavor for me and I hope that it will be also something interesting for players.
So, what will my game be? Let’s start with title. After changing it about 10 times, I decided to pick Zenit Haven. Zenit is the Polish word for zenith. And zenith is direction along body, when someone is standing straight on the ground. And this direction points towards sky. Or stars in the night. And haven means harbor, port, landing place. So the tile means starting direction and its destination – landing place among stars. I love it.
And what about genre? Currently, my biggest inspiration is Stardew Valley. On Steam, it belongs to following genres: Indie, RPG and Simulation. And it also perfectly fit my vision.
I would love to create a fully simulated colony on alien planet, where the player’s character can interact with non player’s characters in many different ways. He (or She) should be able to trade, collaborate on complicated tasks, form relations, learn from and teach others or do nothing. There will be no strong need to do something particular, but there will be opportunities.
But the topic which takes most of my thinking time is the possibility to give player’s character (PC) ability to be autonomous. Imagine the following situation: you are getting back to home after a stressful, energy depleting day. You would like to progress in your game, but you don’t have actual mental capacity to do anything. Then you can start a game, select “go autonomous” mode on your PC, and he/she (maybe I should pick just “character”?) starts behaving like a NPC, but with your style of playing.
How to do that? I was thinking about something like wish list for future and fact list for past. My algorithm would analyze what PC was doing in the past, and analyze what player would like to achieve in future and produce some kind of space of possible activities to perform. So such autonomous PC would do something which he already did in past in order to complete something that player wants to be completed. With some variation, like everything we do in life.
So this is an idea. Stardew Valley, on an alien planet, where you can lean back on a couch and observe what your character is doing. And at any moment you want, you can get back your steering wheel (or rather game pad) and take full control on what is actually happening. Simple, right?
Well, it is not. Making a game is quite crazy to be honest. I have an education background in Physics, and professional background in Software Development/Machine Learning. And only some part of my skills and knowledge is related in any way with crating a video game. So I have to learn, implement, test and iterate on many things, almost simultaneously. It is terrifying but also exciting at the same time.
So what is my plan? I know (almost) nothing at his moment. I’m thinking about writing blog posts about topics I’m working currently, and I hope I can keep those at one per month tempo. Furthermore, I’m also planning to release pre-alpha versions once in half a year. I guess they will be initially filled with free placeholder assets, focused on mechanics and overall game loop, gradually going into more tailored look and feel.
Since I’m going solo, I have to learn to produce code, sprites, shaders, SFX, music, dialogues, plot, world building, game loop, usability and what is the most important – fun.
But, I also know what I’m planning not to do (it’s something!). First thing would be to not using Generative AI inside my gameplay. I know what it is, and what are its limitations. Generative AI is fine for initial filling of empty canvas. When you have to start somewhere, it could quickly give you something to begin with. Personally, I use Gen AI to extract information from larger texts or to do review of my code. I don’t like to use it to do work for me. And I totally don’t want it to mess with my vision of the game. I totally want to personally write stories, create persons, build quests and stuff, create graphics and music. Hell, I don’t give the best part of my game to AI.
The second thing I don’t want to do is to build the game as a service. I consider myself as noncompetitive old school gamer. I love to live trough stories, immerse in game. Not only that, but I don’t care about score and I don’t care how I’m placing against other players. And I hate battle pass. Period. When my game will be released as 1.0, it will be completed, whole and finished. I may or may not publish additional free content for it. And I’m not ruling out the possibility of paid DLC. But no seasons/pass/loot boxes/episodes and such predatory stuff.
Anyway, if you are still reading this, you seem to be seriously interested in my game. Wow. Thank you. I believe that you might be also interested in forum located at itch.io. I would love to read feedback from you. Observed bugs, quality of life ideas, positive and negative experiences and virtually anything related to my game. After all, I’m doing it in my way, but for you to enjoy 😀
