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Veridian Expanse: open source space game looking for feedback
slembcke Sep 13, 2023
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"Explore the depths as you drill, craft, and fight to escape from a mysterious asteroid deep in the Veridian Expanse."

Get the latest playable alpha from Itch for Linux/Win/RPi4. (There's also links to the Steam page and source code)
https://howlingmoonsoftware.itch.io/veridian-expanse

So I've been developing a space themed crafting/exploration game with arcade-y dual stick shooter controls. It's made from scratch in C on Linux, open source, and will even run on a Raspberry Pi 4 (see README)! This is the game I've wanted to make for years, but never had the time for: free-form asteroid mining, moody lighting, helper drones, and lots of space bugs to blast. :) After the most recent showing of the game, I'm pretty happy with the core of the gameplay, and need to start focusing on finishing out the rest of the biomes and other content.

Why is it open source?: Why not? The "engine" isn't really reusable, but I've pointed several people to my code and gotten them up and running with my fast soft shadowed lighting model. While I plan to release it the game on Steam and a few other platforms, I don't realistically see the code availability causing problems with the game's sales. Pirates don't want the source code, and Windows users don't want it either... On the other hand, maybe somebody will get an OpenBSD or Haiku port working before I get to it. :) I also might just publish it on Flathub because why not?

Marketing: I have no idea how to market anything in 202X!! I demoed VE at a local convention recently, and it had a steady stream of players that seemed to love it in person. This is in contrast to the internet where I've found it kind of impossible as a solo dev to make enough noise for... basically anyone to notice. Nearly all of the exposure the game gets is from Steam's recommendation queue. A lot has changed since then, but marketing a profitable (shareware) game 15 years ago was a lot easier than today. >_> If anyone has any recommendations I'm all ears.

Mastodon
GitHub (Gotta move it off this copyright infringement platform... -_-)
Blog

Last edited by slembcke on 13 September 2023 at 2:55 am UTC
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