I did the Ludum Dare, and it was very fun and neat. But the game I made turned out to be quite confusing; even I have been trying to figure out the best way to get a high score. So in this post I’ll do my best to explain what the mechanics are and how everything works (in theory at least), and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

If you aren’t sure what’s going on, the idea is that you’re at the end of the universe, when all stars, galaxies, and worlds have long since disappeared, and all that’s left is the dead cores of those stars; black dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Not only are they drifting apart at an exponentially faster rate due to the expansion of the universe, but they’re losing mass and will eventually disappear forever.

To survive and keep your ship running, you need to acquire energy from stars you find. Your score is the energy you have by the time all objects in the universe either die or are too far away to reach, which is when time reaches 500, and if you run out of energy before then, your score is 0 and it’s game over.

The first thing you’ll need to know is that every stat in the game is one to one.

• 1 unit of mass is equal to 1 unit of energy. When you siphon a star, you gain energy equal to its mass.
• Distance and time are the same, because the distance between stars is measured in the time it takes to reach them. So the first 2 stats the game displays measure the same thing; the time/distance since the game started, and since the last star you visited.
• A star’s mass is also equal to its remaining lifetime. Over time you’ll find less and less stars, not just because of the expanding universe, but also because any stars with less mass than the time that passed disappears.

For every 1 unit of time you spend traveling, you lose 3 energy, so you’re challenged with deciding to siphon a star’s mass or farm its radiation for a portion of the star’s lifespan. You won’t lose energy while farming, and the amount of energy you’ll gain increases with the star’s mass and the time you spend farming, but you’ll also diminish your chances of finding more stars the longer you farm. So the strategy isn’t in choosing whether to siphon or farm, but in how long to farm before you siphon.

Some other things to keep in mind:

• Black dwarfs don’t radiate, so their mass is siphoned automatically. The game displays how many black dwarfs you found and how much energy you got from them. Also, the distance since the last visited star doesn't include them; instead it's since the last neutron star or black hole.
• It’s possible to farm a star past time 500, but you won’t find another star after that, and the game will end.
• A lot of things are randomized, so your success is pretty heavily based on chance. You might find yourself making decisions in hopes of getting lucky.

Here’s some exact math and values:

• 100 is 1 solar mass (the mass of the sun), neutron stars can have a mass between 150 and 250, and stars with more mass are black holes.
• To determine the mass of a star, the game chooses a random number between 1 and 500, and then subtracts another random number between 1 and 500, and takes the absolute value of the result (in case it’s negative). This makes more massive stars less common.
• Before generating a star’s mass, time increases by a random number between ⅛ of the current time and ¼ of the current time. This repeats until a star with mass larger than the current time is generated.
• When you farm radiation, the energy you gain per unit of time is equal to 1% of the star’s mass at that time for every 100 mass it has (if it has less than 100 mass, it still gives 1%). If you farm a star with 300 mass for half of its lifespan, you’ll get 3% of its mass in energy at first, but by the time you’re done farming, its mass will be 150 and you’ll only be getting 1% of that.

Now here’s the thing. This is all how the game is supposed to work. It probably doesn’t. I am not a scientist, I just think this stuff is really cool. In reality, these numbers are way larger and the equations are far more complicated, and I chose balanced game mechanics over factual accuracy.

But also, I probably made some mistakes even with my own math and code. This is my first purely strategic game, I had 3 days to make it, and I’m also just not that good at math. I was figuring out how to play this game as I was making it. But I do think I came up with something interesting, at least.

If you have any questions, feel like I missed something, or found a problem somewhere in my logic or in the game, please feel free to ask about it. I’d be happy to explain something, or point you towards a more reliable source, and if my math is wrong I’ll do my best to fix it.

This may come as a surprise, but… I want to make video games. I tend to run away after releasing a game for months on end, and it usually takes me ages to finish the next game before I crawl back out from under my rock again to share it. Well I have a solution; I’m going to make more games for game jams.

I’ve heard about Ludum Dare before, and it seems pretty neat. You get two weekends every year to slap together a game and try to finish it in a short timespan. This way I can explore and test out more of the ideas that live rent free in my brain, and spend the rest of the year working on a larger project.

I’m also going to do something that every good game dev does; make development posts, in this case every day of the jam. I tend to drop finished games out of nowhere, and I’ve made some posts about games I was working on before, but I want to do it more, and… better. I can’t believe I didn’t know how hashtags work until last year. So I’ll post about how the game is going every day on Twitter, and I’ll put a link to the thread here when I make it.

Here it is: https://twitter.com/Immanent_Death/status/1510076780077584389

After the jam I will probably continue lurking, but hopefully for not as long. I think I have a new record now.

Made a broken survival horror game.

It's a game where you gather resources to replenish your stats and survive as long as you can. Also, there a thing lurking in the darkness.

You can play this weird game here.

Subterranean is a game about mining. Your goal is to simply dig as deep as you can and find valuable ores. You have limited durability on your pickaxe, fuel in your lantern, and space in your backpack, which you can upgrade by spending your earnings. The game is procedurally generated as you descend, with a different level every time you restart.

It’s reminiscent of a lot of games I’ve played where mining is a big part of the gameplay. There’s just something about mining in video games that’s satisfying, enough that there’s plenty of games about mining specifically. Maybe it’s because finding rare treasures is fun, or maybe it’s thanks to Minecraft for those of us who’ve been playing it for years. It inspired me to try my hand at making a completely randomly generated game about mining.

Subterranean is available to play on Newgrounds, Itch.io, Game Jolt, and my website. I also put together a team of beta testers to find bugs and give feedback before releasing it, so thanks to them there’s hopefully less bugs than there would have been otherwise.

There’s no way I’ll be able to properly articulate my thoughts about the state of this game. It’s enormous and very, very difficult to make, and it’s fun to play, but also very, very buggy. I was hoping to at least be almost done by now, but I was too busy with college (mainly calculus and making Spaceblast), and now I’m much farther behind than I already was.

Besides fixing bugs and overall quality improvements, the major tasks I have left are as follows:

• I have a few more songs I need to write
• I have to finish the sprite for an absolutely massive dragon boss (which was in hindsight a terrible idea because of how much time and effort it requires to make)
• I have to make the final boss, both it’s animations and gameplay mechanics
• I have to make the ending cutscene

The driving force that prevents me from abandoning this game is fueled by how far I’ve already come with it and how much I care about it. But this game is almost two years old by now, and it’s holding me back from everything else I want to make. There’s no way I’ll finish it in any reasonable amount of time, and there’s no way I’ll give up because I’ve worked too damn hard on it, and yet there’s no way I’ll be able to fix it up to the standards I have for it.

So what am I going to do?

I’m putting this game on hold. I’ll see if I can finish the tasks above whenever I can, and then I’ll release the game as an open beta. I’ll maintain a list of known bugs so everyone knows what they’re getting themselves into, and try to fix what I can. But this game may never be officially released, and there’s no telling when I’ll get the beta version out.

I think this is the best option I have because I want people to see this game and it’s story. I want feedback on what I’ve done well and what I need to do better in the next game I make. But I also want to be able to do other projects and develop new skills. Making games is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done and likely will ever do, and I love it, but I want to be better at it.

I’m really sorry this is how things ended up. I do my best to be productive, write devlogs and give updates on things, and just be a competent game developer, but my ambitions are too far beyond my capabilities. I won’t stop pursuing any of the bigger projects I have in mind (some of which dwarf even this game), but right now I can only make small games with more subtle stories. I hope you all will enjoy them when they’re released, and I hope I can one day be good enough at making games to start one of those big projects.

Spaceblast 1.0 is now available to play on Newgrounds, Itch.io, Game Jolt, and my own website. It’s an arcade shooter about flying a spaceship, shooting down other spaceships, and seeing all sorts of cool space things like planets, stars, and nebulas.

Additionally, you can now support me if you like what I do by donating on Itch.io or paying whatever you want on Game Jolt. Making video games for a living is a huge aspiration of mine, and donating any amount whatsoever is immensely appreciated. It shows that you like my work enough to help me keep doing it.

You can listen to the soundtrack here on Newgrounds or on Youtube. I think I’ve gotten a lot better at making music over the past couple years, so if you want to hear a song without interference from laser blasts and explosions, go check them out.

You already know what to do. It is your duty as a space explorer. Report any and all bugs.

This past weekend I did a sort of soft launch/beta release for Spaceblast during Oz-Con as part of the digital student showcase, and I set the game to early access so anyone attending the con could play it. So the game is there, and I think I’ll leave it as early access because it won’t be long before the game is finished.

I was originally going to set it back to a private build until I finished it, but I somehow ended up on Game Jolt’s hot page and that made me rethink my plan a little. The game is stable, and all that’s left to do is make some more content to add, so I don’t want to say, “Nope, can’t play it anymore.” and take it down for a couple weeks without any reason for it.

So if you want an early look at the game, it’s on Game Jolt and Itch.io. I’ll hold off on a Newgrounds release until it’s done. You can also check out the trailer if you haven’t already.