Running it Back to the Drawing Board

Blog

I'll leave this here as a spoiler for those that want to know what's being going in with the dev and the game.

Main Blog: [expand type="showmore"] Let's get into it. Hi, I'm D, or Phaze if you prefer. I'm currently the only person working at OOMM Interactive. I have game dev friends and contractors who come in and help with different stuff if I don't specialize in it, but for the most part, the games don't happen if I'm not pushing them forward.

You may have heard about all the hubbub happening in the games and tech industry. It's a tough time in the tech sector and jobs are hard to come by. That's mostly what's been taking up my time the past few months, looking for work and then doing some dev for myself on the side.

As you might imagine, getting rejected, or not even getting replies from places, is tough on one's mental health. I'm lucky at least to have a place to stay, and savings to keep me going a while. I'm not going to go into depth of how I am, but sufficed to say, I'm trying new ways to dev, and diving into the deep end with this whole make a video game company thing.

Now on to the show!

I'm working on three games at the same time! Hahah......

Ok, a little background. I've been trying new things these past few months, and having multiple projects to switch between works best for me. Originally, I wanted to just stick to EEE and get it done, but that just sorta kept getting bogged down and bloated. I wanted it to just be done, as opposed to focusing on doing it well. A lot of avenues felt closed off, because it would take too long, and some tech debt related to the tech tree made the backend somewhat unstable.

That's all gonna change with the new multi project thing. If I don't feel up to working on something I can switch projects. This also has the benefits of letting ideas and design percolate longer, and possibly come up with better solutions.

I've currently finished up a game, Castaway Soul. It'll be coming out on the 5th of July, and I'll make a separate post for that. This one is actually fully finished before release. X)

I'll be working on a hyper-casual, sci-fi mobile game around bringing free wifi to the galaxy. The drones in that game actually informed how I could rework EEE to be a lot more fun. I'll also be working on a sequel to Castaway soul pretty much right after it releases.

As for EEE, it's still all in the planning stages. What's set for now (but still subject to change) is:

• There will be a "galaxy exploration" progress visible at all times;

• Self-replication will be moved to the new drones, drones will start out few and grow exponentially;

• Drones essentially can do almost all the work that previously went to buildings;

• Buildings are now more specialized, and can be demolished;

• All sites will have limited mineral resources, so they can be mined out;

• Energy will play a larger role, solar panels, solar sats, solar swarms will be more important than ever;

• Leaving a site will still save it's outputs, so old sites can still provide power and other resources, with there being a limit to the total number of sites before old ones start being abandoned;

• The Expedition Vessel will always be accessible, and data can be sent up without Ascending;

• The main focus will be on building space exploration drones, and observation stations to survey the galaxy faster;

I think all these changes will make for a much more fun/engaging game, while adding that sort of griebly feel of drones clearing out the tiles bit by bit. This does mean that the game will take quite a bit longer to finish. Current aim is to have it done by this time next year

That's about it I think. If you got this far, thanks for taking the time to read all that (or at least skim it X) ). There's been a lot of positive feedback with the game, and it's been very encouraging. I want to finish this game, and I want to make it enjoyable for all those who stuck around. :) [/expand]

TLDR:

Life's hard, stuff happens, and tends to keep happening. Getting back into working on the game, will be doing a top-down rebuild to base the game around drones, and will be bringing the main goal of the game more front and center.

Links:

OOMM Interactive Discord: Discord OOMM Interactive Ko-fi page: Ko-Fi