By far the best results I got starting from LD46, actually very happy) Thanks everyone for taking part in this event!

Desided to continue development of my LD game. Liked the idea and already can see how it can be expanded into a full release. Gonna keep the scale low to finish in achievable time. The core will stay the same, main difference will be balance, progression with meta play and of course polish.

First step done - moving from my engine to Unity and cleaning code the same time. As much as I like using my own - I just can't be sure enough how it's gonna scale. If the goal is finishing the game, you don't want to spend time finding bugs in your engine or adding much needed features. Also a good surprise was that Unity now supports Aseprite natively, this will noticeably speed up the whole process.

Before

After

More colors, resolution, details and animations, but trying to keep the initial style.

As I continue the development, gonna post more updates in twitter)

I always enjoy reading stories about people continuing the development of their LD games and publishing them to Steam. That's why I want to share my progress for the last 4 months. Game is called Stellar Initiative.

This is how my game started as the entry to LD 53 with theme delivery

I made a simple linear tower defense game with the idea that you need to plan the delivery of every building, as they are sent from a ship and do not appear instantly.

This is how my games looks now.

Main direction I took is making it roguelike and splitting each run into missions

The idea is that you unlock new upgrades, discover artifacts and learn how to combine them to win.

There are different types of missions and it's a player's choice if they want more resources for upgrades, new artifacts, or a harder challenge.

Artifacts have unique bonus, that can give you a direction for you strategy.

Resources earned can be spent in upgrades tree, to unlock new paths for buildings, with each offering two separate directions.

As you progress, missions get longer and harder, and to hold enemy waves it becomes mandatory to upgrade your buildings, create layers of defense and use ship attacks.

There's still a lot to do, but I'm really enjoying the progress so far. I'm aiming to realse my game in early 2024. You can wishlist it on Steam if you want to follow the development: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2529080/Stellar_Initiative/

Me: let's not overscope this time

Also me: let's create an RTS in 48 hours from scratch