Voidship – The beginning

What is Voidship

Voidship is a 2D space combat/role-playing game for PC that I’ve been developing on/off between contract gamedev projects. It’s been in development for quite a while, but actual development time there is about a year and a half of my full time effort put into it.

“You are the captain of a modular spaceship entrusted with a mission which might take centuries to complete. Gather resources, crew and technology to build your spaceship into a titan warship to fulfill your objective.”

Check out the main game page for a more thorough rundown of what the game is: http://cydonian.games/

Why is Voidship

I’ve been fascinated with space since I was very young. Books, movies, tv shows, I loved diving into different sci-fi visions of humanity’s future in the stars. This obviously collided with my love of gaming very early on. Most of my top 10 games of all time are space games or closely related to space themes. Master of Orion II, Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm, Startopia, later on the Mass Effect series etc. Playing these games as youngster made me want to create my own.

I first downloaded game maker and made my first gamedev experiments just a few months before the new millenium was ushered in. I know this because I remember making a basic screensaver with it that would show a black screen until the clock turns 00:00 and it’s 2000. Then fireworks would shoot onto the screen generated with a very basic self made particle system. From about the same time as that my dream was to make computer games as a living. Especially space games. In fact most of my giant folder of prototypes built in my teenage years are space games.

I made basic 360 degree turning top down space shooter tests for quite some time. I’d share screenshots of the first game, but I’ve lost them to old rundown harddrives. Here’s a bunch of assets I have saved tho:

From about 2002 I started building an age of empires’like in space. It went through various versions between the years of 2000-2010, but never got finished. Kid me had the first 80% of gamedev well covered and didn’t know anything about the last 20% which takes just as much effort, if not more.

These were all separate games.

There were plenty more but I would need a working GM 6 or GM 8 pro edition to export .exes and make playables or screenshots. (If anyone knows how to get one, tell me)

This long saga of space game making lead me to Voidship. Lead me to me wanting to take all this love for space and gamedevelopment and as an adult and professional developer finally put it into a concrete project. Voidship was supposed to distill everything from some of the best games and stories I’ve loved from the genre Homeworld, FTL, Battlestar Galactica etc and distill it into my own quintessential spacegame. I take all the features I love the most, skip the ones I don’t like and I finally make the damn game.

Spurred from my childhood dream I somehow managed to become an actual game developer. I’m 28 now. I’ve worked on 3 titles shipped on steam ( Good Robot, Unrest, WFFF) . Another one that will be soon releasing (No Truce With The Furies). A bunch of other small commercial and non commercial game projects. I now know what releasing an actual PC title entails. Kid me isn’t completely gone though. I still like the same things. Still rewatch Babylon 5 and Farscape. Still try to replay MOO2 once a year and then stop disappointed that I have the whole tech tree memorized and no new events ever happen.

I first started on Voidship seriously when I was about 25. I worked on it as a labor of love next to all my paid work. Building up the engine. Testing different storylines. I’ve now taken a break to work on Voidship full time.

It’s time to finish it.

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