From Asteroids to Space Miner

It really did seem like a fool-proof idea at the time: make small games that could be wrapped up in a month, two at most, and focus entirely on simple gameplay mechanics. Graphics would be simple, UI would be simple, audio would be simple, everything would be simple.

Needless to say, Space Miner ended up being anything but simple.

It started out rather innocently with our original prototype, which was an Asteroids-type game that required the player to physically rotate their iPhone to rotate their ship around to face incoming asteroids. Tapping the screen fired your guns, asteroids would break apart when hit, and you would have to clear the screen to advance to the next level. That was the extent of it. It wasn’t meant to be a very complex game, just one of many tiny games we planned to design and develop using what we called the “Pivot-dot” mechanic, which was this idea of 360 degree device rotation as a core gameplay mechanic. There was really only one problem: the mechanic wasn’t very fun.

When we went back to the drawing board, we also drew a second conclusion: Asteroids is a classic game, but people have played it a million times before, and there are countless versions of it available on the App Store. If we wanted to make a game worthy of the Venan name, it would need to be more than just an Asteroids clone with a new control scheme.

This resulted in the earliest form of the current Space Miner, which asked a very simple question: “If Asteroids never came out, how would you make it today?” In that sense, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust became emblematic of some of the most popular design trends of the last 10 years: Non-linear structure, free exploration, loot collection, deep customization, physics-based gameplay, a storyline, even an achievement system through Plus+. However, despite our gameplay additions, we also kept the heart of the classic Asteroids gameplay – which is that blowing stuff apart is a lot of fun.

With this general gameplay philosophy mapped out, we started pondering the theme of the game. We were tired of generic sci-fi shooters with “gritty” characters and color schemes and decided early on that Space Miner’s universe would be colorful and lighthearted, with a cast of silly characters to accompany the player through the adventure. This led to the idea of Mega Space Corporation trying to take over your crazy Uncle Jeb’s asteroid field, which then evolved into the current game’s storyline.

We also used this lighthearted theme to help us with our gameplay mechanics. For example, the Ore Collectors used in the game to collect loot from asteroids and enemies are described as giant space vacuum cleaners, and the enemies in the game all have Wall-E-inspired robo-blurbs that they emote regularly. Not having to take ourselves too seriously resulted in a lot of fun additions to the game, from enemies with giant magnets on their faces to the inclusion of special asteroids like explosive “gastroids” and the ever-elusive “piñatastroid”.

As the release of Space Miner: Space Ore Bust draws closer, we hope that you will join us at our Twitter feed or Facebook group to partake in the festivities which include but aren’t limited to:

• Awesome new trailers!
• New screenshots!
• Concept art and character dossiers!
• Lots of free stuff ranging from in-game music to promo codes!

You can also stay up to speed on Space Miner by checking the Venan Arcade website.

Until next time!

Mobile Gaming, Then and Now

Hi everybody – Alex here. I thought about just posting “Second!” up here to follow up Mike’s bold trailblazer of a first post, but then I figured I’d talk a bit about mobile gaming and how it’s changed for the better over the last few years – both for Venan as a development studio and for the gaming industry as a whole.

In the last few weeks, we’ve set up a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and sent out a few press releases extolling the awesomeness of our new handheld gaming initiative Venan Arcade, and its flagship title, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust. This being our fourth fully-independent title, you’d think that we would have a system down for such things by now – in truth, a lot’s changed since we released our last independent title, the pirate sim High Seas: Guns and Gold, back in 2007. Two years doesn’t seem like that long a time, but consider what’s happened since then!

Specifically, the iPhone and the App Store happened.

To say that their effect on mobile game development has empowered studios like ours is a massive understatement. In the High Seas days, all of two years ago, when you wanted to make a game on a mobile phone, you weren’t just making it for a single phone. You were making it for a lot of phones, across multiple handset carriers. Screen resolutions would change, size requirements would change, controls would change – you’d have to redesign different aspects of the same game multiple times over to ensure that it took full advantage of every handset it appeared on.

With the iPhone, we don’t have to make a choice between playing either music or sound effects. We don’t have to cut a feature early-on because it won’t work on low-end handsets. If we want pretty particle effects or transparency, the iPhone is more than accommodating. So the question we posed to ourselves was as such: with over 37 million iPhone and iPod Touch users out there, why the heck wouldn’t we want to shift some focus over to it?

And so we created Venan Arcade with the aim of branching out into the indie realm once more. The first game in the initiative, Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, personifies everything about Venan Arcade: fun gameplay, great graphics, and balanced design. Looking at the current library of App Store games, it’s downright embarrassing how many games don’t follow this kind of creed. Some games look nice but feature little-to-no gameplay balance whatsoever. Other games look absolutely terrible but have interesting mechanics. Many App Store titles seem content to consider themselves as mere “diversions”, as did many mobile titles of old.

Fortunately for all us gamers, this mindset is starting to fall out of fashion. Thanks to the App Store, DSiWare, XBLA, PSN and the like, for the first time in a long while developers are making the games they want to make for the audience they want to cater to. Space Miner: Space Ore Bust is our first step into this crazy new landscape, but we have all the confidence in the world that it won’t be our last.