Starship Empire is now on Steam Greenlight
In addition to backing this project, you can also show your support by voting “yes” for Starship Empire on Steam Greenlight
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=414531410
The more “yes” votes the game receives, the closer it gets to being published on Steam. Needless to say that if the game does get greenlit that all backers will receive steam keys once the game goes live.
PAX Player Feedback
I’ve devoted a good portion of my time lately towards trying to get more backers for this project with mixed results. Together we’ve reached over $1000! That’s a great milestone, but the project is still so far away from it’s goal. I don’t have a large marketing budget, so word of mouth is the only way this project is going to get funded. If you haven’t already, please post a link to this project on all of your social media channels and tell all of your friends.
I finally got a chance to compile all of the feedback I received from PAX East and here are the top things that I’ll be working on in the coming weeks:
- Basic tutorial + popup tips
- Smoother mouse controls for navigating your ship through space
- WASD thruster controls for navigating your ship through space
- RTS-like controls for crew movements/assignments
- Add crew automation which will allow repairs/activities to occur when undirected
- More hot keys for weapon selection, switching views, cycling through crew members, etc
- Differentiate friend/foe on mini-map
- Add indicator of where player clicked to make it more clear where ship is flying to
- Missions/stories (always planned, but not yet implemented)
PAX East 2015 Update
Summary
PAX was amazing! I’m just beginning to recover from this three-day high-energy event. I met so many great people, did three or four interviews with various news sites, and received pages and pages of great feedback about the game.
Player Reactions
Players were having a lot of fun shooting other ships and blowing things up in the outer-ship view, but my favorite part was the reactions on their faces when they saw that you can go inside the ship and control individual crew members. When they found out it was Massively Multiplayer on top of it they seemed awe-struck.
I got a lot of “This looks like Star Control meets FTL plus multiplayer!” Some people replaced Star Control with Escape Velocity (or a few other games I’ve never heard of), but no matter which game they quoted they were excited. Another comment I received was, “This is a little like EVE but really easy to get into,” which was reassuring to hear.
Some of the tweets during the show
Fairlight (@FairlightEx) Support good games! Starship Empire looks impressive and is being made by literally one guy. Definitely my favorite so far. @BantamCityGames
Charlotte Armstrong (@scifichar) Really impressed with @BantamCityGames Starship Empire demo at #PAXEast2015. Check it out and help make it a reality
Chris Plath (@name404) Definitely check out @BantamCityGames Starship Empire. Twas very awesome and I must have it. #PAXEast
Some coverage on OnRPG and MMOHuts
http://www.onrpg.com/articles/editorial/pax-east-2015-day-1-recap-trion-worlds-dreadnought-indie-games-and-cosplay/5/
Great Player Feedback
Not all of the players’ comments were positive, but even the critical comments came with great suggestions on how to improve the game. The most frequent complaints were the Diablo-esque clicky-ness (is that a word?) in the outer-ship view and the expectation of RTS-style controls in the inner-ship view. Needless to say I’ll be fixing these things right away in addition to a number of other great suggestions.
Starship Empire is at PAX East 2015!
I’ve taken the game on the road! I’ll be exhibiting Starship Empire at PAX East this year. I’m hoping to get some really good play testing sessions going. This type of feedback is invaluable to improving the playability of your game. I’m also trying to get some more exposure to the game’s Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1453699221/starship-empire
Kickstarter launched!
Starship Empire is finally beginning to shape up into something, but I need your help getting to the finish line. Today I launched our Kickstarter campaign.
You can find the details here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1453699221/starship-empire
You can see the game trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5FVvKOH2yU
