Star Explorers

Schmidt Workshops | First Person Shooter | Released 2018

Star Explorers:

Earth has been destroyed, and humanity must find a way to survive. Star Explorers is the interstellar dungeon crawler. It attempts to capture the vastness, loneliness and desolation of space exploration. Land on planets, explore the surface as well as cave systems, ancient ruins and more on your quest to find a new home for the human race.

Reviews:

"...See, the galaxy Schmidt has created here isn't cruel. "Cruel" implies that it cares. And this galaxy is terribly, terribly uncaring..." - MagFlare – Steam User

"...This game, at its core, is about exploration, and it scratches my space exploration itch in a way that no game has since I played Starflight as a kid..." - battlescar2014 – Steam User

Current Features:

Randomly generated galaxy which the player can fully explore
Randomly generated planets, caves and other environments
Randomly generated alien life, either hostile or friendly towards the player
Combat system with aliens on planets and in caves
Inventory and Trade System with mothership and some friendly aliens
Quests from both mothership and friendly aliens, in addition to the main quest
Upgrade system allowing player to explore wider range of planets over the course of the game
Crafting system, including unique artifacts that must be constructed with ancient blueprints
Day/Night cycles on each planet
Resource management and survival in hostile conditions
Database of Sectors, Stars and Planets in which player can take notes and customize the names of stars and planets

Planets:

Planets are formed randomly, but their conditions are based on somewhat scientific factors. The size and temperature of the star they orbit, their distance from that star, the type of surface, atmosphere, and liquids present (or not) determine how a planet will look once landed on. Players will be able to land, depart and return to planets, exploring their surfaces as well as underground cave systems repeatedly, while keeping the same features intact on each visit.

Exploration:

Fuel, ammunition and oxygen will all have to be carefully managed if the player wants to survive the long search for an earth-like planet. While many planets will be too hot or cold, or without an atmosphere, there are also worlds of liquid methane, ammonia, sulphuric acid and more, that have developed their own unique evolutionary cycles. Each kind of alien plant, tree or animal is pieced together randomly, making for a unique experience for each player.

The Star Explorers universe is not a friendly one though, it can be cruel and indifferent to the struggles of its inhabitants. If you're not careful, you might land on a planet that's just too hot, or too cold, or enveloped in a cloud of corrosive acid, and not live to tell about it. Upgrading your space suit will unlock these otherwise impossible worlds to further exploration.

Inventory, Upgrading and Crafting:

Exploration will allow the player to discover many things, including tools and resources that will help in further exploration. Among these are raw materials, weapons, armor upgrades and blueprints that allow you to craft helpful items. Armor upgrades will increase your space suit's resistance to heat, cold and other environmental hazards. Some weapons allow you to access areas that may be closed off to less experienced adventurers.

Caves and Ancient Ruins:

Star Explorers may be the first interstellar dungeon crawler. Traversing the dark, hidden places and caves is necessary to find the resources required to complete the game. Discover the crumbling remains of an ancient culture and learn the secrets of its mysterious people. In Star Explorers, exploration and investigation are rewarded with special items and locations that many players may never find. If you are someone who likes to look around every corner, then this is the game for you.

Generative Design:

Almost everything in Star Explorers is produced generatively. From the locations of stars and nebulae, to the surfaces of planets and their features, every location is different, and every play-through offers unique challenges. Even the music heard in game is generated in real time, and is based purely on the parameters of the player's environment. Each planet, cave and other location has a unique sound-track.

Shaders and Options:

Star Explorers has a number of visual options you may choose from. Among them is the “Old-School Pixel Shader” which offers a unique, low-resolution experience. The graphics are not really at pace with newer games, but real-time shadows, bloom and a smoothing shader are also available for those who enjoy a slightly more contemporary feel. You also have control of your field of view, mouse sensitivity and game/music volume, along with options that may help the game run more smoothly on older hardware. See the manual for full documentation.

The Future of Star Explorers:

After a year of Early Access, Star Explorers has arrived at a point where I feel it matches my original design document. Fulfilling my promise to have it completed in a year was important to me, but that does not mean I am finished working on it. I have many other ideas I may choose to add to the game's content. Chief among these are the following:

Space battles with alien ships
Boarding and exploring alien spaceships
More variety of celestial objects, like moons, asteroids and more
Alien cities on certain planets
I even have a mechanism for Time Travel (this is really outside of the original idea, but I am intrigued by the possibility of doing this anyway)

At some point in the future, I may begin work on these new features. The timing and consistency of these potential future updates will depend largely on how well the game is received by its audience. The more I hear from players, the more likely I will stay motivated to continue on this project.

Post news Report RSS Star Explorers

A Potentially Premature Post Mortem for Paradox Vector

I wanted to document the progress of my game Paradox Vector for the potential benefit of other game developers.

Idea
My idea started off fairly simple, make a vector graphics style first person shooter in the tradition of arcade classics like Battlezone, Tailgunner and the original Star Wars. The relatively recent resurgence of pixel art games had achieved a kind of peak, and I thought it was a good time to draw from this other retro graphic tradition for inspiration.

Paradox Vector in all it's retro FPS glory...

The idea did not end there though. Making a simple shooter was not enough for me, I wanted something else unique. That's when I remembered my idea for a non euclidean puzzle game that had been swimming around in my head for a while.

Add to the mix some Lovecraft references, and I thought I had a pretty good formula for a unique game idea.

Paradox Vector was released on Steam Early Access in April of 2019. It was meant to be a six month project.

Marketing
Marketing is something I had avoided on all my previous games, but Paradox Vector was going to be a hit (I was sure of it!) so that meant I had to reach out to people and tell them about it. Everything I know about marketing.

In addition to things like posting on #screenshotsaturday, I also did a bit more in terms of market research. I found other games with a similar aesthetic, gameplay or story, and reached out to the journalists who had written about them. This yielded pretty good results, and articles were being written about my game.

I also used something called IndieBoost. Many Youtubers and Twitch streamers were playing my game for their followers. I think I probably did this too early, as the game had yet to be properly tested. Those folks did provide an awful lot of good feedback though, so it did help to improve the game, if not sell.

I also paid for some help in the P/R department. I used a company called the Amplifier Group to help coordinate with media outlets. They did help quite a bit in reaching out to some journalists, but I should also point out that some of the bigger events described in the upcoming paragraphs, like Realm's Deep, were secured before acquiring their help. I'm saying that not to diminish the importance of having good, professional PR, but to show that consistent effort on the part of a developer, and word of mouth can also work wonders.

The Amplifier Group started working with me in July 2020, and worked through to the game's release on October 15th.

The unique graphic style of the game did seem to garner some attention, and I was happy to see the game make its way into the public sphere.

Events
In October of 2019, Paradox Vector was included in the Fall Experiment, a fairly young gaming an tech convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was my first official game convention, and though it was not as crowded as I would have liked, it was still a great experience, and I felt like a real game developer when I was able to attend. I also met some great people there, and I keep in contact with them to this day. I truly wish there were more opportunities like this in the Midwest, as traveling to the big conventions like GDC and PAX is simply too cost prohibitive for me as a husband and father of seven hungry children.

Another highlight was Paradox Vector's inclusion in the GDWC (Game Development World Championship) and it's taking third place in the Fan Favorite category. This was the first time any of my games had won any kind of award or special recognition, so that was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, the actual award ceremony was delayed, and turned into an online event (instead if being able to visit Finland!) and I am still anxiously awaiting my prize in the form of a Finnish themed care package. Ultimately, this allowed me to put some official looking laurels in my game trailer, something I'd never been able to do before.

Between my Twitter posts, an article or two and some random curiosity, Paradox Vector caught the attention of the Motherload, host of the In the Keep podcast. As it turns out, the Motherload was working with 3D Realms, New Blood, Nightdive studios and other companies on the Realms Deep 2020 event. This was an online conference which would introduce a number of new games by the studios in question, but they had also decided to tap in to some of the smaller, independent game studios out there, and help to bring attention to this resurgence of the "boomer shooter."