Game I'm Working On.
Hello,
I've been working on a 2D space game. This is a early preview, still lot to go and not all functions are in, but fair bit is and fully functional, I am currently in middle of reworking the combat, UI and VFX, so their are broken parts still.
What it is.
Nova Reforged is an open-world space sim across 50 seeded systems. You fly, fight, mine, haul, and salvage your way up from a starter hull to something that scares patrol wings. Nobody hands you a tier list. The economy, the factions, and the people in them were already in motion, you just slot into the friction.
Combat is real-time and reads off your gauges, not a damage log. 67 guns sorted into 10 families, blasters and gatlings dumb-fire, railguns and turrets lock, missiles chase. Shields soak, hull doesn't come back cheap, and the capacitor decides whether your guns or your engines win the next three seconds. Crew you hire can man a hardpoint and fire it themselves inside its arc. Capitals throw 360° turret batteries at you.
Mining is a job, not a button. Survey the rock with a beam, watch the heat climb, fracture it, then chase down the chunks before someone else does. Run drones if you'd rather work the field than the rock.
Trade rewards people who read the map. Frontier systems make exotics nobody out there wants; the core craves them. Spreads run 11–15× if you can find the route and survive it. Merchant haulers drift the lanes, hail one, deal on the spot. Some doors only open after you've found the base behind them.
Factions remember. Federation, Independent, and the Vorax all keep their own books on you. Clip a fed fleet in a crossfire and they stop caring whose side you thought you were on. Reputation is personal, NPCs reference what you actually did, not a karma bar.
Plus the rest of the lived-in stuff: dockable stations with live economies and defense turrets that scramble if you push them, hirable wingmen who can die and stay dead, breachable derelicts, salvageable wrecks, megastructures sitting out past the last orbit, and a scan-and-codex loop for people who'd rather chart the dark than shoot at it.
There are functions I've not mentioned and their are heap of hidden factions I've not added, there a lot more coming. 300+ systems, full scale dungeons, 100+ ships, many modules. There is system around combat/weapons I've not added or mentioned, which I'll mention once I've got it in the right place.
AI... and where it's used currently and what are my future plans for AI.
Coding - I use it to assist me, makes building ideas and testing lot faster.
Art - I made the space backgrounds myself, none of planets use AI artwork, only parts atm that use AI for art is mainly around items and ships, however I will replace that as I've started redesigning every single ship in blender myself as low poly, I already ran tests and I can get it into game without to much of performance hit, its prob going to take a while, so until then deal with it. In terms of everything else it's slowly getting rebuilt, by the end the only AI artwork will be character portraits, truth is I suck at making them and honestly AI does rather good job I just haven't found the style that I like and matches the game.
Music - Real person is making the soundtracks for me, hopefully in talks atm if he ends up moving on, I have someone else but he bit costly so might take while to get full soundtrack.
Sound Effects - Purchased assets, I suck at making them I tried.
UI - That's all me (I love designing in Figma), I will be changing it more as time goes on I've noticed mistakes and issues with the new UI but its close to where I want it. Issues atm are colors and some of panels are missing parts so its using part of what UI looks like.
Other then that, I use Godot game engine, its easy to work with.
Enjoy.