u/HarkYonder

Game Title: Roidgrinder

Playable Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4461590/Roidgrinder/

Description:

Playtest accessible from the Steam page!

Short single-player game. One run spans three in-game years, which takes 2-3 hours. Wealth gathered serves as the final score for the run. There's replay value in trying out different upgrade paths to end up richer. Easy to play, tough to master.

The main loop is simple: shoot asteroids, collect resources and upgrade the ship. Beneath the casual surface, multiple systems are simulated. These include physics, the ship's energy system and the resource prices.

Different kinds of asteroids and resources to mine, and various ways of upgrading the ship. There are also other ways for making money, like buying and selling at the resource market.

In addition to flying around and shooting, you will communicate with the ship through a computer terminal. You can buy more programs for the terminal at stations.

From both game mechanics and lore point-of-view, the game leans towards hard sci-fi rather than fantasy.

Free to Play Status: Playtest open until Friday this week

Involvement: Solo dev

I've been working on the late-game. I already had a nicely flowing upgrade path for the first 2/3 of the run but the last in-game year needed more content. The main idea is that towards the end it should be possible (and worthwhile!) to do longer and longer grinding trips.

The main changes were:

Revised the asteroid belt generation mechanic. I made it so that the asteroids fields get richer (more likely to find the more valuable resource types) and bigger when you fly further from the main station. This provides the motivation for exploring further out.
Added tools/upgrades like the spectroscope which tells the mineral content of nearby asteroids from afar and the hotrod which overcharges the thruster for short bursts to pick up speed quickly.
Considerably increased fuel amounts.

It still needs balancing adjustments but I was now able to complete one full run and it remained fun to play until the end. I'll be continuing the tuning & fixing and creating more upgrades to eventually move the project from alpha to beta phase.

Wishlist / try demo on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4461590/Roidgrinder/

I'm running a playtest for my incremental space mining game this week, give it a go and give me feedback!

Running a playtest for my space mining game this week, give it a try and see if you can beat my score!