GameMaker · GML · In development

Solvane: The Iron Reach

An infinite procedurally generated galaxy you mine, build in, defend, and fly through in a ship you configured yourself.

Ask about the game Press kit

Key art: the player ship flanked by two smaller ships, passing an enormous orbital structure against a starfield.

What it is

Top-down, infinite, procedurally generated. You fly out from your base, scan asteroids to see what they're actually worth before you spend time on them, break the ones that pay, and haul the ore home.

Home is a factory you lay out yourself. Solar arrays make power, conduits move it, and processing turns raw ore into the parts you need. Drones get built to repair the base and help defend it. Turrets cover the approaches, because the galaxy eventually notices you're out there.

Weapons are built rather than bought, so a loadout is a decision instead of a menu. The short version: Factorio and tower defense, in space, in pixel art.

An infinite galaxy generated as you fly, with planets and moons on drawn orbital paths
Asteroid mining that tells you the yield before you commit to the rock
Base building with power generation, conduits, processing and storage
Turrets and constructed drones that repair and defend what you've built
Ship and weapon configuration from parts you manufacture

Developer: CosmoConifer
Engine: GameMaker Studio, GML
Platform: PC
Started: August 2016
Status: In development
Release: Steam page in progress

Screenshots

A base under construction: solar arrays, conduits running to turrets, asteroids and drifting wrecks nearby. — A base under construction. Solar arrays generate power, conduits feed it to turrets covering the approach. The bars along the bottom are warp drive, health and energy.

The ship mining a rock asteroid, with a readout showing hit points, scrap yield, crystal yield and experience. — Targeting a rock asteroid. Each one reports what it's worth before you spend time on it.

A banded gas giant with orbital paths drawn across the starfield, a moon below, and the player ship between them. — Planets and moons on drawn orbital paths, with a minimap tracking what's around you.

Combat: the player ship firing on a red enemy, projectiles trailing across the starfield. — Combat. Weapons are built from parts rather than picked off a list.

Where it came from

No Man's Sky launched in August 2016 and the reception was brutal. On a Discord call I told my friends I could probably make something with that much depth in GameMaker. That was a joke, and then it wasn't.

The early weeks were easy, which is the trap. Ships moved, asteroids broke apart, things exploded. The moment I started building systems that had to talk to each other, the actual size of game development turned up all at once.

Nine years in, the thing I'd point to isn't a feature. It's that I've walked away from this project for months at a time and always come back to it.

There's a longer write-up on the engineering side of Solvane — the chunk system I wrote three times, the shader work, what nine months away does to a codebase — over on my developer portfolio.

Technical write-up

Follow along

The Steam page is being put together now. Until it's live, email is the best way to hear about it, and the press kit has everything a write-up or a video would need.

hello@cosmoconifer.com Press kit