Well! First devlog! It's for a game that's only been in progress a few months, and the working title (Space Plants, for when I inevitably fix the title for SEO purposes) is already out of date.

Originally, I just wanted a game where hydroponics' actual strengths shine. A small, cramped space but with access to water, or the ability to recycle it. Hydro can be very low energy if you don't need lighting. Like if you were close to a star with no clouds or atmosphere to blot it out. So Space Plants sounded like a better name than "unnamed something game."

The last few games I worked on in college were with Cocos2D, Unity, or plain Javascript. Wasn't really a fan of how any of those handled pixel art, so picked up Godot and Aseprite and got to work.

Then, I found an amazing feature had been added to Aseprite while I was away - tilemap layers.

Mollusk in a pink alpine area with petrified wood

I love working on tilesets, and tilemap layers made it so much easier and faster. I have been a bit too indulgent recently, and I've gotten more tileset drawing done than in-game mechanics...

I'm looking forward to developing this tileset further in particular.

Mollusks in a colorless sunbleached city

I'm a sucker for harsh, directional lighting and brutalism. Especially eco-brutalism, which this will eventually be. I'm also finding lighting like this isn't really done in tilesets because it is blowing up the number of tiles I need, but... it's so cool!

But hopefully next month, there will be actual plants.

Tags: Peddlers Between Pulsars