Devlog #1: Lessons in Scope and New Beginnings


2 or 3 years ago I started working on a space-sim management game called Terminal Dominions. It is a sort of 'Majesty meets Rimworld' approach to a Freelancer-styled universe. I had heard about feature creep being the bane of game developers, and I thought that I had taken managing my scope pretty seriously. Sure, the game had autonomous space traders, different warring factions, mercenary ships that had their own internal work/life balance mechanics, player-built structures that had power grid requirements, etc. But I already had the systems mostly finished, I figured, and surely it wouldn't be long before all the features tied together.  Terminal Dominions alpha builds can be found here:

https://reefpirate.itch.io/terminal-dominions

However, I eventually came to realize that tying all the systems neatly together was going to be the most challenging part and that could drag on for another 2 or 3 years or even longer. I could just duct tape them all together in a rush and hope for the best, but in order to achieve the level of polish that I desired I would need to invest real time and effort. I decided to get serious about cutting back my scope, and instead focus on the 1 or 2 things that I found most compelling about the project: large space battles and the Research tree.

Now, about 6 months later, I've come up with Hostile Domain. You can test the results of my scope compression in the recently released public Alpha build here:

https://reefpirate.itch.io/hostile-domain

Files

hostile-domain-win-alpha.zip 94 MB
Version 1 Nov 23, 2017

Get Hostile Domain

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