PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
My name is Ariel Coppes, I'm a 40 years old Game Developer, married and father of two. I’ve started playing games when I was a kid and I knew at that time I wanted to make them. I really enjoy playing all kind of games, I tried to think in a favorite genre but as far as I remember I played lots of different genres during my life and enjoyed practically all of them.
TELL US ABOUT SHIP MINER.
Ship Miner is a twin stick 1-bit (only two colors) pixelart mining game in space with procedural generation and roguelite elements. The story is something like this, you are a simple miner, an anomaly appeared in this galaxy eating everything and you have to help building the ultimate artifact to destroy it. That's it for now.
The idea started when I was preparing the itchio 2023 1-bit jam and I did some mock-ups for a moon lander game, I really liked it but the jam was going to start in two weeks so I decided to do some prototyping because I was really excited with both the idea and the art style. At that same time I was playing a lot Dome Keeper and when I started prototyping my moon lander game I casually added some kind of mining mechanics and.... it was awesome, so I decided to continue that path and forgot about joining the 1bit jam.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
Well, for my personal dev journey started last year after I quit my previous gamedev job. I was a bit tired of doing always the same and wanted some new challenges. Decided to take some time to do jams and find something interesting, while also learning and building a toolset to make games. In the meantime I got a freelance job doing some javascript stuff and that allowed me to keep exploring. At the end of the last year I found Ship Miner and it got so much interest that I decided "ok this is the game I have to complete", and at the same time I got hired to work on the game Cleared Hot so I am now full game dev for my game and for that one.
Development for Ship Miner was a bit bumpy since I had to spend more time on other stuff, just in the last couple of months I started to spend more and more time on it.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I picked Unity mainly because I was using it a lot at previous job and had so much experience and also allowed me to quickly do those jams/prototypes. I really like it but have no personal attachment, could change to any other engine at some point in the future.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
Finding outside interest to continue the games and marketing. I mean, I really enjoy making marketing stuff but it is also so unpredictable, most of the time I do stuff and almost no response and some times I get an awesome response that helps me validate "ok, it seems I am still on the right path". But needing to have that validation from time to time is a bit exhausting.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
What it worked for me last year was to try to do different games, test my skills, try to get better at my weaknesses and improve my strengths, and share a lot and seek for feedback/interest to validate and feel more secure to continue stuff. Also, participate in jams to help me have some limitations to focus on and also the jams community is normally good and give great feedback.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Please help me by adding my game to your wishlist on steam and/or subscribe to my newsletter, follow my devlog, etc, I really want to complete and release Ship Miner.
more info at my dev page https://arielcoppes.dev
-Ariel
❤️
