Silver Void
Unknown
Silver Void was my submission to Acerola Jam 0. Participants had 2 weeks to solo create a game on the theme "Aberration", as in a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected. Initially I wanted to make a time loop game, sort of like Groundhog Day or Re:Zero, but quickly determined that even with 2 weeks, the scope was too large. So I settled on making a realistic 3D space simulator, where the player takes part in a fleet battle. This fits the theme in that the enemies continually predict where the player will be based on current position and velocity, and so the player needs to continually thrust and change trajectories (i.e. make an aberration from their current path) to avoid being hit.
Usually I approach game making as an art form, and for this jam, I feel I was really channelling The Fountain crossed with The Expanse. The player is fighting in a grand ship to ship battle much like those in The Expanse, but the zoomed out scale, somber piano, and backdrop of the Milky Way all add to a feeling of futility and poignancy, much like The Fountain. Ultimately there is no winning, and the game continues on forever, even if the player dies.
Photos
Assets
All assets except the milky way image (public domain here: ESO - Mikly Way) were made by me. Sound effects are pot and pan recordings layered/edited in audacity, and the soundtrack is piano improv recorded with my phone. There's not much art to speak of, as ships, bullets, and explosions are all just simple polygons combined into slightly more complex shapes. The game itself was made in the Godot game engine.
Soundtrack
I didn't have a lot of time to work on the soundtrack, so it's just a single take. But apparently people enjoyed it a lot, so here it is:
Cut Features
Lots of things had to be cut. Initially when I was building the ships, I was imagining fleet battles more like those from Legend of the Galactic Heroes, i.e. long range laser battles with shields. The game actually even has a hidden laser beam you can switch to, but as time was running low I trimmed it down to a more core experience. Some other notable cuts included:
- different sized ships
- fully remappable/customizable controls
- lasers and shields which draw power from power modules. The lasers would need to store power in capacitor modules before being able to fire
- menu for changing settings like volume
- shader for giving a sense of your absolute velocity (e.g. a faint grid showing the underlying coordinate system as you fly around)
- I actually had initially thought of having a mechanic where the player could pause time, and they would use that to change the tide of battle. It was my first take on the theme, but it fell way out of scope.
- some sort of target system or reticule that show you where to point to hit a moving enemy in 3D space
- better fleet behavior
