I'm writing this blog to give those who care a look into what Mining My Business is about, how it came to be and create a (hopefully) interesting log of future development. What we have now in game feels really fun to play, so the decision was made to share the game via an Itch.io early access, and get people playing the game so that we can continue to balance it accordingly and work towards the new worlds and enemies. Everyone who purchases a copy on itch.io will receive updates for the life of the game, including steam keys once we move to Steam for a much bigger "Early Access", regardless of any price changes during this time.

  So without further delay, for our first dev log, here is how the game came to be and what the core game mechanics are:

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The Beginning

    After a long and very much needed break from coding (and streaming) mostly retro game development for the C64, Mega65 and Gameboy, I started to get the itch to design games again. However, this time I wanted to concentrate on mechanical game design and spend little to no time worrying about implementing engine features. I had been in possession of a Valve Steam Deck for a little over a year and found it to be an exciting machine particularly for indie developers, and so I decided to give modern game development a go once again. 

    After a little research I settled on version 4 of the Godot Engine as it was particularly good for 2d games and for a first foray into a new engine it was important to stick to what I knew (that being 2d game design). After a few hours of fiddling around I managed to create a simple twin stick shooter mechanic that worked natively on Steam Deck.

Early prototype

    By this time I'd already got an idea of the game I wanted to make and had settled on a hybrid between Vampire Survivors and Robotron with progression through mining various ores. I'd also realised I was going to have to rely on A LOT of asset from various stores, and as such would need to make sure the gameplay was the primary focus. I'd much rather play a great game with poor disjointed assets than a terrible game just because it looks great. So the initial game mechanic design needed to be solid and scalable.

    After getting my son Shaun and one of my best friends Scott onboard to assist primarily with game testing and design feedback I set about to tweak things slowly over the coming months, making sure that we focused on the "feel" of the game over everything else.  After 100s of hours of testing, tweaking and iteration we're finally in a place where the game feels really nice to play.

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Game Mechanics

    And so the core mechanic of the game is simple: 

Get as far through the levels of enemies as you can before you become too weak to stay alive. 

    However there's obviously a lot more to it than this and the aim has been to create a gameplay loop which is fun and challenging with plenty of things to progress toward and lots of stuff going on to keep the whole thing feeling fun to play. As of now this is where we are at with the core game mechanics:

Combat

    You start in control of a fighter ship in space (using either WASD and mouse or twin sticks on game pad), you can move around using thrusters and shoot a simple laser. Enemies will slowly spawn in and make their way toward you causing damage to your shield and then hull when they make contact. Every time you kill an enemy you gain a little xp, and collecting the gem it leaves behind gives even more. Enemies increase in frequency and difficulty as you move through the levels.

    Kill things fast enough and you will earn multi kill bonuses, small effects that last 10 seconds or so. The more you kill the more bonuses you get such as increased weapon fire, better thrusters, enemy slowdown and more.

Card Deck

    You start with a basic deck of cards with a few upgrades to four different weapons, two secondary weapons and ship systems such as thrusters. Every time you gain a level you are given a random choice of cards to select from allowing you to use cards from your deck to upgrade and switch your weapons.

Ore

    You'll soon realise you aren't going to get very far without more upgrades and the way to do this is by mining ore from the world. The world is randomly procedurally generated on the fly to create a potentially infinite landscape (albeit a relatively boring tile map without decoration) and includes randomly placed asteroids and ore deposits in the map. 

    Asteroids are the easiest to farm but contain the lowest level ore. They float gently throughout the map in a few sizes and have a chance to drop "Anytime Cards" (See next section).

    Ore deposits can be found throughout the world map by shining your ships torch onto the tile map, this will reveal colored areas that can be farmed for larger amounts of ore including more uncommonly rarer ores. Like asteroids ore deposits have a chance to drop "Anytime Cards" (See next section), but contain rarer and more exciting cards.

    Ore can be spent on the mothership to purchase amongst other things:

• New upgrades for your card deck such as triple shot lasers or double rockets. 
• Permanent upgrades to your ship such as mining lasers to make farming ore deposits easier or increases to the shields and hull
• Mines, drones and various other usable items

Anytime Cards

    As you farm ore you will come across cards hidden in some asteroids and map pieces. These cards are a selection of various special weapons, stat increases and usable items. Cards can also be found in crates that occasionally warp into your area. Often these cards can give you a huge boost and make levelling and killing enemies easier. 

    Another way to earn cards is through purchasing the card generator ship upgrade. This adds xp bars to the multikill display which fill up as you achieve the various tiers. Filling one of these bars awards an anytime card up to the level of that tier (More about this in a later dev log).

Challenges and Expertise

    In order to rank up you need to complete challenges. These are small tasks that can be completed as you play and doing so rewards you with permanent clone expertise. Expertise increases the stats of things like damage, weapon cooldown, mining range etc and transfers to every new clone you spawn. Completing enough to rank up will open a whole new set of challenges for the next rank. Ranking up will also open up access to new rooms on the mothership such as the Officer Quarters, a personal area where you can place new vendors, terminals and furniture.

Clones

    Whenever you die you lose the clone you had. And when you respawn back at the ship you are given a new clone with new stats and strengths and weaknesses. Some clones have quirks which can affect their expertise or have other side effects, for example Vampiric quirk will reduce the clones hull hit points but grant them the ability to leech hit points from enemies. You can reroll if you don't like the stats but it gets costly fast.

    Clones lose any items such as drones or mines they were carrying and will always start combat at level 1 again. Any ship upgrades persist and your deck remains the same. You also keep all the ore you collected.

   Once you rank up to Ensign from Cadet you unlock the Officers Quarters where you will find a clone terminal that allows you to upgrade the base stats for new clones, thus making them on average stronger and more able to deal with new worlds and enemies.

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Next Time

    It's a lot of information to take in (and write!) so I will end this dev log here for now. Next time I will take a look at some of the weapons we have in place already, how we have gone about balancing the mechanics, and a few other bits and pieces. After the next dev log I'll be focussing weekly logs on what we are actually working on.