Future
This was the theme for Open Jam 2019, the game jam where Space Express was born. We were a team of 3 people over the course of 72 hours. We didn't have a lot of video game experience, but that didn't prevent us to do the best we could!
In Space Express, you play as a courrier ship from the same-named company. Your goal is to bring the merchandise to your client as soon as possible. During your trip, you will encounter random events that'll break or repair your ship, make you win or lose cargo, will injure or recruit new crew. You have to think fast, keep your ship going, and hopefully arrive with as mich merchandise as you departed with.
Our goal was to push the game's polish as far as we could. I was the main programmer and game designer. I focused on adding animations to the places you visit, particles, screenshakes and juiciness. We went as far as adding a ship selection just for the heck of it.
We were really happy to build a coherent universe as we went, if you pay close attention to the places, there is logic and small references. My personal regret is that the game is so fast-paced you don't get to examine the really cool assets.
3rd place
As the name of the competition suggests, we were invited to use open source software and make the game open source. And we did! The only proprietary software used was Affinity Designer, and the full source code is available on Github. Also by chance, the game's source code was included in Github's Arctic Vault archive project which is pretty cool.
The jury really enjoyed our game, which got the 3rd place. As a reward, all 3 finalists' games were features at All Things Open, a big event in the US focusing on open source technologies.
