itch.io

• Factory builder / automation game in space
• Hard Scifi
• You are the alien
• No conveyor belts, no inserters
• Solar system as a playground
• Dark Forest setting
• No grids
• Gravity, atmospheres and other spacesim perils
  
• Dynamic enemies (the "Locals")
• Top-Down 2D but with 3D visuals
• No AI, all hand crafted
• Modding
• Demo is out, release coming

Hey, I want to tell you about a recent update I made for ASEMA demo. This is a factory game where you build a factory in space, but there are no conveyor belts. The game mechanisms are top-down 2D, but visually it is 3D, made with Unreal Engine. The belts and inserters are replaced with railguns.

Your factory parts are not buildings, but more like spaceships - you can fly and rotate each one of them. Any of them, you can crash into an atmosphere or a micro black hole, but naturally that is not.. productive. There is no grid for placement, because it does not matter in this setting: Automated railguns will handle the deliveries. Build Hubs, connect railguns, build larger and faster hubs, to get more railguns shoot faster. Find asteroid streams, and place your asteroid crushers on them to get raw materials, or build mining operations on moons - it's up to you.

This all is hard to onboard correctly, and last months have been endless iterations of tutorials and such. But the update 16 E seems to have clicked. While it never ends, it is now good - external QA has verified it works and the lackings are now rather minor, even QoL and unlockable features- related; such as platforms, machineskeletons to tether machines, fleet management to move many machines at once, etc.

There is also an enemy system, which unfolds to fullfill the entire solar system in full version.

So, currently there is a demo out - it's here and on Steam, both are the same versions. I'd be happy to hear feedback and thoughts, and especially if you go and build a factory, show it off. There's many ways you can lay out things in this game.

The entire game is built around modding. Everything in it is modular. The modding interface becomes online at least partially on EA, and fully between EA and 1.0 , unless if it finished before that. I have an internal roadmap for quality updates (QoL and audio engine; a full dynamic map, machinemanagement), content updates, and optimization updates (2 phases, the goal is to scale from 100 machines running pretty well now, to 1000 machines, and then 10000 machines > I am working on the 2nd of these iterations, as the factory scales have to be very large).

I've built the game solo (not the musics, tho! Talented guys are making them), on Unreal Engine, and I've made custom CPP subsystems for physics (UE physics are neat and all, but not at this scale at all, as there are 1000s of bodies flying around in the simulation already), and logistics/machinebrains, to make the factory run smooth and nice.

As an architect and 3D artist, and a long term gamer (automation games and rts games especially; Factorio, Satisfactory, Captain of Industry..), this is very much a passion project for me. I am not very interested in making other games than this, so I just keep making this to make it really fun and good. I have a good time playing the game already myself, and it has felt amazing to finally find the "shape" of onboarding that allowed completely fresh QA testers to build their automated factories and point out that they had fun, the game is addictive and the atmosphere is good. Exactly what I love about in Factorio - but now I wanted to introduce something different and new.

I guess I have to ask, would you be interested to play a game like this?

The Steam-page has new trailers - the trailer on Itch is a bit older still.. working on things! 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4478970/ASEMA/

https://certaingoblin.itch.io/asema

https://www.reddit.com/r/AsemaGame/

Here is described an arch of issues players faced. This is indeed a hard game, and while fixing and addressing all of these may sound like too many pillows, I think I can assure you that is not the case - my first and the most important goal is to fix confusion, so that players can solve problems and the new type of spatial puzzle ASEMA does.

Before that, a few random content updates 16 E received:

• Container has now Overseer module, but it's range is very small, so it can only command railguns attached to itself, or someone very close
• Haulers, Hubs, Beacon, Container now have Enemy Register module, so they can set targets for railguns, but only within their range
• Haulers have now Overseer modules too, so they act like moving Hubs, making them very versatile and more worth their price

Then, the arch of player experience, problems they faced and the fixes.

1. Player would ignore messages, or quick browse them to find ones that open the Guide, which is a wall of text > Player experience is "had to read walls of text" > Guide is renamed as Encyclopedia to make it sound less like a tutorial helper and more like a mid-/end-game data source > Guide is also no longer accessible via tutorial tips
2. Player got so many messages they probably felt less meaningful > Now only 1 message per mission
3. Player would still ignore messages > Now each message is shown as a prompt that requires pushing a button that says "UNDERSTOOD"
4. Players would complain lack of tutorialization > All of the above is meant to build up a sense of the tutorial being here in the room with us
5. Player opens game, asks what am I supposed to do, ignores the debris field, and flies away > Gets teleported back, prompted to the direction of the debris
6. Player then lands on the moon on mission 1, while this is cool, player hasn't learned how to Lift Off yet > Teleported back to space, with a prompt about the debris
7. Player would be confused what to do with the debris > Glowing arrows and a phrase helps with this
8. Player would land accidentally and not realize what just happened > Addressed with messages and pacing, not a large problem, but something to consider in UX aspect
9. Player would mine, and get full inventory and thus be unable to produce > A marker tells if inventory is full, prompting player to think about inventory space and realize the inability to produce may be related to it
10. Player would not find how to produce > Changed the wording in the tutorial texts and added a "Click to open" text to the production items in Inventory
11. Player would not find the Data Core > If player goes too far, teleports back
12. Player would not find the Data Core > Glowing bright arrows point the direction and location
13. Player would not be able to pick up the Data Core due to full inventory > Addressed at item 9
14. Player finds popups annoying > Removed popups, and replaced them with the 1 message prompts per mission
15. Player would not find the Container plan > Arrow points to the direction, "back to start area" was not enough
16. Player would bump into the Container plan, making it fly away > Container teleports back if it moves
17. Player would bump into the Container plan, making both Pioneer and Container fly away in different directions, and player would enter the Container and lost the Pioneer to space > Pioneer now teleports back, too, with spesific conditions, in early game
18. Same as 17, but player is confused, why their "ship is glowing" (the Container plan is glowing) > Reduced the plan glow entirely, so now the machine shape is more apparent and it is easier to differentiate from other machines
19. Player had issues with producing and full inventory > Addressed in previous items
20. Player would build Crusher, but land it on a moon > The build message pinpointed the location of builds, this is not a softlock, but it makes things harder as moving Boulders to a landed Crusher is harder > If player later builds a new Crusher, and realizes it is smart to build it on a boulder stream making it run autonomously, it feels good
21. Player would fly up north with the Crusher, and place it on the stream near a place where a heavy moon emits gravity, making player confused why the Crusher moves on it's own > Tweaked the starter asteroid stream direction so that it does not enter gravitated areas

And so on; the campaign continues long after this, but these are the basics. Due to the unique mechanism, such as things can move around, be bumped and be pulled by gravity, it become increasingly vital in the recent months, that gravity cannot be introduced very early, and the start area must be simple and easy, introducing only a new mechanic at a time.

The demo world has a few moons, and only two of them are heavy enough for gravity. Players who play for so many hours that they enter the other moon near orbits, will find out about the gravity - and have likely passed the campaign to a point where they have found out about Focus and Gravity. They may then build systems to prevent gravitational pull, so they can operate near gravity wells.

Onboarding polish continues.

Feedback on UI, UX and visuals has been positive. Bug reports are so far very few - only two (maybe 3, all relatively minor) known currently. Audios may start to play weird, I consider that as a glitch, but only in larger bases. An audio engine update is planned in version 17, amongst other inside tweaks.

The demo has been updated in major and deep ways since early builds.