Mercury Fallen Begins

I’ve been working on Mercury Fallen for a little over a month now. I wanted to get a website up and running before this, but was a little strapped for cash to purchase the domain. That, of course, has now been accomplished and I’m ready to start blabbing about the development process.

I have a tendency to focus more on working on a project than talking about a project, which isn’t always a good thing. Naturally work needs to be done, but if no one knows about it than you have to start questioning your goals for the project. In my case I want to complete a game and, ideally, have people enjoy playing my game. In order for that to happen then people need to know about it. Mercury Fallen is the type of game I’ve had rattling around in the back of my brain now for quite a while. I had some other projects on the docket, but they quickly grew out of scope as a single developer and didn’t gain much traction so they’re sitting on the back burner for now.

Mercury Fallen is a strategy survival colony building game that is very much inspired by Dungeon Keeper II and Banished. Similar to Banished the game will not have a focus on combat, but rather resource and colony management. Those fond of Dungeon Keeper II will notice the underground expansion aspect of the game very familiar. One big difference from both games is a science fiction setting.

 

 

Humans, for the first time, are attempting to colonize a planet outside our solar system, but it doesn’t entirely go to plan. Robot workers and supplies were sent ahead in the vessel Mercury to establish the foundation of an underground colony and research facility. The colonists were sent via stasis ships during multiple launch windows and would be awoken when all colonists had arrived safely. Unfortunately the last stasis ship arrives roughly 100 years later than expected and awakes to find the facility in ruins.

In my current plan you start the game with a single colonist as well as some handy robot workers. Early game is mostly expansion, resource gathering and finding additional stasis pods to acquire additional colonists. The core focus of the game is digging out the underground and creating rooms, furniture, colonists, robots and, above all, keeping your colonists alive.

I’m also focusing on a simple polygon art style for the game that I feel will fit nicely with what I have planned and keeps things more manageable for a single artist.

Now to get back to work and to write more for the devblog.