Hello fellow tinnies!
As we are getting closer to a Release in the coming months, early 2022, we wanted to start sharing more details with you about Tin Can. These Dev Diaries will be published on a monthly basis, in addition to our regular updates.
This first Dev Diary is called #0 as we wanted to introduce our vision for the game, and share some stories about how we started the development of Tin Can.
The next Dev Diaries will detail the updates we released during that month, the state of development of Tin Can, while sharing the next steps that await us over the coming month.
Our small team of Indie developers is always super happy to read your comments & suggestions about the game, so thank you for checking us out!
▲ Join the Tin Can Community:
Note that we coupled our Scenarios Update to a Discount: -34% on Tin Can, until Monday 27th of September! 🚀
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1315980/Tin_Can_Escape_Pod_Simulator/
Some projects are born from the need to fill a void.
William "Manny_Lectro" Burke, 3D artist & Game Designer, wanted to build a space game that had a micro approach to the Simulation genre. There are not many games in this niche, so this was an opportunity to offer a unique experience to players.
In his youth, Will spent his childhood looking at sectional views of spaceships, both real and imaginary, as he dreamt about how each individual component had a role to play in the whole. Most games have a more macro view, where you're not concerned with the little details but rather with the big picture. In these games : ships are big and systems exist solely for themselves, indivisible. Here with Tin Can, the goal would be to make something really different; To make a game where the scale and focus would be smaller, so that every components have their own purpose and can be toyed & tinkered with.
After years spent working in a VR company he co-founded, Manny started writing a game concept where the players would feel like the crew of Apollo 13. These brave astronauts struggled to survive in the inhospitable environment of space and in a complex escape pod filled with mysterious systems and components, only relying on their sense of logic and their wits.
Will left everything behind to realise his long time dream of making this game all by himself, so he went one last time with his former colleagues to the restaurant where they used to get lunch, for a final goodbye. Clément "Data" Marchand, the owner, overheard the conversation about building a space game and he ended up being crazy enough to invest in the project and produce it.
Tin Can was born, around a few cups of coffee and some beers...
After a long year of hard work and many sleepless nights, the team finally launched Tin Can in early access, in October 2020 and what a big baby it ended up being: Thanks to the amazing reception & support from the community, we were able to go full steam ahead with our development plan!
This is where Jonathan "Djoe" Pourrez, a developer with years of experience in the modding community, joined us as Lead Developer. With him, we set new goals and worked towards these improved plans together, always keeping in mind the feedback received from players along the way.
Since then, Djoe has been taking good care of the game helping us improve it and adding complex features. We couldn't ask for a better lead!
So far, we have added the following features to Tin Can:
- Settings menu
- New languages
- New events
- Fire
- Leaks
- New tools
- A Rescue mode
- And a scenario editor that we recently released
We are currently working on our next major update: Tin Can in VR!
We will soon share more details & footage about this new chapter of our development, so keep an eye out on social Media or simply keep an eye on our Steam News.
Now, we would like to avoid staying in Early Access for years and falling into oblivion: This is why we intend to release Tin Can in early 2022.
Until then, we want to propose the most polished game with our features at launch, a VR mode, some re-balancing and additional work to add a lot of details to Tin Can.
We also have additional plans to propose a multiplayer feature and modding.
Our team is as close to the community as possible, we appreciate your time and support to Tin Can.
As a small team of French indie developers: your suggestions, discussions, and enthusiasm are really a motivator for us to continue with our plans and Tin Can. So thank you to everyone who helped us during the development so far, especially those who supported us on our Discord with their daily suggestions & bug reports. It means a great deal to us!
We will see you next month in a future Dev Diary, as we aim to recap the recent events & development of the game while also providing you with more details about the future of Tin Can!
Cheers 🚀
