One year ago today I released my first game on Steam.
But it wasn't as simple as that, there was one and a half years of development prior, as well as another half year of post release content.
So to celebrate the one year anniversary of my game, I thought it would be nice to look back at its two year development journey, from a simple prototype, to the game I'm proud of now. I have the full development journey in the form of dev logs on YouTube, if you would like to see it in detail, but I'll provide an overview here.
Dev Log Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOmypIsKoxbXpnwWbWQSDIiaHxRNlIwC7
Idea Conception
Before GeoDepths, I was working on many different game projects. All centered around core gameplay ideas. Really just practicing elements of game development. Naturally, the games I play influenced the game concepts that I wanted to develop, which drove my game development hobby at the time.
Then during the beginning of 2022, I played the perfect combination of games to lead me to the idea of GeoDepths. The primary of these being Planet Crafter and Iron Lung. I had the idea of a game where the player is within in a drill that mines underground and uses diegetic levers and switches to control it. Much like Iron Lungs submarine, but with Planet Crafters resource management.
I figured that the core gameplay loop would be that you drill down underground, gathering ore, which you would bring back to the surface to your HUB to refine and then use those resources to upgrade your drill, allowing deeper excursions with better resources. The goal of the game would be to reach a certain point deep underground, so gaining these drill upgrades would be vital. This idea is not much different from the game as it is now, except a lot simpler in gameplay and scope.
I could envision the game in its entirety, and had the confidence that I had the capability and capacity to finish it within a reasonable amount of time. So then I set out to start its development, abandoning what ever game project I was working on at the time for a greater endeavor.
Initial Development
I started the game with the drill, creating an interior with a layout of buttons and a map. The buttons could control the drill and you could see the drills location on the map. You can't see the ore on the map though, so it was up to the player to take samples of the rock at the current drills location to determine its ore grade. There was limited space for mined ore, so mining higher grades would be advantageous.
With the drill implemented, I then moved on to creating the HUB homebase. When at depth 0, you could press a button in the drill to tell it to dock at the HUB, which would open the back door. I created the HUB to have multiple rooms, containing a drill upgrade station, an ore refinery, and an inventory screen. I implemented basic drill upgrades, for speed, storage, and mining.
I then went back to the drill, revamping its interior to feel more like a cockpit of a drilling vehicle rather than a closet. I also changed the boring buttons to be levers and a steering wheel that you would interact with using the mouse. Making it feel more satisfying to drill underground. This point marks a change in gameplay design for how the mining works, as I made the map show where the ore was, rather than having to take samples. I'm sure there was a place for the blind mining mechanic if done well, and maybe I could have made it work, but at this point I felt like it was too clunky.
Scope Expansion
Following on with changing how the mining works, it was around this time that I started to change how I wanted the game to play out. I was feeling that the original idea of the game was too shallow, and wouldn't be fun, so I began implementing more gameplay features to flesh it out. This obviously expanded the scope of the game, and too large a scope for a solo-developed game can either lead to a loss of confidence, or just make the project take way too long. Both things potentially leading to a dropped project, wasting time and energy.
But what the heck, I did it anyway, and I'm so glad I did. The game wouldn't have turned out the way it did if I hadn't, and I can't imagine it being more enjoyable otherwise.
The first major new feature I added was base building, where I changed the static HUB home base to be buildable using a room based system. You could build a refinery, a drill upgrader, an inventory screen, and several furniture pieces. All this would cost resources, providing more incentive to go deep and mine for ore.
The second was adding cave exploration, where I added caves that the drill can dock at, spread thoughout the underground depths. The idea was that these caves would contain objects of interest that the player can scan, such as plants and crystals. These scannables would be listed in the scannable terminal, with interesting information about them, encouraging the player to find them all.
I created a cave generator tool in unity which I could use to generate random caves out of cave parts, speeding up the process of the creation of each cave.
Demo and Feedback
I now had a solid little game, which was ready for people to try out. So I got the game ready, adding menus, saving and loading, and settings, before uploading a demo onto Steam.
This was a crazy milestone for me, having many people play my game. Lots of feedback was coming in on what people thought of the game, and I acted on quite a lot of it. Around this time I would develop a bunch of features and improvements, create a dev log about them, then update the demo for people to try. I focused on improving already developed parts of the game, such as making the terminal screens look better and expanding the base building capabilities. As well a new features to improve player engagement, such as research, power and farming. This iterative process was great as I was getting immediate feedback on the changes I was making. I also participated in Steam Next Fest, which majorly boosted how many people were trying and providing feedback on the game.
The most prevalent feedback was that the drilling and mining felt too boring and unengaging. The map was just a black screen with coloured dots on it, and all the player did was drill through this void to each of the dots to mine the ore there. So I completely changed this so that the drill actually drills through a layer of rock, creating tunnels, with different rock toughness' that would take longer to drill through. I also added a mining minigame, so that the player feels more like they are doing the mining, rather than it happening on autopilot.
One last thing I changed, in response to this feedback, was making it so the drill can be controlled using the WASD keys rather than having to use the mouse to pull the levers and steering wheel. I rebelled against this change for so long, as having to control the drill diegetically was one of the core gameplay pinnacles that existed since the games beginnings. But I ultimately caved in favour of a more familiar and user friendly method of using the keyboard, much to many players delight.
Road to Release
With the core gameplay implemented it was now time to think about 1.0 release and the work needed to get there. I needed to add more depth levels with new resources, caves, and plants. Including more drill upgrades and buildables that use these resources. I also added story elements to the game, in the form of logs found in caves from previous explorers. As well as a path that leads towards an ending, for which I added alien ruins and tech to some caves.
It was quite a marathon in this phase of development, with me setting a strict timeline for myself, outlining what I would do each week during the final several months before release. I really didn't have to do this, as I could have just delayed the release date if need be, but at this stage I was keen to get the game all finished and polished off.
It was a mighty relief when I finally finished. I had a beta period, and got the game translated into several languages, then eagerly awaited the release day, hoping that nothing would go wrong.
Then in the afternoon of that fateful Friday, 20th October 2023, I pressed the big green button on Steam, releasing the game.
Post Release
Releasing my first game was the best feeling. So many people played the game, and most of them enjoyed it. Lots of positive Steam reviews were coming in, as well as some negative reviews. I didn't let the negative reviews weigh me down though, but instead took them in as feedback. So many people were asking for more though. Requesting more content, more reasons to continue drilling and mining. I was happy with the game, and after one and a half years was keen to move onto something else. But all this feedback was encouraging me to do more. So I listed out all the new content I could do, both from requests and things I left out of the full release, and came up with a plan for two post release updates.
Update 1.1, called Denser, I released 3 months later at the beginning of 2024. In this update I focused on improving and enhancing the current state of the game. I added a way to infinitely mine resources, added machine upgrades, a lot more home base decorational additions, and an overhaul of the research system, as well as several other improvements.
Then give it another 3 months, and I released update 1.2, Deeper. This update expanded the game, adding more depth levels, caves, plants, machines, upgrades, and resources. An entirely new ending was added, making use of these new depth levels, which expanded on the original ending, and the lore behind it.
What's Next?
After two years I was finished with GeoDepths development, and was definitely ready to move on. That whole time I had ideas and inspirations for other games that I had to just file away, but now it was time to act on them. I made a small puzzle game Elevator Warp, as a palette cleanser from the two year adventure of GeoDepths development. I took my time with it, letting myself have a bit of a break from the constant grind of game development. But after finishing that I was ready to dive back in, and start my next big (for a solo-dev) game.
You may have already heard of the idea for my next game, which I'm calling Fossil Keeper. The concept is that the player can explore dig sites, dig up dinosaur fossils, construct skeletons, and display them in their museum. So far I've just been prototyping and designing this game, but I am soon ready to start developing it for real, and releasing dev logs on it. There's no Steam page for the game just yet, but be sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel in the case you are interested in following its development.
A big thank you to everyone that has supported me during the development of GeoDepths, and I hope you are looking forward to what have in store next.
Matt Littlemore
A Little More Games