Howdy Folks!
As you may, or may not, know I’m also the solo developer of Mercury Fallen. Mercury Fallen is a sci-fi colony management game, which is quite a bit different from PACK. I’ve had a few people ask me why I’m working on PACK, which is such a different kind of game, so I thought I would provide an answer for anyone curious.
I began development of Mercury Fallen in late 2016 and it was released into early access in late 2017. In late 2023, after many many updates, the game was released out of early access. The development of Mercury Fallen took a long time, but as a solo developer I’m proud of what I created. I learned a lot about game development, but also a lot about project management.
Two major things I learned are scope and scale. I had a general goal in mind when I began developing Mercury Fallen, but the scope wasn’t entirely clear which led to some longer development times and uncertainties along the way. The game also changed course based on player feedback, which was expected and great to have community involvement. Mercury Fallen became bigger and took longer than expected. There were many times where it was hard to know what “finished” meant for Mercury Fallen as new features could have continued to be piled on indefinitely. On a personal level I wanted to complete Mercury Fallen and work on something different, something with a smaller scope and scale.
PACK was better planned out from the beginning to have a more clear scope and a smaller scale. As the game is broken into separate levels I was able to pre-determine the amount of content I wanted to deliver. Even before I started serious development, I already had a sense of what “finished” meant. I know the general scale of the game and, for the most part, what it will take to complete.
So basically I’m working on PACK because it’s another genre of game that I personally enjoy and a project with more clearly defined goals. I’m super excited about PACK and I can’t wait to release it into Early Access for all of you to enjoy.
If you have any questions regarding the development of PACK or questions about the game development process then be sure to reach here on Steam or on the PACK discord server.
Because I too like pretty pictures, here is a work in progress screenshot from one of the levels coming in the Early Access Release.
Please be sure to wishlist and follow PACK on Steam.
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