Over the past year, I set out to build Spaceship Idle as something quite ambitious: an incremental space grand strategy autobattler.
It was an exciting idea. Persistent progression, prestige systems, evolving spaceships, and automated tactical combat, all wrapped in a long-term strategic layer. On paper, it felt like a natural evolution of what I’ve been building since Industry Idle and CivIdle. But as development went on, reality set in.
When Two Genres Pull in Different Directions
Incremental grand strategy and autobattlers are very different genres. Incremental grand strategy is about persistence. You grow stronger over time. You prestige. You carry knowledge and bonuses into future runs. The joy comes from compounding progress.
Autobattlers, especially multiplayer ones, are about fairness. Matches need to be relatively even. Matchmaking needs to work. Players need to feel they had a fair shot.
When you combine persistent progression with competitive matchmaking, something breaks. If progress carries over, matches become uneven. If it doesn’t, the incremental layer loses its meaning. Designing around that tension proved far more difficult than I anticipated.
At the same time, grand strategy and autobattler are both deep genres on their own. Each demands careful systems design, balancing, UI clarity, and long-term content support. Trying to fully merge them turned Spaceship Idle into something too large for a one-person indie developer to realistically execute at the quality level I want.
That was a hard realization to accept.
Splitting the Vision
Instead of forcing one game to do everything, I’ve decided to split the original vision into two clearer directions:
- A spaceship autobattler
- An incremental grand strategy game
Spaceship Idle naturally fits the autobattler direction. But I've decided to put it on hold and focus on the incremental grand strategy game. It's less of a creative decision and more of a practical one.
The Multiplayer Burden
A multiplayer game is not just a game. It’s a service. It means dealing with cheaters, bots, and spammers. It means monitoring servers. It means paying server bills every single month, regardless of sales. It means knowing that if revenue slows down, the server still needs to stay online.
As a gamer myself, I hate it when an online game shuts down. And I don’t like aggressive microtransactions, which is why my games rely on pay-once expansions or supporter packs. But that also means revenue naturally tapers off over time.
Right now, the server for Industry Idle is effectively supported by CivIdle’s income. But I’m very aware that this cannot scale forever. If I make a new multiplayer game, at some point it will have to support itself, CivIdle, as well as Industry Idle - every additional multiplayer game adds another permanent financial obligation. That becomes a vicious cycle: the more games I make, the more long-term burden I create for myself.
And that isn’t sustainable.
So I made a difficult but necessary decision: my next major project needs to be primarily single-player. Something I can support long-term without being tied to ongoing server costs.
Introducing Restitutor: Empire Restored
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4431750
The "incremental grand strategy game" I’m focusing on next is called Restitutor, which is Latin for "restorer". It is set after the death of Commodus, when the Roman Empire has shattered into rival provinces. You begin as a governor of one province, and your goal is to reconquer the others and restore the empire.
The core systems are inspired by classic grand strategy games like Europa Universalis IV: diplomacy, conquest, and long-term statecraft. But it’s streamlined and abstracted. There’s no micromanaging army movement or individual battles - war is resolved through stats-driven systems and calculated risk. The focus is on strategic decisions, not mechanical execution.
Each run earns “legacy points” based on your accomplishments, making the next run stronger and faster - bringing that incremental progression into a format where it truly belongs.
This is a project that fits both my strengths and my constraints. It lets me go deep on systems design without tying the game’s future to constant server costs. It’s ambitious but achievable.
Looking Forward
The current build of Spaceship Idle will remain available and playable. I’m not deleting it - It just won’t receive major updates while I focus on the new project. I've also made the game playable without the server, which will shut down shortly. Putting it on hold doesn’t mean I regret it. It taught me a lot about scope, genre tension, and sustainability as an indie developer.
More importantly, it clarified what I should be building next.
If you wishlisted Spaceship Idle, please accept my apology - I couldn't realize the original vision of the game due to game design challenges and personal resource constraints. If you’ve supported my other games before, thank you - your support is the only reason I can make decisions based on long-term sustainability rather than short-term pressure. I’m genuinely excited about Restitutor - not as a replacement for Spaceship Idle, but as the right next step. I hope you’ll join me on this new journey.