With the amount of updates and changes to this game, I thought it might be nice to write down some of my thought process behind making it.
This first log entry gives some of the background behind why I started working on Star Explorers, and what other games, films, books and ideas inspired it. I hope you enjoy reading this, and that, perhaps, it will prompt some more discussions...
About Star Explorers
5/7/2021
I wanted to start writing about Star Explorers, for the players, for the potential players, and for myself, as a way to document my thinking behind the game. This is not where I will be posting updates or announcing changes to the game, you can see all that on the Steam Page, but I want this to be about the deeper stuff. This first post is dedicated to those shows, books, games and ideas that really formed the primary influences of Star Explorers.
The whole idea for Star Explorers came up some time in 2013, around October if memory serves, and it was a result of playing a bunch of Minecraft and watching a ton of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes on Netflix. I remember specifically the image of the Enterprise orbiting a new world, and wondering if I could make different worlds, like Minecraft does, but in a way where a player could visit many of them in the same game.
It's that image of the Enterprise's view screen, with a planet slowly circling on the left, and space extending off to the right, that I really wanted to capture. There is something magical about the idea of treading on new ground. The mystery of what may or may not exist on the surface of a new world. The expectancy and anticipation of it all, just like the crew of the Enterprise must have felt (theoretically) whenever they approached a new, unexplored planet, and could see it from the relative safety of their ship before attempting to transport down ... that's what originally motivated me to make this game.