🛠️ New Engine, Fresh Start – First Systems Back Online

Hey voidwalkers,

Welcome to the very first devlog for Voidspace: Survivors – and what a fitting moment to begin. Over the past few weeks, I made a big decision: I switched to a new engine. That meant putting aside a lot of early experiments and systems, and rebuilding the foundation of the game almost from scratch.

It wasn’t easy. But it was necessary.

The old setup was limiting me more and more – both technically and creatively. The new engine gives me cleaner control, better tooling, and a much more scalable path for the systems I want to build: weapon synergies, boss encounters, and frantic large-scale enemy waves. And so far… it feels really good to fly again.

✅ Core Systems Re-Online

Despite the reset, some of the core gameplay is already back in working order:

• 🚀 Ship Movement: The player ship now moves smoothly with physics-based steering and momentum.
• ⚡ Boost & Dash System: You can dash in any direction for quick evasive bursts – perfect for escaping clusterfire (and eventually, sudden death modes).

The feel of the ship is already starting to click – responsive but with just enough drift to feel like you're actually flying through voidspace.

🧪 What’s Next on the Radar

Now that the ship is airborne (or rather, voidborne), the next steps are all about enemies and user feedback systems:

• 👾 First Enemy Prototype: Simple AI movement, attack triggers, and spawn pacing. This will lay the groundwork for boss logic later.
• 🖥️ Alpha UI Elements: I’m starting to wireframe health bars, cooldown indicators, and some placeholder visuals for resources and energy.

It’s early, but the building blocks are falling into place. And honestly? Seeing the ship dash across the screen again already got my heart rate up.

📡 Building in Public (While Working Full-Time)

I’m developing Voidspace: Survivors solo – mostly in the evenings, weekends, and whatever fragments of time I can carve out between a full-time job and real life. It’s a passion project, and I’m aiming for progress that’s not just fast, but thoughtful. I want this to feel refined, chaotic, and replayable even in its raw early state.

This itch.io page will be the central hub for the game’s devlog. I’ll try to post regular updates, small system spotlights, failed experiments, and all the cool stuff that happens along the way. You’ll probably see some messy prototypes. Some rewritten code. And – hopefully – some emergent space combat that makes you go “woah.”

Even though there’s no public build yet, I’m excited (and nervous!) to finally share the process. It’s a weird thrill to open the hangar doors and let people peek in this early.

🧭 The Road Ahead

Here’s the broad trajectory:

• 🛠️ Finish core combat loop: enemies, health, death conditions
• 🌀 Add first upgrade nodes & synergy previews
• 🎯 Implement early spawn logic + boss wave placeholder
• 🎁 Release playable techdemo here on itch.io (early Phase 2)

I’ll go deeper on each system in upcoming posts.

Thanks for reading this first entry, and thank you even more if you’re following along. Feel free to comment, share, or just lurk silently from the shadows of the void. I’m building this game for the people who love small, weird, intense projects like I do – and I can’t wait to show you what’s coming.

– Zyrano