Down Under Devs: OreSome
The Team
At the moment, the massive, all-encompassing team behind OreSome consists of … me. That’s alright though, because its never been easier for a lone developer or small team to build great games. It’s where I see the most innovation happening these days. Without the massive risks that the millions of dollars required to make triple-A games brings, lone developers (or small teams) can make something different from FPS #768.
I’ve been building OreSome in my spare time, which I doubt would have been possible until recently. Technologies like XNA and its associated libraries make it relatively easy to make something good, fast, and the internet allows wide distribution no matter how small you may be. Lately, I see the biggest successes in the gaming world having first come from small beginnings before going on to great things.
The Game
OreSome is a 2D strategy game about ore. Explore space for it, fight aliens for it, blow up planets with it. Build a network of frames and bots to defeat your enemies – or just throw a sun at them. In a dying, decrepit universe full of foes, build up your forces and mine your way to the top of the food chain to explore further and further out into the void.
By the time you’re ready, you’ll be powering light speed jump drives with stars, building Death Star style super weapons with black holes and left in charge of the largest scale mining operation ever known to man – all working for one of humanity’s least scrupulous corporations – and there’s a lot of competition.
OreSome is an Indie game I’m building in my spare time, with a view to releasing in the not too distant future. I’ve just released an alpha version of the game’s sandbox designer, in which players can drop in most of the elements of the main game, from suns to enemies and save the designs. Hopefully, when people make something interesting, they’ll send me the save file, and I can drop it into the game as an encounter to be had in the full single player game. I’m hoping that this will give OreSome a community that really feels involved with the game. Good communities are what lift Indie games from obscurity and I intend to do everything I can to build one – and as quickly as possible. I want to hear what people have to say, good or bad, so OreSome can be built up to be the game its players deserve.
The Future
This is just the start for OreSome. In the near term, I’ll be releasing new versions of Shipyard Mode with bug fixes (the first week shook out a lot of these that will be in the next version) and new Frame types, the structures that the player can fit together to build their capital ships and space stations. Soon, I intend to begin a full beta for the campaign, which I expect to last a number of months.
As to what I hope to achieve – a Steam release is my main one, along with greater popularity, but I’ll take just a few players enjoying the game if I must! Further out, I’d like to bring OreSome to other platforms, likely the Xbox 360 first and possibly Windows Phone. I also intend to do post release work, including a campaign co-op mode and greater modding capability. In the really long term, well, this won’t be the only game you see from me. I have a few ideas percolating, and depended on the success of OreSome, I’d like to put together a small team to build bigger and better things. That’s a long way off yet, but you should always dare to dream.
If you want to stay up to date with everything Oresome check out the game’s site HERE!
