The very begining

The story of Starminer starts some time in 2014, according to git’s history, I first started working on the game at 3 minutes past midnight on 8th of July 2014. Which means that the idea had been brewing for some time before that, since the idea was inspired by an old arcade game from the early 80s.

By August 13, the full game mechanics and all powerups had been implemented. By then, I had time to make the game fully playable and already had added a few levels, with some time to spare to add a few effects, such as twinkling stars and background parallax. The fact that this was done on my free time after work baffles me.

Adding initial polish and tweaking it

After that, I started polishing the game further, added small animations, particles, explosions, the first tutorial levels, even did some balancing on the existing levels and game feel, added sounds and the music. You can see how Starminer looked and sounded at this point, in this video I published at that time:

So, although the Starminer didn’t look a lot like it looks today, from a game play perspective it was pretty similar to what it is now.

First Hiatus

By the end of September 2014, my focus turned elsewhere, I can’t remember exactly where, but it may have been while I was preparing some talks as by that time, I started doing public speaking. Before I realised months had gone by, and I hadn’t looked at the game again, until mid March 2015.