Synthaar: A Space Opera Simulator Windows game

Check out the official Roadmap for the game here!

Synthaar is a game about building a legacy. With this legacy, you'll be able to pursue advancement through three pillars; wealth, power, and legacy. You'll build your wealth through crafting, careers or other means. You'll build your power through influence, connections, being elected to office, or building an army & fleet to impose that power. Finally, you'll build your legacy by meeting new allies and partners, while having children to impart upon them your success. In this week's dev log, I wanted to talk about the inspiration for the design of Synthaar, its implementation, and the road I'll be taking to implement these designs into the game.

For as long as they have been in existence, life simulators have fascinated me. The genre inspires you to live vicariously through characters whose needs and comforts are akin to your own, as you help them live what often could be seen as your dream life, or a challenge to overcome. Life simulators excel at generating story and experiences that often stick with you as any other story might, but the ones generated by simulators are special because they are stories that are unique to you, even if they share elements with other players. However, many life simulators focus on the self contained unit of the home or family, and often seek to recreate a modern life or one set in a fantasy or medieval setting. In addition, some of these great games tend to focus on the survival aspect, struggling in the face of tangible and wild dangers on a frontier. Synthaar seeks to broaden out beyond the contained unit, focusing on the climb through social and economic ladders, within a civilized science fiction universe, with the option to take the "family" unit to the galactic stage of politics and war.

Synthaar focuses on a Legacy, which is a collection of people who may or may not be blood related, that acts as a unit to further the goals of the legacy as a whole. This inner circle is your tool to success, as Synthaar focuses on its cultivation and growth. You start with nothing but a few thousand credits and the option to go anywhere. You can start within the confines of a city to gain its luxuries and utility, or start in the fringes or on unpopulated worlds; which offers privacy, at the cost of more challenges like providing your own utilities and safety. Since the life of your characters is ephemeral, you will always be facing short term and long term goals. Short term goals enlighten and empower your characters who are alive, while building up wealth and resources to propel your legacy to its longer term goals, which will be carried on by their descendants. You'll be with your characters from the times they are scavenging or working for minimal credits, to eventually when they are in seats of power, commanding cities, planets, fleets, and eventually even Empires.

I seek to achieve the design goals of Synthaar by looking at past games and systems that have worked, and pair them with systems of my own design. Synthaar's design is a tribute and a composition of classic games, while taking them in a new direction. The current goal is to ensure that the aspect of life simulation is clean and operational. Characters should be able to sustain themselves on the items you give them without too much oversight, while inviting the player to manage them more closely for the sake of efficiency. Once the characters and AI is performing that task without issue, the design will expand on the core concepts of gaining power, influence, and growing your legacy. Along with these three core elements, the ability to create new and interesting structures and lots is important, as well as the ability to share these lots with other players to really create a diverse and interesting galaxy to explore.

With the current progress Synthaar is making, these goals are within reach to create what I hope to be a fascinating game of progress and legend. I have always enjoyed watching and playing through the lives of characters as their genes and dreams are passed on, and starting from nothing and rising to power. To have characters that impact the world around them, and explore the many ways a single person can leave their mark well beyond their own time. Synthaar is more than just a life simulator, it is a space opera simulator. I look forward to hearing about the countless stories that everyone will be exploring!

Stay tuned every Tuesday for a new Devlog regarding the development of Synthaar! Thank you so much to those who have been interested in my game. Check out Synthaar on Steam and Itch.io!