My Secret Project – Released!

After several months of development, I’m finally ready to unveil the “secret project” I’ve been working on. Behold, Galaxia!

Galaxia is a multiplayer web-game that takes place in space. The year is 3009 and humans have settled through much of the galaxy. You start off as the Captain of a brand new ship, orbiting Earth. What you do from here is up to you! You can earn an honest living by taking on jobs, earning experience and credits (money). You can also earn riches by buying low and selling high at the hundreds of trade ports in the galaxy. Or maybe you want to take advantage of these honest folks and rob them blind, by attacking them in space. Or perhaps all you want to do is just explore the galaxy and uncover hidden secrets. It’s your choice!

My inspiration for Galaxia comes from several places. Many of the original game mechanics come from an old BBS door game called Trade Wars 2002 that I played as a kid. It also borrows a bit from Facebook games like Mafia Wars too. As for mood and setting, I was influenced by sci-fi shows such as Firefly and books such as Larry Niven’s Ringworld. Last but not least, there’s a dash of World of Warcraft on top too! Galaxia is feeling more and more like an MMO, so it’s no wonder that WoW serves as a huge source of inspiration.

The game is certainly far from done. There’s plenty of features I still want to add, a bunch of bugs I’m sure exist, and lots of little things still unfinished, unimplemented, and unpolished. Most importantly, what’s lacking is the whole fun factor and game balancing. This stuff is hard to do! And as a developer, I’m not very good at it, nor do I have a lot of patience to learn and do it. I just want to code and make things happen. :)

In any case, I do feel like the game is adequate enough to at least show. Galaxia will probably just remain a hobby for me at this point, since I doubt I have the strength to really polish it up. That said, if you really like what you see and are interested in helping out, let me know!

Finally, I should note that Galaxia is just being hosted on my computer at home. Since I’m going to be away on vacation the next two weeks, I figured this was the best time to “release” it, since it won’t interfere with my game developing or game playing. But that’ll probably change when I return. I’m still trying to decide where and if I want to host it externally. I don’t mind spending some money on this hobby, but only to a point. :)

Anyway, that’s it! Let me know what you think. I have a feedback page that you can enter stuff into, and you can also leave me a comment here or on Facebook. Once again, the URL for the game is: http://galaxia.thoughtsofageek.com.

Enjoy!