ASCII Space Adventure, Claude Code, Godot 4, On-Going

ASCII Space Agency

Please note: This game does not pass the basic security checks in Mac or Windows.
Not tested on Windows machines.

Obviously I am obsessed with ASCII Vibe Coding… I was burnt out from my story based ASCII game so I decided to dive head deep in a side-side project ASCII Space Agency.

The game has no sound… Please play this video at like 5-10% volume while you play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycIau2jkNSA I like this vibe.

The initial idea was to have a grid build mode and the player can expand their ship. I am a fan of Kerbal Space Program and how that honors (or at least attempts) space physics. When starting this game I really wanted to ensure that the gameplay was grounded in that reality, but not too much as to make it impossible to have fun.

The concept was initially simple. Build ship, fly ship, mine asteroids, and sell to merchants. The concepts landed pretty quickly using Claude as the main AI for this game. Since I have been working with this AI for a while, I have gotten pretty good at describing what I want and how I want it done so there are less back-and-forth prompts.

The biggest issue I have had with this game is the physics and the gameplay. When the game was first created the physics were 100% correct. This was great, it’s what I wanted. However, it was inhibiting the ability to actually enjoy the game. I spent more time trying to fly the ship rather than actually doing anything. I will admit the learning curve was fun at first, but quickly got old when trying to test other mechanics. I eventually had to dial back the physics and create some ’rounded-edges’ to make things more fun. I lightened the mass, removed center of gravity physics, increased the fuel to mass ratio, all in efforts to make moving around in the game not so painful.

The navigation was interesting. After playing for a bit, I needed to have some way to see the world around the ship. The view of the ship was very restricted to about 1km around the player at all times. So having a nav ball or radar would assist getting the player to explore and even avoid hitting asteroids. Playing KSP (Kerbal Space Program) relies HEAVILY on the nav ball. This is how you orient yourself, add manuever plans, and dock onto other space stations.

ASCII Space Agency’s nav ball shall do the same! Although there are no orbits in the game, technically everything in space is orbiting something. I did not want to add the strain of tracking orbits, doing transfers, etc. This was an asteroid destroyer game?

The game was instantly fun. I was moving around manuvering and dodging asteroids. Hitting them was even more fun, which added some challenges, which this games lacked. So I added a few things.

Currency (Credits)
Build Costs
Repair Costs
Upgrading Parts

The player is likely to hit many things while transversing the spacescape. So rebuilding the ship on-the-fly seems to be the quirk of the game. At any point the player can press [B] on the keyboard and enter build mode and repair and upgrade their ships.

Their ships can be as large as they want, but it becomes harder to move around and engine thrust may not be enough, which requires the player to upgrade parts to have more thrust, be stronger, have more torque, etc. This gave the game it’s first true gameloop.

Next, after my brother play-tested it, I learned a lot about the assumed player experience. It’s interesting because when he was playing it, he ran into a lot of issues that I never even thought of. That is the glory of play testing. Through quick deliberation, I realize that the game felt more like an arcade game than anything else.

So, I decided to add levels to the game that correspond to the amount of credits earned through selling to merchants. The amount of credits currently held is not the level, but it’s the total amount of credits earned overall. This arcade feeling made the game more exciting and less daunting.

Now that we have a successful game loop and what I think is an interesting concept of gameplay, I can start to now refine the play style and look at all the individual types of perspectives.

Now that the player has the currency and the credits, what can they spend it on? I have created an entire build menu that allows you to expand your ship and upgrade each item depending on what resources you have available and what cells may be damaged or not. Cells can be damaged by hitting asteroids or other objects floating around which adds incentive to protecting the cells with bulkhead or structure pieces. This creates a value to repair something over just replacing it over and over again. I haven’t spent a lot of time refining the ladder of unlocks as you level up, but right now leveling up to level four is extremely easy, which unlocks everything in the game. Everything after that is upgrading each individual cell to be more powerful and more useful.