A year ago, I started making a game about a space station. I wanted to make a game that had all the fun parts of an RTS but none of the fiddly, stressful bits. The more I removed, the better the game became and that’s how Rymdkapsel came into being.
Rymdkapsel is a game about building your station; imagine a real time strategy game where you don’t have to worry about ever leaving the cozy comforts of your home base.
It’s not all smooth sailing though, when your base grows bigger as does your need for space and resources. All this expansion will surely attract the attention of the dreaded enemy. This leaves you with the task of balancing your quest for expansion with the safety of a small, tight, structure.
The philosophy of less is more goes on right through the entire game. This idea of removing-to-make-better isn’t a new one for sure, it’s something I’ve been exploring in many prototypes for years. I’ve made a one button dungeon crawler (glorg), an implementation of Tetris that only requires one dimensional touch input and a crazy tower defense that lets you skip around in time to get to the fun bits faster.
You control the game by dragging rooms from the upper part of the screen down and attaching them to your station. All rooms need to attach to a corridor, which form the backbone of your construction. The lower part of the screen has the task list, here you can drag minions between different tasks such as construction, engineering or food service. Once the enemies come around, you’d better have a weapons room and make sure it’s manned too.
The soundtrack and all sounds are made by Niklas Ström. The game features a single track, but it’s a whopping 15 minutes. Inspired by the lush forests of Sweden, but somehow transposed into dark, lonely space. Niklas whipped this up in a few days almost a year ago and I’ve listened to it thousands of times since then and I still love it!
The entire game is made by me, Martin Jonasson, sometimes known as grapefrukt games. I’m a longtime flash developer and game maker, but this will be my first game for sale directly to players. For more information on grapefrukt games, please visit our website.
Oh, and if you’re feeling up to the challenge; the record among my testers is lasting 54 waves. Best of luck!
PS Vita owners will be able to download Rymdkapsel from the PlayStation Mobile section of PlayStation Store later today for $4.99; Owners of PlayStation-certified devices (see the full list here) can obtain it through the PlayStation Mobile Store – click here for full instructions.
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