Entry 1

Previously, on Nana's Nebula

. Written to catch up on decisions made before the diary began.

I’ve wanted to make a game for about as long as I’ve been playing them. For most of that time, the plan consisted of saying “I should make a game” and then not making a game. It was a very stable plan. It never failed, because it never started.

This time it started.

Nana’s Nebula is a cozy farming and mining game set in our own Solar System. Think Stardew Valley, if Pelican Town had a launch pad and your grandmother had strong opinions about what grows on Mars. You farm, you mine, you trade, you slowly turn a scrappy little operation into something that runs itself. Later on, the game opens up into procedurally generated star systems, but the first playthrough is home: the planets and moons we actually have.

It’s a hobby project. It’s just me, on PC, in the evenings and on weekends, roughly 10 to 15 hours a week if life cooperates. Life has a long history of not cooperating.

Why a diary

Two reasons.

The honest one: I’m heading into the unknown with a game idea I can’t stop thinking about, and I’m going to give it my best shot. I want a record of the whole thing, so that one day, however it turns out, I can look back and see how it grew from an idea into something I’m proud of. And writing it down while it’s fresh is a lot cheaper than archaeology later.

The other one: if this ever turns into something people can actually play, I’d like there to be a record of how it got made. Not a polished press release. The real version, with the dead ends and the bad ideas and the evening I spent arguing with myself about pixel sizes.

What you’ll find here

  • Decisions about how the game plays, and why.
  • Build notes: what I made, what broke, what I broke while fixing it.
  • Ideas that might make it in, and some that definitely won’t.
  • Eventually, screenshots. Once there’s something to screenshot that isn’t a grey rectangle.

The next few entries catch up on the decisions made before this diary existed. After that, it’s whatever happens, roughly as it happens.

Nana would want me to get on with it. So I will.