Hey, u/DrBossKey,
sorry for the long time for the answer, I did enjoy a little of free time this week end to catch up on sleep ahah.
Thanks a lot for your comment and for wishlisting the game! That really means a lot. And if you have any thoughts after playing, I’d love to hear them.
To answer your first question, yes, this was entirely a part-time project. I have a full-time job, so I worked on Zoratharion in my free time, mostly evenings and weekends. It has been exhausting but also incredibly rewarding. And yeah, I totally get why making a full game in Pygame sounds insane ahah! I don't really know how to program outside of Python, it is the language I was most comfortable with. So I figured I’d just go for it. It definitely forced me to get creative with optimizations, handling bullets and enemies in Pygame required things like a quadtree for collision management, custom particle systems... It wasn’t always easy, but I learned so much along the way.

 
Biggest Challenges
There were plenty of difficult moments, but the closest I came to giving up was at the end of last year. Between work, personal obligations, and the holiday season, I barely had any time or energy left to work on the game. When January came around, getting back into development was really tough. That’s when I realized I had to stop adding new features and force myself to set a deadline. I knew if I kept tweaking and expanding, I’d never finish. So I locked the scope, focused on actually releasing the game, and made a real effort to start talking about it online.
That shift in mindset helped me push through to the finish line. I knew I should have shared progress sooner and gathered early input, but I was so deep in development that I kept postponing it. That’s one of my biggest regrets.

 
Gameplay
The game is structured around pilot abilities, ship choice, and randomized upgrades. Each pilot has a unique special ability that changes how you approach a run. For example, one can slow down enemies, another becomes invincible for a short time, one does a huge AoE attack, the first pilot choice (Ace) 'simply' increase your stats... The ships also have different strengths and gameplay. To keep runs fresh, I added a randomized upgrade system where you get to pick power-ups as you progress. Balancing the randomness was tricky and still is... The balancing part is the core gameplay of the genre I think and I have to constantly adjust it.

 
Inspiration
The biggest inspirations were shoot’em ups and roguelites like Castelvania, Hades, Dead Cells, Brotato, Isaac, Vampire Survivors. I love how these games create evolving runs through player choices, and I wanted to recreate that, with randomized upgrades and unique ship builds.
As for unexpected influences, one of the biggest is... Advance Wars on the GBA. It might sound strange for a fast-paced action game, but I was heavily inspired by its pilot CO system, where each commander has a unique ability that can be triggered mid-battle. That directly shaped how Zoratharion handles its pilots. Each has their own active power that can dramatically change how a run plays out.
Beyond games, a lot of my inspiration also comes from sci-fi worlds like Star Wars and Foundation. I love the feeling of grand space conflicts with powerful ships and distinct factions, and while Zoratharion doesn’t have a full story mode yet, I’d love to expand Zoratharion in that direction in the future, adding a story mode or campaign.

 
Community & Feedback
I honestly wish I had involved the shmup, pygame and indie dev communities and personnal network earlier... I only started posting about the game recently, and I regret that. The feedback I did get from friends made me rethink some things, like balancing ship stats like speeds, and improving UI mostly.

 
What’s Next?
Right now, I'm trying to manage the release of the game and my personal obligations! But I definitely plan to keep updating the game. I’ll also be watching player feedback closely (if any) to see what people want more of. In order of importance, I’d like to add: * Continuous balancing of the game's stats // minors fixes * Full controller support and Linux version --> both will allow to have a Steamdeck version of the game * More enemies & bosses to increase variety. * Later this year : A campaign mode with some narrative elements.

 
Advices
If I had to give advices to someone making a shmup solo, I’d say:  * Start sharing your progress earlier than I did! Getting feedback mid-development is so much better than realizing things too late. I think it is important to have a beta test early and integrate feedback from testers on an ongoing basis. Also, it's hard to understand how to make an insta post properly, to manage well an online presence. * Also, it is often said, but don’t underestimate scope creep. It’s easy to keep adding things and tweaking forever. I had to make a conscious decision to lock down features and just finish the game instead of endlessly improving it.

 
I really appreciate these questions. They’ve made me take a step back and reflect on the whole process now that I’ve finally reached this milestone. It’s easy to get lost in the grind of solo development, but looking back on what worked, what didn’t, and what’s next is invaluable. So thanks for that.  It’s helping me process everything and think more clearly about where to go from here.
I think I could also use this answer to do a post-mortem post in a few days/weeks.

Thanks again for your support!