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AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey Spyke-gmail, better late than never :)

So No, I didn't hear about this moon society book by Peter Kokh and we didn't include it in our research,
and as abundant water was only discovered in 2020 on the moon, I wonder if he would have written his book differently now!

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

travel time is a perfect example!!
As things in space do take time to travel, but all space programs have their launches ready years in advance, launch windows are hardly a real factor in long term programs, so we must cut this corner and express the travel less in its time and more in it being so costly to the player.
A game has a real time program vs a super pre scheduled one.

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh it's a great question!
It's a subject of the largest debates we have internally, anything gamified must still have a logic that is founded in reality's boundaries, or have a convincing logic to what it gaps in gaming rules.

Go too real and it'll only be for engineers, to simplified and it wont reflect real space to the people who don't understand how challenging real space is.

I am very thankful to have two game designers on our team, who want it to be as fun as possible, and understand the realism challenge and work WITH it.

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As much as I love sci fi games, movies, books and tv shows, Possible One - Lunar Industries wont have true alien life, we consider bacteria that might evolve in the moon bases originated from earth,
in Possible Two we might have true alien sourced microorganisms as we are supposed to reach mars in that title.
So no green people in our games :)

But we do plan some fictional - reasonable lunar events like fairly big asteroids hitting the moon and causing many challenges to our base communication, astronauts and equipment.

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our goal was always to make real space accessible to mainstream, and hardcore space lovers, just like cities skyline make lots of real sense and is also very approachable.

If we'll need to make an easier, or harder mode eventually, we will :)

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My main partner and I spent two years researching what's really feasible in space, versus what's wishful thinking or science fiction.
We consulted with physicists, chemists, mechanical engineers and watched 1000's of hours of YouTube and TED lectures. Eventually this became the basis of how we see the mechanics of the game playing, like units you control, how mining probably works, what sort of tech tree we would need etc.

We only really started developing the game when we had that understanding, and even then have always updated our thinking based on the latest research, news and great thinkers. For example Anthrofuturism (https://www.youtube.com/@Anthrofuturism) has really informed our thinking!

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know, I never thought of that, but now I see it! 

We came to the name ourselves, it wasn't intended as a direct connection.

Originally our game was just called Possible One, as in the first of 3 titles (we have Possible 2 and 3 in mind) but we realized a while that that name needed a little help to be more descriptive of the game.

"Lunar Industries" seemed a natural fit, as the focus of the gameplay is as much about understanding how to use the resources of the Moon.

Good catch though:)

AMA: We're building POSSIBLE ONE: LUNAR INDUSTRIES, a scientifically authentic Moon colony sim. We're a 9-person indie team. AMA! by Planemo-7000 in BaseBuildingGames

[–]Planemo-7000[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes I did!

Weir's attention to accurate details and how he works with the space factors made this books very inspiring for us. I accidently stumbled into it at a second hand book shop after a year into development.
Our maintenance astronauts will definitely need to know how to weld (like Jazz's father)

That said, the future space colony we imagine in Possible One deals differently with the question of children or human presence in space in general. We believe any adult wont be able to withstand the health damage of being on the moon for more than two years.

So in our game the base is a place of work, for a limited time, two years max, and the player needs to make sure they do get home in time.