Two years ago, I accidentally discovered the Godot Engine for making games. My coding experience was 30 years back. I was a radar designer and I spent years making software for simulating propagation of electromagnetic waves. I even got a scientific prize for it. I followed the tutorial on the Godot website and I was hooked.

I did not have a plan for the game. It grew organically. However I had a vision: with Earth's resources getting scarcer, Humanity will have to go beyond Earth and even beyond our own solar system in order to mine for resources. It will face celestial dangers, probably aliens, and also bad humans, ie, Pirates. It started with a single astronaut collecting gold ore. Then of course I added mining robots. For fun, I added meteor storms, and a laser gun to shatter the meteors. Then I designed villains as pirates, so it made sense to develop autonomous robot guns, sort of spatial war drones. Then I designed Aliens, that are attacking the astronaut. In my mind, Aliens are like the indigenous peoples of the Far West that are protecting their territory from invasion. Then it made sense to develop other technologies like the Magnetic Harvester, the Magnetic Repulsor and an Electro Magnetic weapon.

Two years ago I started building a game on a Linux laptop. No team. No budget. No guarantee anyone would ever play it. Just an idea, and a lot of hours. And some tension with my wife that resented my long hours facing a computer screen. This is the story of how Cosmic Gold Rush was born.

WHY I BUILT IT I was a fan of Sim City. I loved the fast action of Team Fortress. I love the balance between tactic fights and strategic resources in Age of Empires and Shogun. I felt that a lot of AAA games were strong on 3D glitz and weak on purpose and mechanics. I wanted something original, so I ignored other Sci-Fi/Space games in order to concentrate on my personal vision. I know that many will not like it, but I am certain that it will find its niche of people who will enjoy it.

WHY GODOT I am a believer in open source. For years I knew that I had to leave Windows because of its spying telemetry. It took me a full year to switch completely to Linux, and AI helped a lot in making that transition easier. So Godot was an obvious choice. Plus I was put off by the pricing scandal around Unity. Even if Godot was weaker at the time, I felt that it was the right choice. Now Godot is increasingly becoming the obvious choice. My experience with Godot is that it never failed me once. I was never blocked by anything. I love the way it loads super fast. I love the language GDScript. I am enthusiastic about its elegant object oriented structure. Only weaknesses: I wish that I could open 2 side by side windows in the editor, and also that the plugin library was richer. But this is very minor.

WHERE IT STANDS TODAY The game is feature-complete and in beta. The core loop works. The 9 technologies are implemented. The 7 solar systems are explorable. The two enemy factions — Pirates and Aliens — are fully operational with their own AI behavior and weapons. What I need now is players. Real players who will push the systems, find the edges, and tell me what feels wrong and what feels right. The game is called Cosmic Gold Rush. It is on Steam and the demo is free.