🫡 Greetings, Astropilots and Game Dev Enthusiasts

A warm welcome to you and I’m thrilled to take you on a journey with me starting with the Flight Assist Off Race. As someone who has been in the game dev world for almost a decade professionally, it’s a liberating and exciting feeling to leap into uncharted territories: Solo game development.

Flight Assist Off Race is inspired by Elite Dangerous. Or well - mostly the FAOff flying style, which is a game within the game on its own. Flying FAOff in Elite is at the same time a challenging nightmare and bliss once mastered. Reaching the point where you’re even able to keep your space vessel still takes a while.

But don’t worry - Flight Assist Off Race is meant to be fun from the first minute, just according to the philosophy of the Playdate.

🔥 Ignition: The Playdate Spark

For years, I kept my eyes on the development of the Playdate console but eventually forgot about it. Yes, shame on me. It was during GDC 2024 when the spark was reignited again. Cabel Sasser’s talk was amazing and inspiring - which I missed. The Panic folks brought Playdate consoles, which could be bought at the GDC merchandise stand - which I arrived at after they sold out.

So in the end, it was a colleague in a group of game developers enjoying plant based burgers, who with shining eyes talked about Cabel Sasser’s talk and happily showed off the Playdate console he had at hand.

It was this moment when I knew that I’m going to develop a game for the Playdate. And so, I started the very same night. (And also ordered one online with around 50$ intercontinental shipping. Ouch 😝)

🪶 Flight Path: Charting New Worlds

Flight Assist Off Race is a top-down spaceship racing game. But it started off as a narrative-driven space exploration game with NPCs, dialogues, and procedurally generated areas in space with combat and inventory systems. The prototype is still there, collecting dust for now.

Playing around with the crank, I noticed though that the greatest fun was to hit corners with the highest speed possible - just as close as possible to… well, being obliterated. So, I wanted to focus on that. Also, I wanted to include players as soon as possible. A narrative-driven RPG doesn’t really have much flexibility for that. A racing game with new ships and levels, which can be added easily, was perfectly suited for both goals.

Did you know that you can become a Skytester on the Discord and then get access to early versions of the game for free? And also to have an impact on future development of the game!

🧭 Navigational Adjustments: Fine-tuning the Experience

It wasn’t just the complete vision of the game that shaped a lot towards what it is now. Even after the decision on a racing game was made, it started off with a bazillion HUD elements. Velocity indicators, G-Force gauges, Speed, Fuel, and whatnot. It’s always a bit painful to remove neat and working features.

But on the path to focus on what’s really fun and what’s in the way, the realization came that with the Playdate crank and a few particle effects, the astropilots get all the control and feedback they need.

🫵 Your Role in This Odyssey

In case you’re reading this and the game is still not released yet: Please join the Discord and consider becoming a Skytester. You’ll get a free pre-release version, and your feedback will be highly appreciated. Skytesters from the pre-release era will get a permanent badge of honor for the rest of the world to see.

There will be a pre-release league happening, so you can already aim for your best times and submit them. Get ready for when the game gets fully released!

Beyond that, I will personally be grateful for any feedback you provide, and I’ll listen to everything. Everything that is in my power and that makes the game more fun, I’ll try to get in.

📗 About Myself

Hi there. If you made it until here, I want to introduce myself: My name is Vik (he/him), originally from Prague (Czechia), and now living in Berlin (Germany). I grew up with games like CIV I and Commander Keen. But it was roleplay games that shaped me. The first time I cried in front of a screen was when Zidane reunited with Garnet in Final Fantasy IX. And it was Gothic I by Piranha Bytes which made me choose Computer Science as my career path later on.

The first game dev attempts I did with something called Black Basic, as far as I remember. It was a disaster: Me being too young to grasp what’s happening (and don’t forget: no internet back then to look for a tutorial :D ). Later I moved away from the Alps and Software Development to Berlin to be closer to one of the European game development hubs and haven’t regretted it since. The game dev community here is wholesome and sparkling with innovation and creativity.

Now, it has been almost 10 years in the gaming industry for me. Working on successful MMO titles like Albion Online, on amazing ones like The Wagadu Chronicles, and some smaller titles in between.

There are ups and downs in the world of game dev. But since I joined - I’ve never had a single day of doubt about being in the right place. For me, it’s just the best form of medium, entertainment, and culture. And I’m thrilled to see how it’s going to evolve in the upcoming years.

🚀 Join the Mission

• Join Discord: Whether as an Astropilot, a Skytester, or just as a lurker to stay up to date. Everything that happens around the game and future projects will be announced there. You can directly reach me there as well if you want to say Hi.

• Bookmark this page to get notified about further Devlog entries and updates about the game.

Thank you very much for reading and being here 🤗

o7 astropilot!

What does o7 mean? Coming from games like Eve Online and it’s a greeting emoji: the o being the head and the 7 a saluting hand