So, I bought Starsector way back in 2012, back when it was called Starfarer, for something stupid low, like $20 or less. As much flak as they receive, I'm personally a big fan of 'Early Access' games, starting with Starsector's most common comparison: Mount & Blade. I feel that the format allows neophyte developers to present their concept directly to consumers in a manner that allows them to buy into their vision in a iterative way that gradually validates their concept from initital prototype to realized product in a gradual progression from risk-taking 'investors' to savvy consumers. However, as much as I love many games that fall into this format, most of them fall victim to 'feature bloat,' where they start from an initial version demonstrating an innovational concept and progressively tack on more and more features in a haphazard fashion in an attempt to fill out their initial concept and never end up resulting in a well constructed final product.
As someone who's played games for most of their life, found themselves analyzing their structure, design, and purpose behind such, as well as toyed with the idea of delving into the creation of, I find myself continuously impressed with the deliberation with which Alex approaches the addition of new and alteration of existing features. Following the arc of development, I see someone who started with a reasonably concrete vision of what he wanted to achieve, settled on a starting point (combat) and implemented that genesis point with as much accuracy as his initial perspective allowed, then iteratively added features, bit by bit, in moderation and with full consideration of the impact they would have on the groundwork he had already laid as he could muster, in order to inch his work towards it's final goal.
This approach, of starting from the main gameplay loop and consciously developing outwards, is one I have been consistently impressed with, and which I would emulate were I ever to take on a project of this magnitude and recommend studying to anyone interested in game design. Too many games as of late seem to merely emulate without considering the ramifications one feature has upon another, pale in comparison to Alex's considered approach to development.
I've come back to this game time and time again since purchase, and almost every design decision he's made, whether I agree with it at the time or not, I've found to positively influence the experience.
As a fan of playing and analyzing games, I just wanted to throw out a kudos to Alex for being a shining example of a developer.
