That Tiny Spaceship

“Hello! My name is Luca Bicono, I’m a trans woman and also one of the artists working on That Tiny Spaceship! When I was first commissioned to work on TTS, I expected to only be kept on for a few assets. Words can’t describe how excited I was when Kitsune asked if I wanted to join We Make Small Games’ dev team; I was nervous and scared but also so honored and motivated to put my best foot forward to make sure I did the team proud!  In addition to helping me test my skills when it comes to background assets and vehicle designs, working on TTS has been a great exercise in character design; being able to try my hand at designing characters without first having names or backgrounds to help shape their visual appearances has definitely been an interesting venture. Not being limited by a strict set of rules allowed me to design not only the sorts of trans- and gender-neutral-coded characters that I wish I had to look up to as a child, but also remedy problems that I’ve seen in other fantasy/sci-fi media (for example, female anthropomorphic creatures being mostly human in appearance while their male counterparts are animalistic).  On top of the more human designs, I was able to have some fun with some more alien designs, which worked as an exercise in designing characters and creatures based on their ecological roles of predator and prey. Although I was only satisfied with one design in particular, the practice was still worthwhile in preparing me to undertake such a task again!”  An Example of Characters Developed By Luca! Feeling The Beat “ was done up over the course of a few weeks, taking inspiration from my work with synthwave, drum & bass, and trance and my enjoyment of 80s-00s music I wanted to give a more modern retro feel to the soundtrack”. - DJ NekoArc  Right now, the draft version of That Tiny Spaceship’s soundtrack includes 8 energetic synthwave tracks - each of which brings their own distinct sound and emotion while complimenting the vibrant and clean look that we’re going for with That Tiny Spaceship’s aesthetic.  If you want to sample part of what awaits in the final game, part of Neko’s OST was used in the fall ‘retrofitted’ trailer:  Which you can check out here. Gameplay, Release Date and Feature Updates Gameplay in That Tiny Spaceship has been designed to feel tense but not overwhelming. Dangerous but not requiring the skill that some well-known bullet hell games can demand. I wanted to design a short, arcade-like space shooter that evokes the feeling of older coin-op arcade titles like Midway’s Defender without emulating the games of the 1980s directly. That Tiny Spaceship should draw upon the fundamentals that helped establish the shmup genre while having its own unique feel to movement thanks to the physics-based movement system that we've chosen.  Each of the 4 main stages in That Tiny Spaceship’s Arcade Mode will introduce you to a mechanic unique to that level. You can see an example of this in the ‘Retrofitted’ trailer with the warning labels at the edge of the screen - all of these mechanics will culminate in a final 5th level that will test your mastery of the mechanics with difficulty ramped up!  With planning for all of the levels completed, I’ve been working hard to ensure that the specific mechanics work as intended. I want them to keep players moving, thinking and aware that no area of the screen is particularly safe.  Here’s a sneak peek at the second level’s unique mechanic taken, can you guess what it is?  In-development screenshot of That Tiny Spaceship Level 3 (art not final) Folks watching our release date on our Steam Page might have noticed that the date has shifted from Summer 2018 to Fall 2018 and now to Q1 2019. Since game development isn’t an exact science sometimes things take longer than we anticipate. Since announcement back in May we’ve added an additional level and quite a few things to the game’s design/presentation that will lead to an improved experience when everything is done.  As we update TTS’ Steam Page we will continue to put our best estimate for a release date as things progress.  See you in 2019!