Why I'm Building Tiny Ship

I deeply enjoy videogames. Tiny Ship is not the first game I've attempted to make, but it's the first one that feels far enough along to actually share.

It's a twin-stick shooter, survivor-like action game built from mechanics inspired by my favorite games. I think about videogames constantly: how systems interact, how combat feels, how levels are structured, how controls and feedback shape experience. Games have given me a lot of joy and a lot of ideas, so it felt natural to try and build something that reflects what I find fun.

For a long time I've been fascinated by Kingdom Hearts 2. It's one of those games that feels almost perfectly tuned in how all its systems layer together. It's a PS2 game, but the depth of its combat still feels hard to match. I could write a lot about how it works, but the important part is this: it shaped how I think about layered gameplay systems. Tiny Ship won't look anything like KH2 on the surface, but the influence is there in how I think about mechanics and interaction.

Other major influences are Doom Eternal and Bloodborne. At one point I really wanted to build an FPS that blended all of these ideas together: Doom's speed and flow, Bloodborne's setting and tone, KH2's mechanical layering. Basically a mashup of everything I love.

But every time I tried to build my "dream game," I ran into the same wall. Scope would explode, or I'd hit systems that required skills I don't actually have yet. Animation, 3D assets, and making things feel good visually. I'm a programmer, and that's the strongest part of my skillset. Game development, unfortunately, doesn't care about that in isolation.

Over time I started noticing a pattern in how I think about game design more generally:

• The games I love aren't necessarily my favorites because of depth alone. They're my favorites because of how they feel to play.
  • That feeling comes from a mix of systems, animation, sound, music, and feedback—not just mechanics.
• People massively underestimate how important "easy to pick up" is.
  • If something is hard to understand or engage with at the start, most people will just drop it.
  • This applies even to games that are considered deep or complex.
  • This applies to everything in life actually. Including game dev.
• Depth only matters after the player is already invested.
  • The best games are extremely accessible at the start, and only later reveal their complexity.
  • If you don't survive the first few minutes, none of the deeper systems matter.

I kept trying to build my "perfect" game, but I was aiming way past what I could realistically execute. At some point I had to accept that I can't brute-force my way through missing skills by just writing more code.

That's why I pivoted to a twin-stick shooter.

A top-down shooter removes a huge amount of production complexity. I don't need high-end animation or detailed character work. It's movement, aiming, and systems. More importantly, it still gives me space to experiment with layered mechanics in a way that feels closer to the design space I care about.

I also played a lot of Super Stardust HD back in the PS3 era after the PSN hack, and I still think about how fun that game was. That kind of simplicity is part of what made this format appealing.

From there, I started narrowing down what kind of game Tiny Ship actually is.

I've been deciding between a Devil Daggers-style design and a Vampire Survivors-style design. Right now, Vampire Survivors won out, but not in its pure form.

Key differences in Tiny Ship:

• No auto-fire or full auto-targeting (in most cases)
  • I want more intentionality in how attacks are directed.
  • Vampire Survivors works because it's about build expression, but I want more moment-to-moment skill expression too.
• No permanent meta progression (for now)
  • I prefer games where improvement mostly comes from player skill rather than long-term stat accumulation.
  • Games like Sekiro and CS:GO stand out to me because mastery matters more than time invested.

This is still evolving, but the direction is clear: tighter control, clearer input expression, and less reliance on passive progression systems.

So that's where Tiny Ship sits right now. It's not trying to be my "dream game" anymore. It's something much more grounded: a game that fits what I can actually build well, while still pulling from the ideas I care about most.

As for Veilborn, I got what I wanted from it technically and mechanically for now. Other design problems around structure and world state became more interesting than continuing it immediately, so it's currently parked. I'll likely return to it once the design direction is clearer.

Check out Tiny Ship on itch.io! https://arham99.itch.io/tiny-ship