PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:

Hey, we’re Daivid Frank and Yulia Zazovsky! We're a married couple with an adorable golden retriever. We've been making games together as a hobby for almost a decade. Daivid handles all the code while Yulia creates all the art. We recently decided to get serious about making games and promised each other that our next game would get a full release on Steam, no matter what.

That’s why we started NightShiftGames. It’s a fitting name since we both work on our games after our day jobs. We're currently making Pirate Survivors and sharing our progress every week. It's a great way for us to learn how to move beyond just making prototypes and create games that are genuinely fun for people to play.

TELL US ABOUT PIRATE SURVIVORS.

The idea for Pirate Survivors started when Daivid was playing around with a prototype for a pirate shoot-'em-up. This was right when the "bullet heaven" genre was taking off, so we thought it would be fun to try and blend the two ideas together.

In most survivor games, you just focus on moving while your character attacks automatically. We thought it would be interesting to play with that movement more. With a pirate ship, you have to actually steer and position it to aim your cannons. It just felt like a really natural fit for the genre that adds another layer to the gameplay.

On top of that, we didn't want to hold the player back. The whole point is to feel unstoppable, so we let players choose upgrades repeatedly. To balance this, you also have to choose upgrades for the enemies. This leads to some really cool moments where you feel incredibly powerful, but you also have to be careful you didn't accidentally make the enemies too strong to handle.

HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN

Since this is a part-time project for us, development has definitely taken longer than we expected. But honestly, that promise we made to ourselves really helped us get through the tough spots. It’s forced us to finally tackle the parts of game development we weren't very good at before, like menus and balancing, which are still a work in progress.

WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?

We chose Godot for our engine. We've been using it to make small games since 2020, and for 2D, it's the best engine we've tried. It's really lightweight, you can test new ideas super fast, and it's easy to change things to fit your needs and give back to the open-source community. All of that helps us make the game we actually want to make, not just the game we're limited to making.

WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?

Balancing the game and making sure it runs well are the two things we're always working on. Since we designed the game to let the player become almost game-breakingly powerful, we're constantly trying to find that sweet spot. We want the player to feel how crazy their build is, and we want the game to run smoothly, right up until the point where the screen is just pure chaos.

ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?

The biggest lesson we've learned with Pirate Survivors is that sharing what you're doing and setting a schedule for it are the best motivators to keep you going.

Because we post updates every week, we always have a deadline, which forces us to make progress. Plus, the feedback we get from the community is incredibly helpful for making the game the best it can be.

ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?

We're just really excited to see what players think of our current playtest and the demo we're preparing! We have a lot of great plans to add more content down the line, but our main goal right now is to get feedback and make sure the game is as fun as possible as it is.

We would love it if you could check out Pirate Survivors on Steam and let us know what you think! And if you like what you see, wishlisting the game is the best way to support us and really helps a lot!

You can also follow us to see our development process on:

Twitter: https://x.com/Night_Shift_Ga

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Night_Shift_Games

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/night_shift_games/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@night_shift_games

Thank you for featuring our Gamedev Journey,

Daivid & Yulia.

Pirate Survivors on Steam