Astral Avarice is a power grid management game that takes place in space. It differs from similar city-builder titles by imposing unique construction constraints. Buildings must be placed on small, 2D, circular planets. And if a planet accrues too much mass from the buildings it has, it will start pulling on neighboring celestial bodies, potentially resulting in cataclysmic events.Â
The first version of Astral Avarice was made in 9 days by Archibald Faugno and myself for the 2025 Bigmode Game Jam and competed amongst 830 other titles. It was ranked number seven for best theme implementation, which was "Power," and was selected by the judges of the event to be a finalist shown in a Twitch steam hosted by videogamedunkey.
For Astral Avarice, I am both a programmer and a 2D artist.
When the theme of the jam was announced to be "Power," Archie and I floated a few ideas, but we were mainly focused on two. One was a puzzle-platformer where the player controlled a robot with a battery that activated and turned off various hazards and puzzle elements. The other was a power grid management game in space with planets with gravitational forces. We decided to go with the latter because it seemed like the more unique idea - we thought that the puzzle-platformer was more likely to be done by other teams - it played into Archie's strengths as a designer more, and I had a pretty good direction of where to start taking the game artistically.