Little Martian is a game in the works currently by a team of three. The game started life as a simple idea by lead developer Craig as a way to teach coding to his two sons. But as time went on, as with a lot of passion projects, the scope grew to the point where it had started to become the survival game the three yearned for. Thus Little Martian was born!

The has major nostalgia value in it’s graphics inspired by ZX Spectrum games Craig grew up playing. This translates well over to the feel and in particular the inventory artwork as it stands is a beauty to behold for those who enjoy a bit of pixel art. I will continue to be astounded by people who can make artwork with so few pixels.

The game’s developer website outlines the story as a top down survival game and alludes to moral choices that will affect how the game plays with those choices coming back to affect the player. The objective of the game is simple, survive (as you would expect in a survival game). But the long term aim is to help the adorable namesake character, Little Martian, repair his ship and escape and return home.

Onto the world, the game is planning to have procedurally generated terrain with various levels in elevation, temperature and moisture. The website goes into more detail about exactly how this works but it has gone slightly over my head, but it sounds like a grand time when thrown into a survival game. The terrain generation is being kept on the simpler side of things for now but there are plans to expand on this further down the line with the addition of streams and rivers, veins of minerals and islands. The team has also hinted at a climate change system to set itself apart from other games in the genre but it’s all very hush hush for now but will be revealed soon.

Arguably the most important aspect is that you get a companion. A small fluffy one. When you start the game you get the choice of a dog, a cat or a fox and they all come with unique abilities and behaviours that can help you out in their own individual way, which will be interesting to see it adding replay-ability when combined with the procedurally generated terrain.

Now as I hinted briefly early in the inventory section there is of course a crafting system comparable to Minecraft, however the main difference is you’ll be making much more technological crafts. To quote the dev website:

For example, crafting a processor requires silicon, brass and wire, which is itself crafted from copper. There are currently 24 elements, 11 compounds, and 3 alloys, with many more planned.

-Little Martian Dev Log

I personally have been tracking this game with some interest for a little while and can’t wait to give it a try later down the line. You can keep up with the game’s progress on the Little Martian Twitter Page, or on their Developer Website.