Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector - No Coding

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Creativebloq reports that Citizen Sleeper 2 was created without classic coding:

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"Game development is more accessible than ever": how Citizen Sleeper 2 was created without coding

Illustrator turned indie dev, Gareth Damian Martin's new game is built entirely with visual scripting.

Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector is the upcoming sequel to the hit indie game from 2022; that first game reached more than a million players. But what fans of the two games might not realise is that the solo indie developer behind the games, Gareth Damian Martin, has barely written a line of code for either of them.

Gareth's background is in illustration and writing, but messing around with Twine - a text-based game development software - as a way to write experimental fiction led to them creating In Other Waters, a 2020 game all about analysing the flora and fauna of alien seas. "I had the idea while I was on holiday in Greece, and I was swimming in the sea every day," Gareth remembers.

Gareth had little programming or animation experience, so instead they concentrated on their strengths. "I knew that I could write, and I knew that I could do graphic design, so I was like, 'Well, what kind of ideas can I do within that space?' And so a UI game, like In Other Waters, seemed like a really obvious decision." The form perfectly reflected the content: the artificial intelligence you play as in the game can only experience the 'real' world outside through text and interfaces.

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