SPACE BASE
Space Base is a city builder simulation game by Astrotect Interactive, where the player is tasked with building a colony on an unmanned planet. When I first came across Space Base, I noticed convention-goers fully immersed in this space-themed game, carefully managing resources to expand their settlements. It immediately caught my interest—I knew this was a game I had to try for myself.
The gameplay in Space Base stays true to the city builder genre. You construct excavators to gather resources, power them with upgradable energy sources, and build homes and gardens to support your arriving space colonists. While talking with Joe Fore, the Technical Designer at Astrotect Interactive, he mentioned that players can choose a more relaxed playstyle—slowly building up their colony before bed—or opt for a survival-focused experience, where you must prepare for meteor strikes or fend off waves of alien creatures threatening your settlement. The game is designed with 3D graphics and a sci-fi art style that complements its theme perfectly.
During our conversation, Joe shared that the team isn’t afraid to cut features that don’t work or completely overhaul ideas to improve the overall experience. Their goal is to create something truly enjoyable for everyone, and that means being open to change. If tweaking or reworking a mechanic makes Space Base stronger, they’re all for it. That level of dedication shows in the build I played.
I would absolutely recommend Space Base to longtime fans of the city builder genre, as well as newcomers curious to try something new. It’s approachable, engaging, and offers a good mix of strategy and creativity. As of writing this, the current build is available to demo on itch.io, so it’s a great time to check it out. If you’re interested in following along for updates, you can check out their Discord so you’re ready to get into the space action!
Taz: This is Taz on day two of Geek Fest here in Everett, Washington, 2025. I'm here with Joe from Astrotech Interactive, showing off Space Base. Joe, how are you doing today?
Joe: I'm doing great. Taz, thanks for asking. How are you?
Taz: I’m doing good. This is my second year at Geek Fest. It has grown a lot since last year. Tell me about who you are and what's your role in the game.
Joe: Sure. So I am a junior technical designer. I started working in Astrotech Interactive on Space Base back in March. So it's almost four months now. I would say, yeah, four months. My role is mostly making systems for the game. Anything that you see popping up on screen, like UI visuals, just making sure that that's working correctly. One of the major things I recently did for the game was get all of our audio integrated, because we got a whole bunch of new audio from our composer, and it all needed to get put in. So I just went through and got all that done recently, and I think it's in a really good spot.
Taz: Right on. And what originally got you into Indies?
Joe: Well, I've always loved games ever since I was little, and I decided, you know, really early on, I wanted to pursue game design as a career, but it's been a little more challenging recently to make that a viable career path. I was lucky enough to get introduced to Robbie, the lead on Astrotech Interactive back at GDC, and it was actually an old professor of mine that got us connected, because we were both alumni from the same school. We just hadn't really taken any classes together. We were just co adjacent, so we didn't really meet beforehand, but it was nice to get that connection, because now I'm finally on a project, and it just feels really good to be able to use my skills first before just kind of floundering in an ocean of what do I do, and I can't get a job, you know. So feels good to be doing this now.
Taz: For sure. And that's amazing to hear alumnis, you know, never been able to cross paths until that kind of connection just kind of really puts you, you know, it's the kind of strings of fate, if you will.
Joe: That’s exactly what it felt like, too. So I guess just being able to be on an indie project is just it feels like such a great opportunity these days. So I'm really into it.
Taz: Yeah, I dabbled. You let me dabble a little bit in the game. It looks great. I'm not gonna lie to you, and not sure if you noticed from my gameplay, I'm not a great city builder gamer.
Joe: You were doing just fine. You were going quick.
Taz: Thank you. Thank you. I like to experiment, try some things out, but it is definitely, I mean, it's not my cup of tea as a gamer, per se. However, that is like I was playing it. I was having a great time. It was fun to kind of see and experiment with different things. And like, you guys really, even as a demo, have thought really into the details and like what resources are needed and like where things are placed. It's very, very, I mean, again, my lack of experience. I played Frost Punk once, and that was really stressful. Earlier, you were telling me about the different modes of gameplay for whether more veteran gamers or more casual gamers. Like, what can you tell me about those game modes?
Joe: Yeah, so for us, we really want to focus on, like, the relaxing aspect of the game. First and foremost, we want there to be survival aspects too, so that there's some challenge, but we ultimately want you to feel at ease while you're playing. It's like a nice end of the day, like before-bed game, you know. But I would say for the more veteran players, we want to add different levels of difficulty that you can choose from, like we have a survival mode that you can't access yet. It's grayed out, but we want that to be a real thing later on, so maybe there are enemies that show up only at night, like being attacking the base, or you might just have more aggressive resource management goals. So that's kind of how we're looking at making those different difficulty modes fleshed out later. But for now, it's just the one core game while we have our demo working.
Taz: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And with the amount of details put in, how long has this game been in development so far?
Joe: So that’s a good question. I would say about two years total. Robbie, the lead developer, started on it about two years ago. I want to say for maybe about six months to a year, he was mostly alone working on it, just getting like the basic systems built. And then he got some more help from other alumni at the Academy of Art and friends that he knew. And then about a year ago, that's when they started working together and really fleshing it out into what you see today. So yeah, about two years total for production, or for development.
Taz: And how many people are on the team?
Joe: If you include me, there's five of us right now. So me, Robbie, the other lead designer. We've got a composer, Alex. We have Victor, our UI and balance person. He's also going to be taking a lot of the marketing tasks on. And then we also have Kirill, is our visual effects artist.
Taz: Okay, so solid team, not huge, but everyone seems to have a very intimate role in putting this thing together. Because, you know, city building and base building isn't, you know, it's not. It's very complex art, game, game play, if you will.
Joe: It can be, for sure.
Taz: What was the inspiration to kind of jump into a project like this? Was somebody, is somebody huge into the base building? Was it just kind of like, hey, let's give it a shot.
Joe: I would say, I mean, Robbie was behind the inspiration 100% this is like, this is his baby. So I know for sure, like Surviving Mars and ASTRONEER were on his inspiration table for that. But beyond that, I don't want to speak too much on his behalf, as far as the inspiration, but I know for a fact ASTRONEER was like a big one.
Taz: Okay. And for the size of your team, and as indie developers, how much have you had to kind of outsource to, like a third party, or was it all just kind of in house?
Joe: Thankfully, it's mostly just been in-house. As far as I know, we haven't had to outsource to anybody yet, so that's been nice just being because a lot of this too for us, like Robbie, started this back in around 2023 when layoffs started really happening in the industry, and they just were tired of it, and they wanted to have a way to support themselves and also give developers a chance to learn and have a space where they can kind of figure stuff out and play a little bit while still making something that we can eventually release. So that's really what this is about. Like, supporting ourselves, making sure we're learning and, you know, becoming more adept at our trade. But still, we want to, you know, we want to make money eventually, hopefully. So we're still working towards that.
Taz: Yeah, and Joe, as for you, what has been something that you worked on in the game, or you built in the game? That's you. That's kind of like you love, you love that you added this in. It's been a work in progress. You did it. You're successful at it. You love it's your baby. What, for you as part of that development team, do you think that is?
Joe: I'm pretty happy with our day and night cycle. When I came onto the project, there wasn't one. They did have a one, one that was kind of working before I started, but they turned it off because there were a lot of problems with it. So that was my first task. And I like what we have now. I think it looks really nice, and the solar panels work flawlessly with it, so I think that's very satisfying. Also, integrating all the sound effects was really satisfying as well.
Taz: Yeah, as I was playing it, I did notice that the sound effects were very satisfying. I can click on stuff, things would make sounds different sounds. It was really nice.
Joe: And I mean, I have to give all the credit to our sound guy, Alex, but being able to get that working for him is really nice.
Taz: And that day and night cycle I really loved, as I was playing it, I could tell, like, you know, there's not a lot of real estate going on currently, right? I'm kind of in this little crater. But with the day and night cycle and the shadows, kind of, where they're placed, and all those things, I was really able to, like, get a sense of, like, oh, this is how much space I have without having to look around the whole thing. If I see a shadow creeping up, I'm like, Oh, I gotta, I gotta move fast. Yeah, it really, it really added to like, where I was in the setting, even though I couldn't actually see it.
Joe: Right. Oh, that's good to hear. I'm glad that it's like, having a nice effect visually.
Taz: For sure. And of course, you know, you saw me building solar panels at night. Was it working? Of course, that's just me. Just see, just to see what happens. You know, you never know, but you're giving me a lot of great tips and things like that. If there was something, either for you personally, or something that you guys have discussed as a team, if you just like, as a fun little thought experiment, if you guys can go back in time to change something, whether it be something small, something big, what would that be? And why?
Joe: Go back and change something… that's, I'm not sure if I have a good answer for that, because our current cycle is so iterative. That's kind of what we do anyway. We are always going back and seeing what's not working so well right now, and we are not afraid to just cut it out and either stop using it, find a new solution, or just rework it until it's fixed. I'll give you an example. One of the programmers that was on our team, he kind of took a break, but he made a save game plug-in specifically for Unreal Engine, and we were using that to do like saving and loading. But there were some bugs, and a couple of people had issues like trying to reload their files. So we decided, while we're working on those bugs, we're just going to disable it completely, take the buttons out of the menu, so that no one can run into that issue. Like, oh no, I spent six hours on the space, and now I can't get it ever again, you know? So that would be really sad and frustrating. Obviously, we want to have saving and loading later, but for now, we're kind of just putting it on the brake until we figure out a true solution, sure. So that's something I would like to change, but I'm not super equipped at the moment to handle that myself.
Taz: Gotcha.
Joe: Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we get there, though,
Taz: For sure, absolutely.
Joe: One thing at a time.
Taz: Yeah, totally. One thing at a time. How has public feedback been here at Geek Fest, or even, like, on your socials? Have people have gotten a chance to look at it, play, played a little bit? Give you any feedback that you guys have been like, Oh, that's a good idea.
Joe: Yeah, I would say I've had really good feedback this weekend, great reception. So far, I've only had like, maybe one person, and it was a kid that was like, maybe one minute into it. He's like, Are there any other games here? And I'm like, There absolutely are, and you do not have to stay here. So like, he wasn't into it, but everyone else has been super, like, drawn in almost immediately, like, they like to play until they're done. I'm sorry, what was the other thing that you had asked?
Taz: Like, I don't know. Is this available? Like, as a is there a demo available, a discord that you guys have heard, like, people's feedback?
Joe: What was the reception on like, socials and stuff? Yeah, our socials are something that we're actually just trying to get better at right now, actually. Victor, the UI balance guy, he's gonna be taking the lead on the socials and keeping those more updated now, now that it seems to be taking off a little more, we definitely want to, you know, be more active in getting our, you know, updates out to people. But here at Geek Fest, I'd say it's been really good reception, great feedback from everybody.
Taz: Good, good. And then what's the release window look like? If there is one.
Joe: There is one we're hoping for late next year. So late 2026 we want to give ourselves enough time, just in case. You know, with our saving and loading, we might be stuck on that for a few months. You never know. So just want to make sure we have enough time to finish everything.
Taz: Yeah, for sure. And what's the platform is going to be?
Joe: Platform right now is Windows PC, and it is available to wishlist on Epic Games Store right now. We might consider Steam release as we get closer to the actual release window, but so far, just Epic, and you can download the current build to test it out if you want at home on itch.io so we have that up for download as well.
Taz: That's amazing. Well, that's all the questions I have. Joe, Please promote yourself this. Is this your chance to find, like, tell us where to find you, where to find the game, how we can kind of keep an eye on it.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. So Space Base, Astrotech Interactive is the company. You can search for us on Epic Games Store to wishlist our game, and again, we're on Itch. And also you can find us on Discord. If you want to join our channel, you'll get updates on development, and we do take feedback from people, because we want you to be involved in the in the development of the game too. So it's ultimately for you. So we want to make sure you're going to have fun playing it.
Taz: Awesome. Well, Joe, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your Geek Fest, and then just have a good time.
Joe: Thank you, Taz. You, too. Appreciate it.
