Ondrej was kind enough to answer some of our questions regarding this exciting project:
In one sentence, describe what Dogelon Mars is about? Dogelon Mars is a sci-fi colony simulator where players must survive and thrive after crash landing on a planet that's been previously abandoned.
How long have you been working on it? In terms of development time, Dogelon Mars has been in the making since around November 2012 so it has been a little over a year and a half now. It started out as a small side project but quickly snowballed into what I am doing right now - working on this full-time.
For how long did the project exist in your mind before you actually began to work on it? In other words, did the idea for the game come up all of sudden or did you think about its concept for some time before starting to develop? I had been thinking about similar ideas ever since I played Rimworld back in 2012. Rimworld is an amazing game but I wanted to make something that was more focused on the story and character interactions, as opposed to simply trying to survive.
What makes Dogelon Mars different from other games in its genre? There are a few things that make Dogelon Mars stand out. First and foremost would be the setting – it's a sci-fi colony simulator taking place on an alien planet. This gives players a lot of freedom in terms of what they want to do, since there are no real restrictions for what is possible. Additionally, I am focusing on making the game more about story and character development, rather than just "getting by." Finally, I am also including a heavy modding support and I am planning to release the game for free.
What games inspired you when designing Dogelon Mars? It's quite hard to point out specific games that have influenced me while working on Dogelon Mars, since there are so many of them and each one had a different impact on my ideas and direction of the project. Rimworld is without a doubt an obvious answer here but other than that, I would say that Crusader Kings II has taught me a lot about storytelling in videogames and how it can be used as a method to make up for the lack of player agency.
