Novastar (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Nathan of Binary Freeze is applying for the Indie Dev Grant, as he's trying to start developing indie games full time. He's been learning programming, graphic design, and music composition, with a heavy emphasis on developing games for almost 9 years now. What's more, he's getting married on June 9th, and in the coming fall his wife and he will be starting a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration majoring in Entrepreneurship, specifically for starting an indie game studio.

Recently Nathan released Arena of Fire on Microsoft's Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace. Designed as a test, it was his first game developed on Windows and he wanted to go through a complete development-release cycle.

Lately, Nathan has been working on a top-down space exploration action-adventure game codenamed Novastar. Its major focuses are missions, exploration, and space combat. Some planned features include: 4-6 coalitions (2 major, 2 minor, 2 other), lots of spaceships to purchase or commandeer, many weapons and ship upgrades, and multiple singleplayer storyline endings. He's also been wanting to add online multiplayer and missions to accommodate 2+ cooperating players. Although he has developed a physics engine, he does not yet have the resources to focus on this as a major feature. Moreover, he seems to be running out of time.

"With getting married, and moving in the middle of June, I can't afford to continue pursuing my passion of development full-time. I hope to get funded so that I can continue on my game, and provide a great resource for others", says Nathan.

He then adds: "Finally, one of my dreams, in being a game developer, is to empower and help realize the dreams of my family and friends. My sister is an aspiring sci-fi novelist. I have hired her and given her the creative freedom to do the storyline, history, and background. This has the possibility of turning into a short novels project, and the higher development of a sci-fi world. And again, I've been in contact with a music composer, whom I quote, 'I just think it would be cool to be able to have my stuff in a video game!'".

Here is an early video of the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v8FETS6R08&feature=youtu.be.