Solar Siege — A Planet, An Arsenal, and an Alien Invasion

Sometimes, the best defense is turning an entire planet into a weapon.

Developed for Planet Game Jam #12, Solar Siege is a 2D top-down bullet hell shooter that puts you in control of Earth Prime, the last line of defense against an extraterrestrial invasion threatening the solar system.

Hostile forces are coming from every direction, and they're certainly not here to negotiate.

Your objective is simple: survive.

Dodge incoming projectiles, reposition yourself across the battlefield, and unleash your planetary firepower against waves of alien enemies. Every second demands attention, every movement matters, and standing still is probably the last thing you want to do.

Solar Siege is built around pressure, reaction speed, and maintaining control when everything on screen is trying to destroy you.

A Small Team, A Big Battlefield

Solar Siege was an important project in our early development journey, marking one of our first attempts at handling a more structured game production process.

The project was led by Lord Zaini, who took on both game design and programming responsibilities while also managing the team.

Working alongside a small group of contributors, the project was divided into several creative roles, covering level design, pixel art, and music.

For project coordination, we kept things relatively simple. Google Docs handled planning, task requirements, and asset tracking, while communication happened through a regular Discord group chat.

No complicated project management software. No elaborate documentation system. Just a shared document and a group chat.

And surprisingly, it worked.

The team managed to bring the project together into a playable experience, complete with its own short story.

It was a good reminder that effective production doesn't necessarily require expensive tools or complicated systems. Sometimes, a simple workflow is more than enough when everyone understands what needs to be done.

When Management Meets Development

Of course, things weren't perfect.

Taking responsibility for both programming and project management turned out to be more demanding than expected. Balancing technical development with coordinating other people's work created a workload that was difficult to maintain.

There were also challenges with gameplay balancing and difficulty design. Some encounters ended up being more punishing than intended, partly because playtesting wasn't sufficient to validate the difficulty.

The game jam environment also limited the amount of feedback we could gather, making it harder to evaluate the overall experience through external opinions.

These weren't particularly glamorous lessons, but they were important ones.

Solar Siege showed us that managing a project and developing a game at the same time requires more than just knowing how to code or organize tasks. It also requires realistic workload distribution, proper communication, and enough playtesting to catch problems before they reach players.

More Than Just Another Game Jam

Solar Siege might be one of our smaller projects, but it represents an important step in learning how to build games as a team.

It gave us an opportunity to experiment with production workflows, coordinate different creative roles, and experience the responsibilities that come with leading a project.

Not everything went according to plan, and there's certainly plenty we would approach differently today.

But that's the point.

Every project gives us something to take into the next one. Some teach us how to build better gameplay, while others teach us how not to manage an entire project alone.

Solar Siege gave us a little bit of both.

And for a team still figuring things out, that's already worth something.

Prepare yourself. The siege has begun.