Starfinder began as a physical prototype.

My initial design for a fog-of-war exploration system required many separate pieces to represent as a physical prototype. Testing this clunky prototype helped me realize that the fog-of-war system wasn't going to be fun in the long run.

Creating a grid-based movement system was an assignment for another class. I decided to challenge myself by creating a triangular grid of points instead of a square one. This helped open up the map of Starfinder by increasing the number of paths the player could take.

My  initial vision for Starfinder involved random enemy encounters that could occur while travelling between planets, and multiple points of exploration on each planet that would contribute to a resource management system. Most of this proved to be out of scope, and I trimmed the features down to a single description for each planet.

I went through multiple iterations of 2d art assets, particularly with the planets, to make sure they were as bright and distinct as possible. I made all the UI elements resemble the physical controls of a spaceships console in order to aid the sense of immersion.