Hey Everyone!

My name is Tryggvi Hákonarson and today I am releasing my first Steam game: Ceres
It has been a long and exciting journey and through this update I would like to give you a little background info on how it all started .

Around the year 2010, I started programming a Homeworld clone as a learning exercise for Unity3D. I created some ships, wrote some scripts and “voila” I had a simple Homeworld clone. Mine, attack, build and explode.

This simple clone did not want to be just a simple clone. So captains were added and captains needed perks and levels and skills. Drones, weapons, more ships, refitting, missions etc. followed.
The clone got more complex, grew a new identity and decided to become "Ceres".

First I worked on Ceres in my spare time, on my sofa with a laptop, sneaking in some programming during work...
Ceres kept growing over the next few years, until my daytime job grew dull and I decided to quit and focus solely on Ceres. It was a dream come true. I was a game developer. It's hard to become that here in Iceland. There isn't much support for that kind of risk taking.

Ceres started with just me. I worked on it in my spare time, on and off. I switched to other projects when I grew frustrated with bugs and errors, but I always returned to Ceres.
Then I put Ceres on IndieDB and it quickly got attention. Ceres was rough and ugly, but it got the attention of Pavlos Germidis, who joined me and fixed it up a bit. He created new ships, new textures and designed the UI for the ships, trade menus and refitting. Sadly he left after about a year to pursue other projects, but there was no turning back now. I started hiring talent, to do what I did not have the skills for, like Peter Jones who freshened up the textures and created some new meshes.

After some time on IndieDB, Ceres got the attention of Publisher Iceberg Interactive, with whom I signed a publishing contract.
Iceberg made sure that the game was polished enough for release, gave some good pointers regarding design and other important aspects, such as quality assurance and bug reduction.
Some good, patient people there. ..

I have probably spent thousands of hours on this game. Sometimes working on it 7 days a week, 10 to 14 hours a day, programming in my little room, nourished by coffee, fermented shark and Black Death (that's booze).
I have suffered through software crashes, hardware crashes, sickness and despair. Keep frequent backups, people!

I never intended Ceres to become so massive, with so many features. It's like it called for it or something, always wanting more. I had to stop that. so I picked a release date and worked towards completion of the game. I actually wanted to release this game in March 2015. However, my publisher Iceberg did not agree. And they were right.

If I would have had my way, this game would have been a failure. In March, the game was still really buggy, but I was blind to the bugs and glitches because this was my baby. I played the game as it should be played, knew exactly what to do and where to go. I did not play the game like a madman who was clueless what he was doing. Hurray for testers and quality assurance!

The game went through about 3-4 months of testing and QA. We found, fixed and verified so many bugs. Some weird, others just plain silly.

I also got a ton of support from the people on IndieDB who helped iron out some gameplay and game loop issues, early testers and IndieDB, I thank you.

It is weird knowing that I finally released my game. I don't really know what to do with myself...I think I'll relax a bit, loitering on the forums and keeping an eye out on your feedback.

For those who believed in me and kept me going, I would like to say thanks! For those new to the game, I am hoping you will enjoy it as much as I did programming it.

Have fun!

Tryggvi