Starship Rubicon

Released on July 13, 2015 by Wickworks

Developed by Wickworks

Starship Rubicon is a modern take on the classic space shooter genre. It's a smart and challenging rogue-lite that features a unique control scheme, pixel art remixed with NASA photographs, and an existential crisis about who is REALLY the monster.

I was recently a guest on Game Dev's Quest which is a local Podcast all about the process of making Indie Games and in the latest episode I talk about Cheerful Ghost and my involvement publishing Starship Rubicon. Rett, Taylor and I talk about all of that and also round things off talking about mindfulness and chasing the next $60 game. For quite some time i've been thinking about how to structure the games I pick next to play to better fit in my life and find something sustainable because it seems like every couple days a new incredibly engrossing $60 game comes out I have no time to play. I really enjoy Game Dev's Quest and if you like a couple of friends talking... Read All


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Even though i'm more than a couple days late to writing about the second day of Steam Developer Days I wanted to get out my thoughts while they are still nearly fresh in my mind. Spoiler alert, day two was incredible but the drive home from Seattle to Portland that night was precarious as I had to navigate the freak storm that occurred as some remnants of Typhoon Songda hit the west coast. I feel bad for my steering wheel as my clenched fingers strangled it for many tense driving moments but the wheel and I made it home safely.

One of the most interesting parts of the second devs days was Mike Ambinder's talk on The Psychology Of Games. When the talks are released from... Read All


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In 2014 Cheerful Ghost published it's first game Starship Rubicon, an asteroids-esque rogue lite. Working with Wick to take his game to a wider audience was a really fun experience and along the way we hit some fun milestones like releasing the game on Windows, Mac and Linux on Steam. Because of that Cheerful Ghost was asked to attend this years Steam Developer Days and we happily signed up. I wasn't sure what to expect but I figured we'd learn more about what Valve was up to and maybe play some fun games along the way.

It's All About VR Baby!

It might not be too surprising that Valve is focusing heavily on VR and the Vive. The main social area here at Steam Developer... Read All


Greetings lovers of the Irish and all things green! If Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun taught us anything is that you don’t get between the little green people and a pot of gold or gamers and great gaming deal. So keeping in Saint Patrick's Day Holiday season we are marking Starship Rubicon to 60% off! WHAT? THAT’S SO CRAZY! The luck of the Irish won’t be with you forever as this sale packs up and walks back over the Rainbow Monday March 21st.

And really, what were you going to spend your money on anyway? You can only buy so much beer dyed color green anyway. We're not saying don’t buy a ton of green beer but buy a ton of green beer AND Starship Rubicon too!

... Read All


After a string of summer events showing Starship Rubicon, winter approaches, and as such comes the incredible march of the holiday sales. Starship Rubicon will join the legions of games on sale and we want to give people an extra incentive to buy the game at its super discounted rate so today we are launching a demo. If you haven’t tried Rubicon and have always wanted to this is your chance! As everything awesome in the PC space the Starship Rubicon demo runs on PC, Mac and Linux and contains a tasty slice of the actual game in 3 playable ships and the entirety of level Sol level 2. As with most demos we keep some of the great stuff for the full meal deal but we think... Read All


After showing at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, it became apparent that some of the bosses (I'm looking at you, Dodongo) still had a couple bugs. I took the opportunity to wrap those tweaks up with the bugfixes that I've done since Steamlaunch into a new patch.

I haven't done a boatload of testing with this version, but how bad could it be? You can opt into the "stable" branch if you would like to roll back to 2.12 for whatever reason.

I would like to hear what people think! Probably the most visible change is the doubling of the dialogue + portrait boxes. It was a little jarring for me, but there were enough people that couldn't read the text that I decided it... Read All


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I want to thank everyone that came to our booth at this years Portland Retro Game Expo. Wick and I enjoyed talking with people about the game and seeing what cool stuff people picked up. I also want to applaud the 6 winners of our ranked ladder, some of those scores were no small feat!

Portland Retro Game Expo is my favorite convention of the year because the community and vendors are so much fun. This year I came to the expo with a goal. Replace my broken Gameboy. Beforehand I made the choice to buy a Gameboy Advance SP as it plays original Gameboy games as well as advance games. The backlit display and nicer form factor make the Advance SP a much better Gameboy and... Read All


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Hey Everyone,

Cheerful Ghost & Starship Rubicon will have a booth at this years Portland Retro Gaming Expo. This Expo looks blow the doors off the last one with over three thousand tickets already sold! They plan on even more people attended so if you want to lock in your ticket, click the link below. Wick and I have our new booth ready to go and are excited to have people check it out. We are also having a daily Starship Rubicon ranked ladder where the top 3 scored players will win a free copy of the game! So stop by, play the game to get ranked, grab a free sticker and remember that Wick loves selfies so make sure to ask him to take as many with him as you can!

I... Read All


Greetings human. Wick and I will be giving a co-talk at this years Eugene IndieGame Con about Starship Rubicon from it's early stages to eventual Steam launch. We talk about the games humble beginnings, Kickstarter and also discuss the age old question "why make another indie game?" Spoiler alert, we ain't rich but we can hopefully convince you we had fun and learned... something. Oh and come by and check out our all new Cheerful Ghost / Starship Rubicon booth. We will have some surprises for people so come check it out.

IndieGame Con is happening October 2nd-3rd and we will be boothing and give our talk October 3rd. For more information about IndieGame con, ticket... Read All


Azurephile gives this a solid "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Azurephile gives this a "Rad" on the Ghost Scale
This is fun, with very few issues, and is well worth your time.
Review

  • Recommended :1:
  • Fun, retro-looking, good controls, similar to Asteroids
Pros:
Fun, retro, great control scheme (and in-game reminders of how to control your ship).

Cons: I can't really think of any. The game's difficulty could go here, but it's not horrible. Many improvements have been made over the course of development to ease the game's difficulty.

Tips: Collect as many blue orbs as you can, they are currency. Repair ship in-between battles

Synopsis: Starship Rubicon is a fun and challenging game, which was inspired by Asteroids. This takes many players back to their childhood playing classic games, something that's missing from many modern day games. However,... Read All