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Space Station Managing, Post Mortem
M0b1u5 writes "Mistaril is a small company with an intriguing product: Space Station Manager. It's a finalist for the Independent Games Festival and a follow-up game is planned: Luna Base Manager. However, the SSM project has a developer post-mortem which is well worth a read if you're thinking about launching a game development company, or are just interested in game development."
I would like to expand on the article somewhat. Because of the very high interrelation of the content production and the programming effort, XP as a whole was unsuitable for the project. It didn't matter that it actually worked well for a small subset, the content and code dependencies made the two impossible to separate. Again, I had previous (positive) non-related industry experience in using XP, so what we are talking about is defining the correct domain where XP is applicable.
Actually there were several other projects that influenced the design originally: Project Space Station, EOS, Millenium 2.2, Deuteros, Moonbase etc. As such, originality is a tough question. None of the above mentioned games concentrate on the flow simulation or 3D building. But these concepts are hardly original in themselves either. In my opinion most indies are best served by concentrating primarily on usability and gameplay, and only secondarily on originality.