approaching infinity

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort. Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

I’m my previous column I discussed the weird state of “people caring less” from the blog post “The Who Cares Era” and the value of having things be BY people and FOR people. Yeah, it involved AI, but also general issues in our culture.

So I was thinking about areas I saw a lot of care, a lot of involvement. One of them – perhaps the largest I could discuss – is video games.

Video games are things that people experience very hands-on. You guide things, you type, you make choices. You may have involving stories, if not stories that at least keep you moving ahead. There’s music to enthrall you, there’s graphics to show the story, there’s UI design to help you play. Video games are involving as a form of media – in many ways they are an intersection of media.

Getting this right takes work. Yes you can use pre-existing frameworks. Yes you can use premade music. There’s plenty of tools to help you. But that also means so many other people can do it. To make a game people care about you have to make something for someone, you have to at least give enough of a damn to make something people will want and pay for.

That’s because with games you are having a highly interactive experience and one where multiple forms of technology and art come together. Everything has to come together to make the experience work because that is what you are getting – an experience. If you’ve ever played a game that just compelled you, you know what I mean.

I think because of all of these interacting elements, because of the hands-on nature, gaming is one area where you can feel the care. Even if such care is a good job of engineering Space Shooter Knockoff Whatever, you can at least feel that. A game is something you live in with relative ease, and you want to belong there.

I’d also add that games take so much effort to make, to make really good ones, there’s a boundary to not caring. If you just want to grift or something, games are too much work.

So let me close up with a reflection on a few games I enjoyed the last few decades that I felt showed people cared (Most are indie)::

Approaching Infinity: A vision created by one author, a space Roguelike that got “rebuilt” with over a decade of history, released in 2025. A roguelike space adventure with classic graphics that has multiple plots, spaceship management, planets to explore, sci-fi drama to experience, and just about everything you’d imagine in a space adventure. The author cares and you cannot only feel it, but they even have a Discord.

Dungeonmans: A comedy Roguelike fantasy RPG that is also a serious game where you build a Dungeonmans Academy which continues even when characters die, create adventurers, build equipment, and so on. It’s both funny and an actually good game, and one I played in multiple times in Early Access and after release. The author has even updated it since it dropped in 2014.

Our Adventurer’s Guild: A game of, well, managing an Adventurer’s guild. It’s chock full of the things people that like fantasy adventures want – crafting, characters, adventuring, etc. Your growing teams have their own independent personalities, turning the game into a kind of procedural soap opera. It also has plot twists that really hit me in the gut, all with a kind of 80s-90s anime aesthetic. You can feel the care, a game that felt like someone saying “this is what I want and I bet others do to.”

Shadow Hearts (Series): A classic-type JRPG series, but with a kind of horror/macabre mix with humor. You assemble a team of weirdos to fight some evil supernatural force, and there’s all the classic JRPG elements, but with more horrific monsters and interesting twitch-click gameplay. The games all feel like they’re taking chances with their strangeness and weirdness, and it’s clear each one was fun to make. (Also, oddly, the only big name game I mention here).

The Slormancer: An ARPG released in 2025, a humorous game of battling the evil Slormancer (Slorm being a powerful magical substance), but the game is hardcore. You customize characters with complex interacting abilities, you build equipment, and everything interacts. It’s a game where someone had a vision, a vision so good a friend and I both had the game and obsessively swapped tips for weeks – we even won the game on the same day.

Star Traders: Frontiers: A spaceship management game in the Star Traders universe. Open-ended with a plot that repeats each game, you can choose your profession, make alliances, run a starship, and manage a crew where each member has a personality. The creators have done multiple games in this setting, and this one is a compelling space manager game.

Hope this gives you some food for thought. I’d love to hear your thoughts on games, caring – and ones that you enjoyed where you know people cared.

Steven Savage

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr. Find out more at my newsletter.)

Welcome to the start of a new series analyzing how games and game systems provide lessons for storytelling. I will focus on what games teach us in general, though my focus is on advice for non-game tale-telling. Now, onward!

Approaching Infinity is a space adventure in the “roguelite” vein. Like the classic game “Rogue,” the game is usually over when you die. Games become a little easier as players unlock resources available for the next adventure into a hostile cosmos.

The game contains all the elements of classic space adventure in a simple retro style that draws from decades-old genre tropes. Travel in space, blast aliens, trade goods, explore planets, the usual. The lessons come from how these tropes work within more significant stories and how they come together to make a unique tale in each game.

Approaching Infinity‘s story elements exist on three levels and provide valuable lessons on writing.

Great Rivers of Story

At the “top” of Approaching Infinity‘s stories are different factions, about a dozen as of these writings. Players can take missions for these factions, and most missions unlock further opportunities and advance the tale. When the player completes a faction’s linear chain of missions, they usually unlock an ending to the game.

Each mission chain provides a background story on the faction and its place in the galaxy. The player’s activities have meaning in the context of the game. Faction missions also provide a sense of a bigger picture, filling in blanks as one plays the game. One could play the game many times before they saw everything or understood the backstory.

These “big arcs” remind writers that stories work with an overall, meaningful tale. Such arcs don’t have to be complicated (Approaching Infinity‘s quest chains are mechanically simple), but they should have truth in them.

These multiple story possibilities also provide a potential writing exercise. When one looks at all the possible “big picture” stories in a work, work out multiple endings – alternate tellings. Such work helps you understand the tale you ultimately tell, as you’ll understand why things happen and what might have been.

Choice in the Flow

The “big arcs” in Approaching Infinity also interact, depending on player choices. Choosing to help one faction can alienate another faction. Completing part of one mission chain may make you enemies as you’ve had to blow up a few enemies. You can try to please everyone, but you can’t, as which “big arcs” you follow lead you down specific paths.

The game handles this with a simple diplomacy score. The score goes up when you do things a faction likes and goes down with the opposite. When you have about a dozen factions competing and random and procedural events happening, the game becomes complex.

Story-wise, this is a good example of how smaller-picture actions cause “big arcs” to collide. How many great tales hinge on that one choice or one mistake? Approaching Infinity creates that feeling of tension in a complex-to-evaluate, simple-to-understand way. A player’s (or character’s) choices pile up and life becomes complicated at some point.

The individual parts of a story don’t have to be complicated –the “big arcs” can be simple. The interactions, the choices, they make a tale delightfully complicated. Plus, playing with those choices lets you ask “what If,” much as players of Approaching Infinity see their suddenly-destroyed starship and ask what they could have done differently.

All Those Tiny Waves

The sweeping adventure and juggling alliances of Approaching Infinity happen in a procedurally-generated galaxy. Each game is random, meaning new sectors, planets, caves, space wrecks, and more await you each adventure. Each game also starts with giving you a choice of ship models and commanding officer.

This randomization and choice mean minute-to-minute happenings are personal. Around every corner is a new planet, new piece of equipment, a new discovery. The fine details of your adventure are personal and unique to you and your game.

If you’re on a mission from a quest chain to defeat a space monster, you have many choices. Do you craft a new weapon for your starship? Dash deeper into more dangerous parts of the galaxy to buy one? Raid enemy ships for parts and equipment?

These choices may also affect your quest chains, your “big arcs.” Even when they don’t, they’re uniquely yours, part of your adventure.

For writers of any kind, this is an example that a tale is driven by discovery. A story may be linear and straightforward, but it’s the moments that bring it to life. When every scene, every chapter is unique, personal, and meaningful, a story grips us. Even when a scene doesn’t surprise or suddenly switch up the big picture, it matters.

Of course, the tiny picture might create a sudden, surprising change in plot. In Approaching Infinity, an unwise small choice might just affect the big picture. Even when it doesn’t, there’s the tension that it might. In many a game of Approaching Infinity, I kept an eye on my diplomacy, knowing I might make enemies I didn’t want to make!

Closing In On Infinity

Approaching Infinity‘s mix of simple “big arcs” and personal, minute-to-minute experience makes the game a Space Opera simulator. Using simple roots, it creates a replayable adventure seeped in both lore and individual experiences. No one element is overly complex, but their interactions are – just like many good tales.

Takeaways for Writers:

Having backstory-driven “big arcs” gets you to the truth of your tale. They can – and often are – simple.
Plot multiple “big arcs” even if you don’t use them to understand your setting better.
Possible “big arcs” interacting help you craft a meaningful tale. Those smaller moments of interaction drive the story.
Complexity can come from the simple interaction of simple “big arcs.” The results are often far from simple.
Those moments where character choice sends them down one path or another are meaningful. They also let you play “what if” and evaluate your work.
Storytelling is gripping when events, even small ones, are personal and meaningful. Events don’t have to have big impacts.
Small moments and choices bring tension because they may have huge impacts. Even when they don’t and the story goes along, that tension engages the audience and is meaningful.

Steven Savage

Video Games: People Care

The Writer’s Game: Approaching Infinity