It's always easy to understimate just how long games can take to create. It doesn't matter whether it's a powerhouse like Grand Theft Auto 6 or something much smaller like Nova Drift, these things are always going to take much longer than planned. Nova Drift had a Kickstarter back in 2017, after which all backers got Steam beta access a couple weeks later. Official Early Access landed in 2019, and after five years of steady updates today sees its official launch into 1.0. It seems like a lot of time for an Asteroids-style shooter, but there's a lot of depth in the build possibilities of its pick-one-of-several powerup system and tuning it properly takes time.
Becoming Something New, One Powerup After Another
While Vampire Survivors may have popularized the level-up system where you get a selection of options and can only grab one, slowly changing the way a character plays while climbing to ludicrous heights in the power-up tree, it's by no means the first one to do it. Nova Drift was playing with the idea way back in 2017, and in the intervening years the game has only gotten richer with build possibilities. Gameplay starts...
