Welcome to Coder Supernova 🚀

Hi everyone, and welcome to the very first devlog for Coder Supernova!

This project has been brewing for a while, and I’m excited to finally start sharing it more publicly. Coder Supernova is a roguelike space exploration game that lives inside your coding workflow. It runs as a free VS Code Extension, playable right within your code editor. It can serve as motivation to code more often and to become fluent in different programming languages. It can also offer an occasional break from your busy coding workflow.

Engage Engines

Everyday coding, writing code, fixing bugs, pushing commits, becomes the resource fuel that powers your ship. Your fluency in different programming languages gives you advantages against different enemy types, and your progress as a developer is reflected in your progress through the galaxy.

You’ll:

• Code your real-life projects in VS Code, earning resources to use in-game

• Mine & terraform planets for other types of resources

• Explore asteroid fields in a push-your-luck risk/reward system

• Encounter & hack alien ships in turn-based, break-and-boost combat

• Upgrade your ships with modules & consumables

• Persist perks and unlock stronger ships across runs

It’s a blend of coding + roguelite mechanics designed to make development itself feel rewarding.

Visual Feed Incoming

Gameplay mostly takes place in the sidebar views of VS Code. As you work on your projects, you’ll see your ship’s resources automatically filling up in the background, energy being the primary resource earned directly from your coding activity. It’s a subtle companion while you’re in flow, but always there if you want to check in. Motivation to keep coding, so you progress more when you're ready to play.

When you’re ready for a break from coding, you can slip into the Coder Supernova tab and jump into the cockpit. From there, you can chart a new course through asteroid fields, investigate derelict ships, or face off against enemy vessels in turn-based hacking battles. Each encounter is designed to be lightweight enough for a quick distraction, but still meaningful if you want to dive deeper and keep pushing your run forward.

The design philosophy is all about bite-sized gameplay: a mining run might only take a minute, while a full battle could stretch a little longer. You can fit it neatly between coding tasks, or spend a longer stretch exploring and upgrading your ship. Either way, progress always ties back into your coding, making the game something that complements your work, instead of competing with it.

At this stage of development, the core gameplay components are all there, but there's lots of balancing to do so that the progression feels motivating, and not just a grind. It's quite early in development still, but reaching a point where its complete and playable, I'm hoping to begin some beta testing within a month.

Thanks for checking this out, and stay tuned for more!