I spent 500 days making a Steam game from scratch

A solo developer chronicles 500 days of building Terra Factor, a factory-automation survival game released on Steam, entirely from scratch without a game engine. Starting as a simple 2-week Stardew Valley clone, the project evolved into a multi-age open-world survival crafting game featuring conveyor belt automation, an infinite procedurally generated wasteland, a day/night cycle with enemies, and a unique 'spatial tesseract' mechanic that lets players nest factories inside cubes to manage complexity. The devlog covers the full journey from a basic window renderer to a feature-complete Steam release including tech trees, boss fights, and an alchemy system.