I was laying awake in bed one night, thinking about a fantastic PICO8 mini-metroidvania game called Ascent, and how it would be fun to design something similar.  I was thinking of ways to keep it small but interesting like:

• What if it fit on 1 screen?
• What if it was top down?
• What if the world changed instead of the protagonist?

And thus the idea for "The Edge of Known Space" was born.  To keep things simple, I wanted to use rot.js - a small javascript tool for building classic roguelike games, but with a sci-fi theme and metroidvania mechanics.  I had the concept of landing on an alien planet with the rest of your crew missing, and needing to explore, but literally hiding the unknown space around you until you find a way to discover it.  Because I'm into narrative, I thought through the story first, which lead to mechanics and level design, which then fed back into story.  Bit by bit, the world came together.  

First map sketch designed to fit on one screen (SPOILER!)

I've started exploring rot.js and some ascii map editors and the next step is to build out the initial game play and complete a technical proof of concept.