To bring context, earlier this week, information about an Aurora-like game called “Protostar4X” surfaced on Discord. It hadn’t yet been formally disclosed to anyone. Instead, it got organically spotted. Confusion and questions emerged. I am the developer behind it. I write this post for two reasons: first to try to clear up the misunderstandings by exposing the true intentions behind and second to express my deepest apologies.
Some background to begin with. Since early GPT back in 2023, I had found an interest in AI assisted development, which grew over time. Back in late 2025, I aspired to invest myself in learning “vibe engineering”, with the desire to further develop my professional skills as a senior software engineer, given the growing pressure to use AI in my particular line of work. I had a list of projects in mind, yet somehow ended up after much back and forth and hesitation choosing the insane Aurora route, perhaps the most complex choice I could have made. As a long-time gamer from the 80s era, I played so many games, yet Aurora has been my favourite since I found out about it about a decade ago. My expectations had always been the eventual disposal at some later point when I felt ready to move on to another project, anticipating a complete vibe coding “mess”, and retaining only the knowledge and skill I would gain from working on it. Sharing any of it outside my own PC wasn’t even on my mind at all.
As the experimenting, researching, failures and successes happened the many months that followed, I got better and better at understanding and harnessing LLMs. There eventually came a point when I started thinking maybe it could actually get shared beyond my PC, taking into consideration the importance of opening up with Steve first and then the community.
This regrettably never happened, as I gradually re-oriented the development towards more serious architecturing and direction. It came to a point where the entire project was literally online and no word had been shared to anyone. In my wrong reasoning, I told myself there was no harm as long as I didn’t tell anyone. I waited too long, it is now too late and I’ve caused damage that cannot be undone. I was not even able to make up my mind on whether I really wanted to go ahead or not. I was too slow, disorganised, and indecisive in the planning, an endeavour in which I lack much experience. I really wanted to share with good intentions to contribute, then on the other hand, the thought of having to face the harsher part of the criticism kept me stuck in this endless loop of trying to decide whether to go forward or not.
Had I taken that concrete decision much earlier, the outcome would have been different.
Steve, I wish to express my deepest and most sincere apologies. My choices and actions have been highly disrespectful to you and very poorly thought out. I also wish to extend my apologies to the community, I should have been more forthcoming. My only desire is to see it and Aurora flourish forward in the many years to come. My mistakes have taught me important lessons I will never forget.
Going forward, I have permanently deleted the project repository, the site, the web server along with all backups. I cannot go back anymore. I know this statement is hard to prove, I affirm it regardless.
I sincerely hope that this post will have cleared up a good enough amount of the confusion and that it will have conveyed the sincerity of the better intentions behind the bad outcome. I will be making sure to do things the right way from now on.
I was really surprised — an Aurora-like game with graphics! I’d never heard of it before, and I was also surprised to see the contributors page and the statement about wanting to stay faithful to the original Aurora. I also tried the game for few minutes and was running very smooth.
