The Making Of: Space Miner

Founded in 2002 in Middletown, Connecticut by a couple of friends, Venan Entertainment  (now known as Megaspace Industries) spent its early years making J2ME and BREW games for feature phones. It was primarily known at this time for its Super Putt series of isometric mini-golf games, but it also had a hand in many games based on licensed properties including South Park and Crank Yankers. The team also developed mobile versions of major console brands like True Crime and NBA Live. 

Venan’s connection with Electronic Arts eventually brought the developer to iOS in 2008, where it developed the various versions of the board game Monopoly that were published by EA. In the same year, Venan developed an original title for the Nintendo DS called Ninjatown, a somewhat under-appreciated tower defense game. Venan would only develop one more game on the DS, yet another version of Monopoly, before turning its entire focus onto smartphones.

Venan also developed the first version of NBA Live on iOS, which they released in 2009. Early in 2010, SEGA published the Venan-developed Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games just before Venan’s first self-published iOS game hit the App Store. That game was Space Miner: Space Ore Bust. Released on February 5th, 2010, the game received considerable praise including a five-star review from TouchArcade. A near-instant hit, Space Miner and its spin-offs would occupy much of Venan’s attention in the following years. 

The game received numerous updates following its release including a few with significant content like the HardcORE Mode, which gives players a single life to complete the entire game with.

The game received what appeared to be its final update in late 2011. When a software update in 2014 caused some compatibility issues with the game, Venan took the opportunity to fix Space Miner, update it to work with all of the new hardware releases since 2011, and even went so far as to add a bunch of new content to the game. The new version was known as Space Miner Platinum Edition.

In 2019, it was once again updated when it was added to the GameClub library, bringing this amazing classic back to life.