Fred Ford's first prototype was a two-player action game where the VUX and Yehat ships blow up asteroids, which led them to build the entire universe around that simple play experience. The Yehat ship was Ford's crescent-shaped design, and its shield-generator led them to optimize the ship for close combat. They built on the two original ships with many additional ships and character concepts, and playtested them with friends such as Greg Johnson and Robert Leyland. The team preferred to iterate on ship designs rather than plan them, as they discovered different play-styles during testing. The asymmetry between the combatants became essential to the experience. Ford explains, "our ships weren't balanced at all, one on one... but the idea was, your fleet of ships, your selection of ships in total was as strong as someone else's, and then, it came down to which matchup did you find". Still, the ships were still given some balance by having their energy recharge at different rates.