Gamer Dork

Besides gardening and other various home improvement stuff, I’ve used most of my free time these days making a video game with my friend. It’s been a massive undertaking. I’d heard that game development is fractally difficult–every sub-component just as tricky as its parent–and boy did that ever turn out to be true. We’re both pretty experienced programmers, so we were able to manage the scope creep, at least; no features we don’t absolutely need, no matter how cool they would be. Anyway: I’m happy to say we are finally at the point where we can start introducing people to it! Before I do, I’ll note that this is not really shameless self-promotion; we are looking to buy some fiction, but you need context first, and also the pictures are pretty and I want to talk about something I think is exciting. (The shameless self-promotion will come later when I do one (1) post about the Kickstarter.)

So without further ado, here’s our first piece of promo art.

Starspawn is set in the Cthulhu-mythos universe, drawing primarily from the works of H.P. Lovecraft himself. Rather than paraphrase myself, I’ll just quote from our website:

It’s shaping up to be a beautiful spring at Miskatonic University. Finishing your independent study is your only real concern. One night, you dream of a strange frozen wasteland full of monsters and ancient ruins. You wake up shaken, but not worried—until you realize that your classmates, too, seem a little less human than they did yesterday. To top it off, somebody’s ransacked the geology lab, ruining the project you need to ace to keep your scholarship, and stealing something irreplaceable–a deep core sample of very ancient Antarctic soil.

Were the things you saw in the dream real? Was the quest you received more than the hallucination of a stressed sophomore? And what are you supposed to do with the knowledge that your best friend is some sort of fish-monster?

Explore worlds magical and mundane while evading monsters, solving puzzles, and maybe finding love. Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery offers a game mode for everyone, with top-down exploration, arcade minigames, 90s-style point-and-click puzzles, dating sim elements, and visual novel storytelling!

This is a story-driven game with lots of point-and-click first-person puzzles, as well as areas to explore in a top-down 16-bit mode. There are also dating sim elements, where you have to manage your free time to develop your relationships (platonic or otherwise) with various characters, each of whom has a side narrative that changes based on the choices you make. We’re aiming for about ten hours of play time. I’m super excited to share more as we work our way towards the demo. It’s been incredibly challenging and rewarding and I have so many thoughts about the development process. And the artists we’re working with are amazing, too. We’re lucky to have assembled a great team.

Later this year, we’ll be doing a Kickstarter to make sure we can afford all the art we need to finish strong, but for now, I’m trying out something a little fun: we would like to do a short story anthology set in the game universe as a Kickstarter reward! Part of the backstory is a cool (imo) Cold War thing, and we thought it would be fun to let people play in that sandbox if they wanted to. I know we have some writers here, and people who know writers, so I figured I would share it with you all. Here are the submission details. They do contain some (marked) spoilers for the setting, obviously, so beware, if you care. We can only afford hobbyist-tier rates, unfortunately, but it is what it is.

Bonus Samwise and Momo, doing their best impression of a synthpop (or folk) duo liner notes pic:

Aaaand, open thread, naturally!

Now Buying Stories! (i.e. Pre-introducing: My Adventure Game)Post + Comments (49)