In your own words, What is Stardander?
David: Stardander is a RPG/Visual Novel hybrid where you guide four witches through witch school - learning spells, gaining friends (and familiars), uncovering mysteries and defeating dangerous fae who want to exterminate the human menace.
Natalie: A lively, witchy, story-focused interactive adventure in a rich world. It lets you play as four young witches as they grow over seven years of their lives. It hits the notes of spooky, mysterious, and endearing all at once.
How long has Stardander been in development?
David: We’ve wanted to do a story-heavy witch game since the release of our previous visual novel, in 2017. But, it took a while to settle on what we wanted from the game (and we released another game, Aground, before we came back to Stardander), so development didn’t seriously begin until 2020.
Natalie: Longer than we expected! Stardander actually started off as a magic academy simulation where you play as the headmaster - then it briefly pivoted towards a battle-focused game, and then to a simple event-based design (a la Sort the Court). However, after making Stardander Revenant in one month for a game jam in September 2021 (which we won 2nd place in), we found the right formula - a balanced mix of visual novel, turn-based combat, trials, and RPG elements.
Who makes up the Stardander team?
David: The core team is me (programmer, gameplay designer, editor/sometimes writer), my wife Natalie (artist, story writer, art director), Chase Bethea (composer), and Laura Onderwater (background artist). We have several other collaborators who made additional art - such as illustrations, character designs, enemies and enemy animations.
When do you expect Stardander to be complete?
David: The first half of the game, Part One (Years 1-4), will be releasing on October 2nd 2023. We plan to release Part Two (Years 5-7) in Spring 2024.
Why include combat and other gameplay elements into a visual novel?
David: Personally, I love turn-based combat, and I feel like it meshes really well in visual novels, as there’s no time pressure - you have time to think or pause before making your move. While gameplay elements can distract from the story, they can also enhance the story, like one of my favorite visual novel series, Ace Attorney, where the trial system forces you to pay more attention to the story to present the right evidence. It shouldn’t surprise you that there’s a trial system in Stardander as well! But, for those who only care about the story, all gameplay elements can be skipped or ignored (there’s only gameplay penalties for gameplay elements, it never does a game over if you fail).
What makes your game unique?
David: The world is very unique - there’s a lot more worldbuilding than is immediately obvious when starting the game (and there’s already a lot to start). While the mechanics of stat building, trials, and yearly mysteries have certainly been done, the combination of them is unusual and they work together in interesting ways. Finally, the battle system is different from any turn based battle system I’ve tried - and I’ve tried a lot. It’s designed to let you experiment with all the different spells you’ve learned, very few of which are damage dealing - encouraging you to get creative!
Does the team come from a gaming background? What are the team’s favorite games to play themselves?
David: I play a huge variety of games, and my favorite is often changing based on my mood or what I’ve played recently. But I always enjoy Pokemon (and, in some ways better, Monster Sanctuary), Finding Paradise is the only one that’s actually made me cry from the story (although all the games in the To the Moon series are great), and I loved the out of the box puzzles of Baba is You.
Chase: I have an eclectic palette of gaming. I started playing games when I was six years old. Starting on my Grandmother's Intellivision and moving to GameBoy (some of my most beloved titles on there like Turok Battle of the Binosaurs, Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle 2, Link's Awakening). Eventually, moving to the N64 and late to the game with Sega and playing on my Father’s PlayStation. I love a myriad amount of games from ICO, Lumines Plus and Shadow of Mordor to Eternal Ring, Beyond Oasis, Twisted Metal Small Brawl and Exit.
Natalie: The only games I played before meeting David were Chip’s Challenge and Zoombinis (the original!) on my hometown library computer! David and I were briefly hooked on Dofus (an MMO) in college - before quitting in favor of actually-getting-things-done-in-real-life. The games that stick with me always have strong storylines or characters; I greatly enjoyed the Dreamfall series and many of the Ace Attorney games.
Who is working on the music in Stardander?
Natalie: We are very lucky to have Chase Bethea working with us to create the soundscape for Stardander. Chase is an award-winning freelance Composer/Technical Music Designer who has been working in video games for over a decade. His tracks are textural, atmospheric and complex - and his use of dynamic and adaptive techniques keep the music fresh and vibrant.
What games inspired Stardander?
David: Long Live the Queen and Magical Diary were definitely inspirations - they both include stat building mixed with story (with Magical Diary even taking place at a witch school where you learn spells). The battle system was kind of inspired by Into the Breach - the systems are pretty different, but I remember having a flash of inspiration when playing the game. I loved how you were able to see what the enemies were planning next, and then have a chance to counter them with a wide variety of options almost like a puzzle. I used that enemy preparation, player action, enemy action style when designing the Stardander battle system.
About how long will it take to beat the full version of Stardander?
David: It depends a lot on your reading speed, and how many optional exploration scenes and battles you choose to do, but approximately 10-20 hours.
Will there be multiple endings?
David: Kind of. The core seven year story and mysteries are linear (with many optional scenes and minor choices), but there’s a major choice at the end that greatly affects the conclusion of the story. We’re also planning optional romance routes, which don’t change the main storyline but could count as multiple endings. There’s also one secret romance route that DOES greatly affect the main game ending.
How many characters do you play as?
David: There are four perspective characters - although anyone you befriend can fight with you in the battles, and they all have their own stats and spells. Natalie can introduce the characters better than me!
Natalie: In the first versions of Stardander, you played as Dare, the cat-headmaster-fae who runs the school. But early feedback from players told us that this perspective felt distant and less involved than we wanted. So we switched to a student perspective, but then realized there were more sides to the story than a single student character could really bring out. That’s how we ended up creating four unique and colorful main characters. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, challenges and quirks. We hope you love them as much as we do!
