We're continuing to make progress on Star Stuff and are excited to share some updates with you.
WIP red giant room
Art-wise, we're happy to report that a large portion of our assets are complete for every zone of the star factory. Patrick and César have also been working on an efficient system for our NPCs, allowing for a ton of variety with just three models that share the same rig. They've implemented retargeting with a humanoid rig to apply the same animation clips to all NPC models and have also added shader animation for the eyes and blend shapes for mouth animations. We're also experimenting with physics-based animations for NPC accessories, like wobbly alien ears!
Our next priorities are to build out the design of our progression system and refine our gameplay assets.
WIP NPCs aka your starlien crew
WIP t-tauri terrace
On the level design front, we've validated the mechanics and concepts for Zones 0-5, and have tested Zones 0-2. We're planning to test Zone 3 levels soon after the new year. If you'd like to help us out by testing, please join our discord!
grey box level, zone 2
We've also been focusing on solidifying the story beats for the game. We're watching playtests and thinking about the right questions to ask ourselves to get players to their "aha!" moment. We're discussing the possibility of adding a light hint system to help players along. And, just for fun, we've been chatting with Chat GPT about star formation a lot these days. Ha!
Finally, we've made some changes to the game feel to improve the player experience. If you played our demo, you may have noticed that you couldn't move around to explore the puzzle before coding. We've changed this so that you can move freely and approach a terminal when you're ready to code. We hope this will allow you to jump in and try things out right away. Our coding editor is also getting a MAJOR facelift thanks to our UX designer, Martín.
We hope you're as excited about these updates as we are! As always, thanks for following along with our progress on Star Stuff.
Wishing you the best year yet!
Shine on,
Sylvia & the rest of the Star Stuff team