Hello, my future friends. I’m the developer from Stargate Games, and the director of STARIO: Haven Tower.
This is my first Devlog, so I want to introduce the very beginning of the “tower game”.
Why a “tower”? Does it relate to a specific tower? Well, the idea comes from an Architecture class when I was in university. So, it’s not about any famous tower in the physical world.
(Pictures of our classwork.)
We had a topic on “A thousand-meter-tall settlement”. The dimension of it is 600M (L) * 600M (W) * 1000M (H). And we are asked to discuss the issues of this vertical tower-city – the opposition of city and countryside on this city; the development of the city…
This topic has been on my mind till today. I was not merely intrigued by the macro perspective on this project, my thoughts are mostly about some underlying issues:
- What’s living on a high vertical tower be like?
- Would people have vertigo living on higher levels?
- How long would people wait for the elevators?
- Would there be sky-viewing houses over a sea of clouds?
- Would people have anoxia due to thin air?
One day, I found some ideas on these questions in a game.
I was playing The Twilight Forest Mod in Minecraft and there is a sky-high tree in the game. It’s a hollow tree, with about 3m2 space inside. There are vines growing inside, allowing me to climb up and down.
So, I make my home inside the tree.
Because of the limited horizontal space, I’ll have to build my stuff vertically.
From the living room at the highest position, I put stove, workbench, growing area, farms, storage, enchanting area, spoils of wars and showcases each level below.
I dug holes every couple level, to build a viewing platform hanging outside the big tree.
The scale of this tower city is not as big as I imagined, but it’s relatively big in this game. It was a refreshing experience, making my fantasy fulfilled.
(A tree house I made in Minecraft)
Today, I’m still attracted by all kinds of towers in this world ---
The megastructures in other fantasy stories,
The lighthouse the protagonist was training in from the film TENET,
The endlessly expanding and all-inclusive skyscraper from the Library of Babel,
and the giant tower from the Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang, and I shall quote a few lines from it:
After dinner, he asked Kudda and his family, “Have any of you ever visited Babylon?” Kudda’s wife, Alitum, answered, “No, why would we? It’s a long climb, and we have all we need here.” “You have no desire to actually walk on the earth?” Kudda shrugged. “We live on the road to heaven; all the work that we do is to extend it further. When we leave the tower, we will take the upward ramp, not the downward.”
And I have a lot of pictures collected, of towers, of skyscrapers, of giant vertical structures.
(Here is some of my collections for reference.)
So, I started thinking about doing something on this idea.
For the spectacularity, the curiosity of life, and the answer for that topic 10 years ago.
For the imagination and great expectations mankind having for the skies, I started this project.
That’s how everything comes together.
In the next Devlog, I’ll talk about the design, gameplay and logics of this game.
Until next time.