Hello everyone,
(If you don’t have Alpha access, this won’t be very exciting, but you can read anyway)
It’s been a year since the Kickstarter finished, and we have some very exciting news!
We worked tirelessly through the weekend. I think I got like 4 hours of sleep.
Make sure you have a valid steam account. If you don’t have one, you can create an account here
Elephant in the Room
We’ve been working on a number of features that you’ve never heard of. We want to give you something exciting and surprising in the Alpha.
Not all of these features are fully complete, and they may require some balance.
Please have an open mind.
CPU as a Resource
With the release of games like Space Haven and Meeple Station, we realized that we needed to take the “space simulator” genre in an exciting new direction.
I think that the best games incorporate elements from everywhere.
Introducing, Stardancer
This is a minigame that you play to fill up your “CPU” meter. CPU meter is required to perform most actions in the game. Pausing the game, for example, drains CPU at a rate of 100 score per second (these values might change as we playtest).
In order to refill the meter, you’re going to have to boogie.
Minigame
This sounds weird without much context (and it’s why we haven’t said anything about this until now).
It’s sort of similar to the “lockpicking” or hacking minigame found in other games
For example, in Bioshock you hack by playing a “pipe” minigame. Obviously no one would suggest that Bioshock is stealing an idea from a decades old game.
Hacking in Bioshock
Similarly, Starmancer is NOT stealing an idea from Dance Dance Revolution.
We simply took a good idea, and made it better
Procedural Skybox
The most exciting feature of Stardancer is the procedural background. We’re literally generating any entire star system every time you start a new dance session.
Internally, this is actually a star system that exists only in the Starmancer’s brain. We hope to expand on this in the future and add features that blur the line between reality and simulation.
Think about how interesting it would be if a core glitch made you think that all of your colonists were actually pirates. Once repaired, you’d realize that you accidentally slaughtered your entire station. Bad HAL!
So try to appreciate all of the little detail while you’re Busting a Move!
Bust a Move
We realized that you’d be disappointed if you had to dance all the time, so we’ve implemented a feature where you can add a fully customizable colonist avatar that dances in your place.
This colonist will ensure that the funky rhymes keep flowing, and that your cpu meter never runs out (just remember to feed him/her).
The Bust-a-Move machine generates cpu meter
The customization options are nearly endless. The only rules are that the avatar must have 2 feet, and must be capable of Busting a Move
By the way, you can place as many of these machines as you want. Right now, we’re balancing it so that you have to place about 1 machine for every 10 colonists.
Deadline
We’re a bit upset that we missed the March release date, but we barely missed it. Having such exciting news on the 1st of April is close enough.
