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[bluilisht]

Once in a decade, a creature known as STARling would be born from the stars. they are able to produce raw energy known as STARs. these became important source of life and many respected the STARlings for their ability.

There is however one unfortunate STARling who couldn't produce any STARs. he is a little owl who possessed a star-shaped face. People despised him for betraying their "ray of hope" and the STARlings mocked him as well. As to make things worse, his unnatural appearance made him unable to hide his identity whatsoever. So he decided use his appearance to turn against the STARlings by working as a travelling clown.


He gained many supporter at first but many STARlings couldn't stand his jokes. They treated him as an offender and people who sided with him were banned from supply of STARs. Eventually everyone stopped watching his shows and he fell into ultimate poverty. Due to his poor state of welfare he turned into the darkside and became a ruthless thief who steal STARs in the nights.

GAMEPLAY:

STARlings is an avoider game with the owl as main character, using flat-minimalist theme as the art direction.
Player controls the owl by using mouse. The objective is to get as much STARforce (score) as possible until the STARmina () runs out.
STARs will be spawned by entity such as meteor, bird, etc. Each of it with different behavior.

There are 3 types of STAR
-Yellow: Give Coin and STARforce, Coin would be used to buy upgrade and STARpower.
-Blue: Give AP STARforce, AP is needed for using STARpower.
-Red: Decrease STARmina.

STARpower is an ability that can be used to heal STARmina, become invincible, etc.

The game is on early phase of development. The gameplay and story is not conclusive, as we still trying to make the best of it.

TEAM:
We are Skyforts, two-man studios working on this game with additional force from the artist of stellar-Ø.

• I, Blue_mc, is doing the code and game design
• somehow I persuade my partner spiralhalo to write the story. But I dont know if he gonna make it coz he is so lazy and he also working on his own game Mirror Witch
• We borrow Lazcht from stellar-Ø and force him to draw the game

This will be the development blog from STARlings, and I hope I could update it regularly. 

[bluilisht]

Lazcht finally make a mock for the shop screen. Now i can work on it.

[Lazcht]

hello im the artist. here are the quick character design i did. my aim is simplicity and a bit of cutesy, but not much.


color still not fix, but the rule is: whatever with red color = bad and should be avoided

still need time to execute the actual sprite, im used to pixel but this time im gonna try to vector to match the GUI and the background, outta my comfort zone. wish me luck with the sprite and the project as well! 

[bluilisht]

So i change the gameplay,integrating a [Link] mechanic.

Now all STAR will hurt player when in [Avoid Mode]. Player can enter [Link Mode] by holding left mouse button. Doing so will consume [Link Energy] *temporary term*.
In [Link Mode], all movement except the player will be slowed. During this moment, player have to touch any STAR with same color; the color is determined by the first STAR taken. Touching different colored STAR will give damage and break the [Link Mode].

After [Link Mode] ended, (by releasing the click, run out of [Link Energy], or touching wrong STAR )player will gain STARmina (determined by total STAR linked on the [Link Mode]).

You can try the demo here. there are still many bugs 

Let me know what do you think about this concept. I think there are things that still missing. I also didn't like how the STARs overlap with each other. Especially in [Link Mode] when player has to chase the STAR and that STAR was stacked with other colored STAR . I thought about using box2d to add physics so the STAR couldn't overlapping, but it will break the STAR pattern and it would be chaos.

[Lazcht]

some of spriteworks i did some days ago   


the last 2 will be revised though, since blue_mc doesnt want them looks too outlined

still looking for feedback, esp. gameplay/design wise 

also, i gave in about doing vector for the character sprites , im going to aim clean pixel art instead

[ashtonmorris]

I like the look of it very much pleasant color pallet and font choice. I agree there is something missing too. But I cant quite put my finger on it. The concept and feel of it are nice but I think it doesn't have enough of a rewarding feel when you collect stars, and it doesn't feel challenging enough when you aren't and just avoiding them. In that sense it lacks in an emotional or psychological appeal or drive.

I think you could add some benefit for getting a increasing number of stars. Perhaps some challenges when you aren't catching stars and just avoiding them, like some small ai where they slowly go towards you.

I am not a developer so I don't know how hard any of these would be to implement or pragmatic. Just some thoughts. I think you have something good though.