In Stars and Time
New Trailer, New Demo, New Platform!
Your friendly neighborhood producer here to fill in for Adrienne as they are currently in Japan showcasing in Stars and Time at the Tokyo Game Show!
We have a special treat for you today in the form of a brand new trailer, some new screenshots, and a BRAND NEW DEMO THAT YOU CAN PLAY RIGHT NOW! This demo will only be available through the end of the month, so be sure and check it out while you can! Be sure and let us know what you think!
Note: As this demo contains a modified version of the game's start to get you into the action as soon as possible, your progression will not carry over into the full game when it launches next year.
But that's not all. We also have some great news to share; In Stars and Time will be coming to Nintendo Switch on launch!
Whew! That's a lot of news! Thank you to everyone for all your excitement and interest in the game! If you haven't already, please take a moment to wishlist the game on Steam, and be sure and follow Adrienne on Twitter via @insertdisc5!
Devlog #6 - Demos and Playtests
Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog! If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!). You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!!
LET’S GET TO IT
So!!! I’m very happy to announce that In Stars and Time has now reached Alpha!!! Which means the game is now playable from start to finish??? What the heck??? It’s still missing a ton of things (mostly art and intense rounds of QA), but I’m so happy??? Wowie!!!
ISAT reaching alpha means I’ve been playing the game from start to finish, to make sure the sidequests work as they should! To make sure moments hit! And y’all! This game is really good!!! I yelled multiple times while playing it!!! I’ve been having such a good time playing through it and I can’t wait for everyone to experience it.
I also did not mention this before, but now that I have gotten my business visa I can say that yes, I will actually be in person here for realsies at the Tokyo Game Show!!! If you’re in Tokyo, please come by to the In Stars and Time booth and get some small goodies, and get to play a short demo of the game!!!
The Tokyo Game Show is also hosting an award event, SENSE OF WONDER NIGHT! The general public can’t vote on it, but you CAN place your bets on which games you think will be finalists (and if you guess right you can get some prizes!), and, if you want, you should place your bet on In Stars and Time ☺️ but only if you want ☺️
To finish this month’s devlog, I have a little anecdote for you all. So, the character of Loop is mostly here to give you advice and remind you of what you should do next, but every loop you get an option to just have a chat (picked at random!). And y’all. I don’t know why but I’ve had at least three instances where something sad happens to Siffrin, and the Loop Algorithm automatically picked the most biting chat option related to whatever sad thing happened. Like Siffrin would go “waah I feel so useless :’(“ and I’d go talk to Loop and Loop would be like “so, feeling useless, huh? It’s because you ARE useless, stardust~! <3” Loop is haunting the randomness value and using it for evil
That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!
AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!
Devlog #5 - Art and Shows
Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog! If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!). You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!!
LET’S GET TO IT
The big news first: In Stars and Time has been selected for this year’s Tokyo Game Show!!! Oh my stars!!!
You can’t imagine how much I screamed when I found out this was happening. Like y’all. That’s the TOKYO GAME SHOW. They show Final Fantasy there. AND MY GAME!!!!!!!!!! WHAT!!!!!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! Anyway it’s cool and I’m definitely not losing my mind thinking about it. More info soon…
This month was also my first month as a full time game developer! I took the time to rest at my mother’s for a couple weeks, but still managed to complete the script for Acts 5 and 6, the final two acts of the game. Phew!!! That’s one big task I can cross out!!! I have now started implementing all those dang words and events into the game, which means…
“Oh my god I have so many things I need to draw”. I have not started the BIG ILLUSTRATION PROCESS yet (I think I have 40+ illustrations to draw…), but I have started on some additional expressions and pixels! So many pixels!
What else, what else… Oh, I finished my second big ISAT notebook! This baby is chock-full of doodles and notes and spoilers. I’ll start a new one soon, but it makes me sad to know I probably won’t have time to finish it before the game is complete…
That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!
AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!
Devlog #4 - Feedback and Secrets
Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog! If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here! And currently 15% off for the Steam Summer Sale!). You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!!
ALRIGHT LET’S GET TO IT
What did I do this month. A lot, I dare say! Sadly I can’t show much because it’s either 1. Secret or 2. Boring to talk about.
Some big personal news though, is that I've been working on this game for the last year and a half (?!?) while juggling my daytime job, which I've realized a few weeks ago was a little... Too much. So I'm very happy to announce this week is my last week at my job, and I'll be able to focus 100% on In Stars and Time for the very last stretch!!! Yahoo!!! I'll miss the friends I've made at my job, but I'm glad I'll finally get all the time I want to make ISAT the best it can be!
And so, since I knew July would be the start of working on ISAT full time, and more specifically Act 5 and 6, I've taken the time this month to work on Acts 1 through 4, playing through them, fixing any bugs I've been ignoring, and adding any events and sidequests I hadn't added yet. I've FINALLY finished writing and implementing Secret Sidequests for all the main characters too, and I can't wait for everyone to find them!
I went through the visuals I had so far as well and updated them a little. Look at this new gameover screen.
My publisher Armor Games Studios also finally got to play the latest build of the game, and I've gotten some very valuable feedback from them! Like for example: did you know people who either don't play RPGs or even video games at all might play my game. And so. It means. I should have more tutorials explaining how the game works. It's one of those things that I completely forgot about!!! Some people don't even know the arrow keys make you move!!! Unheard of!!! So I've added a bunch of (quick! short! fun!) tutorial sections to the game to make sure everyone can have a good time!
Getting Armor Games to play the latest build also means I got some nice story feedback.
A lot more happened this month that I can’t talk about, but Oh My God! Some good stuff is coming!!! But that’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!
AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!
Devlog #3 - Musings About Text Speed
Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog! This one will be about what I did this month, and also text speed in video games.
Anyway, if you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!). You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!!
ALRIGHT LET’S GET TO IT
I've had quite the productive month, mostly because I took a one week break from my day job to chill and rest and work on the game. Which means…
Act 3-4 is more or less complete and implemented and tested!!! I say "more or less" because I'm still missing a few illustrations, and a few sidequests I'd like to add. BUT!!! The main story for those acts is complete!!! YAHOO!!!
I've also been drawing a bunch, which hasn't happened for a little bit. After months of not drawing, I hung out with a friend and we drew together, which helped me unblock myself art-wise! THANKS, FRIEND!!!!! Anyway here’s one cryptic illustration, just for you guys.
(Siffrin goes ^u^)
I’ve also been playtesting the game from beginning to (temporary) end! I haven’t done that in a while, so it was interesting to play it in its entirety and see what works, what doesn’t (and needs to be fixed), and also the parts that are broken code-wise and I need to jump into and figure out. There’s less of those than I anticipated though, so: YAHOO
I do want it on the record that while playing through I knew what was going to happen (of course I did, I wrote the damn thing), but I did get some very fun moments that made me go “oh god!!!! That’s really good!!!!!! Who wrote this!!!!” I wrote this. It’s always fun to feel surprised by your own work, and it happened a bunch, so I’m very happy!!!
And now it’s on to scripting the few things for Act 3-4 I have left, and then finally jump into scripting for the final acts, Act 5 and 6. I’ve had the base for the events written down for a very long time, as well as countless notes on “ok we GOTTA MAKE SURE that this thing happens”, so it’ll be a matter of sitting down and making sure all those notes become a cool thing. Which it will, because, come on guys (I strike a pose) it’s me.
What else, what else… Oh! Somehow I found myself wondering about text speed this month.
I’ve asked my followers on twitter what text speed they preferred in their games, (buzzfeed voice) AND THE ANSWERS WERE SURPRISING (not really)
A few random ramblings about text and dialogue in video games:
-I found it very interesting that most people set text speed to fast-but-not-instant (FBNI speed!), and that people using instant speed were relatively low. It almost made me wonder if I should just force the player to play the game at FBNI speed (kinda like how Ace Attorney forces you to use one speed), but hey. If I can add options, might as well add them.
-I did leave instant speed in in ISAT, but it IS kind of sad to see the text appear all at once when I already made sure the text appearing would pause slightly at every comma or end of sentence (see above!) One of my gripes with instant speed is that it sometimes kills the pacing. Can you really feel the WEIGHT of a sentence if it appears all at once?!?! Thankfully, I did find out how to add very slight pauses with the instant speed! Heck yeah! Even at instant speed, you will go at MY pace, player!!!!
-Many people also love when, if your text speed isn’t instant, you can press A while the text is still appearing to make the text appear all at once! Thank god this is already a thing in RPGmaker and I don’t have to figure it out myself. What I DID figure out is how to make this NOT happen, for important moments! Again, you will go at MY pace, player!!! It’s a fun, subtle way to catch the player off guard, so I’m glad I figured it out, teehee.
-One of the reasons I was wondering about text speed is that I’m a very fast reader, and I didn’t really take that into account when I made START AGAIN: a prologue! I had a few dialogues where the text would advance to the next box on its own, without player input, mostly when a character would interrupt another or something like that. Because it’s fun and cool! Haha they interrupted this character so the text box advanced on its own! How realistic! What a good use of video game code powers!
But here’s the thing: some players (especially streamers, who read everything aloud) did not have time to read what was on screen before it went away! And if they had the text speed on instant, the code made it so that they would get literally one frame of text before it went away! AND THAT’S NOT GOOD!!! So for ISAT, I made sure I would add text that advances automatically VERY rarely, and when I did (because, again, it’s fun and cool), I made sure the text speed would slow down significantly, and the text would stay on screen for as long as it took me to say aloud a few times. So you are welcome, slow readers everywhere. Sorry it took me so long!!!!
That’s it, that’s all for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!
AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT'S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!