What?

The Blue Stars is a strategy RPG game I've been developing for about 2 (shudder) years now

I am the solo dev working on the game, all coding, writing, art, animation, game design and music(shudder)

I released a demo of it back in December and it went over well enough with like the 3 people that played it

I am bummed out the game got zero traction, but that hasn't stopped my passion for this project and making games

Far from it

What even is the game?

Stategy, RPG, you are the Prince of Earth on mission to take back Earth from an invading kingdom (Who are literally space aliens)

Throughout the game you gain more weirdos to place aboard your ship and gawk at, they have completely unique abilities, perks, stats, assist abilities and interactions. 

There's a lot of fucking characters.

HOW MANY EXACTLY?!

Uhh, like 20 I think? (this gif doesn't have all 20 though)

The game mostly revolves around character special moves, these expend a "Blue Star" which is essentially just a mana token. Character special moves target different areas and perform different effects. One character fires a short ranged laser, another creates a metallic construct that blocks damage, another creates a healing circle, another swaps places of two units and one unit is able to split into two.

Lining up special moves to effect the most of amount of enemies and most amount of player units is where a lot of the dopamine is mined. The game rewards you for playing efficiently with Confidence Points (or just CP). With more confidence you can meet new people (gain more party members) and confront dangerous problems (complete more difficult quest chains)

Is there much of a story?

The game does do cutscenes in a visual novel style but the story is kept relatively simple for game play sake. Most of the writing is dedicated to meeting new characters and interacting with them in a persona styled bond system. There's like 18ish characters you can speak to who all have 5 dialogue scenes so almost 100 (shudder) potential interactions in total. If you like interacting with stupid fucking aliens and people with severe problems actually living in reality you might like it?

Where is the project in development?

Uhhh, after about 2 years I have a lot of stuff done. Loads. I THINK the game may be done around the end of the year as a lot of systems and mechanics have long since came online and now it comes to assets (levels,enemies,player units) which I really enjoy doing and have made systems to create these assets with not a lot of hassle. Music, however, is a big problem with the project because of my inexperience with it. Basically I suck at making battle themes. A lot of the games final push will be music.

The full game progress is currently 19.06%, this is a confusing number I use for myself so let me explain 

The full game is not 19% complete (it's probably closer to 70% or so)

The progress needed to get from the December demo to full release is about 19% done

So in about 2 months I got 20% of the way there so in roughly 10 more months the game should be close to done

Is there anything I can do to help development?

Play the demo! and do yourself a favor and only listen to the music for like an hour before muting it and putting a music play list over it (the music in the demo is really bad!)

Then @ me on Itch or at https://twitter.com/BlueStarsDev
And tell me what you thought of it!

Even if you thought it was more painful then being strained through a rusted sewer drainage pipe I still want to hear what you think!

Thanks for reading!