Starlings - Playable Prototype

After a year of on-off development, I’ve decided to make the playable prototype version of Starlings available for download. This build represents around 4 months of development, from late January to late May, and is what I handed in for my final year university project.

Whilst it’s not everything I want to put into the game, it represents everything that I initially set out to do, which in turn is actually everything that was realistically possible with a one-man team.

Starlings is available for Mac and Windows platforms.

Mac - http://www.therussmorrishosting.co.uk/StarlingsProtoMac.zip

Windows - http://www.therussmorrishosting.co.uk/StarlingsProtoWindows.zip

Controls

Move mouse to adjust flight direction
Left mouse click to reduce flight speed
Right mouse click to take screenshot (screenshots are saved in the games root directory)
Hold C for change to cinematic camera
No input from keyboard or mouse for 5 seconds will activate the auto-flight and pause menus.

Loading Starlings for the first time can take a while, please be patient…there’s no progress bar on the splash screen, but it is working :)

What is Starlings?

Starlings was my final year university project for London South Bank University. The aim was to create a game that put into practice core game design theory concerning player rewards and immersion, as well as creating a game that aimed to be unique within the industry. Whilst Starlings was predominately a one-man project, a special mention must go to the Unity community that supports the engine and it’s users.

The music was created by Christopher Chong, who also created the awesome jazz-fusion soundtrack for Beatnik Games’ ‘Plain Sight’ which was released on Steam earlier this year. You can find out more about Christopher on his website, www.majorc.co.uk

Player Rewards.

One of the core components of the game is the way in which the player is rewarded for playing the game. The goal is simply, collect birds for your flock. The obvious reward for the player for doing this is the increased visual experience of the flock growing in size. However, as I believe that audio plays an incredibly important role in creating the overall experience, I wanted to also reward the player through audio. What I decided to do was to have a soundtrack that progressed along with the player, so that it not only matches the visual experience, but builds along with it. Christopher brilliantly describes it as a ‘gameplay-adaptive orchestral score’.

Immersion.

Immersion is one the ‘buzz’ words of the industry at the moment…pick a handful of reviews from the big AAA games of the last 3 years and I guarantee that 80% will have the word ‘immersive’ in it. The strict definition is something that provides stimulation to a number of senses, as well as sound and sight…however in terms of video games, it’s usually applied to those times where you get completely drawn in by the experience and forget your even playing a video game at all. Despite how much effort is put into creating an ‘immersive’ experience, it’s always over in an instant when the player decides to press the start button and pause the game. This is something that I wanted to explore in Starlings.

The first point of contact when playing Starlings is the Start screen, and I felt that in order to quickly draw the player into the experience, then I didn’t want a simple static image, where the user simply presses start. By placing the title and options in the game play environment allows the user to become familiar with the surroundings. The next challenge was transitioning from the menu to the game play… By having the camera fly through the environment meant that I had an opportunity to also introduce them to game controls without having to hold their hands. The idea is that by the time the camera has made it’s way to the start of the game the player not only knows the controls, but has a good understanding of the environment.

The next challenge was maintaining the immersion whilst dealing with the user-interface and pause menus. As previously mentioned, a player is always one button press away from removing themselves from the experience. The challenge isn’t stopping the player from pressing start and removing themselves from the experience, it’s doing it in a way that is in context with the game itself. In order to achieve this, I decided that all the player needs to do to pause the game is stop moving the mouse. If there is no movement of the mouse for 5 seconds, the flock will go into an auto-flight mode, and the camera will automatically change to a cinematic viewpoint, and the options menu is displayed. The aim of this method is to allow the player to gradually remove themselves from the experience, like a feathery come-down…rather than an abrupt wake-up call.

What’s Next?

As previously mentioned, there is a lot that is possible with Starlings, but I think at this point the most sensible thing to do is move onto a new project. One that isn’t so ambitious. I’m using this opportunity to upload the prototype build as ‘closure’ on this project, allowing me to move on from Starlings.

Whilst working on some freelance work, I’m also currently working on a more traditional, puzzle based game, which I’m hoping to show very soon…

And Finally…

Thanks to anyone that’s ever show the slightest bit of interest in Starlings, I really really appreciate it….If only even 1 person gets some joy out of it, then it’ll be very much worth it.

PS…I get a lot of ”isn’t it just Flower?” questions….well, isn’t Quake just Doom?