Good morning everyone, I'm really happy to announce that my game Devouring Stars is coming on iOS around mid-December! Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Devouring Stars is a strategy game with some exploration and a lot of Greek gods. I tried to expand on the traditional RTS game, with different sort of battles, another way to "build" units, a focus on intuitive controls and a large "scope". In Devouring Stars you play a tribe of galaxy-size entities trapped in Tartarus, a corner of the universe as far beneath hell as heaven is high above the earth. I tried to recreate the feeling you have when you look at Nasa photos of giant stars and galaxies. Your entities have the ability to "devour" star fields, creating dynamic nebulae that will protect them. There's no tech tree or building facilities in Devouring Stars: your entities will have to merge in order to create advanced units with special abilities. Depending on the set of entities you start the game with, you will be able to go for different strategies that will evolve during the game. I'm specially happy to see Devouring Stars coming to iOS. The game has already been released on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/354230) with good feedbacks from the players. I like that version, and will keep improving it, but my preferred one is definitely iOS. First it's a lot more beautiful for a simple reason : on PC, you're constrained by the variety of screen qualities. On iOS, I was able to focus on Apple screens, and "push" the colors and atmosphere. The game looks a lot more vivid and alive on iOS. It will be iOS 8+, I really needed to take advantage of Metal. Also, I spent a lot of time adapting the controls to the touchscreen (it was my intention from the start, so it affected the design of the game itself). Here is another short video, focused on the gameplay and control (it's on an iPad) : Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Devouring Stars is mainly inspired by Dan Simmons' Illium but also by Homeworld, Eufloria and Starcraft. Some features : - 15 advanced entities to unlock by merging the 4 basic ones (earth, air, fire, water). Each advanced unit has a specific ability like freezing enemies, controlling them, attacking them from afar, ... - Music made by the amazing Ryan Ike (Gunpoint) - Generated star fields offering a large range of beautiful and differently balanced layout - A single campaign arranged differently depending on your choices - Direct attack, escape route, diversion, ... many ways to go through the game depending on your strategic choices, your entities and your enemies - 4 enemy tribes with specific features and behaviors - Thousands of different settings through generated scenarios - And some hidden secrets... I'm happy to tell you more about the game, so don't hesitate to ask things here. Cheers!
This has quite some "shroom trip" vibe to it. Your "I tried to recreate the feeling you have when you look at Nasa photos of giant stars and galaxies." just adds to that. Reminds me of an old German latenight TV program called "Space Night" that always looked like it was made by trippers for trippers (and made me wonder how they got away with it in an already conservative state-owned TV program in a very conservative state like Bavaria) (random example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGv8OrlQJHI) Will definitely get this when you release. And I liked the music in the trailer. Is it in the game as well? Only negative point: While it looks really interesting visually, it does not tell/show much about the actual gameplay. UPDATE: Youtube gave me a link to a gameplay video, https://youtu.be/isusQqrVlJI .
Trippy! I like that, definitely close to what I'm doing . Also Starkovsky is a good inspiration (Solaris). Yes, this is all in-game music. Ryan made more than 50 min of music for the game. You will find a couple of gameplay videos of the PC version out there. The main mechanic is similar, the main difference is on the controls (you draw your units path on iOS) and the polish of the game. Lathland made a very nice first impression Let's play here (it's longer): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weQpzsH7zgc
Nice to hear that there's more of that music, thanks for the fast reply, nerial. Just took a look at your presskit: Illium as inspiration? Excellent. Those two were a weird read, even more so than his Hyperion books.
@Jayg2015 Thanks loads! DS has been a long project, but it was worth the effort. I hope you will enjoy it! @Nullzone I really like Dan Simmons, his scope and universe is really unique. I quite like the fact that he's never really trying to design a perfectly coherent universe (what most classical sci-fi writer will try to do).
