Star Fall Released!

Woohoo! I'm back already, folks, and I'm overjoyed to bring you my seventh #1GAM game, Star Fall! That's right, you can play it yourself now, free of charge, as always! :)

The once and future title image of Star Fall

You can download the game on Game Jolt here: http://gamejolt.com/games/star-fall/160883
or on Itch.io here: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/star-fall

From my description on the game pages: Star Fall is a lovely, relaxing game about catching stars as they fall from the night sky! Play as an adorable stuffed bear in a dreamy world where the stars are within your reach! Watch the spinning stars as they drift toward the clouds on which you stand, and score points by catching them in your net before they hit the cloud. Be careful, though! Some stars are large and magical, and if you miss these, it's game over!

This game was a lot of fun to make, primarily because I got to collaborate with wonderful artist (and stellar girlfriend) calmcalling on it :) Her artwork is far and away my favorite part of Star Fall. I think once you play the game, you'll agree with me!

Thanks, as always, to those of you who follow my blog! I couldn't 'a done it without'cha! If you play this game (or any of my others) and enjoy it, or even if you don't, please comment below! I'd love to hear from any and every one of my readers and/or players :)

See you next time, everyone! Ciao!

Dev Blog #16: Running and Falling

Hello, folks! Time for another weekend update on the status of my #1GAM endeavors! This week I have some new info to bring you about my June 2016 game, Star Fall! Check it out!

The gameplay programming is broadly done, and you have the ability to guide your avatar left and right, and to catch the stars that randomly fall in your net. You gain score, which is displayed in the upper-right-hand corner. Here's a (rather primitive) screenshot:

Fancy lookin, huh? :P

You earn points by catching stars, and the rate at which the stars fall increases slowly over time. Also, instead of flying off-screen when they reach the edge, the stars bounce back towards the center. I'm thinking of making them do something similar if they hit your player character, but not your net.

As you can see, the graphics are obviously lacking, but that's because my guest artist is still working on the art, so I haven't even tried to put my pitiful programmer 'art' in the game :) Yep, it's just plane ol' squares on black backgrounds so far ;)

This game has a bit of a different design goal than my previous #1GAM entries. Firstly (and most obviously), the artwork is the primary focus of the whole project. Secondly, though, I decided to make this game purposely easier than my previous games. I may have ramped up the difficulty a bit too much recently (Keyro, Torso Ninja II) , and I don't want to fall in the trap of making games that only have content in the form of discouragingly hard challenges. Make no mistake: you CAN lose in Star Fall, but hopefully repeated loss will not be the default mode of this game :)

That about does for the time being. See you next week, hopefully with some finalized art for me to show off :D

Dev Blog #15: Announcing Star Fall!

Hi! I have returned once again to announce my current #1GAM game. This month's project is called Star Fall!

Check out the fancy logo!

Star Fall is a game about collecting falling stars from the night sky. You play as a bear with a net on a mission to catch the plummeting stars. You navigate around, left and right, trying to catch the stars as they fall. Smaller stars will give you points for catching them, but watch out for the big stars: you must catch them, or you will lose!


Gameplay-wise, Star Fall is inspired somewhat by older arcade/home console games like Joust or (to a lesser extent) Breakout. I'm making this game because I feel like my recent #1GAM games might be a bit too difficult, so I want this to be a more chilled out, somewhat relaxing game to play.

Also, I should mention, the artwork for this game is being done by a very special guest! My girlfriend, who goes by calmcalling online, will be making all the art and animations for Star Fall! She's waaaaaay better than me at art, so this game should be the best looking one I've put out ;) Check her out on deviantArt here.

That about does it, I suppose. I'll keep you filled in when something new comes up :) Until then, take it easy!