The Stars Between
The Stars Between is a short narrative fishing game about loving and letting go.
Narrative Designer & Lead Producer
Narrative Design
In creating this game, I had the privilege of designing and writing dialogue. I wanted to portray the feeling of uncertainty and resistance to change, and I used the character, Rowan, to help convey that. Rowan is a complicated but kind person, obviously still in love with their partner, Willow, who is just as complicated. Willow, on the other hand, seemingly has detached herself from her relationship with Rowan, and through her lack of enthusiasm and dry responses, we as the player can infer she is ready to end their relationship.
Being able to write this story as a person who has trouble leaving those I love most in order to better myself, I felt that in order to convey the longing and cycle of grief one experiences after a break-up, I have to write out the build up of a relationship dying.
Production StatementGameplay
In order to maintain the narrative aspect of this game, as a team we decided to include a fun and short fishing game! The controls are just your mouse, the same as how you would click to continue the dialogue, you can point, click and hold to cast, then click and hold again to catch a fish!
On top of being able to catch the fish, our amazing artist made info sheets of the fish you catch! The fish are based on real fish you can find on any fishing grounds, but since the story takes place in space, they’re space versions of the fish! This incentivizes the player to catch more and more! The info sheets themselves include an image and name of your caught fish, as well as its size.
Another fun feature in this game is your inventory of fish! At the end of every day (level) you choose which fish you’d like to eat for the night. We decided to include this because it allows players to relish in their haul of fish, which in turn also incentivizes them to continue to play until completion.
These mechanics were made with the player’s narrative experience in mind. The repeated action of fishing while still having to go through excruciatingly sad conversations and moments pushes players to Rowan’s mindset.
For this project, I was given the role of Producer and I took initiative of this role by creating a production plan, using project management software JIRA, and individually working with my team’s programmer and technical artist.