About this project

Who are we?

Starchaser Studios is a mobile game development team aiming to produce clever, quality titles.

On a less formal tone, we’re Starchaser Studios and, much like our audience, our members are spread all across the US and EU.

Our unique collaborative system is one of the things that sets us apart. Although our core development team has been constant for the past few months, we also have a large number of collaborators who contribute depending on their spare time, commitment and skills. Our community page allows people who do not work in the video game industry to pitch in whenever they feel they might be able to help.

Because of this community driven nature, we believe that it’s mainly the community that should benefit from games developed this way. Therefore, our first release will be completely FREE for everyone: no paid features, no commercials, just clean, simple fun.

Our goal is not only to deliver quality titles, but also to engage as many developers as possible into setting a new standard for mobile platform games.

However, you’re not here to read biographies, so we’re going to skip to the actual star chasing part.  If you’d really like to know more about us, you can check out our page at www.starchaserstudios.com, and the affiliated Facebook, Youtube and Twitter accounts.

What do we plan to do?

For the moment, we're busy working on our first title. Uplift is a fantasy themed game for both Android and iOS, with a pinch of steampunk flavor. At its core, Uplift is a combination between a platformer and a puzzle game, although we’d like to believe the game followed its own path in the last few weeks.

The game follows the adventures of professor Flugen, renowned zeppelin specialist, his nephew Zack and his pet robot. Desperate to help their home city, one of the many floating cities of their world, the three embark on a quest to find the precious heltrogen gas. Obviously, this scarce resource does not grow on trees, but lays hidden deep within a savage mountain range.

A small airship, a difficult task and dangers lurking around each corner. Now,  guess who the main pilot is going to be...

Filled with tongue-in-cheek references and based on hybrid mechanics, our game tries to find a balance between easy to understand controls and spontaneous challenges. No complicated schemes, no crippling bugs and no unfinished levels.

While the game allows your airship to do more complex maneuvers, one of the key features of our approach is the fact that your zeppelin can't fire upon its enemies. You will have to rely on your wits and the strategic mistakes of your foes, in order to beat the later levels.

The game will offer you both the casual gameplay you can enjoy on a bus trip, but also bonus material for people interested in the background story. 

When will it be done? Have you started yet?

We would have said ASAP, knowing how eager our team is to finish it. However, due to the fact that most of us are working part-time and our financial resources are limited, we need your help to speed things up.

Our desired launch date would be in the 1st quarter of the following year (Q1 2012). While we were hoping to launch this winter, certain delays have made this deadline less plausible. What we can promise though is that you will receive a quality, replayable title as soon as we get the financing to do so.

At this point, we’ve already finished four fully working levels and are concentrating on the 5th and 6th one. We’re trying to make each level’s terrain unique. There is also a web-based closed beta program in progress, so we can get as much feedback on the game mechanics as we can.

We will keep you updated on our web-site www.starchaserstudios.com and on our social media channels.

How much will the final game cost?

Given that the project is community driven and since it is our first title, we won’t ask a dime. After all, many people have contributed to this game voluntarily and if the financing is also provided by the community, it's only natural the game should be shared with the ones who made it possible.

This is the reason why we need your help: we don’t expect to make too much out of Uplift alone, but we do hope to set a standard for future titles.

What platforms will it run on?

As we’ve said earlier, Android and iOS are the platforms that come to mind at this point. Although both Unity and the additional software we use allow our game to run fine on other platforms, we’ve designed it to be a mobile game.

The first operating system Uplift will make contact with will be Google Android. Soon after, an iOS version will follow. This isn’t a matter of preference, it’s a matter of available technology. It's also the best way for us to deliver a finished product at the desired launch date. However, we wouldn’t dare neglect the iOS audience, so we’re going to make sure they get their game ASAP.

Initially, a WP7 version was also planned, but since manual tweaking is in order, this might actually take longer. Again, we don’t want to make any promises we can’t keep. For now, Android and iOS will be the first platforms you can play Uplift on.

What will the money be used for?

We’ve managed to get a small team to work for us, so we won’t ask for any money to accomplish basic tasks such as making the design document come to life or actually doing the hard work. This is our job, and we will give our best to accomplish it.

However, we do need money for a couple of things:

• Unity licenses are the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Uplift and…they don’t make any special offers for dreamers. Thus, in order for us to release the game for both iOS and Android we need to pay $4500 in Pro license fees. This would cover the basic license and the mobile publishing license.  If you think that’s a little steep you may check out the prices of the Pro licenses here: https://store.unity3d.com/shop/       
• We're using custom shaders and a few other custom built features which work better with the Pro Version. The current build has been created with the free version, and so, you might experience some small visual glitches if you are involved in the beta testing program (such as purple textures instead of real time reflections and transparency). If the feature description is correct, we assume they will work fine in a Pro Build. Also, because we work at different locations we would actually need a second license of $3000 to speed up development, but for now, we can manage with a single one.  
• Second of all, since most of our members are only part-time on the job, we plan to “lure the two programmers” into a programming frenzy and finish our game faster. In order to do this they will need to give them more than words of encouragement. Fortunately, we believe that around $1000 should be enough to get their attention for a few months and just enough to finish the game.
• We would also like to pay for some asset packs which will greatly speed our work on the current title and on future titles also. We have estimated the cost of such asset packs at around $1000. We're talking about assets which are optimized for mobile platforms, assets that would save us a great deal of work.
• We would also need a few developer/test phones to better tweak the game and allow more attentive beta testing. Most of these phones will be low-end because we want to game to work on as many devices as possible, not just the high-end models. Even so, buying 4-5 low-end phones will still cost around $1000-$1500.

If things don’t seem to add up, it’s because we don’t really want to sound greedy or obsessed with the financial aspects of this project. This is why, we’ve established a set of thresholds (these exclude the additional taxes which will be deduced from the final amount):

• $5000 to release the game and give it our best within the available time and resources. This would cover the license fees and some of the asset packs.
• $8000 to release the game while speeding up the iOS release and diminishing the time it takes to port it on other platforms. This would cover the license fees, the asset packs and the programmer bonus.
• $12000 to do extensive game testing and cut development time by 2-3 months. This would cover the license fees, the asset packs, programmer bonus, test phones and the additional Unity license. This amount should also give us a nifty head start for our next title. 

For now, our main desire is to achieve the first threshold. If you help us go beyond that, none of your donations will be wasted. The funds will be used to reach the next threshold. Your money will be carefully invested in Starchaser's next step.

What are you going to do next?

Sit back, relax and enjoy the enormous flow of fans. Leaving the joke aside, if Uplift is going to be a hit, we’re going to turn this into a full time dream and work on game ideas which have been waiting for too long.

As we’ve said: we’re trying to set standards here and, with your help, the mobile game market is going to be a better, more spectacular place.      

Since we feel we’ve already gotten familiar, we’re going to leave the task of saying goodbye to our robot Krantz.            

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