Star Rift Saga News

Hey all, welcome to the first progress update for Star Rift Saga. My plan is to start doing these monthly as things have been ramping up in development.

In this update, we’ll be going over the state of development and the road forward. There will be a sneak peek at some of the new sprites and a look at the new art style, as well as a quick listen at a song from the soundtrack.

The summary: a demo is coming sooner than originally planned. I want to get the game into a playable and polished demo sooner rather than later so you can see what I have been working on.


Up until now, Star Rift Saga has been a fully solo developed game. I have designed and coded everything myself, as well as drawn all of the art that is currently in the game. While this has worked, this has been a slow process that I’ve been doing in my free time.

That said, the game is currently playable from start to finish for the most part. You can start a new game and play it through to the final boss, with some walls blocking off some side areas as well as some other side content that’s not currently in the game.

That said, there are some problems with this when making a game for Steam:
I am not a good artist.
I am not a musician.

I'm just one guy who makes games, and I'm a coder but not an artist. That’s why I’ve made the decision to work with pixel artists, a sound designer, and a musician to get Star Rift Saga to the level it deserves.

Working with people costs money. Artists should be paid for their work. The original plan was to run a crowdfunding campaign to get people paid for their work. Luckily, this would be able to have a much lower goal than most video game crowdfunding campaigns and be a much safer bet for backers, since the game is already made.

That said, while it’s a reasonably safe bet for backers, the art problem rears its head again here. My placeholder art is not great, which makes it a much harder sell.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to fund the start of the game, and make a demo publicly available before any crowdfunding for the rest, if any. The current plan is for a demo up to the first boss with art and sound done by people far more talented than me. This means you get to preview the game sooner before other steps start moving forward.

With all of that in mind, let’s take a look (and listen) to things that have already been done for the game as development ramps up.


The character art will be done by an artist named Merlin. He’s a talented pixel artist (and coder too) who has already brought a lot of really good ideas to the table. You can check out more stuff on Twitter.

The original character art I drew came from a template that I added an arm to. It was always meant to be a placeholder, and didn’t really lead to very dynamic poses because those are hard to draw. There has been a total redesign of the character, as well as some new posing. Here’s the preview.



Notably, your weapon has changed with this to a gauntlet rather than a handheld gun. This solves a few story problems, and just looks cooler.

The capsule images for the Steam page have actually been based on this character design. These new sprites will result in better feeling action with more dynamic poses when standing and shooting (as opposed to just lazily lifting an arm) as well as just looking better in general.

As things get implemented in the game, expect to start seeing some changes to the screenshots in the store page. A lot has changed since the current ones were taken, which really just shows how much things are progressing.


Here’s a sneak peek at a song from the soundtrack. The soundtrack will be composed by Vincent Colavita. He has worked on other games including Red Ronin, Luck be a Landlord, and Raven’s Hike. Check out his website here.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The game’s soundtrack focuses on using Indian and African instruments paired with sci-fi synths to create a sense of being in a new and unfamiliar place. This work in progress song is from a late game area called the Endothermic Forge. It’s a frozen factory from an ancient civilization.


This has been a very exciting process for me personally. As art and sound has come together, I’ve been super excited to take a look and listen at each one. I look forward to sharing more stuff with you in the coming months, and hopefully getting the game in a playable demo form in your hands before the end of the summer, but not promising anything specific quite yet!

In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Steam, and follow along on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

See you next month!

Star Rift Saga has been a game that I've been working on for a long time now. SRS is an action-platformer with some light RPG elements and some metroidvanian ideas. It has platforming, exploration, and various weapons as you'd expect, but also status effects and inventory management like an RPG. I've been working on it almost exclusively by myself since the beginning, so everything you see is placeholder pixel art and assets drawn mostly by me. The game started relatively small, but has quickly grown into the largest game I've ever made by a long shot. Today I'd like to talk about where the game is and where it's going, and how you can help make the game a reality.

The Current State of the Game
To start off, I'd say the game is about 90% content complete. The main story is playable from the opening to the credits roll, with the exception of the final boss and some optional bosses. There's also a lot of skill chips that I have to add from a large master list that I have, as well as other collectables that I keep on adding. Of course, there's no shortage of balancing, adjusting, and refining that goes on (it feels like there never won't be, especially as I have more people playtesting the game internally!) but the game itself is nearly finished. So why is the release date so vague and distant? Why isn't the game in your hands?

What's the next step?
Video games are a fairly complex medium, and they involve a wide variety of disciplines to make. While I'm a decent game designer and coder (just don't look at the spaghetti that is my code), I don't have all of those skills on my own. This is where I need the most help. The next major step is crowdfunding. While most video games that are crowdfunded are asking for funds to create the entire game, this one is going to be a little different since the core game is mostly already done. I don't need funding to create a game, I'm not trying to sell you an idea for a game. I've already made the game, and I'll be seeking funding to hire people with the talents necessary to create the pixel art and audio to make the game worth your time and money. I want SRS to be all that it can be, and that requires some money to pay artists what they deserve for their work. Expect to see news of the campaign soon.

In the meantime...
I try to post to social media twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I tend to post screenshots and short videos highlighting specific mechanics and previews of the state of the game. If you want to see more, that's a great place to start. It really helps if you follow along at whatever social media channel you use, and you get a sneak peek as things develop. I'll try to respond to any questions or other comments there as well.
Facebook Twitter Instagram

My goal is to be transparent about where things are, what the plan is, and what the current roadblocks are. This will be especially true after the crowdfunding campaign. These channels will be where most updates will happen.

-JCV