Introducing the Video Game I’m Working On: Morning Star, From Industrial Toys
Posted on December 11, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 38 Comments
As most of you know, for the last year or so I’ve been working on a video game with Industrial Toys, the new video game studio formed by former Bungie founder Alex Seropian. We’ve been quietly chugging along in the background putting the game together; my job has been working with them to create an overall game concept as well as the narrative that fits into that concept. It’s been a hell of a lot of fun, in no small part because my co-workers at Industrial Toys are some of the smartest and most creative people in the video game business.
We’ve been keeping the title of and images from the video game pretty close to the chest to this point, but today’s the day we officially announce the game, complete with trailer. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet Morning Star:
As the trailer notes, the video game is a first-person shooter, but with a bit of a twist: It’s designed specifically for mobile gaming on tablets, which means that everything — gameplay, controls, story — was put together incorporating both the physical layout of tablets and the gameplay dynamic of mobile gaming. It’s not a port from another video game medium, in other words: It’s at home in mobile. Which is also very exciting.
There’s going to be more to discover about Morning Star in the coming weeks and months and I’m going to tell you about it here — but you can also visit MorningstarGame.com to sign up to be the first to learn more about the game. If you’re a gamer it’s worth the sign up.
I’m really excited to be showing off Morning Star to you. I can’t wait for you to see the whole thing soon.
Update, 9:10: Some more information on the game on the Industrial Toys web site! Also, check out this story on the game over at Polygon.
I looks beautiful, and I can’t wait to try it out.
Mind. Blown.
Very cool. Thanks for the head’s up!
egggselent!
Nice one! The graphics are fantastic and I’m always a sucker for “Oops, first contact and the aliens are hostile” stories.
I watched the video but can’t hear the sound right now, so I have an important to me question, that might/might not be answered in the audio: Can I play a woman, too?
Sweet!!
Congratulations!
As an…
Ipad owner.
Scalzi fan.
Long time video game designer
Longer time video game fanatic
I am excited to see what comes of this.
First contact is on my daughter’s 137th birthday. I hope she’ll be okay…
Are they going to port it to the PC? I currently don’t have a tablet.
http://www.geekzenith.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/shut-up-and-take-my-money.jpeg
Sweet!
Very cool. What are the chances this makes its way to Windows 8?
I may have to buy one of those newfangled tablet pad thingies. This game looks great!
I’m somewhat interested. I’ve currently been unimpressed with mobile controls for FPS. They’ve improved by leaps and bounds but I’d still rather have a mouse or a controller. I suck enough with a mouse. The tablet makes my precision even worse.
I’m very excited!
Will it also be available for the iphone, or just the ipad flavor of ios device?
And if you are, like me, a reader, not a gamer – would it be possible to start here…?
(My only gaming experience, up till now, was that old brick tennis game…)
Now all of mankind’s survival is in MY hands…?!
You’re all so fucked…!
I’m in – looks great!
I hope they try to migrate over to Nook devices, I don’t have the money for Apple. Still, it looks AWESOME
Looks pretty cool to me. Will this run on the original iPad? That’s what I have (still).
The game looks awesome! I really hope y’all find a way to make first person work on a tablet. Dual-stick controls have been about as good as I can get…
The game looks amazing, and congratulations on your work. It would be nice (and I couldn’t find a place to put this on the morningstar site, or I would) if it was made clear that it is not a tablet game, but an iPad only game. I got very excited until I realized that I, and the other 50% of tablet owners using the android system would be excluded. Its nowhere in any of the releases or on the website except in super fine print at the end of trailer for 2 seconds/
That is too bad. It would probably have made me consider trying gaming on my Nexus-7 out. Port to Android sometime soon?
I got really excited when you said it was made for tablets, then watched the amazing trailer and saw that it’s for iPads. What about those of us who are committed to Android?
I am going to concur that some thought and effort should be put into androiding this game. I was very disappointed inthe link to the gamesight that was unresponsive to my tablet.
Also here for the “bummed it is ios only” contribution.
-Scalzi fan
-Spends money on games
Hoping it will be available as an android app for my galaxy note. :)
Sorry, I don’t want to just complain that it won’t be available for Android right away, I also want to say that it looks AMAZING! I don’t normally play these types of games, but that it is made for tablet play and how AMAZING it looks, makes me WANT to play! Beautiful, brilliant art work –WOW!
So, John: Have you played it?
Have to add my “looks good, want to play, tell me this isn’t iOS-only please” to the mix.
Watched the trailer on my iPad 2 , looks way cool.
Carina – audio is music only.
One more reason to hope for an iPad for Christmas. I’m quite interested to hear more details on how this interface will work, as I’ve been thoroughly disappointed with the interface for action games on touchscreen devices.
Another plea for Android support please! But this looks awesome! I look forward to having my husband play it so I can take in the story!
The music reminds me of the (great) soundtracks from Babylon 5 – anyone else think so?
No-controller FPS is pretty tricky. I hope they’ve managed to come up with a whole new approach to UI which recognizes you can’t do the precise move forward/stop/strafe/fire thing as easily as when using a controller. I’ve noticed existing tablet games get around this by having you do some action continuously like fire or shoot, making racing games a lot easier than FPS-style games IMO.
Looking forward to the android port. The N-7 really is a gaming powerhouse given the price. Just wish I had gone for the 16 GB; 8 GB is fine to fit what music I want, and ebooks take up no space at all anyway, but games can be a killer: one purchase I did off the Google Play store ate up 1.6 GB without telling me!
Beautiful. I like. Except for, y’know, the iOs only thing. Not an iPad owner, not likely to be one.