Factsheet

Team:
Pol Clarissou
Nicholas Gavan

Founding date:
summer 2014

Website:
polclarissou.com/eventhestars

Press / Business Contact:
contact@polclarissou.com

Social:
twitter.com/PolClarissou
facebook.com/woundsmusic

Description

Wandering through space without a purpose ; getting old and getting lost. Even the Stars aims to capture the lack of purpose and the endless disappointment of a lone space cowboy without a home. Focusing on exploration and contemplation rather than ace fights and laser guns, the game lets players explore the galaxy, discover various structures, partly through text controls. From this ephemeral journey, only the ship's log will rest. Even the Stars is a single-player game, but players are invited to share their endgame log and map (saved during the playthrough).

History

Space Cowboy game jam

The first version of the game was developed solely by Pol Clarissou during the Space Cowboy game jam, held by Venus Patrol and itch.io in June 2014. It can still be played on the jam's itch.io page. The game was rated #1 in the category "lonesomeness" and #2 in "the void" (#19 overall) over 56 entries.

Further development

Pol decided to keep working on the game after the jam, and was contacted shortly after opening a Tigsource dev-topic by Nicholas Gavan who offered his collaboration as composer. Over the month of July, the game has been drastically enhanced with the addition of structures and spaceships, an overall visual improvement and an eerie semi-procedural soundtrack. The travel log feature has been added, bringing it all together.

IGF 2015 - Student showcase

Even the Stars was part of the IGF student showcase (see the list of selected games here: http://igf.com/2015/01/2015_independent_games_festiva_2.html), and was in display during the GDC 2015 in San Francisco. Even though the game has been submitted in the student showcase it is worth noting that it was made on Pol and Nicholas' free time, as a personal project.


Videos

Teaser Vimeo

Let's play video by BarryDennen12 YouTube

Images

download all screenshots & photos as .zip (11MB)
even_the_stars (18).png
even_the_stars (10).png
even_the_stars (14).png
even_the_stars (15).png
even_the_stars (19).png
even_the_stars (111).png
even_the_stars lastpic.png
even_the_stars (12).png

There are more images available for Even the Stars in the ZIP file. If you have specific requests, please do contact us!

download logo files as .zip (5KB)
logo

You will find transparent black, white and grey versions of the logo in the ZIP file.

Selected Articles

  • "It offers a sense that you may be wasting your time, that you have a mortality to fill up with exciting sights, forever being disappointed that your vagabond lifestyle has neither home nor reason."
    - Warp Door (about the jam version), wip.warpdoor.com
  • "Today’s offering is Even The Stars, an esoteric exploration game lacking any real goals other than to live, die and try to enjoy it. There’s probably a message in there."
    - Ben Barret, Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Official page
Links to the game (browser/standalones), screenshots, the OST and more can be found here: http://polclarissou.com/eventhestars.

itch.io page
Standalones (pay-what-you-want): http://polclarissou.itch.io/even-the-stars.

GameJolt page
Standalones + GameJolt page: http://gamejolt.com/games/other/even-the-stars/55092/.

OST on bandcamp
Arranged soundtrack (pay-what-you-want): http://nicholasgavan.bandcamp.com/album/even-the-stars-ost.

Team & Repeating Collaborators

Pol Clarissou
Designer, Artist, Programmer

Nicholas Gavan
Composer

Contact

Inquiries
contact@polclarissou.com

Pol Clarissou - Twitter
twitter.com/polclarissou

Nicholas Gavan - Facebook
facebook.com/woundsmusic

Web
polclarissou.com/eventhestars

presskit() by Rami Ismail (Vlambeer) - also thanks to these fine folks