Steam Starr Mazer DSP: 30% off on Steam!

IGameArt

Member

WELCOME TO THE GREAT WAR.
The UNFP's been kicked in the teeth by a G'ell invasion force and humanity's last hope is its
fleet of experimental DSP MkI Forward Assault Fighters and anyone marshall enough to strap
in and forcefully accept some apologies.
Luckily this planet's full of all kinds of crazy just begging to take a shot.

>> NOW ON STEAM EARLY ACCESS <<<


WHAT'S DSP?

Starr Mazer: DSP is a side-scrolling shoot’em up in the same vein as classics like Gradius and
Lords of Thunder with a roguelike twist on the traditional lives/continues system. Players take
ontrol of a squadron of DSP pilots with different ships, weapon loadouts and voices. Your mission
is to battle through nine frantic arcade levels, countless waves of enemies, 3 powerful bosses,
and take down the G’ell Super Ship in a single run.



The citizens of Thersa-CPIX are at war and we’re not sending one hero to the fight,
we’re sending EVERYONE!



Levels - Battle through nine Levels, across three intense arcade-style bullet-filled acts!
Take the fight from the surface of war torn Thersa-CPIX to the Space Gate and up to the
heart of the G’ell Super Ship; the Adamastor!
Recruit - Recruit a diverse team of humans, aliens, and a dog! Hand pick your DSP team
before every mission using their weapons, stats and battle order to your advantage!
SK:ORE - The fight never ends with SK:ORE! There are no game overs in this battle! Use
your SK:ORE from fallen enemies and Carbomite pickups to purchase a new squadron of pilots!
Unlock Pilots - Discover legendary pilots! Give your squadron an edge in battle with unique
legendary pilots like Slimo, Bunny Killmaster, Don Thacker and many more!
Power Up - Power up your weapons for maximum destruction! Collect Carbomite from fallen
foes to power up your primary fire or to fuel your super weapon!



Hundreds of procedurally generated pilots. ---------------------- Procedurally generated enemy flight patterns.


Death is just another opportunity to get more pilots! ---------------------- Unlock progressivly better pilots to amp up your game.

PRESS

"Starr Mazer: DSP was easily the highlight of my GDC!"
-
Destructoid

"I died a lot in Starr Mazer: DSP, but I wanted to jump right back in!"
-
PC Gamer

"A great, stylistic, well refined SHMUP!"
-
The Zero Review



Starr Mazer: DSP was born as a passion project during the development of its bigger brother,
the point-and-click SHMUP hybrid, Starr Mazer. Originally, Imagos Softworks teamed up with
veteran development studio Pixeljam to craft a demo environment to test weapons, enemy attack
patterns and space combat. When both teams couldn’t stop playing the single demo level they
designed, they knew they were onto something very, very special.


MEAT AND POTATOES

So, Starr Mazer DSP has been a project in development for several years now. Created by
Imagos Softworks and originally developed by PixelJam, DSP has been in Steam Early Access
since some time in 2016. Development on the project came to a screeching halt due to false
legal claims against Imagos Softworks. The project sat dormant for some time, as no developer
wanted to get entangled in any of the legal mumbo jumbo that surrounded the project. That is,
until I became friends with the head of the project and Imagos Softworks founder, Don Thacker.
It was then that we decided to work together to complete Starr Mazer DSP, one of the biggest
undertakings of my game development career, as DSP was originally assembled in Haxe. This
meant that I would have to pour over thousands of lines of someone elses code, and port it into
GML and the Game Maker Studio framework. I started this journey close to 5 months ago.
Porting so much code into GML meant that, for a considerable amount of time, the project
wasn't even compilable because so many ported scripts required many more scripts to be
ported before they could even run.

I'm happy to say that Starr Mazer DSP is not only compiling and running in GMS 2, but it's, in
many ways, outperforming the current Early Access release! We are headed quickly to a 2019
full launch!

JOIN THE FIGHT, SOLDIER!
Currently, I am developing Starr Mazer DSP without regularly scheduled pay. I'm only paid in a
portion of the profits from the Steam Early Access release, which is really not very much,
almost enough to keep me fed. If you like what you've seen here, Please, share this with your
friends and help the continued development by providing me with an occasional sammich
through the Steam page!

Now,

GET BACK MEOWT THERE!!
 
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IGameArt

Member
Thanks everyone. Luckily we had a full dev team working on this so I had a lot of work done for me, graphics, audio, and even gameplay design.

Here, have some more promo material!

 
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IGameArt

Member
Cracking away at the game, nothing really new to show off but here's an amazing behind the scenes look at the recording process for the DSP Forward Squadron voices!

 
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Niels

Member
Wasn't this game's development in trouble because the componist (Alex Mauer) had a meltdown?
 

IGameArt

Member
Yep. Nobody would continue development on it because of that reason. Since the situation has been resolved, there's no risk to continue development and renew interest in the IP. It's being rebuilt in GMS for a few reasons, one of which being that the original source can't even be compiled anymore due to outdated libraries. Plus all the other benefits that some with GMS2.
 

Niels

Member
Sucks to hear the whole project got canceled because 1 team member loses it, but glad that you picked up the project to finish it.
 

IGameArt

Member
It was never fully cancelled, just shelved for a while. None of the hard work from the previous developers have gone to waste. It's all of their hard work that has allowed me to get DSP into game maker after 6 months of toiling.

EDIT: Have a cookie, an Phase Slipping shader shaped cookie!
 
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IGameArt

Member
I made a bunch of progress this week and figured I'd share the current state of the Starr Mazer DSP rebuild with you all!

 
M

Mabec

Guest
Great game. Recommend it. New sound effects are better then before
 

IGameArt

Member
Thanks Mabec. We're implementing some new sounds too, and will be giving the player the opportunity to play with the sound and music that's in game now, or to use the new hotness that we're brewing up.
 

IGameArt

Member
Been a while without an update, I've been busy working hard pretty much 7 days a week in full crunch mode to get this game ready for a Steam Update, lots of progress has been made, it's feeling more and more like a complete game every day.

However, I've taken little bit of a break from just coding today to work on crafting an interesting new idea that I had, that my creative director is a big fan of.
Can't say much about it yet, but I can share this pretty sweet mockup I made!

 

IGameArt

Member
Thanks Misty!

Got some new art assets from our awesome artists and decide to test some ideas on them in photoshop. What do you guys think of this?

 
M

mamacato

Guest
Beauterrful! Only shooter I've ever enjoyed was Over Horizon on the NES. But I'd try this one as a follow up.
 
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