Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery
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starspawngame.com
Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery
@starspawngame.com
560 followers 50 following 240 posts
Your scholarship is in danger, your friends aren't human, and something ancient awakens in the dreamlands. As reality becomes uncertain, questions of identity and transformation become matters of survival. Just another finals week at Miskatonic U.
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starspawngame.com
automated tests heck yeah
December 29, 2025 at 1:43 AM
starspawngame.com
They fixed it 🙌 we haz automated UI tests #gamedev
testsuite inventory: before testcase: # Open the inventory screen pause 2.0 keysym "K_i" pause 2.0 assert "Combine" testcase can_open_and_close_inventory: pause 2.0 keysym "K_1" pause 2.0 assert not "Combine" testcase can_hold_and_unhold_item: assert eval (fortress_cool_rock in game_state.inventory) move pos (770, 100) click assert eval (game_state.held_item == fortress_cool_rock) click button 2 # right click assert eval (game_state.held_item is None) testcase can_unhold_item_outside_inventory: assert eval (fortress_cool_rock in game_state.inventory) $ game_state.held_item = fortress_cool_rock # Close inventory screen and confirm pause 2.0 keysym "K_1" pause 2.0 assert not "Combine" pause 2.0 click button 2 # right click assert eval (game_state.held_item is None) testcase can_combine_items: assert eval (fortress_cool_rock in game_state.inventory) assert eval (fortress_exploration_supplies in game_state.inventory)
December 18, 2025 at 10:51 PM
starspawngame.com
We've been busy working on the script and some top secret UIs, so there hasn't been anything particularly photogenic to share. But here, have a chapter one story beat
label .give_diana_grant_seen_prof: main "Yep. He actually made {b}less{/b} sense after that. It almost sounded like he'd been experiencing things in the wrong order." diana "Huh. Okay. That's a new one." main "Dude's nuts." diana "Duh. Did he say anything else?" main "He knew my name before I said anything." diana "Interesting... Well, if he's experiencing things out of order--" main "You're just gonna run with this?" menu(screen="choice", side=True): diana "You got a better theory than time shenanigans?" "In {i}Slaughterhouse-Five{/i} it's a metaphor for PTSD. We probably just met at a mixer or something.": $ game_state.change_rapport(diana, +1) diana "Good reality check. It's always worth considering plain old madness... It {b}could{/b} all be in his head..." main "{b}Something{/b} definitely is." "Lucky guess?": diana "Hunter. I know you don't want any of this to be true, but {b}come on{/b}." main "Okay, umm, he could have... supernatural... luck?" diana "And it turned him into {b}this{/b}? I appreciate your willingness to brainstorm here, but I'm gonna stick with time shenanigans for now." "Literally any theory would be better.": $ game_state.change_rapport(diana, -1) diana "You can't just say that and not provide an alternative. How many impossible things have already happened to you today?" main "More than I'd like, that's for sure." diana "Exactly."
November 30, 2025 at 8:00 PM
starspawngame.com
Playing with multi-level maps, doesn't make that much sense as a library at the moment but the tileset looks great. Guess I can't do much with the space under the overhang though (we don't have "you can see through walls if you're under them")
Screenshot of the Tiled map editor showing a library. Welcome desk on the bottom, stacks in a T shape, stairs going up to a nice study area. Space beneath the overhang provides nothing
November 30, 2025 at 7:56 PM
starspawngame.com
It's Friday night so you know what that means! That's right--we're implementing a point and click puzzle
A drawing of a messy and very weird professor's office full of occult items and damaged goods. Translucent pink squares overlay the clickable areas since we're in debug mode
November 8, 2025 at 2:20 AM
starspawngame.com
Added additive lighting for night scenes, real bulb glow, colored tints
top-down pixel art map of a new england college campus. brick buildings, one has a big gym sign... it's nighttime and dark. gas lamps around the map glow with yellow cores and reveal the true colors underneath, tinged yellow
October 12, 2025 at 3:02 AM
starspawngame.com
lockable choice menus
Visual novel screen. Weird gym background. Ethnically ambiguous character is thinking (Alright. That's enough sitting here and moping...) Options are (Getting the feeling that this day will never end if I freak out every time I see a monster. Let's play ball.) (Madness ≥ 50%;) (I should go back to my room, lay down, and mope there instead.) [Madness < 50%)
September 21, 2025 at 8:52 PM
starspawngame.com
who up finally making it to water polo practice
visual novel screen, a vertical text box to the left reads "Brody: Yo, Hunter! You made it!" In the background is a very strange and dilapidated gym. oh, and Brody, who's in the middle, is huge and green and has tentacles for hair and webbed hands
September 19, 2025 at 2:58 AM
starspawngame.com
Made a screen that’ll let us set really granular game states and jump around the story
Ugly checkbox screens showing lists of game state keys and inventory items like C1_DONE_INTRO cl_seen_beach cl_seen_stealth cl_seen_shrine cl_seen_fortress_exterior cl_seen_fortress_entrance cl_seen_bas_relief_room cl_seen_sculpture_room cl_seen_control_room
September 17, 2025 at 4:32 AM
starspawngame.com
ewwww
Pixel art of a weird horned dinosaur skull fossil, but it’s got 8-9 eye holes of various sizes clustered together
September 10, 2025 at 5:57 PM
starspawngame.com
Ice world!
August 28, 2025 at 9:40 PM
starspawngame.com
Got dynamic nighttime + lighting rendering working, that was quite an ordeal. Just gotta add variable dimensions which should be a cinch
A top down pixel map of a dorm common area showing a roaring fire and TV, at night, the room is dark but the darkness fades in a gradient from the light sources
August 23, 2025 at 11:02 PM
starspawngame.com
new tiles
August 21, 2025 at 3:59 AM
starspawngame.com
Bit wordy but i think this story is off to a strong start

(Alt text continued on second picture of same page lol)
June 6, 1960 Reykjavik. The bay of smoke, if you translate it literally— and why shouldn't you? That's what it looks like. Fog rolls in from the North Atlantic. Steam wafts in fits and starts throughout the city, escaping from heating systems. Not too far away the landscape itself smokes where the earth moves beneath your feet, two continental plates separating an inch per year, the island ever growing, shifting, erupting, melting, freezing, falling into the sea. And all is damp, damp, damp, even the gathering spots, communal hot springs and pools where old men boil themselves for hours on end. Reykr- that first part of the name — means smoke, though it's cognate with the English reek, and you'd be forgiven for thinking Reykjavik means stinking harbor. Half the steam smells of sulfur. The hot water smells of sulfur. You shower in sulfur and emerge a clean rotten egg. It has gagged me for all three days that I've been here, though I do find that the odor vanishes more with each hour. I am acclimating - changing. This does not trouble me; I have changed before and will change again; but in my line of work, one must be aware of such things. I have failed to journal in that time. Forgive me. I know that these day-to-day chronicles are the lifeblood of the Old Road, but there was little to write about other than my settling in. I arrived on a cargo ship bearing factory equipment; you know that. The day was long but strangely dim; this you could have guessed. I have eaten too much herring soup, obviously, being surrounded by herring. Piles of fresh herring go into the processing plant, barrels of salted herring come out, as do equally large piles of herring guts (this smell, too, becomes less pronounced by the day). After my shift, I drink caraway aquavit with the herring girls who work harder cleaning the fish than any fisherman does catching them. My work at the processing plant is dull. My work at the harbor is dull. My work at the construction office is dull. They have me translating paperwork! When I leave at night, even the sun is dull. Somebody must do it, though, for the Old Road; there are places that factories and piers must not be built; and our presence here fell to me, for I am the one who speaks Icelandic.
August 17, 2025 at 9:53 PM
starspawngame.com
Here’s a choice bit I like a lot 🙂

deepcuts.blog/2025/08/16/i...
"[Cosmic horror] stories provide a ripe foundation for exploring non-heteronormative identity because both involve recognizing that consensus reality is more fragile and constructed than it appears. Cosmic horror traditionally focuses on themes of transformation, hidden knowledge, and the inadequacy of established categories, all of which create natural space for examining gender and sexual fluidity without requiring explicit positioning. The genre frequently features characters discovering their true nature, often something that existed before their conscious awareness or something that has been heavily suppressed. Both resonate strongly with non-binary and trans experiences of self-discovery. To cap it off, the horror elements can effectively capture both the terror and liberation that can accompany stepping outside normative social structures."
August 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM
starspawngame.com
Arkham's central shopping district. What do we think
Pixel art screen of a new england town. It is a bright sunny day. American colonial brick architecture with neon signs for prescriptions and psychics, and graffiti, mark it off as a modern location despite the construction being frozen in time
August 10, 2025 at 10:29 PM
starspawngame.com
A puppet of a momkey awkwardly looking to the left and the right
August 9, 2025 at 5:01 PM
starspawngame.com
Stick figure guy looking at a Lovecraft compilation saying “wow! Monster beyond comprehension” meanwhile an arrow going over his head shows the point he is missing: MASSACHUSSETS IS THE SCARIEST PLACE ON EARTH
July 28, 2025 at 2:24 AM
starspawngame.com
My husband dug up this old shoggoth cat from Mofusand, I think ours is better though
A cute orange tabby cat wearing a green squid outfit. Keychain tab
July 8, 2025 at 9:50 PM
starspawngame.com
Look out Lune, there’s a nevron behind you!
Samwise the big gray cat hiding behind my monitor. The monitor is displaying Clair Obscur. He’s peeking out looking at the screen
July 3, 2025 at 7:08 PM
starspawngame.com
more proper texting interface #gamedev
June 22, 2025 at 9:00 PM
starspawngame.com
adding the actual dynamic parts of campus life. now you can enter your dorm room like a normal person
June 19, 2025 at 7:11 PM
starspawngame.com
I hear it's #screenshotsaturday! Here are three variations on some Elder Things.

(pixels by the lovely @2dchaos.com)
#gamedev
A charcoal/ink-on-sepia treatment of some Elder Things walking around an arctic wasteland, all tentacles and wings and starfish heads. On the left we see a picture of a shocked man pointing and saying "My god" Arctic wasteland again, this time in top-down pixel art. The elder things are sprite monsters now A sculpture inside a crumbling temple of an elder thing fighting off shoggoths, in top-down pixel art, recalling "laocoon and his sons" sculpture. A beam of light shines down, striking it
June 14, 2025 at 11:45 PM
starspawngame.com
who up thinking about the fallout 3 metro npc #gamedev
a 3d character with a blue and steel subway train instead of a head. although i've heard it might actually be equipped as a handheld item? anyway, the game engine didn't support moving vehicles, so the subway train was just a guy with a train for a head who ran really fast.
June 7, 2025 at 2:34 AM
starspawngame.com
I also added some little throbbing animations to the pause screen tentacles, it's subtle (good--don't want it distracting) but pretty creepy once you notice it
May 4, 2025 at 10:00 PM