Star Word: a Scrabble-like Adventure
Star Word
A mysterious earthquake shatters the two protagonists' final day on an alien planet. Help them escape using a Scrabble-like method of communication!
Controls
- Mouse: Click and drag tiles from your hand to place them on the Scrabble board. If a tile is red, the word is incomplete or invalid.
- Right-click: Remove or undo your most recent placement of red (invalid) tiles.
Notes
Feeling stuck with the Scrabble mechanic? Here are some helpful tips:
- Use the Redraw button located in the upper-right corner to shuffle the tiles in your hand. You can use it once per turn.
- Still stuck after redrawing? Try any two-word combination! Many combinations are valid according to Scrabble rules, which will also unlock the redraw button again.
Credits
Development
Developer: Luca Oropallo
Narrative Designer: Alessandro Santoro
Contributors
2D Artist: Erica Zanussi
Narrative Supervisor: Antonino (Anthony L. Wolf) Lupo
Font
Plugins
Art
- Lunar Surface by Rumblecade
- Astro Sprites 1-B by Rumblecade
- Free Smoke Fx Pixel 2 by BDragon1727
- The Sunset by KingKelpo
Audio
- Sci-Fi Sounds by Kenney
- Impact Sounds by Kenney
- Sci-Fi Alarm SFX Free by Sound Works 12
- Wind Sound Effect by Neptune Ringgs
Music
Code
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
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Hey, thank you for the deep feedback! I'm glad you liked the mix of narrative and Scrabble.
Show post...
a really interesting game!!
Hi, I loved the game, but I found myself clicking for like 30 seconds straight (or more?) to skip dialog to actually play the game. I get you put a lot of effort in the dialog and story, and a lot of people are looking for that, but some of us just want to, you know, unplug our brains and just play a game, LOL. Please consider a skip button. Thanks! other than that, I really loved the aesthetic and the gameplay and I'm sure the story is great, it's just not what I was looking for today, also it might hurt replayability.
alright, there's GOT to be a setting for immediate dialogue dismissal. sure, maybe you really want it there, but i thought about ctrl+w twice before i even got to start. after exposing the first other station (blindly, there's nothing that says that's what to do), i thought about quitting again. then the third one? man. bye.
You're right, every game should have a skip button for dialogues, even if it's narrative-based. Thanks for giving it a try anyway!
Nice!
love 🫶
Very interesting storyline!
Thanks! We're proud of how it came out
Super fun idea! I enjoyed the simple but compelling storyline and interesting scrabble hook. A few bits of feedback for improvement...
In my opinion it wouldn't have hurt to take just a few more lines of tutorial to explain specifically how to input words, especially since you have to drag and drop them in, and in reverse order lots of times. I would have been fine with a little more hands-on tutorial, at least for the first word. Maybe make the first set of letters something that is the same no matter what and let the characters specifically mention a correct word to input?
It also wasn't immediately clear that my goal was to connect the initial word to the various interaction points. Again, just spitballing here but perhaps if there was one prior level where the first word was given and there was only one possible interaction point available would have helped ease me into that more.
Finally, and I know this is nitpicky, but I think some kind of indicator above whichever character is speaking could have helped me know who was who more explicitly. Just a thought.
Oh, and on the finish screen where it says "Press esc" I did so but nothing happened...
Thanks for the fun game though! Overall a lot of great ideas executed very well. Cheers!
Hey, thank you for the deep feedback! I'm glad you liked the mix of narrative and Scrabble.
I'm on the same page with everything you said. We underestimated the initial difficulty thinking that everyone was familiar and comfortable with Scrabble, but translating it into a videogame probably adds a layer of complexity, making it a bit frustrating for the player.
There is space to improve and you pointed us in the right direction, thanks again 1000 times!