Stella

From the OculusQuest community on Reddit: STARFALL. A single developer created this? WOW! Let's show him our support. Explore this post and more from the OculusQuest community

www.reddit.com/r/OculusQues...

I discovered this project while searching on Reddit about ASTRA, that's where I found someone hyping STARFALL saying :"I know, looks like he has taken some inspiration from ASTRA, but that was very short."

And... I have to agree, haha!

"You awaken in space, returning from “the simulation” with heavy memory loss as you arrive at your next destination: Planet Exoris. As you explore surreal planets, you must uncover who you really are, the purpose behind the recon mission, and how human connection brings meaning to life."

Starfall (Demo) on Meta Quest **Do you sometimes feel like you might be living in a simulation?** Step into **Starfall** (Demo Chapter 1 of 4), a sci-fi mixed reality experience where reality isn't what you think.

Having people be inspired by it, and (maybe?) being the bases of a new genre of space-themed hybrid (narrative+gamy) experience in XR!

I present to you STARFALL → www.meta.com/fr-fr/experi...

My first shipped project - ASTRA - directed by Eliza McNitt and produced by Atlas V has been quite successfull for mixed-reality : 400+ reviews and ⭐⭐⭐⭐ stars on the Meta Quest store, not bad for a narrative-driven project!

www.meta.com/en-gb/experi...

But you know what impress me even more?

A screenshot of a demo shown in Micro Kid's.

Did you know that from 1991 to 1995, more than 200 demos were featured on national French TV in the show named "Micro Kid's"?

Here's an anthology!

peertube.fenarinarsa.com/w/24nDZWh5Er...

#demoscene

IA : Reddit attaque quatre entreprises, dont Perplexity, pour exploitation illégale de ses données La plateforme accuse trois sociétés de contourner ses systèmes de protection pour aspirer les messages de ses utilisateurs et les revendre, afin d’entraîner des IA, notamment celle de Perplexity.

IA : Reddit attaque quatre entreprises, dont Perplexity, pour exploitation illégale de ses données

“L’interactivité d’une œuvre vidéoludique permet de ne pas subir le système. Et le contrôleur permet de renverser ce rapport de force” commente Olivier Mauco, président de l’Observatoire européen des jeux vidéo.

"Sans toujours revendiquer explicitement la mouvance du permacomputing (lire l’article, Permacomputing, tendance éphémère ou phénomène durable ?), ces pratiques en partagent souvent les principes : économie de moyens, sobriété technologique et réemploi."

“Très souvent, on commence le prototypage avec du carton et du scotch, poursuit Émilie Breslavetz ( @emiliecorne.bsky.social ). On finance nos œuvres nous-mêmes, donc on fabrique souvent en low-tech. Mais un bon contrôleur peut évoluer [...]""

“Cela s’approche vraiment de la culture makers : fabrication artisanale, partage, open source. Les contrôleurs sont souvent conçus dans des fablabs. Avec les contrôleurs alternatifs, j’ai une liberté que je ne retrouverai nulle part ailleurs”, confie @emiliecorne.bsky.social

"Les contrôleurs alternatifs ont depuis été étudiés, notamment via les travaux références de l’artiste chercheuse Tatiana Vilela dos Santos avec une thèse présentée en 2024, “Le mouvement altctrl, repenser la matérialité du jeu à l’ère de sa dématérialisation”."

"Alors que le jeu vidéo reste souvent associé à la console de salon, une autre scène indé s’affirme à la marge. Artistes et game designers y créent des œuvres installatives qui détournent les manettes traditionnelles. "

Contrôleurs alternatifs : mi-installation, mi-gaming Les contrôleurs alternatifs prônent le hacking d’objets du quotidien et la réappropriation de l’espace physique, avec souvent, une bonne dose d’humour.

📂 Onglet dump

hacnumedia.org/quand-les-co...

🥹❤️‍🩹

PLAYING THE GAME IS LETTING IT EXIST will be exhibited at Octobre Numérique - Faire Monde in Tiers-Images, a group show curated by Vincent Moncho et Guillaume Pascale in Arles (FR).

More on → octobre-numerique.fr/ensp

A Burned-Out Designer Tried to Heal by Making a Cozy Game

Joli article, lu après avoir fini Wanderstop, que je ne peux que vous recommander.

(et j'aimerais lire cet article mais il est po accessible :( www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/a...)

“A pet peeve of mine has really become when people say, ‘I just wanna ask questions,’ ” he added. [...]“It is something that I have plumbed the depths of, and I have come up and found it wanting,” he said. “Questions aren’t good enough for me anymore. I would like to start talking about answers.” ♦

Wanderstop explores a situation which, as Wreden noted in his lecture, often falls outside the purview of video games: namely, how one lives with the consequence of not getting what one wants.

In a lecture at Aalto University, in 2015, Wreden declared that [...] the mainstream video-game industry had led to “an art form in which by far the most ubiquitous form of expression is that of firing a gun.”

"But Wreden has Trojan-horsed a trauma plot into this : he twists the cozy formula, just as his previous works have played with other game-design tropes, telling what he’s described as “a really unpleasant and uncomfortable story in a format designed around comfort.”

“I decided to make Alta everything about me that I thought needed healing,” Wreden told me. “She was needy and obsessed with perfection and totally unaware of how much she was hurting herself.”

"Karla Zimonja played a pivotal role in [THE PROJECT]. She, too, is a Vancouver-based game developer who made her name with [...] Gone Home [...].

She joined Ivy Road [...] and became Wreden’s editor, pushing him toward what he called “true specifics.”

“It wasn’t just there for you to poke at for a minute, but it actually was trying to speak—trying to effect a sort of psychological therapy on the player, to grant them the permission to relax and to unwind.”

"His approach to its development was, in part, a product of his aversion to writing. At first, he thought that it would be something akin to a toybox, which immersed players in a mysterious and beautiful world without explicit goals or conclusive endings. "

"After founding a new studio, Ivy Road, he realized that the sketches contained the seeds of his next project. Wanderstop belongs to the tradition of so-called cozy games, a genre of nonviolent titles devoted to relationships, crafting, exploration, and routine—to building, rather than destroying. "

"In January, 2016, Wreden began drawing for upward of five hours nearly every day. [...] producing hundreds of pictures in the course of a six-month span, all of them variations on a simple scene: a pastoral clearing with a quaint-looking tea shop surrounded by trees, rocks, and brooks. "

"The Beginner’s Guide was partly inspired by William Goldman’s novel “The Princess Bride,” which Wreden had read while working on the Stanley Parable."
[...]
"After the release of the Beginner’s Guide, in 2015, he found that he could no longer write at all."

"Wreden has since become ambivalent about the Stanley Parable, feeling, he said, “like a guy who had gotten rich making jokes about video games, trying to deceive real writers into thinking that I’m a real writer.” "

I thought that if I made a game that spits in the face of an attempt to find meaning [...], I would get over my fear of meaninglessness in the world.
And it did not work.”
D.W.

“I’ve had phases of my life where I became not very functional [...] because I couldn’t distinguish myself from the absurdism of the media that I liked. [...]" - D.W.