Everyone is free to imagine whatever subtext they like, but the game isn't overtly adult-oriented, and we're happy to have all ages participate. This makes a certain amount of sense if they don't know what the game is about, the subtitle can convey entirely the wrong idea. In our experience, kids love playing STARWHAL just as much as anyone else! But we've seen some parents with children hesitate around our booth at various events. It's a game about colourful, smiling sea creatures poking each other in outer space. The first issue is representing the game as adult-oriented when it's in fact totally family friendly. It turns out the answer to the question “what’s in a name?” can sometimes be “a massive can of worms.” There are two main reasons we want to drop the subtitle at this point. Unfortunately, the subtitle itself has been a bit of a contentious issue.
We kept the original title - Just the Tip - as a subtitle. After the game jam we wanted a more descriptive name, and the brilliant pun “Starwhal” seemed to perfectly describe the lovable neon space mammals battling across the stars.
At that time, Just the Tip both made us laugh, and felt like it (sorta-kinda) described the gameplay. It’s a difficult and often sleepless task! During the jam, we needed to come up with something to name our game as we worked. Global Game Jam is an event where a team undertakes the challenge of creating a game in 48 hours. The “Just the Tip” subtitle was originally the entire titl e of the game when it was created during Global Game in January 2013. And if you don't have a sweet PS4, PS3, or WiiU in your gaming lair, other consoles are also in the works. And we’re still excited to have STARWHAL hitting gamers' couches across planet Earth on consoles in 2015! Remember you can already play on Steam. This decision is being made entirely by Breakfall, on its own accord.įEAR NOT! We're still hard at work on the game, and this doesn't come with any other changes to our master plan to bring you the ULTIMATE space narwhal combat simulation. After some pretty serious deliberation, Breakfall is choosing to drop the “ Just the Tip” subtitle from our game, STARWHAL. STARWHAL is about to get a name change, and we’d like to offer some explanation as to why we are doing this. Stay tuned and follow our social media for a drip feed of random nonsense from game dev life. We’re gonna blog more about stuff in development. It’ll also test your speed, power, and accuracy. It may not make you cry, but it’ll definitely make you laugh. Lately we’ve been working on something new, and it’s totally, totally rad. A lot of games out there are doing bigger and badder sales, but to us getting on these consoles and selling some copies was definitely a big “Achievement unlocked.” We didn’t make enough money to allow everyone on the team to buy a pet narwhal - but we did make enough that Breakfall is still around as a studio and we get to try making another game. Many of you backed us on Kickstarter, and supported us by buying the game when it was finally released on the platform of your choice.įor this you have our unstabbed heartfelt thanks!Īs you may have already guessed, it’s been a while since we passed that wild, inconceivable 50K copies of STARWHAL sold. You all played the crap out of the STARWHAL demo on the site, told your friends, and watched people on Youtube yell at each other. With that notion in mind, we joked about the idea of STARWHAL taking off and selling 50,000 copies, which was a wild, inconceivable number.Īnd then you came, you saw, you flopped around, and it was good. It wasn’t our first rodeo - we’d made neat little games we were proud of for several Game Jams in years past, so we were used to the idea of just making these sorts of things for fun and them not going anywhere beyond that. Lots of fun was had, many narwhal hearts were pierced, and we ended the weekend with a neat little game. The original version of STARWHAL was made back in January of 2013 at Global Game Jam. (Sorry to all the Atari Lynx fans out there.) It’s not the game that modern consoles deserve, but it is the one they need. Every entertainment device in your home that we at Breakfall deemed relevant. STARWHAL is available on PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U.
Hey, whoa… Breakfall had a blog? Let’s get some fresh air in here.