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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery

@starspawngame.com
640 followers 50 following 241 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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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 18/09/2026
Implementing some new baddies. The shoggoths always know where you are but move towards you slowly
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 12/09/2026
It’s fun how the outer gods are a bunch of unfathomable horrors that no mortal mind could ever even begin to comprehend, and also Nyarlathotep who is just Satan
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 12/09/2026
I’m sorry, classic 1995 LucasArts adventure game The Dig was written by who?
Writers
Orson Scott Card
Brian Moriarty

Steven Spielberg
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 10/08/2026
Lovecraft with a speech bubble
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­­ ­ ­ the­ ­­ ­ ­ ghostes @rem.bsjky.team · 06/07/2026
NIGHTMARE CRAB DOOR
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 24/06/2026
final FINAL.png
A figure stands in a cave before a series of ruined cities, each one atop the other, wildly different architectural styles
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 17/06/2026
deep strata beneath the dying dreamlands
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 10/04/2026
Celephaïs library reading room
A glorious library reading room. Shelves from floor to the vaulted ceiling. A long table with chairs. Statuary and an orrery in the rear. Beams of light shine in through the windows; green chunks of crystal intrude on the serenity
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 04/04/2026
Finalizing the chapter 1 maps. Library entrance!
A pixel art map of a library. It has two levels with wood floors and a variety of shelves and periodicals, it feels very cozy
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Materialist Gnostic @walmsley.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
"this is my daughter R'lyeh, pronounced Riley"
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 01/03/2026
We're zeroing in on the elements we want for the top-down 'navigation mode' of the game. There's no combat, but we still want things to feel dynamic and keep you on your toes. We have some exciting traps coming next!
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Richard Moss @mossrc.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Help me make a dream project: a documentary film (on Blu-ray) about the SCUMM engine and the incredibly-imaginative, brilliant LucasArts games that redefined the adventure genre. It'll feature designers Ron Gilbert and David Fox, artist Mark Ferrari, and many many more, but only with your help.
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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 03/02/2026
1 like = 1 instance of Lovecraft using the word "queer"
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 29/12/2025
automated tests heck yeah
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 18/12/2025
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)
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 07/12/2025
Well gosh darn it. The latest ren’py version adds a powerful automated test suite and good OpenGL optimizations, but also breaks the sprite manager class we depend on for the whole top down mode 😔
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Alex T Singer, Arbiter of Bagels @moonsheen.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
When my father asked me what cosmic horror was I had to pick a book he'd actually recognize and I blurted out "Moby Dick." I stand by this. See also: this print.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 30/11/2025
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."
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 30/11/2025
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
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 08/11/2025
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
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Fred Scharmen @sevensixfive.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Happy Happy!
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 30/10/2025
We have posted our second update :D in case you're curious what we've been up to! #gamedev
kickstarter.com
Update 2: Update 2! · Starspawn - Lovecraft Mythos Visual Novel/Dating Sim
Feature developmentMap puzzlesWe are continuing to work through our feature backlog. Lately we have focused on two of the top-down-mode adventure/puzzle elements: rooms with a
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 12/10/2025
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
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 22/09/2025
Ok question for the #gamedev crew. I think it would be neat to have an indicator by menu choices that shows dialogue tree flows like “this moves you forward” vs “opens a sub-menu of questions” or “exits a sub-menu”. These placeholder emoji are terrible of course. Thoughts? Good/bad idea?
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 21/09/2025
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%)
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Gundroog @gundroog.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Sun Tzu in his Art of War once said "those who save consumables will be buried with them."
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 19/09/2025
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
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 17/09/2025
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
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 13/09/2025
Seems like a nice chill spot to hunker down and finish the game, and not at all like a setting in the game
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 11/09/2025
Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to the kickstarter, we’re gonna have so much extra art now! Well above the bare bones we need to produce a satisfactory result—this is gonna be great
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 11/09/2025
Last night to pledge! Every little bit makes the game that much better at launch 😇 www.kickstarter.com/projects/485...
kickstarter.com
Starspawn - Lovecraft Mythos Visual Novel/Dating Sim
Your scholarship is in danger, your friends aren't human, and something ancient awakens in the dreamlands. Welcome to Miskatonic U.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 10/09/2025
ewwww
Pixel art of a weird horned dinosaur skull fossil, but it’s got 8-9 eye holes of various sizes clustered together
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 07/09/2025
Somebody just wrote on Kickstarter to make sure you can romance the boys. Yes! This game is gay as hell!
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 06/09/2025
Definitely the sort of thing you say to your lord every time he comes up to you!
Jrpg dialogue

Citizen
I'm always splurging on women, so I never have any money for myself! Gahaha!
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 04/09/2025
Seven days left 😱 we’re already funded but can we make it to a nice round number?? $20 gets you the game (when it’s done) and a Kickstarter exclusive story collection—and the exclusives only get better from there Click through to read all about our gay little game!
kickstarter.com
Starspawn - Lovecraft Mythos Visual Novel/Dating Sim
Your scholarship is in danger, your friends aren't human, and something ancient awakens in the dreamlands. Welcome to Miskatonic U.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 28/08/2025
Ice world!
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 26/08/2025
Very excited to see the character designs our top backers come up with for some of the big remaining NPCs. We got [spoilers], we got a helpful elder thing, we got a forest witch, we got a deathly ill magical librarian, we got a talkative ghoul,
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🍅🥔🫐🌽 hoopy frood 🌶️ 🥑🍫🌵 @huwupy.kawaii.social · 25/08/2025
If you’d like to help bring a mad AI character to life you should give us money for the character art and also get lots of exclusive goodies www.kickstarter.com/projects/485...
kickstarter.com
Starspawn - Lovecraft Mythos Visual Novel/Dating Sim
Your scholarship is in danger, your friends aren't human, and something ancient awakens in the dreamlands. Welcome to Miskatonic U.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 24/08/2025
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
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 21/08/2025
new tiles
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 20/08/2025
Since we’re funded it’s time to think about stretch goals! Lots of people are saying they’d like voice acting, but that wouldn’t become feasible until like $10k. Intermediate ones we can think of are in-game collectible card game and playable character backstories, what else? #gamedev
kickstarter.com
Starspawn - Lovecraft Mythos Visual Novel/Dating Sim
Your scholarship is in danger, your friends aren't human, and something ancient awakens in the dreamlands. Welcome to Miskatonic U.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 17/08/2025
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.
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Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein @deepcuts.blog · 17/08/2025
Re-skeet for the Sunday crowd.
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 16/08/2025
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."
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 16/08/2025
We did an interview about games and queer themes in mythos stories! It was pretty fun, check it out
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 14/08/2025
Discount tiers! Free DLC! Kickstarter exclusive short story collection! And more! Get ‘em while they’re cheap! Sale ends noonish!
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⟨ Jargonaut NPC Alex ⟩ @lastnpcalex.agency · 13/08/2025
still ~24 h left to back my friends game on Kickstarter at 25% off on the first tier. looks pretty awesome!
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Starspawn: A Miskatonic Mystery @starspawngame.com · 13/08/2025
Wow we already funded! Still, lots of reasons to pledge today 😇 - Discount - DLC - Exclusive horror story collection +more - We now have the bare minimum needed to finish—it’ll get even better with each extra pledge! - High rollers design an NPC portrait or detailed full-screen drawing (up to PG13)
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