Paint the Stars is a kinda-action, kinda-incremental game that has you painting constellations upon the night sky to cast magic that defends a forest from falling asteroids. The goal is to grow your forest up into the sky to end the source of the meteorite scourge once and for all. As you destroy falling asteroids, you can harvest their energy to discover stronger constellations that will assist you in your endeavors to reclaim the sky.

I originally made Paint the Stars solo for Mixjam 5, a tiny 48 hour game jam that provides you with three random prompts when the jam starts; mine were “art,” “druids”, and “asteroids.” I approached the design of this game very differently from normal, building up the systems as I went along, and then taking a moment every few hours to reevaluate my heading and course correct if need be. This less structured approach led to the game’s central focus being less refined, but resulted in a more interesting an nuanced experience. After the jam concluded I spent a week refining and finalizing some of the unfinished ideas I had, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, as unorthodox as it is.

You can check the game out on Itch.io, or peruse my code on GitHub!