UNDER A STAR CALLED SUN

👩‍🚀 🌏 🌟

a sci-fi bitsy game about grieving, holding on to fading memories, and carrying the world on your shoulders, made for LIMINAL magazine's GLITCH series, released in June 2020 as part of the Emerging Writers' Festival.

use wasd or arrow keys to move and interact
content warning: allusions to grief, death
click on the title screen at the beginning if it’s unresponsive at first

soundtrack: Elegy For A Cosmonaut, made in beepbox.co

💫 🛰  🌌 

for Ruslan


bitsy hacks and tools used

[made in bitsy v7.0]

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5
Rating
Rated 4.9 out of 5 stars
(692 total ratings)
Authorcecile richard
GenreInteractive Fiction
Made withbitsy
Tagsartgame, Atmospheric, Bitsy, glitch, Minimalist, Narrative, Sci-fi, Space, Walking simulator
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard

Development log

Comments

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Viewing most recent comments 1 to 40 of 219 · Next page · Last page

IM NOT CRYING BITCH YOURE CRYING YOU ARE

i damn near cried

"Who do you blame for misfiling a memory..." hit me deep. What an incredibly moving game. Thank you.

(+1)

Short and ...deep.

Been pondering on the self corrupting memories as well, this is beautiful.

Such a poignant elegy

This ship's trajectory is unchanging... and the ship's name is "Life".

The Atlas carries the world on his shoulders, and he endures another day.

So minimalistic, yet complex. Love it!

This is amazing!

oh… love itTTTT repeated vague memories…

(+1)

absolutely gorgeous writing and art, amazing work

(+1)

nearly cried (i didn't cry in years)

thank you

(+2)

Wow. This is my second game of yours I have played and you have such an amazing way of storytelling and in such a short format as well. The repetition of "the trajectory of this ship is unchanging" tore me to shreds and then I decided to murder my heart even further and delete the message at the end. I'm absolutely in love with this, thank you.

Simply a beautiful story ;)

Oughh my heart squeezed so hard playing this ;__; so short yet so lovely, I loved it !!!!

I exploded(my tears are now everywhere)

Man, this game resonates.

(+2)

I'm crying so hard. I have a long distance relationship and this really moved me.

(+2)

WOW!!!! AMAZING!!!! 😭😭😭

(+2)

so so beautiful and moving, i zqs really emerged in the story ...waw

(+2)

That was incredibly powerful :) Especially loved the music and how it helped create the mood <3

Loved the game man. The graphic style is very nostalgic bringing me back to the old days playing Snake on an old nokia phone with my friends. The music is really good too, very touching. I was teared up by the end of the game!

(+2)

i had tears after finishing the game. perfect job by developer!

I think this game captures a certain type of feeling that a lot of us have experienced at different points in time. Something about this game is just so universal

The music is amazing. Like the narrative as well.

As a prelude to a much larger story or a one off moment, this was such a good experience.

The soundtrack for this is so good. It makes me weep

(+6)

I was interviewing another creator once when they said something that stuck with me: "The more specific you get, the more universal that thing becomes."

There are areas of this game that are vague and others that are hyper specific. It is because of this that I think it is so affecting. Every line of this game feels quoted from my own life, and yet, it is clear that the events that happened to you aren't even remotely similar to the events that happened to me. This game means a very different thing to me than to others, and that will be true for everyone.

I actually first played this game around August of last year, and I played it with the person who I can't help but think about when I play it again. They were a person I loved back then, they wouldn't be for much longer.

Thank you for this game. It hurt me. A lot. I'll cherish it.

it’s not often that I drop a loud "wow" after finishing a game.

(+7)

This made me sob violently and I needed it. It's my mother's 50th birthday in 10 days and she died pretty abruptly at 48. I miss her fucking incredibly and had to say goodbye for the last but not the first time halfway around the world over a video call via a shitty wifi connection. I was 29. Her father, who was functionally my dad, had died a year and four days prior—on valentine's day no less! hAHA

I wish I could say those were the only things that make me empathise so fucking deeply with this cosmonaut, with Atlas, with the Sisyphean effort in every After, with the recognition of memories being corrupted by reconsolidation and trying to remember anyway, that quintessential irony in the desperate attempt for connection by their recall. The regret you weren't prepared for because you had no way of fathoming it before. (you thought you were doing enough; but you know, too, that anything more would have been too much, would have interfered with being there in the moment, in those moments. this is just how it is. one cannot perfectly archive one's entire life.)

But they aren't the only, so the compounding of what was already terrible in these two losses by so much else is just... horrific  devastating  what the fuck p much  catastrophic? nah don't wanna maKe It bIgGeR tHaN iT iS    feels bad bro :/

But dusting the leaves. Humming. Caretaking. Hope, or at least the suspension of disbelief, the shelving of cynicism. The promise to love. The promise of love. 

It helps.

I don't know you cecile but I love you for making this game; I hope you're well out there~ tl;dr: 10/10 game + soundtrack, abs fantastic will make u feel things in 30 secs or less

(+2)

<3

(+1)

I hope you feel better

Lovely.

made me cry, it's so well-written and amazing storyline! I love it<3

Good game.

(+1)

Well I'm in tears. So...thanks?

This broke me. Thank you.

I have played a lot of your Bitsy games in the last few days and they're all so so good

truly lovely and uniquely affecting, thank you for making this. iinspired to discover more forms for digital art and text based games

Deleted 330 days ago
(+5)

bit rude

(-1)

dude this is so sick <3

Viewing most recent comments 1 to 40 of 219 · Next page · Last page