Starwick - making it look and feel premium

Spent this stretch on two things: making the realm look premium, and making it feel premium.

The realm became a journey

You now relight several star-sites in a row - a companion leads you to each, you trace its constellation, the ground warms, a new light calls you onward. Restore the whole sky, then make the choice. And there’s a roster of companions: the one you carry seeds the world - different terrain, layout, palette, color, even the music. Replay and you’re somewhere new with someone new.

Looks premium

No new art, just rendering: a filmic color grade with glowy bloom, a horizon haze with a richer nebula, crystals that went from flat cutouts to lit glass that catches light, and a focus-pull that softly blurs the world behind dialogue. Aiming at the Sky / Gris look, not photoreal - the right call for a game built entirely from code.

Feels premium

Everything reacts: a screen-punch and crystal pop on relight, buttons that pop in, a counter that punches when it ticks. Every tap, trace, and relight makes a synthesized sound, with matching haptics on a phone. None of the audio is recorded.

The day it went black

Reached for ACES tonemapping plus heavy contrast and vignette, and the whole scene crushed to near-black - nebula and terrain just gone. Swapped to a gentler tonemap, lifted exposure, dropped the bloom threshold so things glow instead of clip, and it came back better than before. Bonus near-miss: I wanted horizon fog but fog eats a star field - turns out the sky’s shader ignores scene fog, so the land hazes while the stars stay crisp. Accidentally perfect.

Where it stands

Looks and feels like a real game now Caveats: no title screen yet, and it doesn’t remember you between runs - a persistent sky and a collection screen are next.