Star Birds: The Short-Term Strategy Game Launches in June with a Demo
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Last year, the developer announced a collaboration with Munich-based web video producer Toukana Interactive, shortly after Dorfroentik. Star Birds will receive a demo for the next Steam festival in June 2025, as a new trailer has now announced as part of the Triple-I initiative.
Structure and Automation in Space Begins with the Demo
It was already known that Star Birds was to be released on Steam in Early Access sometime this year. However, once internal testing is completed in the first quarter of 2025, a demo will initially be available in the summer. At the next Steam festival, which will run from June 9th to June 16th, players should be able to try Star Birds for the first time. In addition to the core gameplay loop with production lines and first-stage snippets, the demo version should also include a tutorial and a challenge level. The Early Access release later in the year would offer additional resources, buildings, levels, and a closed story. Work is still needed to balance the game.
Procedural Asteroids and Roguelite Mechanics
Star Birds
Star Birds (Image: Toukana Interactive) Image 1 of 4
Automation via mouse-driven pointers and spaceships becomes an end in itself: the happy birds are still bringing new technologies to generate space surgery. “You have to connect things to other things to produce more things,” the developers summarize. But there could also be a potential framework story: if you develop your own asteroid mining network, you will encounter “non-world secrets.”
In terms of content, Star Birds will primarily rely on fresh and intuitive building strategy mechanics and “an exciting story,” the developers have compensated for this. Asteroids, production process management, and a graphic style based on short videos are proposed procedurally. The roguelite mechanics, i.e., the use of subtle roguelike elements, should ensure a high level of reflection. With all this in mind, Toukana emphasizes that despite the collaboration with Short, the title is not a serious educational game, in which knowledge transfer is the primary focus. Instead, “fascination with the universe must be awakened through intrinsically motivating interactions and challenges in a dynamic game world.”
Toukana × Short
The collaboration between Toukana Interactive and Short began nearly three years ago. Toukana was organizing pre-production on a new game at that time, while the animation studio, known for its YouTube-based entertainment videos, was looking for a partner for its own video game.
[…]The first contact between the two German studios took place at Gamescom 2022. Both studios were already familiar with each other’s loving art style and creations, so the interest in collaborating was mutual from the start. The atmosphere also fits perfectly, right down to the birds as a mascot. And so the two decided to “send the birds into space” together in a brand new game.[…]
The Larva as Interactive
From the Village to Space
A lifelong video game enthusiast, Julien reviews the latest releases and explores the technologies transforming the gaming world.
