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Midnight Star is a mobile FPS that works (no, really)
From the mind that co-created the Halo universe, Midnight Star is a robust, alien-infested first-person shooter – for mobile devices. Wait, where are you going? Hang on! Just – hang on. Midnight Star is a good mobile shooter. The game comes from Alex Seropian, the man behind Halo, and Tim Harris, a former comic store owner and co-founder of game studio Seven Lights. Together at Industrial Toys, Seropian and Harris have been promising Midnight Star as a mobile shooter with innovative controls that make sense for the touchscreen platform, something the jaded mobile masses can believe in. And so far, Midnight Star delivers.
Halo co-creator's mobile FPS now called 'Midnight Star'
Midnight Star is the new name of Industrial Toys' ambitious mobile FPS, changed from Morning Star after studio founders Tim Harris and Alex Seropian discovered an existing trademark of the same name. They're creative guys – Harris founded the studio Seven Lights and Seropian helped create Halo – so they were able to insert the new name into the game's lore. They're also lucky – the logo for the game is an M with a star under it, and rarely do its assets say the full "Morning Star." Welcome, Midnight Star. Industrial Toys has been pitching Midnight Star as an innovative shooter for mobile platforms; AAA on iOS. Harris tells me over Skype what this means for the game's controls: Tap one finger to shoot, two to bring up a shield and other common gestures for specific weapons, such as pinch to zoom in a sniper rifle. The game is technically on rails, but it offers players the ability to control the camera. Two hexagons on either side of the screen light up with the number of enemies surrounding the battlefield, and the indicators change colors as foes prepare to attack. Players can tap the hexagons to swing the camera that way and take care of business. The aiming reticle is positioned above the player's finger so it's always obvious where it's pointing, and the enemy AI system is dynamic, "not unlike Halo," Harris says. Enemies respond to a player's actions, ducking for cover when a sniper zooms in on them, staying back in one playthrough and charging forward for a melee attack in another.
The sci-fi all-stars behind Morning Star Alpha
Morning Star is a huge gamble. It's an interstellar FPS for mobile devices built by a crack team of geek-industry experts at Industrial Toys, all hoping to break stigmas of handheld, hardcore gaming. Morning Star Alpha, the tie-in graphic novel for the game, is an even bigger risk. Add-on apps for games have earned the reputation of being rushed, shallow and of poor quality, and most players don't take these digital comics seriously, no matter how fanatical about the series they may be. Convincing people to play a new shooter on their iPhones is one thing – getting them to read a digital comic about that game is another world of salesmanship. So far, Morning Star Alpha has three things working in its favor: It's free, it offers a new way of reading on-screen comics, and it comes from an all-star team, written by award-winning sci-fi author John Scalzi, drawn by Marvel and DC artist Mike Choi, and overseen by Halo creator Alex Seropian. And a fourth thing – it looks really cool.%Gallery-193419%
The evolution of Morning Star's ugly-cute bad guy, the Renfield
Morning Star, from Halo creator Alex Seropian and Seven Lights founder Tim Harris' studio, Industrial Toys, pits players against a variety of alien enemies in a hardcore FPS for mobile devices. The Renfield are a race of agile, bulldog humanoids subservient to the main conquering race, the Dust, who are vampiric monsters bent on destruction. The Renfield take their name from Bram Stoker's Dracula and its secondary antagonist, R.M. Renfield, a psych ward patient with a penchant for consuming living organisms. In the novel, Renfield is under the control of Count Dracula, just as the Renfield in Morning Star are slaves to the Dust. Marvel artist Mike Choi designed the Renfield in Morning Star in one sketch, and from there the enemy has evolved into varying classes: sniper, trooper and "some surprises," Harris writes. Get a good look at the Renfield on the Industrial Toys blog.
Halo co-creator's iOS game Morning Star getting a tie-in comic app
Morning Star, the upcoming iOS first-person shooter from Industrial Toys and Halo co-creator Alex Seropian, will be getting the comic book tie-in treatment in the form of an interactive graphic novel designed for Apple's mobile devices. Called Morning Star Alpha, the comic is being penned by Redshirts author John Scalzi with art by Mike Choi, who's known for his work on the likes of Witchblade, X-Force and Green Lantern. The plot of Morning Star Alpha will tie directly into the game -- and on some pretty deep, interactive levels at that. Readers will be able to make choices while reading the comic, which will then affect the game. In-game discoveries will, in turn, make new elements of the comic available for reading in order to provide more context to the on-screen action. There's no release date set for Morning Star -- which will also feature a score by System of a Down's Serj Tankin -- or the Morning Star Alpha tie-in, but we'll have more on both as Seropian and company reveal it.
Morning Star comic app weaves into the game, from John Scalzi and Marvel's Mike Choi
Morning Star – the hardcore, mobile FPS from Halo creator Alex Seropian and Seven Lights founder Tim Harris – is more than an iOS game. Seropian and Harris' studio, Industrial Toys, employs a wide range of geek experts, including Redshirts author John Scalzi and Marvel artist Mike Choi, both of whom are collaborating on an interactive, graphic novel app to tie-in with Morning Star on a deep level.Morning Star Alpha will expand upon Morning Star's tale, frequently allowing readers to make choices that are saved to their accounts and ultimately affect the game itself, at least when that drops a few months later. Conversely, discovering certain things in the game will unlock aspects in Morning Star Alpha. It's sequential-storytelling symbiosis."We're doing some interesting things with this experiment by trying to take sequential storytelling's creative and enjoyment processes to the next level, using the mechanics available to us without the restrictions of a paper default – to coin a phrase – and also making it so that no two reads of the story are the same," Choi says.Players won't need to read Morning Star Alpha to enjoy Morning Star, Harris tells us, but the app will add another layer of experience to the universe."The game will enhance and add to the graphic novel experience," Harris says. "For players who want to dig into the things they encounter in the game, tons of extras and narrative elements will unlock and bring those explorers down the rabbit hole. We call it the Nerdopedia internally, but it's so much cooler than that – it will be fed by the game and continue on through our later episodes and issues."Scalzi's script is complete and a sample of Choi's art is hanging out above, though there is no release date for Morning Star Alpha yet.
Serj Tankian composing the beats behind Morning Star
Morning Star, the first mobile FPS from Alex Seropian and Tim Harris' studio, Industrial Toys, will feature a full musical score from System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian. Seropian and Harris are pretty serious about their premiere, and this sounds like part of that effort to make a truly hardcore mobile game."We've been big fans of Serj's for quite some time," Seropian says. "The opportunity to collaborate with him on Morning Star gave us a way to take the game to a whole new level. We knew his score would be unique, but it's his ability to interpret a scene or gameplay element and come up with something that makes it moodier, more dramatic or just more awesome that's really got us pumped."Tankian, a self-described poet and political activist along with his musical duties, composed the music in the above trailer, for those interested in a teaser."I'm really enjoying working on Morning Star because it gives me the ability to create new musical worlds to complement the new visual worlds in the game," Tankian says. "Though most of the gameplay will be action-oriented cues, the stunning artwork and static scenes have inspired unique sounds unheard before."
Former Halo creator working on Morning Star for iOS
Alex Seropian is one of the first game developers I ever interviewed -- he's one of the original creators of Halo back at Bungie Studios (back when it was being planned as a real-time strategy title for the Mac), and I met up with him when I worked at a PR firm one floor below his company Wideload Games (which was later bought up by Disney). Now, he's started a new company in Los Angeles called Industrial Toys, and today they've announced their first title, a shooter called Morning Star that the team hopes will "reimagine" the genre "for touch." There's a teaser trailer for the game (embedded below), and as you can see, Industrial Toys isn't skimping on graphical quality. Other than a few fleeting images, however, there's not much more information about this one. It's got aliens, shooting and a new control scheme that's supposed to work great on touch devices. Industrial Toys says its "totally unreasonable goal is to completely change the expectations core gamers have for their mobile games." That's a totally unreasonable goal that plenty of iOS developers have already tried to accomplish, and one that I'd argue a few companies (most notably Epic, with the very popular Infinity Blade) have actually completed. But Industrial Toys does have a lot of cred with Seropian and the rest of the crew, so Morning Star will be one to watch.
'Morning Star' is a mobile, space FPS from Halo creator's Industrial Toys
In 2132, Charlie Campbell boards the MSRV-Joplin, an interplanetary research vessel outfitted with modern military equipment, to investigate a signal emanating from Saturn's largest moon, Titan. His team reaches the signal and discovers an alien artifact distributing an SOS call – but it's more than a cry for help. It's a powerful portal. The artifact transports Charlie and his crew to Oberon, a barren, devastated planet wrecked by war and lorded over by the Dust, an evil, vicious race responsible for the surrounding destruction and bent on slaughtering everyone in sight. And then:"Some bad shit happens," Industrial Toys co-founder Tim Harris tells Joystiq. "Awful, awful shit goes down."Awful shit, such as Charlie's entire crew dying and the artifact causing the sun to implode, instantly incinerating the Earth and every human on it. The Dust, it turns out, have sabotaged the portal to destroy the system of the creature that finds it – though perhaps not permanently.It's an alien artifact, an SOS signal, a portal, a remote killswitch, and, apparently, a time machine, potentially allowing Charlie to undo what the Dust have done. In the battle for humanity's survival, Charlie is our only hope, and Industrial Toys is pulling his strings. %Gallery-173069%
