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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%
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.
