Asterism mixes handcrafted artwork, an array of unique planets to explore, and compelling music to fuel a playable concept album.
When I was growing up there were a lot of repeats on TV, and one thing that kept airing over-and-over on ITV was a kids show from the 80s called Button Moon. All of the characters were toys or models made from kitchen utensils that were then jiggled around in front of what looked like a black sheet with holes poked through to make stars. The moon was, as you might imagine, a button.
Asterism is also a ‘crafty’ little game set in space. However, its cardboard walls, papercraft trees, and collage don’t tell a worry-free story for children, but instead depict an epic journey set to a fantastic, emotive indie album.
I don’t really know what I was expecting when I sat down to play Asterism while at MCM X EGX earlier in the year. The Leftfield Collection is my highlight of these events, and so where I normally hang my hat – but I sat at the booth before actually processing the booth. Going in unprepared, unwarned, turned out to be a massive boon — and I’m sorry if I’ve ruined that for you. Because I wasn’t expecting the little space ship exploration with its story about scouring time and space, to suddenly erupt into amazing music.
Each destination, most of which are planets, is set to an indie song, with you exploring the imported, crafted land in a variety of different ways. It never feels like you’re having much of an impact, but it feels great to basically play out the role of the subject of an artistic music video… and that’s the thing. Asterism feels like you’re playing a music video, but also like you’re playing one of those really good interactive art installations.
While each planet has its own song, the absence of that music in those moments between, where the story advances, also becomes its own sound. I felt myself both carefully reading the story while also rushing to get to the next level because of how immersive and absorbing the last one had felt. While, as I said before, it very much felt like I wasn’t having much impact, it was a joy-filled almost-arcadey experience that I really couldn’t get enough of.
In fact, I couldn’t actually tear myself away from Asterism (ultimately only stopping because Jupiter — who I was there with — came over and wanted to talk to me about the games she’d played), not realising that this was as much a visual experience as an audio one.
I dived back in when I got home, as there’s a demo live on Steam, and happily finished all of the current planets… and now I’m just hanging around waiting for the moment it releases to play more.
Asterism is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can follow its creation on itch.io or get a demo for the game on Steam.
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