Review Fix Exclusive: András Asztalos Talks ‘Morningstar: Descent to Deadrock’

Review Fix chats with “Morningstar: Descent to Deadrock” producer András Asztalos who discusses the upcoming Survival/Horror game via Phoenix Online Studios. Breaking down the inspiration behind the game, as well as its goals, Asztalos discusses the long and arduous development process behind the nifty and great-looking indie title.

Review Fix: For those that are unfamiliar with the plot, can you tell us what the game is about?

András Asztalos: The game is about Powell, the hero getting stranded on Deadrock, a notoriously dangerous and off-limits planet. It’s up to the player to repair the ship and escape the gravity well of the planet. It’s basically a ‘stranded on a desert island story’ set in space.

Review Fix: What was the development process like?

Asztalos: Long and exhausting. It was early 2013, I had just finished working on a project and I had some money saved. Earlier, sometime in 2010 we already had the idea to port Morningstar to the iPhone, but then nothing became of it. So I thought why not try it again. Shouldn’t take more than a few months. It was initially planned a a simple  iOS/Android re-release of the original game, with the old graphics and other assets intact. But it quickly became apparent that the graphics of the original title would seem outdated for the new audience, and the gameplay wasn’t long enough to grant a desktop release. So it was decided that all graphical assets would be upgraded and re-rendered in full HD quality, the gameplay would be enhanced and the game would be released primarily on PC and Mac as a stand-alone downloadable title. Additional screens and puzzles were designed to include the story elements that had been omitted from the original due to time constraints. The cutscenes were re-created in HD and more than 30 minutes of new, original in-game and cinematic music was composed.

Review Fix: The trailer was awesome, from the music, do the shaking dead body in the cockpit of the ship. Can you discuss the game’s visuals and music and how they work together to create the game’s atmosphere?

Asztalos: To be honest, there was no master plan or vision as to how the game should look. It just came out this way after I started modeling things based on the first draft compositions. After the puzzles were designed and the story written, Peter Kurdi (game designer and writer) came up with the basic layout of the Morningstar (the ship itself). He also provided me with descriptions of the locations. Then it was up to me to compose the shots and refine the environment. Initially I wanted to make the desert a lot more weird, but I’m not a concept artist, and I didn’t have one at my disposal, so for the desert shots I ended up looking at photos of actual rock formations in the desert. The design of the stone heads was based somewhat on the Easter island stone heads. The alien structure is also based on Peter’s descriptions.

Also I think the voiceovers of Alec Dean and Zsolt Sárközy add a lot to the atmosphere.

As for the music, credit is due to Zoltan Batky, who I think one of Hungary’s best singer/songwriters and a good friend of mine. I just handed him the cinematics, screen shots for the ingame music, and let him do his stuff. What he came up with is amazing.

Review Fix: What games did you play as a kid? Did they inspire this one in any way?

Asztalos: As one would guess I played a lot of adventure games like the Monkey Island series, the King’s quest series, Day of the Tentacle and such. We tried to come up with a similar feel, while avoiding those ‘guess what the game designer was thinking’ kind of puzzles. Let’s hope we succeeded.

Review Fix: What do you think is the one thing that makes this game special?

Asztalos: The creepy stone heads maybe.

Review Fix: What gamers to take away from this one? Is there a message?

Asztalos: You’d have to ask the gamers about that. We didn’t intend for it to have any message. It’s a pretty straight forward survival story.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Asztalos: It would be fun to do a sequel, but for now I’ll just say: let’s wait for the game to come out and do well, and let’s get back to this one afterwards.