Starstruck: Hands of Time

Starstruck: Hands of Time is a rhythm adventure game with RPG-like gameplay developed and published by Createdelic, LLC. It was released for PC on September 16, 2024. (Official website)

In this game, players adventure through a miniature diorama world, talk to residents, solve puzzles, and play guitar in a style similar to rhythm games like Guitar Hero. The game explores and juxtaposes many themes together of identity and belonging such as creative expression and imitation, fame and infamy, and the scale of time through cause and effect, both long and short.

Trailer

Development

I first became involved in this game in 2019 when I was contacted by Max Ponoroff to help design the improvisation mode where players can just jam with their virtual guitar at their leisure, similar to playing the ocarina in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Since then, over the next few years I also helped with transcribing a few of the original tracks into MIDI. This was necessary for improvisation system during certain sections of the music so the game could generate the correct chords and notes in real-time. In addition, helped arrange and score the choral parts of Praise the Mold, and I wrote, recorded, and performed the piano piece Dammerung Modern.