I developed Star Thief from concept to highly-functional prototype in a digital prototyping university course. The game's design came out of a mashup of Hungry Hungry Hippos and Snake. The concept needed to have a novel physical controller, so at first I chose to design a seat controller. The players would lean left or right to control the ships, while they were sitting down.
Throughout the course I iterated on the game and controller based on user testing sessions. After testing the seat controller, I realised that it wasn't such a good idea. I then implemented a wireless controller to be held by players, using fiducial markers and a webcam.
In the future I plan on re-making the game in a 3D engine and making it more 1980's, with AI for single player games.
