I’ve never seen anything like Carpe Fulgur’s new project

This Starry Midnight We Make

Carpe Fulgur introduced Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale to hundreds of thousands of players in the West and, last we had heard, was helping XSEED Games localize The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky Second Chapter. Now the studio’s moved on and has since shifted its attention to Cavyhouse’s This Starry Midnight We Make, a game unlike anything I’ve seen.

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Watch the trailer? Yeah, start with that.

It’s set in Kyoto, Japan in 1910. It’s part simulation, part puzzle game, part adventure. Players inhabit Hamomoru Tachibana, a clergywoman who encounters something called the “Star-seeing Basin” that simulates the night sky and seems to have an effect on the townsfolk.

“The player must manipulate the levels of energy in the Basin, as well as the positions of the placed stars themselves, to create the objects they require — because helping the people you meet in Kyoto will require the creation of specific celestial bodies in the Basin, and tracking down the full truth of the Basin and its powers will take the creation of complex and mighty objects indeed…”

See? Strange stuff. Starry Midnight comes to Steam on May 25, 2015. There’s a demo.

Project Five: This Starry Midnight We Make [Carpe Fulgur]