As much as it saddens us to say it, we’re going to have to rescind our support for the platform. Perhaps one day, technology will be sufficiently advanced for us to renew our support of the Nokia 5110, but for now, you’re going to have to play the game on Mac OS X or Windows.

We recognize that mobile platforms, particularly phones, are the way of the future. More and more games are being released for the iPhone, Android, and sometimes even Windows Phone platforms. These devices all have their pros and cons, but we have found that none of them really have the staying power, the resilience that we require of our technology.

There is, however, one platform that does meet these criteria. A powerful, flexible, mobile platform, with the strength to resist any and all competition.

We are, of course, talking about the Nokia 5110.

That’s right, folks. As of today, we are officially adding the Nokia 5110 to our lineup of supported systems. The game will be made available for the mobile platform on the same day as it’s available for Mac OS and Windows, and it will be a fully functional version of the game – not the usual crippled fare you’ll find in a mobile edition. We aren’t cutting any corners; check out some of these screencaps below, taken from our dev unit:

The classic menu you know and love.

Every cutscene fully preserved, rendered in beautiful 1-bit color.

All of the locations from the original game, remade with extreme attention to detail, including a dynamic cloud system and moving water!

Every puzzle works exactly as it does on Mac and Windows.

And of course, the awesome maglev rides have been faithfully ported.

Keep in mind that, as with all screenshots that we post, these are a work in progress. We are aware there are some problems and glitches, so please refrain from reporting them.

We’re feeling extra generous today, so we decided to give you guys a sneak peek at another aspect of the project, one that we are asked about quite a lot: sound! For a long time now, we’ve been debating how we’re going to be handling the music in our game, whether or not to remake (or even replace) the score originally composed and performed by Robyn Miller. Well, we’ve finally reached a decision, and well…we hope you agree that we made the right one. Have a listen to a sample of the soundtrack from the upcoming Nokia 5110 edition of the Starry Expanse Project:

We are really excited about the new platform, let us know what you guys think of it! What other platforms would you like to see the game ported to?

Update: Unfortunately, development issues have forced us to rescind our support for the Nokia 5110.

Check it out at https://www.facebook.com/starryexpanse.

Also, stay tuned for a surprise next week!

Update (2013-03-27): Sorry guys, the surprise has been postponed till next week. We’ll post on Twitter, Facebook, and here when it’s ready, and thanks for following us!

So naturally, everybody wants to know – will The Starry Expanse support the Rift?

Our answer to that is, unfortunately, a vague one. We here at 59 Volts all agree that the Oculus Rift looks pretty dang cool. Playing our game on a head-mounted display as great as the Rift promises to be sounds like a dream – Myst is all about immersion, and what better way to immerse oneself than through VR?

At the same time, as much as it pains me to say this, our game is far from being complete. Like, still a few years, at least. With that in mind, we’re unwilling at this time to commit ourselves to supporting anything beyond what we’ve already promised – that the game will play on a standard Windows computer, or on a standard Mac OS X computer.

To be clear: this is not to say that we will not support the Rift. In all likelihood, we will ultimately do what we can to support the Rift. But we’re not promising anything until the game is a lot more complete.

Thank you to everyone who has contacted us about the Oculus Rift, we hope that this is enough of a satisfactory answer. As always, stay tuned for more updates about the project soon!

What we did have was the combined power of two crazy fans, and a dream. An insane, ridiculously over-ambitious dream.

Well, four years later, we’re proud (kind of way too proud, probably) to finally be able to let you guys actually play something that we’ve made as a result of that conversation. It’s been a crazy ride so far, with multiple engine upgrades, an ever-expanding team of Very Talented People™, nearly $4000 in donations, and hey – official approval from Cyan Worlds. Not too shabby.

We’re sorry that we’ve been so quiet recently. We’re mostly all college students, and the fall semester is always a crazy time for us. Now that that’s over, however, we’re back to work, and things are moving forward. You can probably expect to hear more from us in the next few weeks.

SO: What do we have ready for you guys to play with today? Well, it’s pretty much what we showed off at Mysterium. It’s more polished, better-suited for public consumption, but everything you saw at Mysterium is there: you can explore Prison Island, open the firemarble dome, ride the elevator, birdwatch, even mess around with the environment. It’s all very pretty, and just a taste of everything that’s to come. Be sure to check the included readme file for an explanation of how to change the environment settings.

To be clear: we’re calling this a demo, not a beta. We’re showing off some of what we have done, sharing our baby with the public for the first time. We’re not specifically looking to find problems with it, we’re well aware of what’s still broken or missing. So you can relax, and simply enjoy the first public hands-on experience of our game. That said, if you encounter any major problems with the demo, feel free to contact us and explain the situation. We’ll do our best to help you out!

Well, I guess I can’t stall any more, so without further ado:

• Mac OS X - torrent or direct download
• Windows - torrent or direct download
• Windows 64-bit - torrent or direct download

Direct downloads are graciously provided by our friends over at Myst-Aventure, and we are very thankful for it. We recommend μTorrent as a suitable client for downloading the files via BitTorrent. If you need help using it, feel free to contact us at our support address, or just ask in the comments.

We sincerely hope you enjoy this small demonstration as much as we love working on the project.

Thank you so much to everybody who participated! And if you didn’t get a chance to ask your question, just leave it as a comment here, on an older post, or send us an email!

We hope you can come join the rest of the Internet in asking about our project!