Star Atlas is an AAA space exploration strategy game and blockchain-driven virtual metaverse. The highly anticipated game has epic graphics, compelling lore, and a forward looking blockchain-based economic model including Play-to-Earn and other DeFi features.
The brand is set to revolutionise the future of gaming, entertainment and beyond. Creative studio Hello Monday (part of DEPT®) partnered with the Star Atlas team to build an immersive digital experience to create excitement around the game’s launch.
A portal to the future
Star Atlas, set in the 27th century, combines everything a sci-fi gamer’s heart desires; it’s about space exploration, territorial conquest, and political domination. The teaser homepage features a galactic portal that pulls users right into the Star Atlas metaverse. The colour palette is colourful and light to move away from the traditionally dark and moody sci-fi aesthetic to help Star Atlas stand out in the world of sci-fi gaming.
Galactic navigation
The navigation structure is inspired by the solar system. Hello Monday (part of DEPT®) worked to develop a motion approach and iconography style that felt unique and reflects the Star Atlas brand.
Users can easily download the Star Atlas whitepaper, sign up for more information or click “play now” to visit the marketplace, where they can view the game leaderboard and buy and sell resources and services both in and outside the game. This combination of blockchain based in-game currencies and a fully decentralized, non-fungible token (NFT) asset ownership makes Star Atlas a truly innovative game.
Visualising the metaverse
Users can scroll through various chapters that introduce the game lore, and interact with 3D visualisations of spaceships and planets inspired by the Star Atlas world.
The 3D visuals are rendered as point clouds, a set of data points in space, alluding to stars in the universe. They needed to be recognisable and visually appealing while staying abstract to help tease for the upcoming game aesthetic. To achieve this look, the Hello Monday team wrote a custom WebGL point cloud shader that gives the illusion of a depth-of-field effect while staying very performant.
The 3D models are made from projecting light rays onto the surface of actual game models, and pre-processed in a custom compression pipeline based on Draco, an open-source library for compressing and decompressing 3D geometric meshes and point clouds.
Star Atlas is among the most talked-about Play-to-earn games. We were excited to help bring the digital experience to life and try to make it just as forward-thinking as the game itself.
Anders Jessen, Founding Partner, Hello Monday
The stars aligned for Star Atlas
The unique immersive digital experience Hello Monday (part of DEPT®) created for the launch of Star Atlas received overwhelmingly positive feedback from both the Star Atlas community and different award juries around the world:
- Webby Awards 2022: People’s Voice Winner in the category Entertainment
- Awwwards 2021: Site of the Day and Site of the Year in the category Users’ Choice
- FWA 2021: Site of the Day
Questions?
Founding Partner, HELLO MONDAY/DEPT®
Anders Jessen
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