Star Harvester
Asymmetrical Arena Sport, 2025
- Role
- Game design, engineering & art direction
- Target
- An asymmetrical arena sport in which the regulatory system is itself an exploitable resource — proven at tabletop speed before a line of the real game is defended
- Constraints
- In development · built in the open · an asymmetrical design, which means the usual balance escape hatch is off the table: scarcity, time pressure and uneven starts are the sport, not bugs to smooth away
- Force fielded
- Nick Charney Kaye — game design, engineering and art direction; development runs in public on Discord
- Time-to-dispatch
- Board Game Prototype released December 29, 2024; Blockbusters Prototype released August 16, 2025, free and open source; beta opens 2026
- Result
- Two playable prototypes shipped and the economy proven at tabletop speed — starharvester.com carries the releases and the road to beta. Win by stacking 1,000 credits, or by bankrupting everyone else first
- Principal
- Outright Mental (original IP)
An asymmetrical arena sport set in a dystopian satire about the far-future asteroid mining gig economy. You pilot a resource-hungry ship into the asteroid field, mine what you can, sabotage who you must, and — this is the design’s sharpest edge — exploit the regulatory system itself, because in the A.P.E.S. economy the rules are just another resource with a price on it.
Win by stacking 1,000 credits, or by bankrupting everyone else first. The game leans into that tilt instead of smoothing it over, because honesty is cheaper than a patch: scarcity, time pressure, and uneven starting positions aren’t bugs to balance away, they’re the sport.
starharvester.com · beta opens in 2026
Look at the logo
The title art sets STAR HARVESTER in chrome letters encrusted with diamonds, over an A.P.E.S.-liveried mining ship hauling a plume of fire off a molten planet. The bling is doing thesis work: this is a universe where extraction is the whole culture, so of course the logotype itself is dripping in the product. Gaudy on purpose, satirical to the rivet — the same register as the smoking arcade cabinet on Fever Tilt’s title screen.
Shipped so far
The studio builds in the open, and the record so far is two playable prototypes:
Blockbusters Prototype — released August 16, 2025 — free and open source on GitHub.
Beta — opens 2026. Development runs in the open on Discord.
In-game screens from the current build:
The universe
Star Harvester shares its sky with Fever Tilt and the A.P.E.S. Champions: one monopoly corporation, one gig-economy hustle, many games. Fever Tilt is the arcade table in the station corridor; Star Harvester is the shift you clock into afterward — DoorDash for asteroids, now with a competitive ladder.
Our manifesto promises mechanics that expose choice rather than hide it. An asymmetrical sport is that promise at full strength: when the game admits the field is tilted, every choice you make on it is real — including the choice to tilt it further.
Proof: starharvester.com — prototypes, releases, and the road to beta.
