alone among the stars | wrapped

the final episode of the alone among the stars series just went live! here’s a wrap-up post talking a little bit about the production & showing some game data. bc of course, as a general life rule, i simply love to make a spreadsheet about it 🖤

the three playthroughs were recorded in september, october, & december of 2024, then released in january 2025, which i believe makes it the series that had slowest ramp then most sudden launch so far 🏃‍♂️

the guests

jess levine | @jessfromonline [ twitter | bluesky ]
https://jessfrom.online/ | https://jumpgategames.itch.io/

dusty | @dustehill [ twitter | bluesky ]
fromdusttodice.itch.io

charts & process

discoveries

it’s hard to believe that averages & statistics are real while you’re living them, but while our per-planet die rolls varied significantly, we all ended up with almost exactly the same amount of discoveries

the way that i lay out sections in the show obviously changes a lot depending on the format of the game. discrete discoveries as segments was pretty clearly the way forward here, but i wasn’t sure at first how to deal with the varying numbers. the rules i decided on were, as much as possible:

• no player does two discoveries in a row

• each player pops up semi-regularly

• everyone finishes planets at the same time

my specific ADHD black hole of a working memory brain cannot do this kind of work internally & doesn’t even really like doing it digitally, so here’s how i laid it out– i think this is pretty much what you hear in the show, unless something really wasn’t flowing as i worked through it!

i love you whiteboards!!! i’d be nothing without you whiteboards!!! yaaaay whiteboards!!!!!

circumstances

dusty used the roll for “how you discovered [X]” to determine their approach to the planet, with a more narrative approach to how they found each thing on it, so they had fewer in total & ended up with a fairly even split

![]

as much as jess’ character loved coming upon things suddenly, ultimately her journey wore on her & she spent a little more time at rest than anything else

however… i remain the absolute royal of resting. my character was, without a doubt, saturday. fuckin’. chillin’.

locations

we discovered things at all thirteen possible locations, but some were much more common than others!

• frequency

  • most common: “floating in the air” & “in the desert”

  • least common: “under the light of the moon(s)”

• spread

  • “floating in the air” & “on the snowy peak of a mountain” are the only two that we all hit

  • jess was the only one to find something “by a gentle river”

  • dusty was the only one to find something “under the light of the moon(s)”

  • i was chilling way too hard to find anything unique

somehow fittingly for the space cowboy, dusty spent a meaningful amount of their game discovering stuff that was floating in the air, but they also favoured cliff faces & deep water

jess was the only person to pull all four possible instances of one location, & generally spent the most time in extreme conditions or beside a moving body of water

my spread was pretty even, which i’m crediting to my superior card shuffling skills, despite that having nothing to do with it & knowing for a fact that at least one of the other players has some amount of cardistry skills & is certainly on all technical levels better at shuffling cards than me

that’s it for now! these are the episodes that have most made me wish there were an animation budget so far– the visual descriptions were just so strange & evocative. here’s the data if you want to make a copy & find other weird correlations & whatever!!