It’s been an exciting three weeks since we announced Audica, but all of that is behind us as the team just hit the big “release game” button on both the Oculus and Steam stores, making Audica officially available to play in Early Access!
What Is Audica?
Get your blasters ready as you’ll be shooting and smashing targets to the beat of a killer soundtrack featuring songs from some of the most popular electronic artists. Keep timing, accuracy, and form in mind to better your score and race to the top of the leaderboards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PwmDO5WCq8
The Early Access version of Audica will launch with 10 songs. We’ll be releasing new tracks throughout Early Access, so keep an eye out for more information about future releases. The songs that are available to play in Audica today are:
1788-L & Blanke – “Destiny”
Alison Wonderland – “I Want U”
Au5 & Fractal – “Smoke”
DJ Fresh ft. Ms. Dynamite – “Gold Dust”
Donna Summer – “I Feel Love (Afrojack Remix)”
James Egbert – “The Space”
Jeff Allen – “Lazerface”
Noisia – “Collider”
Savant – “Splinter”
Zedd & Grey – “Adrenaline”
Early Access Plans & Development Roadmap
With Audica now available in Early Access, we’re looking forward to working closely with you, our community, to shape the course of our development.
While we have big plans on where we would like to take Audica, there are a ton of questions we have about the game (for example, should there be an overdrive mechanic?) that we want to discuss with the community. Additionally, we’re very interested to hear what features, mechanics, songs, and other things you would like to see in the game!
We’ve been thinking about the best ways to solicit feedback and ideas and have these discussions. We wanted to take a moment to share our current plan with you!
Discord: The entire development team has already been hanging out and chatting with everyone who’s been hyped about the game so far. We have channels here to chat with us, share your feedback, get support, and of course request music for the game!
Trello: We will also be launching a Trello board. Our goal is to update this at twice a week to track feature requests, patch notes, known issues, and more. The Audica Trello board will act as a hub for all info for the game and will serve as a roadmap for development.
We'll be sure to share a link and update this post once it goes live!
Surveys: Every few weeks we’ll be distributing surveys to the Audica community. Surveys are a great way for us to curate all the suggestions and ideas and receive quantifiable feedback on all of it. Stay tuned for our first one in the next couple of weeks!
Other Community Pages: Of course, will also be very much involved with the Steam Forums, community subreddit (/r/Audica), on our social channels (@Harmonix on Twitter!), and anywhere else where an Audica community might spring up. While we may not reply to everything posted, you can rest assured we’ll be reading everything and discussing it internally daily!
That’s all for now!
As you’ve heard all of us say at Harmonix, we’re very excited to finally release Audica out into the world and are looking forward to continuing to build it with you.
Continue to keep posted across the coming weeks and months for more updates as Audica develops!
PRICE DROP: A City Sleeps now under $10!
Hey gang,
We've been paying close attention to all your feedback on the game and have been considering it closely. As such, we've decided to permanently drop the price of A City Sleeps to $9.99 (Standard Edition) and $12.99 (Deluxe Edition) to be more in line with your expectations as a Steam player.
We're keeping the soundtrack at $4.99 because we think it's super awesome, so please check that out if you haven't yet!
We continue to be grateful for the support you've all shown the game so far, and hope you'll tell your friends they should pick it up for less than the cost of a fancy cheeseburger!
Also, if you haven't posted a review yet, we'd love to see more of them and hear what you think. Thanks a million times over to those who did post theirs!
Game Update: Mouse+Keyboard Support, High Visibility Mode, and more!
Hey Everybody!
Hope you've been having a great time in the SanLo City bustin' those Kami. We've been paying close attention to user feedback and are happy to post today's update which addresses a few specific things.
Keyboard+Mouse input support. While a controller still highly recommended, a few folks who don't have controllers, but still want to play the game, asked for this. We heard you, so here it is! Go here to read how to configure this mode.
Game now automatically pauses when controller is disconnected.
Fixed potential leaderboards exploit.
Keep playing A City Sleeps, unlocking more ghosts and relics, and climbing up those leaderboards! And, as always, let us know what you think of the game.
Developer Diary - Creating Sprite Art
We caught up with A City Sleeps' Creative Lead, Matt Perlot, to talk us through how he goes about creating all the sprite sheets that make up all of the characters and enemies in the game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pX1ahOpCGik
Level 1 NIGHTMARE DIFFICULTY Playthrough!
On this week's Harmonix Show, the devs from A City Sleeps came and showed off Level 1 for the first time ever- and did so on Nightmare difficulty! If you wanna see what some high level gameplay of this game is like, this is your chance!
You also get a taste of the overall game shell and metagame design. Lots to chew on here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GEVN4ZEwx4
Examiner goes hands-on with A City Sleeps!
"What really makes A City Sleeps interesting is how music "drives player projectiles, enemy spawning, movement, and bullet patterns." Essentially every action you make has a musical accompaniment. Attack, and drums beat. Stop attacking, and the drums stop beating. Enemies follow a musical pattern, which allow you to sometimes anticipate their actions."
We got to show the good folks over at Examiner.com our game and they seemed pretty into it!
Our composer/level designer, M-Cue (http://m-cue.bandcamp.com/) came on this week's Harmonix Show and performed a live remix of the game's awesome soundtrack while we played. Super cool stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBkTxXfA3qY
REMINDER: you can currently get the soundtrack bundled along with the Deluxe Edition of the game when you pre-order.
To catch future episodes of the the Harmonix Show as they air, follow our twitch channel at http://twitch.tv/harmonixmusic
A City Sleeps on the Harmonix Podcast
The developers from A City Sleeps sat down to discuss the game in depth on the latest episode of the Harmonix Podcast. If you've been craving more details on this game's development story, you'll want to give this show a listen.
This week our developers came on our weekly Twitch.tv stream, The Harmonix Show, and gave an exclusive demo of A City Sleeps to our viewers. If you want more info about the game, this is the place to go!
