See you there!
Adam & Nathan
Astral Flux
Next Fest Live Stream!
See you there!
Adam & Nathan
Astral Flux at Next Fest
We’ve also set an official release date for the game: Friday October 28th! It’s been a long journey, but we’re proud of the result and we’re excited for you to finally be able to check it out.
Astral Flux closed beta
All you need is:
- A PC with a dedicated graphics card (something low to mid-range should be fine)
- A Steam account
- Interest in action rogue-lite games
- (Nice to have) Gamepad
We’ll be accepting applications until July 15th, at which point selected testers will be contacted.
If you’re interested, you can find the sign-up form here. Note that space is extremely limited; we will be selecting testers based on their experience with similar games, so please be sure to fill out the optional question at the end of the form to secure your spot.
Thanks in advance,
Cosmocat/Studio VDS
Devlog #8
Blazing a New Trail(er)
We recently took the time to prepare a new gameplay trailer in preparation for ramping up the marketing efforts. This will certainly not be the last trailer we make, but it reflects many of the changes you’ve been reading about/seeing over the past several months (revised player sprite, wall climbing/jumping, new worlds, new enemies, etc.).
In case you missed it, here it is:
Long Story Short
We’ve also ramped up the focus on the story lately. I won’t spoil it all, but suffice to say, our protagonists aren’t very bright and in their desperate attempt to find their way home, leave an (accidental) trail of destruction. This will be conveyed through a combination of cutscenes, scripted events, and dialog. Here’s the most recent progress on this front: a brief cutscene in which you can see the protagonist’s ship warping to the next planet, and an interdimensional rift left in their wake.
For this one, Nathan leveraged 3D modelling/animation to help give the art a strong perspective:
Who’s the Boss?
Apart from that, we’ve been tying up loose ends with world 4, which includes several new enemies, and most importantly, a final boss.
The theme for world 4–in case it’s not readily apparent–is organic/electronic. As you can see, there is a strong presence of technology, but with lots of overgrowth, rust, etc. We’ve extended this to the boss, which is half computer, half alien.
The boss battle itself is loosely inspired by bosses we’ve seen in Soulsborne games. You know, the kind of whac-a-mole design where you need to take out a few smaller enemies, reveal the big boss, do some damage, rinse, and repeat. It’s my first time designing a boss like this, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
Well, we better get back to it! If you like what you’ve been seeing over the past few months, please consider telling a friend! Every wishlist we receive equates to better launch visibility, which equates to more players, which in turn equates to us making more games. 🙂
Cheers,
Adam
Devlog #7
Sneak Peek
We are working hard on the final world (number 4!), the final boss, the upgrade system and shop, and new enemies. We are approaching the final stages of development and are really excited to show more. For now, here is a little sneak peek of what we're working on.
Recap Video
In a recent video on my Youtube channel (Studio VDS), I wanted to give a more elaborate behind the scenes look at how we make Astral Flux and how we approach some of our systems like random level generation. I have always been a big fan of behind the scenes footage from developers showing their approach to game development. Hope you enjoy this big video update covering the work we've done on the game in the last couple of months.
(Semi spoilers ahead)
Thanks for reading/watching and see you next month!
Nathan
Devlog #6
Milestones
Wow, 6 months already! Although there’s still lots left to do, we’re in the home stretch. We have one more two-month milestone planned which we’ll use to add the final world and the finishing touches.
We’ve left ourselves a bit of extra buffer as well since our release date will hinge slightly on our marketing efforts (i.e. we hope to reach a minimum number of wish lists before launching). This should put the release somewhere around July, but nothing’s set in stone yet.
Arachnophobia
I’m pleased to present the world 3 boss! This was a great collaboration between Nathan and me: I prototyped an early version of the AI, he prototyped the IK animation and art, and I put it all together.
(Semi spoilers ahead)
This one requires a little bit of experimentation in order to defeat, plus a few surprises along the way.
In the process of developing this boss, I also implemented support for particle-based projectiles (think: bullet hell) and environmental hazards (like poison). I’ll keep it a surprise, but you can expect to see a few enemies with these attacks as well.
We also wanted to add some more challenging ground enemies for world 3. What better way than to add some baby spiders crawling and jumping around the temples to stick with the theme of the boss? With some basic AI, these crawly creatures jump or shoot stuff at you. They may seem hard to kill or avoid at first, but once you understand their pattern they become easier to deal with.
Off the Beaten Path
As Nathan alluded to last month, we’ve been exploring ways to add optional content. To that end, we’ve revised the procedural generation logic to identify points of interest. That is, rooms that are off the beaten path and require some exploration to reach. We’ll use these rooms to feature content like upgrades (via challenge rooms), and special items (like coin/time exchangers).
In the picture above you can see an example of a temple with the main path to the boss and final treasure (red path), the branches that can be explored (white path) and the points of interest (red dots) that are far enough off the main path (the green rooms). Everything is randomized every time you enter a temple (the path, the rooms, the POI locations) to keep things challenging and interesting.
Last but not least, a quick reminder that we’ve released an early version on itch.io. Cosmocat patrons get automatic access to this as well.
Well, that’s it for now! Thanks for reading, and see you again in about a month,
Adam
Devlog #5
Icing On The Cake
Remember we were working on the ice world boss concepts shown in Devlog #3? The boss is finished (save for some tweaking and balancing). Our goal with this new boss was to ramp up the difficulty from the boss of the first world. It has three phases that are quite different and require you to figure out what his pattern is going to be. I had a floating skull with creepy tentacles in mind to match the freezing barren ice world.
The initial concept was not alien enough, so I made it more alien and we ended up with this golden alien skull design.
Back To The Wall
While finalizing the ice world, we really felt we could further polish the new player movements Adam started (see Devlog #3). We tweaked the wallslide, walljump, and shooting abilities. Inspired by games like Towerfall, Hollow Knight, Celeste, Ori, and Mario, we wanted to create a balance between fluid movement and player control. The result is a much more pleasant platforming experience. On top of that, we decided that 8 directional aiming would add a lot to the overall game feel and player control. This also required separating the player arm animations from the main body. While we were at it, we added a way to easily swap out different guns within those animations. Here is an example of the results:
A Whole New World
For the third world, we wanted something more mysterious and alien. Many things underwater often look quite alien already, especially when seeing it above water. So we decided to go for a mix between underwater, alien, and mushroomy inspired world. We’re still working on it, but here is a sneak peek of what we’ve got so far:
Totally OP
The next big thing on our list is to start adding weapon upgrades, abilities and challenge rooms. Right now, exploring branches in the world that do not lead to the boss room doesn’t feel very rewarding. Sure, you get some coins with which you can purchase back lost time at time exchange machines, but that’s about it. One of the main mechanics we have in mind is incremental weapon upgrades for firing rate, bullet speed, damage, etc. Players will also be able to acquire different guns and bullet types. The current idea is to place these upgrades near the end of branches away from the main path in each world, either behind a challenge room or make them purchasable with coins at an upgrade point. Below some concept sketches for portals to challenge rooms and upgrade pedestals.
The mechanics for generating new guns are in place. I couldn’t help myself from making an overpowered gun to test the new mechanics ;)
Alright, that’s it for this devlog. Thanks for tuning in and see you next time!
Nathan
Devlog #4
Sound On
As you may or may not be aware, I'm doing all of the audio for Astral Flux; it's something of a passion of mine. As such, it's important to me that we get it right. Nathan did a great job with sound in the early prototype, but it was created using Unity's built-in audio engine. While there's nothing wrong with this per se, it's not as robust nor as flexible as a proper audio engine, so it was important to me that we addressed this early on.
We chose FMOD, for a few reasons: its indie-friendly license agreement, its ease of integration with Unity, and my prior experience with it. (If you don't know, FMOD has been used on a ton of great games, including Bloodborne, Spelunky 2, Bioshock, and many, many more.)
What I love about FMOD is that it allows me to focus on sound design separately from game design/development: it gives me tools that are much closer to what I use when designing sounds, as well as ways to easily interact with things that happen in the game world. For example, if the player is low on health, this can be shared with FMOD and used to manipulate or alter certain sound effects dynamically.
Let's dissect one of the more detailed sounds: the sound of the jelly alien dying.
First off, you can see there are several layers to this sound:
- Ripping flesh
- Popping sac
- Gore impact
- Vocalization
- Splash
Each one of these is picked from a random set of at least two variations, and several of them are also randomized in some way (pitch, volume, etc.). The result is that, no matter how many times the sound is played, it's always slightly different. This is a big part of what makes audio engaging and keeps the player from getting bored or annoyed of hearing the same sound over and over. I also have a blast making these kinds of randomized, dynamic sound effects.
Face the Music
Let's take a look at another aspect of Astral Flux's audio: the music. At its core, I will be approaching Astral Flux's music in the same way I have my past few games: as part of the world, rather than something that plays on top of it. By that I mean the music will be as important as the sound effects and atmosphere, and should never compete with it. As with the levels, the music will be semi-randomized: we'll be picking random music at different key moments in the game, thus making each run slightly different both in terms of how it plays and how it sounds.
As is largely the trend these days, I'm creating most of the music using software: a combination of Ableton Live and Bitwig Studio. (Side note: I was a long-time Ableton Live user until recently, but I've been gradually migrating to Bitwig Studio.)
Although I've not yet settled on a signature sound, I'll likely be leaning heavily into synthesized and digital sounds, as these generally tend to fit better with a sci-fi/futuristic theme. But where I can, I'm trying to incorporate real instruments as well, be it piano, guitar, external synthesizers, etc.
Here's a taste of something I've been working on, which you'll likely hear featured in the ice world:
Early Bird Special
Last but not least, I thought I'd end with some big news: Astral Flux is now available in early access via itch.io! We're offering the game at a discount for anyone who wants to check it out early, and we'll be using your feedback to help shape the final experience. (Cosmocat patrons will also get automatic access to the early access version.) If early access isn't your thing, we'll be running another playtest as we get closer to release. If either of these sound interesting to you, I would encourage you to join the Cosmocat Discord or mailing list.
That just about does it for now, see you again in a month!
Adam/The Cosmocat