- Red Gunner's Defend now gives the player true i-frames when inside the collision radius
- Updated bullet animations that were still blinking even when the bullet blinking setting was turned off
- X Gunner no longer continues to create bullets in between phase transitions in Dark World
- When completing the data tower section of Azuria, it is now no longer possible to clear the segment and also have the building still explode and kill the player
- TLB special weapon no longer does half damage when positioned very close to the boss (Could've potentially led to a scoring exploit that's not particularly fun to execute so we wanted to remove this before anyone else found it)
- Green Gunner can no longer use their special again while another special is currently active (The only spot this was possible was in Dystopia, and total scoring potential should not be changed as the duplicate specials did not produce additional medallions)
- Updated font issues when exceeding 1 billion points
- Prevented System Hack Options from dealing damage to bosses during dialogue
- Fixed memory leak when letting the game idle on textboxes
- Violet normal sword hitbox size increased horizontally by 10 pixels
- Violet special sword hitbox sizes increased significantly. (Existing version was unintentionally very small)
- King Crimson hurtbox extended significantly
- Dark World boss hurtboxes adjusted (Some were much larger than they should've been)
- Fixed some issues where training mode wasn't clearing objects when looping
Astral Gunners
Update 1.0.02
Update 1.0.01
- Fixed issue where entering tutorial with "VS Best" option turned on would crash the game
- Fixed hitbox on Gamma Gunner's missiles. Previously, the hitbox was not rotating with the sprite causing phase 3 of The Gammachine to be exceedingly more difficult than intended
- Added option to adjust bullet blinking
- Fixed issue where saved volume mixing wasn't loading correctly
- Increased volume of Shot 1 sound very slightly
Astral Gunners 1.0 Released!!
CAUTION: Upon updating, save files will be reset for Version 1.0
Dark World
The rematch against Dark Gunner is finally here. And it looks like Gamma Gunner and X Gunner weren't done fighting you quite yet, either. Every run now ends with a nail-biting boss rush battle. Pay attention to how the stage changes based on how well you played through the rest of the levels.
System Hacks
We've rebranded Power-ups to be System Hacks for this update. Instead stressing over trying to make a secondary mode that's also balanced for scoring, we decided to just focus on making playing with System Hacks fun above all else. There's still a System Hacks leaderboard, however, for those who want to try and find the most optimal combinations. Some old power-ups have been replaced but overall the variety is much greater now!
Botstiary Added
Unlock Botstiary entries as you play through the game. These entries will allow you to look at the enemy sprites without all the chaos on screen, and include text with lore about the Astral Gunners world.
Jukebox Added
Unlock songs as you play through the game, and listen to them in the Jukebox!
Full Soundtrack
Speaking of music, the entire soundtrack has been fully mixed and mastered, to the same quality as a professional studio album release. 11 new tracks have been added, including an updated theme for every stage boss. Heavy metal forever \m/
New Achievements
Along with all these new unlockables, we've added achievements to go along with them. Now every achievement in the game, except for four, unlocks something.
Intro and Outro Cutscene Slideshows
It's not necessary, but it doesn't quite feel like a "real" game if you don't have an intro and an outro to a game. The basics of Astral Gunners' story is now conveyed in this manner. There are a few different endings, based on how far you get in Dark World and which character you're playing as.
Quick Save
We get it, we all have busy lives. Sometimes it's nice to be able to stop a game and come back to it later. Astral Gunners now features a quick save option that you can select from the level select screen. CAUTION: Using this will disable online leaderboards for that run!
Steam Avatars
You can now use Astral Gunners avatars on your Steam profile!
Other Changes
- Bosses will now leave if you don't defeat them before the time limit. Additionally, their Astral Core will not be collected if they leave (I wonder what that affects). Boss timers have been updated to be significantly shorter and the score bonus for boss time has been significantly increased. Every second matters even more now!
- NPC Allies have been buffed across the board. Castle will save you on hit, and converts bullets to multiplier pickups. Researchers will give you three supply boxes throughout the level at each checkpoint. Samurai was already very strong but attacks slightly more frequently. Orange Worker helps you fight any enemy with a health bar. Green Miners fly by and give you x100 multiplier.
- Level ranks have been adjusted to be a bit more challenging. Easy mode also now shows you your level rank instead of simply saying "Good Job!"
- Game tips have been added into the practice menu. People who played the earliest versions of early access might remember this feature. We figured it was best to put it back in.
- Move list is viewable from the practice menu
- The flamemobile part collection segment of Crimson Peaks was updated to include more enemies to shoot at and build special meter from.
- The very end of the vertically scrolling section of Dystopia was updated to be a bit more interactive.
- Violet Gunner's focus shot movement speed was slowed by 1 pixel per frame
- Light Gunner's missiles do significantly more damage now
- Green Gunner's defend while their Option is in follow-mode does significantly more damage and has a significantly longer cooldown.
- Auto-Skip Story is now an option in the menus
- Display Vs. Best is now an option in the menus (shows your previous high score compared to your current run)
- Achievement Hunter is now an option in the menus (For select achievements, confirm if you still meet the requirements)
- When clearing save data, there are more options than just "Clear All"
- Co-op: When one player's meter is full, gems they collect fill up the other player's meter (with a slight penalty)
- Co-op: Fixed bug where pickups would freeze in place sometimes when a player died
- Co-op: Enemy health scaling changed. Previously it was x2 across the board, now changed to x1.5 only on bosses and mini-bosses
- Tons of other QOL/Bugfixing changes. We tried our best to keep notes but we're sure we missed a few things here and there.
- Cheat codes added. If you don't enjoy progression-based gameplay you can unlock all characters, difficulties, and stages in single level mode by entering the achievements menu and pressing left, right, up, up, down, down, A/Start/Enter
- A selection of the online leaderboards are also now viewable in the Steam app under the global gameplay stats page.
Full Release June 21 - Free Demo Available Now!
Version 1.0 will feature a host of new updates to the game, and include the full story. Stay tuned for more details!
Version 0.9.3 New Hyperspace!
Hyperspace
The true version of Hyperspace finally makes its debut! Right now it's still being used as a placeholder final stage, but will eventually become a secret bonus stage.
The overall theme of Hyperspace is that it now utilizes any progression elements achieved within a run. Each shadow fight won creates a new bullet-generating portal in the stage. Assisting NPCs will reappear on this stage to help the player. The bonus waves from timeskips will play out where they left off. Shoot as many UFOs as you can to spawn bigger and bigger ones. And Golden Starshooter is back with a vengeance!
A new audio track now accompanies the stage!
Shadow Fight Updates
There was a distinct lack of risk/reward present in the shadow fights. Simultaneously they were also far too difficult for the average player (as of writing this less than 5% of players have been able to clear them at all). Our thinking is this makes the presence of the shadow fights feel mostly like a frustrating addition rather than a satisfying challenge. Overall these changes should allow the shadow fights to actually exist for more casual players, while also providing a more interesting scoring and survival experience for more dedicated players.
Special Meter: Instead of starting the level with only one special charge, atoms now continuously fly across the screen allowing for multiple special uses.
Consequences and Continuity: Instead of being kicked out of the battles upon dying once, you will now have to complete the level before exiting.
Easy Mode: Shadow fights will now be present in easy mode, however it will only be a slightly toned down version of the first phase of each fight. The associated achievements have been updated to require beating these bosses on normal or harder.
No more free Barrier: We tested these levels having a barrier allowing the player to get hit twice before exiting the stage. This never really solved any of the issues we had with the stages and is being removed in this version.
Blue and Violet: The shadow fights for Blue and Violet didn't ever have extra bullets for hard mode. This has now been added. Additionally the Shadow Violet fight has been tuned up a bit across the board.
Speed Matters: More of the challenge has been shifted to winning quickly. The boss timer has been reduced down to 75 seconds, and if you don't defeat them in the timeframe the bosses will leave and the stage ends.
Points: Shadow bosses now drop a treasure chest with medallions when defeated. The base point value on destruction has been reduced from 100k to 25k. It is now possible to enter System Overload on these stages, so while the minimum possible amount of points is lower, the maximum potential has been increased a decent amount.
Misc Changes:
[Player Suggestion] Crimson Peaks: The stage hazards that create flame bullets are now indestructible. The play pattern on this level was somewhat underwhelming on this stage due to the optimal strategy being just to destroy them before they were a threat, despite being designed to be a consistent threat. The middle section where you have to collect parts for the flamemobile should now be appropriately engaging and challenging. There is still one exception to this new rule, however.
[Player Suggestion] Training Mode Special Meter: You can now set an exact amount for the special meter in training mode.
Red Gunner: We fixed an animation glitch with Red's charge shot that functions as a slight buff. Red now charges their Shot 2 five frames quicker.
Samurai Gunner: Samurai's damage when attacking nearby enemies has been toned down dramatically. The damage total has been cut in half and the frequency of attacks takes four times as long.
Orange Worker: Orange previously did pitiful damage when helping fight minibosses and now does roughly five times the amount of damage.
Level Select: Changed the difficulty info for a few of the stages. Fixed some issues where Dystopia didn't display your assist character and Samurai didn't appear as the assist character in other stages.
Version 0.9.2 is now live!
Massive Changes to Dystopia
The first version of this level was simply not up to the standards of the other levels. With all the changes between this update and the previous version, it's almost an entirely new level with too many changes to list in detail. Instead we'll highlight the bigger changes overall.
Full song. This stage now features the full song written for the level, instead of a 1 minute looping track. As with all of the other levels, key scene changes sync up with the changing passages in the music to create a music video feeling in the level.
Faster! Faster! Everything moves faster. While we may scratch the itch of slow and plodding shmups at some point in our lives, Astral Gunners is not the place to do that. Dystopia still has a distinctly claustrophobic feeling to the level, but the sense of speed found on other levels is brought up to standards now and everything in this level moves about 2-10 times as fast as it did in the previous build.
Difficulty adjusted. Since this level appears on the level select screen as one of the second or third levels the player can choose, it didn't feel right having it be the most difficult standard stage. It's now listed as being more difficult than Azuria and Light World, but easier than Crimson Peaks or Emerald Belt and is redesigned with that in mind.
New identity. Along with the change in difficulty comes a new identity for the stage. This is the stage where we want the scoring mechanics to really click for players. There's enemies that are harmless if avoided but can generate tons of bullets to farm for score, and there's a section where the player is allowed to mash the special button over and over. The race against Samurai Gunner is easier to survive, but more challenging to win the race and unlock by far the most powerful NPC helper.
Bonus Waves Updated
To those who are unaware, we'll explain one element of the scoring system briefly to make this change more understandable. There are a number of sections within Astral Gunners where killing enemies faster causes the next enemy wave to spawn immediately. When this happens, the time saved is stored and at three checkpoints in each level that time is expended by playing through a separate bonus wave timeline that is consistent across all of the levels. When you complete the bonus wave once, the enemies upgrade from silver to gold, and then from gold to rainbow.
In all versions up until this point, each tier of the bonus wave looped twice. We've added more patterns so that this loop doesn't happen. Additionally at the end of each loop we've added a new enemy, currently dubbed "The Microwave," that functions as a sort of miniboss for the bonus waves to make it much more noticeable that you've hit the end of one tier of the bonus waves.
Training Mode Additions
There's been a few new features added to training mode for those on the path to become the most skilled space fighters around.
- Toggle to view enemy health. There's now an option to display enemy health as numbers.
- Magnifying glass zoom. You can now create a window that zooms in on the hitbox.
- Option to Hide UI on pause. For people who want to pause and study a moment.
Light Gunner QOL Changes
- Light Gunner has a brief flash over their shield to indicate a full homing missile charge.
- Light Gunner's shield special blinks a few moments before it disappears.
Numerous Small Bug Fixes
I wish I had a good enough memory and good enough note taking skills to list everything in this category, but it has been quite some time since our last build and we've had to tear apart certain sections of the game to make fixes. Regardless I want to make sure we say thanks to everyone who has been patient with us and offered notes on bugs.
What's next? When is the game actually going to be finished? What's left to add?
Right now, we're feeling like we can comfortably say version 1.0 of the game will be ready in Q1 2024.
What we can promise: There will be a final stage "Dark World" which will be a boss rush style stage and feature some rematches against some important bosses. New music will be added; each boss is going to have their own theme. Hyperspace will change and be a more fleshed out bonus stage. Power-ups will be redesigned to focus more on fun, creativity and feeling overpowered and less about being a balanced alternative way of playing the game.
There's a number of other features and ideas that we want to incorporate into the game if we have time, such as a time attack mode for players who enjoy speed running games, mission-based trials meant to offer challenges while teaching mechanics, and hidden dialogue sequences to build on characters. While all of these are things we really want to see in the game, we're trying to keep our focus on what makes Astral Gunners what it is and that's an emphasis on classic arcade scoring goodness presented in a way to ease newcomers to a way of understanding games that is so important to us.
Version 0.9.1 is now live!
NOTE: Some of the information in this update post could be considered spoilers for players who like discovering secrets on their own.
If you haven't played since the 0.9 update, we advise that players go into the options menu and clear their save data to avoid visual bugs and fully experience some of the changes.
Character Personality Has Been Buffed
While we're aware that Astral Gunners doesn't have a super deep story, we're glad to say we can now give the characters a bit more personality in their dialogue. The game has been updated with new portraits for every character, showing unique expressions that fit their text.
Visual Update: Character Select Screen
The character select screen has received a slight facelift. The character portrait animations have been updated, and instead of a boring grey background behind each character they are now residing on their home planet!
New Boss: Shadow Violet
The final shadow battle arrives. Collecting all of the SP Medals in Dystopia will unlock this brutal challenge. Defeat them quickly for that slight boost of just enough points to climb the leaderboard!
Misc. QOL Updates
- Shadow Battles now start the player with a shield on all difficulties except for Revenge, allowing for the player to take an additional hit before being kicked out of the level. Don't get too comfortable with this yet, as we may remove it in the final build.
- Bonus Wave UFO health has been lowered slightly
- Supply boxes that appear before bosses break a lot easier
Ver 0.9.01 --- Bug-fixes
- Fixed a crash that occurred when pausing in bonus stages (Hyperspace and shadow bosses)
- Fixed a bug where enemies couldn't shoot bullets near the beginning of Dystopia
- Fixed a crash that occurred when getting a game over on Dystopia in Single Level mode
- Added an online leaderboard for Dystopia
- Made the personal best high score visible when playing Dystopia in Single Level mode
NOTE: We have been made aware that training mode is causing the game to crash when selecting certain levels. We are working to fix a number of issues with training mode and will update the game as soon as we can.
Version 0.9 is now live!
To fully experience every change in this update, we advise that players go into the options menu and clear their save data.
New Level: Dystopia
That's right, we've got an entire level added in this build. With this level, we've completed the pattern of having a level associated with each playable character. The Violet level, Dystopia, features tight corridors, security robots, a race against a robot samurai, and a confrontation against the scythe-wielding X Gunner. Please note: while there are 3 SP Medals to collect on this level, the shadow fight that would normally appear after collecting all 3 is not yet added to the game.
Updated Title Screen
The title screen has been updated to feature more than just an image of Light Gunner vs Dark Gunner. It now features every major character in a face off. Characters that haven't been encountered or unlocked are greyed out until you progress further in the game.
Updated Revenge Difficulty
Revenge mode has now been altered to better accommodate the mechanics of Astral Gunners. Different enemies shoot different revenge bullet patterns, as opposed to previously where every enemy dropped clusters of bullets.
Red Gunner gets a new move!
Red Gunner has for some time not felt quite right to us. The charge shot dealt a satisfying amount of damage, but their defend was very lackluster and led to players accidentally killing themselves when using it like every other defend ability in the game. As a result, we decided to change Red's defend to give them a better identity in the game. Red now creates a flame zone that clears bullets. The big difference compared to their previous ability is that this now sticks around for a much longer timeframe. As like before, Red can still charge shot 2 and then use defend to create a bigger zone, but now that functionality is more useful. With this change, Light Gunner finally has competition as a supporting character in co-op play.
Additionally, Red's super has been adjusted slightly. It's easier to move around and reposition the fire beam. Hopefully this makes scoring gameplay less frustrating when playing as Red Gunner.
Six New Achievements!
Six new achievements have been added, all centered around the new level, Dystopia.
Misc. Changes
A number of miscellaneous changes have been added to the game, although we may be missing some from this list.
- A HUD element now pops up when collecting SP Medals to remind players of how many they've found.
- A HUD element now pops up in bonus waves to show the player how far in the bonus wave cycle they are, and which UFO level they're currently at. Ideally this should help make the somewhat obtuse bonus wave mechanics a bit more understandable to players.
- Both of the aforementioned HUD elements are visible on the pause screen at any time.
- Can return to the main menu from the level select screen
- New high speed visual added during bonus waves to make it more obvious when a bonus wave is occurring.
- Visuals have been updated for dialogue textboxes
Thank you!
A huge thanks to everyone who has played the game so far, and to everyone in the shmup community for being so supportive and providing great feedback. With this update, we are very close to the 1.0 release. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the game.