Astralojia: Episode 1 cover
Astralojia: Episode 1 screenshot
PC Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie

Astralojia: Episode 1

I hope you enjoy Astralojia
Well, I've sent out steam keys to streamers and reviewers and felt that I've done most of what I can do for getting Episode 1 out there. I'm probably gonna slow down a little bit because very overwhelmed with the whole marketing and advertising thing, and quite frankly I want to get back to what I love to do most, which is write stories and music.

So, I'll ask who I can on Youtube and elsewhere to give the game a try every day, probably until the end of September or so, but what I really want to do is just work on the series.

I'm hoping I can bring on/hire a pr guy to help out and handle the whole 'getting it out there' bit while I can just work on the next episodes and make them as good as they can be. When season 1 is done, I'll look at porting to the Switch mainly, because I think the art style and tone of the series would compliment Nintendo.

I hope you stick around and enjoy the series, it's gonna be a lot of fun I think.

Series Plans, Season 1 Pricing, Future Episodes Will Be Cheaper...
Products and Pricing

I have this concern that people might think that each game will be priced at $4.99 but this isn't the case. Episode 1 is priced more to hopefully help me out with rent so that I can develop the whole season. The plan is to have seasons release with a schedule, which I'm hoping will be more strict in the future. I can probably promise 1 game a month:


  • Episode 1 - $4.99: Releasing Sept 1st
  • Episode 2 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Nov 1st
  • Episode 3 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Dec 1st
  • Episode 4 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Jan 1st
  • Full First Season - $9.99
  • Episode 1 Soundtrack - $4.99
  • Episode 2 Soundtrack - $1.99
  • Episode 3 Soundtrack - $1.99
  • Episode 4 Soundtrack - $1.99


Plans

Over the years to achieve creating this full series I've developed an SDK for Unity paired with a character generator that generates sprite sheets, then a basic amount of 3D resources to go with it. It allows me to create cutscenes very quickly using your typical pixel-art puppetry from mostly the 90s and 2000s.

The ultimate goal for me is to create a studio which cranks out episodes very quickly and cost effectively, and can still deliver stories that people can relate to and latch on to so to speak. My big dream is to be like the South Park creators and be able to eventually with my team crank out episodes very quickly, even a week at a time, and increase the graphical quality as we find our process.

For this first series my dream for it is to release about 40-70 episodes, so I'm not nearly where I want to be right now. I can't wait to make it at this point to episode 10!

After I make it through the first season of games, episodes 1 through 4, I plan on seeing where the series could use improvement by taking user feedback, especially in the graphics and gameplay departments.

The game is about done...
I've spent the last two weeks making necessary improvements and fixing little bugs, and I think that should about do it. I'm going to play through it again one more time and try to search every nook and cranny I can.

If you find any game breaking bugs, just e-mail me at astralojia@gmail.com.

I want this game to be a challenge...
I'm doing my best to even out the difficulty. I want to make the game difficult but not so much that you're throwing your controller at the screen. I want it to just simply be fun.

There are 4 belts:
- White Belt
- Blue Belt
- Black Belt
- Third Degree Black Belt (Unlockable when you finish through the game once)

White Belt should be like the mode where you mostly win.
Blue Belt you should lose every now and then.
Black Belt you should lose just as much as you win.
And Third Degree Black Belt you should lose constantly and keep trying until you can beat it.

The game is designed to be hard. How am I to make big epic story battles in the future if I don't make it extremely difficult to beat? The solution I've come up with is to have the load menu prop up right after you lose any battle.

It's a good idea to run through the game I'd say on Blue Belt mode, which is kind of your 'normal' mode. It should be a challenge but not too much of a challenge. If you're losing too much and you're the type that gets frustrated with losing then I would highly recommend playing in White Belt mode, but the gameplay time for this episode will be very short.

Here are the bugs:

- Learn button too small in shop
- camera is tiled in dojo
- raynwood village tilted first camera
- the ice kid in raynwood village isn't in the town for battle
- at ToMomos, move the forest trainer to the second camera, because it never goes back to the first.
- Change credits to not reveal real names, just 'to be continued...'
- Almost every single kid needs to have more white magic. The Gang of Kids needs to have a much higher spread bar.
- Taku are you sure you want to proceed? I could trigger this one twice.
- Mina at end "You better have fuckin AMP improved!"
- No ending BGM plays

Before I can come up with the new update which fixes and improves quite a lot, and makes it look much nicer, I need to fix all those bugs, which will probably happen tomorrow as I'm taking the day off

New Updates Coming That Will Make It Look More 'Unreal'
New Updated verison of the game needs to be tested fully before uploading tomorrow, but can't wait to upload this one because for anyone with a GPU that has 3GB or above (like Geforce 1050 for example or above) the game will now set it to 1080p with [highest quality] anti-aliasing and slight motion blur to give it much more of an 'Unreal [Engine]' feel.

Updates will include:

- BIGGEST UPDATE: Graphics on any GPU that is 3GB or over in memory will look waaaay better now, all smoothed out, so hopefully a lot more like Octopath Traveler now.
- Fixing finder arrow that would stay displayed in cutscenes.
- Now Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R combo will reset the game to the title screen on PC, akin to resetting a console.
- Splashes on PC will follow the camera much more tightly.

Huge Game Breaking Bug! Updates and a Few More Improvements Coming...
There are a handful of new updates coming. I uploaded an updated version and first and foremost the game will not even get past the first loading screen if you installed an older version!!

This is being fixed ASAP, for now you can delete your 'Astralojia' folder under your Users/YOURUSERNAME/AppData/LocalLow/ folder and the game will re-create it. It has to do with save files/etc.... being different in there.

Here are the improvements for this week:

- like Pokemon now the game has a text box that shows up and tells you what the move is that's performed. I believe this adds a huge dynamic to it.
- damage increases even more per round so battles don't loop forever
- in the menu instead of 'tutorial' it's replaced with 'controls'
- the floor for inner battles isn't too bright anymore
- Before when you didn't finish a skill bar in time, the 'A' button indicator would hang, I fixed that
- Lastly, when you play through the game and unlock a difficulty mode, I fixed where it had multiple entries 'easy' 'medium' 'hard' etc... then would repeat


Here are the improvements coming:

- I need a version check, I haven't had version control in the game. It needs to delete the previous LocalLow/Astralojia files if it's a newer version....or....something. Otherwise I have to just figure out what to do by re-creating the bug.
- If it isn't VR, Start should pause the game, then it should come up with an 'Alt+F4' to exit at the bottom or top of the screen.
- Mouse should be invisible
- If it isn't VR, don't do a ui follow

Fixed A Couple of Game Breaking Bugs...

  • Village no music, fixed
  • Unlocking third degree black belt mode fixed at end of game.
  • Ambient SFX not playing fixed
  • No music on squirrel part towards end of game fixed.
  • Difficulty of skill bars increased for lower levels (it was waaay too low).
  • Added 'Warning: Taking too long to load' disclaimer if you're stuck in loading screen infinitely (haven't found any bugs that do this, but if anything occurs it will prop up)
  • When you level up the level up indicator said 'new ability slot' on lvls 3 and 5, when in reality it was lvls 2 and 4 that you get a new one.


All of these bugs have been fixed, two of them were game breaking so the game should now play through from beginning to end in a stable manner.

If you find any bugs please report them to the discord here and I'll respond promptly:
https://discord.gg/8BeQAy

Updated With New Features
I've made a ton of needed updates after taking feedback from initial play-testing.

This has included removing the lengthy tutorial images in favor of two simple 'controls' images, slowing down the skill bar in battle in easier modes, making it so that damage scales and scales every turn so that battles don't last forever, and adding indicators in particular menus and in battle.

VR is also just about ready and will be coming soon.

Thanks for sticking around!

After Playtesting: A Large Handful of Improvements Coming
I want Episode 1 to be as good as it can be, so after receiving a ton of useful feedback from PiroTae (Twitch streamer) and a handful of friends, as well as curators, I will be making the following improvements:

[First and Foremost]

1. Most important of all, the skill bars are too random and too fast, which leads to a lot of frustration, because instead of it coming down to skill it seems like it just comes down to a sense of randomness, which leads to the player feeling like he doesn't have a sense of control.
2. There absolutely NEEDS to be a camera follow mode for the PC version (this version) of the game. Right now you have to turn your camera and it has a hard time following the player when the player gets closer to the camera.
3. Regenerate less less less white magic per round when defending.
4. Attacks take more and more and more damage per round. These two improvements are essential, because otherwise certain battles can get caught in long loops in where a short battle that should last 1-3 minutes ends up lasting 10-20 minutes and NOT in a good way.
5. When you're defeated in battle, instead of going back to the title screen like a classic Final Fantasy, it should do what Kingdom Hearts does and have a 'Continue' button.


[Big Things]

6. Second priority: Instead of having this tutorial with all these images, it would be a lot easier to have a tutorial video in where I can go into detail about how to play the game. There are aspects of how the game works that need to be understood.

[Small Tweaks]

7. Menu indicator. Some parts you can access the menu, some parts you can't.
8. Part in outpost where after battling one kid, kid INSTEAD of taku says the obnoxious line.
9. The "WARNING Save often, and save in multiple slots!" image that's in the tutorial right now instead needs to instead be in the transfering between scenes. One solution I had was that you simply can't over-write save files UNTIL there are a total of 20 save files all together. The game is one in where like a qte adventure game, like a Telltale game you can't return to where you came. It's the opposite of open world.
10. Takus faceset, his nose is too low.
11. The music for some reason on the part where you battle the 3 kids plus the teacher in the flashback gets quiet on like the 2nd kid.
12. Simplify the save file display name.
13. OneOpponent, add a space to the word when it reads it from the enum.
14. For the map part, just have him look at the map without the need for the input, because the exclamation point bubble is used to emote not to activate things.
15. An X bubble for when you can't go back somewhere.
16. The final battle needs more playtesting and might be insanely hard.

Release Date set for August 30th!
Hey there everybody, the release date for the game is now set for August 30th. I'm sending pre-release steam keys to streamers and press now and will be doing that for the next 9 or 10 weeks or so up until it's release for promotion.

If you're a streamer and would like a steam key just give me an e-mail at astralojia@gmail.com and I'll get one to you. It includes the full game, not a demo, for free under the condition that you will stream the game on your twitch or youtube channel (or of course write an article if you're press).

Thanks!
- Mark
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