Great news, it's here, Chapter 1 is now available for you to download for free! Released as a concept demo it will provide the full game play of the first chapter. Even though I've worked hard to stamp out as many bugs as possible, there may well be others present but I hope that this wont get in the way of the overall experience.
I'm releasing this to gather feedback, so please do share your thoughts here or in the Nascent Prophecy Itch forum.
Thanks for the support and I hope you enjoy playing!
Nascent Prophecy
Nascent Prophecy (Working title) is an isometric adventure game, set in the same universe of ICARUS.1, set topside with it's event's pre-ICARUS.1 you will need to piece together the mystery of what happened to the outpost.
Set in a third person view and moving from location to location, players must solve environmental puzzles and tasks slowly unfolding the history of the transformers and ultimately their fate. You're not alone in your quest, your companion is there not only for the ride but to help out when the need arises.
You must also manage your inventory and there is additionally light crafting. Combine items together to create tools which help solve puzzles in your way.
This has been in development for over a year now and has been a visual experiment which has developed into a full experience. The goal will be to release a free complete chapter and gauge interest in the project to then move onto a fuller and complete game.
Here's some screen shots to get things pumping and by all means let me know what you think. Thanks for reading!
DLC & FOV
A free DLC is arriving allowing you to play the original Prototype version of ICARUS.1, created for the 2015 Edge get into games contest. This full game was put together in under 3 months and provided the main drive for the final ICARUS.1 game.
Faster paced and at times punishing, this rogue like game will put you through your paces. Loot, lazers and crushing rooms await. It's an interesting play to visually see how thing began with the most insane walking bob ever encountered in a game :D
In other news patch (1.1.1) was released today allowing you to finally change the FOV of the camera. You can now select between a range of 40, 50, 60 and the default 70 Field of View.
Above shows the original default designed for 70 FOV
Above shows possibly a more happier FOV of 40
Keep an eye out for the DLC release arriving soon,
Happy exploring!
Jon
Ahoy there Patch!
Hi there!
ICARUS.1 was released over a month ago now and I've been super pleased with the response. There is always that big worry releasing something that you've worked so close too for over a year with how it's going to be received. Thank you all for your feedback.
As with any release there is always going to be bugs and it's the Steam achievements that have caused the biggest problem. It appears that you could not trigger more than one achievement unlock per gaming session (epic face palm)
After some digging around and help from the community I'm happy to say a new patch has been released which solves this problem, it also contains other small tweaks and adjustments.
Thank you all for your patience, it's been a real balancing act as a sole developer getting time between work and being a Father of two.
Trust you all had a good Christmas and Happy New Year!
:D
Time for an exciting update
Things have been a bit quiet as I didn't want to post until things were definite. I've been hard at working putting the finishing touches to ICARUS.1 and making it content complete. Also in this period lots of external events have taken place that almost threatened the completion of the game. I am pleased to say that ICARUS.1 will be live next week!
It's been a year and a half but the end is in sight. Thank you all for your patience and support over this time.
Almost there (insert party popper here). To celebrate check out the new launch trailer and the bunch of new screen shots on the ICARUS.1 game page. As always you can follow @16bitsperpx for fresh updates!
Jon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg8QqzCPepc
Dev Update - Demo
Hi there!
Wow, time fly's and a lot has been happening. I'll cut to the chase, the Demo has been updated with the new deferred lighting and a cheeky new additional 'bit' that's been needed for Chapter 5. As always please let me know if there are any problems. You will need a graphics card that supports the new rendering pipeline but anything that's say 5 years old [sic] or so should be fine. (see last update post for more information about the new lighting)
Other updates in the demo have been the addition of the journal log viewer. This collects the terminal stories that you discover and saves them - persistently - in one place for you to read. This will be fleshed out eventually.
An example shot of the new journal logger
The UI canvas scale has been tweaked so it should scale correctly with different screen resolutions (in game) Also Flares have been added! I've dialed down the ambient light your suite casts to make it all a little more moody.
In other news as a family we welcomed a new addition so as you can imagine that's been taking up a little bit of time and adjusting body clocks to new routines.
Hope to have a launch date of the full game very soon, hopefully in the next update post. Stay posted!
J:D
Dev Update - Lights
Hi there,
Time for another quick update.
So development was progressing slowly due to the constant need to light bake all the shadows. This meant my PC was locked up for hours for things to render and then test. It also meant that everything I moved I'd need to think long and hard about summing up if it was worth the hours spent light baking. As you can imagine, this was a slow process and has been for many months.
Recently I discovered the 'deferred rendering pipeline'.
The what??
With newer graphics cards, within the last 6 years [sic], the deferred rendering mode can be taken advantage of and eliminate the need for light baking, instead all lighting is done in real time! (insert party popper here) There is also a slight increase hit on the CPU but I think will hopefully be nominal.
After some consideration I've decided to go down this route as I (and I'm sure many of you) would like to get ICARUS.1 completed sooner rather than later. The new lighting mode also allows for some exciting new game play features and mood setting. On top of this I've added SSR (Screen space reflections) a new AA filter and have overhauled the Bloom Amorphic lighting effects.
Chapter 4 is half way complete and story writing is being done in parallel.
Thanks for reading, I'll update the Demo of Chapter 1 to the new rendering mode shortly so you can see what I'm so excited about. Here's a few new screen shots in the new rending mode to wet your appetite.
:D
Dev Update - Pockets
Hey there!
It's been a while since the last post but much has been happening behind the scenes as I've slowly been chipping away at the remaining chapters. Chapter 3 was finished (shot above is taken from there) and then I've turned my attention back to a few of the core game play elements, namely Journal log systems and how you pick items up.
A good point was mentioned that if you can only carry one item then puzzles will become very linear (which they are at present)
A solution is to introduce a back pack / pocket. You will now be able to pick up and store items. If you are interacting with an item that needs something you are holding, it will automatically be taken out of your pocket and shown as the item you are carrying. This seems to be working well and I'm slowly rolling it out across all the chapters. I'll be updating the demo with this addition.
Another request was a log system that collects together the story fragments from terminals as you collect them. On reflection this is a great idea so I've been working hard to get this into the UI system. As a result I had to come up with a new solution for persistent data which took some time but it's all in place. Again, I'm rolling this out across all the chapters and will update the Demo with this feature.
Oh and finally here's a sneak peek at some concept artwork which you can allways follow on my twitter @16bitsperpx
Dev Update - Ouch!
Hi there!
Here's the latest development progress. Been adding some effects like this cracked visor and something that’s not very visible in this grab, is new atmosphere fog that’s lingering in the air. Its very subtle but effective when it’s all moving. It's not like standard distance fog but a more physical one.
I've been looking into and addressing the controller scripts as some players aren't keen on it’s immediate movement when you press a direction. Working on a subtle ease effect which will hopefully help with these issues. I’ll make this tog-gable in a setting as I’ve got quite used to the direct motion. Adding more settings for players, screen resolution, invert Y mouse, etc.
Oh and Chapter 2 is finished! Moving onto Chapter 3 …
Demo now available
Hi,
The Demo is now available for download. Grab it here on Steam, it consists of the first Chapter - which is the shortest of the 5 in the final game. As explained in the demo, it may not be feature complete but it's intended as a slice of the full release.
You can keep up with it's progress here on Steam. Also feel free to send me you feedback using the forums provided.
