Sands of Aura cover
Sands of Aura screenshot
PC Steam Epic
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie

Sands of Aura

Sands of Aura - Version 1.0 Available Now!

Hello Knights!



The long-awaited day is here!

Version 1.0 is OFFICIALLY LIVE!




It has been such an incredible journey to get here, one that we will never forget. The end of one journey marks the beginning of the next. This time... we hope you, the curious on-looker, take the next step and join us on our first steps in Full Release. And to those who have been together with us in Early Access, don't get off the ship yet! We're off on a new journey and you're coming along with us!

If you haven't already got your ticket to Talamhel, take advantage of our limited-time 40% off Launch Discount!




Being a small indie team with an enormous passion for the development of Sands of Aura, we hope you enjoy the experience we have crafted for you.

If you would like to help us, you can do so by:

  • Spreading the word - share our game with friends, families, and favorite streamers or influencers!

  • Write a Steam Review - Once you have spent some time in Version 1.0, please consider leaving us a review. Reviews help our game get discovered by other players on Steam! It also lets us know what your thoughts are.

  • Social Media - Share our news on socials, and use the #SandsofAura to help get our game out there!
There is no pressure! Either way, we are genuinely thankful to have you here with us as we set sail and begin our adventures in Version 1.0!


We also want to take this moment to provide an update on Localization. Chashu Entertainment is in active development for localization to bring the different languages to Sands of Aura with high-quality translations! We will not rest until it is perfect! More details will be provided when we can, until then, we ask for your patience.



And a moment for our community, without you, the growth of Sands of Aura would not have been possible. You have helped us create the best game we could and we are eternally grateful for your support. Thank you!





A message to you, from our team



Michael Shistik, Creative Director

“We set out to make a game we wanted to play, and in doing so, we made something bigger than what any of us thought possible. I think we are surprised at what our small team was capable of making. I hope our passion and ideas come through for what we made!"

Some tips: Upgrade your gear. Defense is strong!



John Sadler, Lead Programmer

“I can't wait to see what everyone thinks of the game, it's been a long journey!”



Cassidy Phan, Animator & Character Artist

“The most fulfilling part of working on Sands of Aura has been hearing the excitement from our Discord community. It really feels like what we have created mattered to some people.”



Dylan Erickson, UI/UX Programmer

“The fans of our game make the long hours and hard work worth the effort. Especially to those that have been around from the beginning to see how much the game has improved.”



Zachary Flynn, Narrative Designer

“Thank you to everyone who stuck with us throughout early access. We couldn’t have done it without you. I hope you come to love Talamhel and its characters as much as I have.”



Jeremy Schaefer, Gameplay Programmer

“It's been so fun seeing everyone online and in the Discord experiencing the game and discovering the world we've built. Can't wait for everyone to experience the full game!”



Lee Bunting, VFX Artist

“I did it for my Dog!”



Cody Phan, Audio Engineer

“I can't wait for each and every one of you to experience the amazing world that everyone at Chashu created I'm so grateful to have been a part of it and I hope you enjoy it. Thank you!”



Eduardo Lopez, Music Composer

“I'm so thrilled for everyone to experience the game, diving into its rich narrative, challenging bosses, gorgeous vistas, captivating characters, an amazing voice cast, ambient atmospheres, and the music it offers!”



Leanna Garand, Producer & Lead QA

“We couldn't have done this without the support of the fans, especially the Discord crew, and we are eternally grateful for their support. Also…’My crakeing back…’”



Eric Zheng, Executive Producer

“The past 6 years have been wildly emotional for all of us. We have hit some highs and fallen into some lows, but regardless of where we were at, we have been resilient in the creation of Sands of Aura. This is a culmination of our dedication, faith, and passion, and we hope you’ll love it as much as we have loved developing Sands of Aura.”





We're excited for you to play and to hear about your adventures in Sands of Aura! Join us on Discord to share your experiences with us!


And from all of us at Chashu Entertainment...

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!


The Journey to 1.0 - 1 More Day!!

Welcome back Knights-To-Be!



Wow, can you believe it? Just one more day remains. The day that determines the fate of Talamhel's begins tomorrow. A milestone day for us at Chashu Entertainment. We absolutely can not wait for you all to finally experience Sands of Aura as version 1.0!

Sands of Aura - Version 1.0 officially releases tomorrow:
October 27, 2023
11 AM CDT | 12 PM EDT | 9 AM PDT | 4 PM GMT!



While we continue counting down the hours, minutes, and seconds till release let us resume our journey together as we remember our second and final year in early access.


Year Two

At the start of the second year, early access did not feel much different than at the end of the first. We had just released the Citadel of Steel update, began to analyze the feedback, and planned for the next update to incorporate the feedback. This became our development flow after our first major update, the Twin Thorn. It was going to be more of the same for our next one, the Rotted Throne.


We knew going into the second year it was going to be a little different. We were much more confident, our workflow improved and we strengthened our design principles. We had figured out a system that worked for our team. We got better at what we were doing. As exemplified during our time designing the fight mechanics for the Harshari Princess.


Joking, aside, the one thing that did not change though, was our constant drive to improve combat. The feedback that attributes our combat as floaty never truly stopped. It was a constant reminder that perfecting combat was not simple. Without the feedback and discussions from our players, we would never have been able to move forward. It was during our development of the Rotted Throne patch that we made a breakthrough.



Ah, my shadow!

At this point, we have made numerous changes to combat that moved us in the right direction, but it never quite came together. We added more visual effects, more audio effects, screen shakes, flashes, and added impact on hits. Each of these little improvements pushed combat away from floaty, just not far enough. So we continued iterating, reviewing, and gathering feedback. It was after trying all the possible solutions that we finally landed on one thing we have yet to adjust, shadows.


We came across this revelation by chance as we were developing and testing Black Rot Chasm, the featured level for this next update. The design of this level was dark and filled with mood lighting that required special placements of light sources. While our player character was moving around the level and fighting enemies, we thought we made a breakthrough in combat! It felt solid. It was only through more testing that we realized it was the lighting and shadows that made a significant difference.

The player character had really thin legs and smaller feet in proportion to their other features. This meant that the shadows cast by them were quite small and light. It wasn’t until experiencing the Black Rot Chasm that we began to notice the difference their shadows made to what players see.


Our theory was that the lack of a strong apparent shadow didn’t make the characters feel grounded during their attacks. After tweaking some of the settings for lighting and shadows, we finally felt that we found the missing piece to this puzzle. It was not perfect quite yet but it was the boost we needed.


Along the way, we also developed other mechanics for combat such as dodge attacks and plunge attacks. As well as changing our original dodge animation from a forward dash to a dodge roll. Each of these decisions made along the way was not easy and needed a lot of feedback from our community. Fortunately, they did not disappoint and helped us tremendously along the way.


Seeing is zooming?

In the first week of February, we released the next content update, the Rotted Throne. A few weeks later, we also implemented changes to further enhance the combat feel, such as tightened animation canceling and improved character movement. The most significant change we made for that update was to the camera.

The camera has been another area of feedback that required some hard discussions for our studio. There was a design and artistic choice for our camera perspective. The distance and angles were placed deliberately by choice. When creating new animations, islands, etc. they were created with that perspective in mind.


Many players wanted to be able to zoom in and have more control over the camera, to the extent that it would become a third-person camera. We still wanted to stick to our design principle of an isometric top-down view, but we were willing to make adjustments for the betterment of the gameplay experience.

Unfortunately, it was not simple for us to provide that option without first making improvements and adjustments to the pre-existing content. This was a year-long task that our artists worked diligently to complete. Only at this stage did it become acceptable for us to allow players to zoom in and tilt the camera, at a reasonable amount that still aligns with our design principles.


And our players were right, having this feature made a massive difference in our team’s experiences with the game. It changed the way we would explore the world and handle the challenges presented. It was a welcomed feature by us and our players!


Localization

There was another point of pain for the development of Sands of Aura. Localization.

Localization is essentially the translation of our game into the language of your choice. When we first released Early Access, we also released a localization patch that included 9 languages. With the Twin Thorn patch, we also localized the content there. However, an issue began to become a problem for us and it would grow with each content update.


The problem with this pattern of localization was that we would make changes and adjustments to previous content based on the feedback from our players. There would be quests or story elements that did not make sense or were not consistent with the rest of the game. So every time we would change the context of a quest, it meant more resources were required to ensure they were properly localized. It would be a lengthy and inefficient process for our development.


The requirement to localize the new content and changes to older content became too much for our small studio to properly maintain. Therefore it was with the Rotted Throne patch that we officially announced that localization would be held off until after we have completed development for version 1.0.


It was also at this point we decided to turn off our previous localization as we found inconsistency there as well due to the changes we made along the way. Dialogue would sometimes jump between English and a different language. It made it an unpleasant experience and we could not justify releasing a knowingly incomplete feature.


After the Rotted Throne

After the update in March, we were deep in the development for our next update, The Festering Veil. We had planned to release this update at the start of summer, and it appeared we were making significant strides. However, things don’t always go as planned.


We have made great efforts to maintain our goals and deadlines, so far we have, but it wasn’t without hurdles along the way. One challenge that awaited us was the increase in content size and the testing required. With each patch, our Quality Assurance time became longer and more extensive. Our main goal for year two was to complete Sands of Aura as version 1.0. And the testing phase required for each update would only serve to further delay the full release.


Our small team, now of size of 11, at Chashu Entertainment made a choice, our choice was to release all remaining content together at version 1.0. And it was not without its challenges.


The time between

Between the release of our last patch and the release of our most recent Pre-1.0 patch, it was quiet. Without updates during this period, also meant we weren’t able to give our players the fixes and adjustments we made to Sands of Aura or receive new feedback on our changes. Our belief in what we were creating needed to be the strongest it has ever been for the next 6 months. It was a mentally tough period for our studio but we pressed on and proceeded to develop with faith in our vision.


We made massive improvements to the combat feedback that consisted of higher-quality visual effects for attacks, more impactful sound effects, a new visual cue that provided more information to the player, lighting adjustments that would better ground the player, updated animations and so many more subtle changes that made significant impacts. We believed that all of these changes were what we needed to solve the looming issue of floaty combat.


We reworked the beginning of the game to better communicate the mechanics of the game to the player and to hopefully eliminate some of the confusion on what they are supposed to do. At the same time, we made improvements to older quests and story elements to better complete the story. Additionally, the script for Sands of Aura was finally completed which allowed us to properly voice all 90+ characters found in Talamhel!


By mid-August, we had reached our final checkpoint. This marked the beginning of post-production and also the beginning of the end. The full release was around the corner. Our date has been set, our goal is in sight, and it is the final stretch until the finish line. Our job now was to pick up our feet and finish with the same energy and passion we had when first set off on this journey.


Reaching the end

As the release date inches closer and closer, all of the emotions a developer would experience during development were intensified to the utmost degree. We felt the panic of things not working, we felt relief when the game progressed the way we wanted it to, we became depressed when objects didn’t appear where they should, we felt proud of the design choices we made, we accepted our fate and just a rollercoaster of emotions.


As we reach the end, regardless of where Sands of Aura stands in the mountain of games today, we are proud of what we have accomplished. We are proud of ourselves and the growth we experienced as individuals and as a studio. We are proud of the connections we made along the way. We are proud to have developed Sands of Aura.


Most importantly, we are proud to have met our community of players. You are the most important element for the development of Sands of Aura. Your feedback, whether brutally honest or wholesome, has allowed us to make Sands of Aura the best game we could. Without you, Sands of Aura would be a shell of what it is for Version 1.0.

No matter what the future holds for us here at Chashu Entertainment, we will always look back on this journey with a great sense of pride. It has been an exceptional experience and one we will treasure forever.

From all of us at Chashu Entertainment, thank you for joining us as we relived the development of Sands of Aura. Thank you for being a part of our journey and guiding us along the way. Thank you for your words of encouragement and motivation. Thank you.


We are extremely excited for you to experience Sands of Aura tomorrow as we release Version 1.0 at 11 AM CDT | 12 PM EDT | 9 AM PDT | 4 PM GMT.

We hope you enjoyed our story as we wait to set sail in Sands of Aura!

Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

The Journey to 1.0 - 2 More Days

Welcome back Knights-To-Be,

Can you believe it? Our early access journey is coming to a close in just two days! TWO DAYS! It has been a ride filled with peaks and valleys, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We have learned so much and faced challenges that have tempered our souls. And we relive those harsh lessons as we dive further into early access.


Floaty in Early Access

Given that Sands of Aura is the first title we have released as an early access title, there were a lot of lessons to learn for our studio.

The first was that unfiltered feedback and critiques are a valuable source of inspiration, reflection, and motivation. We received a small number of reviews during the first few months of early access, and we analyzed each one.


The type of reviews we received ranged from heartwarming to confusion. We had some who commented on the beauty of what we were trying to create and would appreciate Sands of Aura for its potential. We also had some that were brutally honest but provided excellent feedback for us to work with. We had other reviews that questioned our passion for games or as people. And then we had comments that simply didn’t agree with the lack of oddly specific and niche features.

This picture represents the mental images that we had when seeing the reviews for Sands of Aura.

It certainly impacted our views on reviews and the effect it would have on us and Sands of Aura.

Many of these reviews served to help us identify issues that were vague, such as combat. Often, we would read similar reviews regarding a particular mechanic, and a buzzword appeared frequently. That word would be ‘floaty,’ used to describe combat. This word has eluded us in its meaning for the entirety of development! The problem was that this word seemed to represent a feeling, and subjective feelings can be hard to decipher. Even within the team, the definition of a ‘floaty’ combat varied from person to person.


We attempted to solve this in many ways, such as implementing more visual and audio feedback, adjusting the speed of combat, adjusting shadows, making things larger or smaller, and many others. None of this moved away from getting more reviews of ‘floaty combat.’


However, we did notice that we were receiving them less over time, and every change did improve the perception of combat. At the very least, we were moving in the correct direction. We just haven’t found land yet. We knew we needed to keep working on it.


Parallel Access

The second lesson learned early on was that we needed to develop new content and work on released content in parallel. It meant we needed to evolve our development structure to accommodate this change.


The simple view, our naive view, was that the content we had already released was perfect as is and did not require any major rework or updates. Minor adjustments here and there were all that we needed. All we needed to do was follow the roadmap and complete the content required along this path, and the game would reach 1.0 according to plan. Or so we thought.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. We wanted to release Sands of Aura as an Early Access title to improve the game through feedback from our players.


We aren’t perfect developers. Our inexperience in foresight or design choices would lead to unintended situations or gameplay flow. We needed to be able to adapt and grow with our players throughout early access. To do this effectively, we needed to level up our abilities to organize our development to release new content and be flexible enough to meet our goals and timeline.

It took quite some time to get there, and like everything else we have learned along the way, we were getting better each time.


A New Aura

Before developing the Twins Thorn update, we needed a new writer to bring Sands of Aura to new heights. Unfortunately, our first writer, Henry K., had to part ways with our team as circumstances required. We wish him the best and are eternally grateful for building the world in Sands of Aura with us. A lasting impression remained with us, and the same quality of work and dedication will be required. The bar was high.


After a long process reviewing our possible candidates, we finally found Zach F. Zach met our standards, spiritually aligned with our Creative Director, Mike, and this was the person we wanted to take the helm as our writer.


Zach’s first task was to write the story for the upcoming Twin Thorn update. After his first draft, we knew we made the right decision. His ideas and creativity took the story to greater heights. And thus, the story in Sands of Aura has evolved once again! From the initial concepts created by Mike to the enhancements made by Henry, Zach would bring it all together as we aim for the finish together.


The save wipes

With the next patch in development, we continued improving the existing systems, made new ones, and updated the released story content. Everything was developing in a good direction, and the feedback from our players helped us make better decisions each time. Unfortunately, improvements came at a cost as well. This cost was save-wipes.


Save-wipes were something we had not anticipated as a team. As we continued development, we realized we had no options but to do so. Had we not conducted save-wipes, more resources and time would have been required to develop new content for Early Access. We knew this was not something our players would like, and we wish we could have avoided it at all possible costs. Unfortunately, the reality is that Early Access feedback also required us to make changes and improvements on a wide scale. The changes meant that older save files would become broken and unplayable. Accommodating and anticipating all of the possible issues would expend a considerable amount of time for our small team of programmers.


It was a harsh lesson and a reminder of our inability to foresee the outcomes of our design decisions and that we were always learning. However, with every iteration, there are improvements in our game and ourselves. We aimed to do better and to improve the experience for our players at every turn.


Releasing new content

By the end of April 2022, we released our next major update, Twin Thorn. It was an important milestone for our team. We were able to reflect on the development of this first major update. We would find flaws in our development structure and inefficiencies that required attention. It also provided us with another lesson in receiving feedback from our players.


A major content update came with major changes or improvements. How the players responded to those changes helped us discover areas of weakness and strength. Some players might hate or love it, and our task was to gauge whether or not we were making the right decisions. We often focus on the bigger picture and lose sight of the details. The feedback from these content updates helped us refocus and develop Sands of Aura into something special.


We took the lessons we learned from the release of the Twin Thorn update and began making changes in our development process for the next update. It was an iterative process that became our mindset for the rest of our Early Access journey.


Year One

After having released the Twin Thorn update and planning for the next major update, Citadel of Steel, we were ready to begin making more ambitious changes to the game design. Throughout Early Access, there were numerous suggestions and feedback on various aspects of the game. One system we believed was worthy of a rework was the blessings system.


At the launch of early access, our character progression and builds could be unique based on the blessings you opted for. In a sense, it acted like a ‘talent or skill tree’ system you can find in many other games. Our version of this system was simple, but it was also quite clunky for progression.


Recognizing this, we scrapped the blessing system and developed a new system called Talismans. It was ambitious for us as we did not know how players would react to a sudden change like this. We were skeptical, but this was a necessary step in the positive direction. Our community responded in kind, and we received the validation that we were doing things right.


With a new character progression system, the progression of our story in the Citadel of Steel, and minor but critical updates on other systems throughout the game, we released the Citadel of Steel update in late August 2022. It marked the last content update for the year.


Year One was a testament to our resilience to overcome the hurdles of negative feedback, an adaptation to the challenges of an Early Access title, and the will to create an experience that our players would enjoy. It was the end of the first year of our Early Access journey, and as turbulent as it was, it gave us the necessary tools to create a better Sands of Aura. We became more confident with every update, and Chashu Entertainment was ready to face Year Two of Early Access!


With the end of Year One, we begin Year Two next time as we look to the planning for the full release of Sands of Aura!

Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

The Journey to 1.0 - 3 More Days

Welcome back Knights-To-Be,

With the day of 1.0 just three days out, our minds are filled not only with excitement but with anticipation of just how much we will learn from this experience. Each of our subsequent releases, be it a prototype, a playable demo, or our Early Access release, has taught us so much about ourselves and Sands of Aura. We’re eagerly looking forward to what 1.0 has to teach us as well. With that in mind, I’d like to recount some of our previous releases and reflect on what those experiences taught us.


A knock at the door….

Not only did Sands of Aura generate interest among players at the Steam Winter Game Festival, it also captured the interest of several publishers! There was a lot we learned during this process and a lot of outstanding people that we met—many of whom we’ve kept in touch with despite deciding not to work together. We learned more about what Sands of Aura is and isn't during those months than we did during development. It was an eye-opening experience. But after months of meetings, of pitches, of important considerations regarding Sand of Aura’s future, we ultimately elected to partner with our current publisher, Freedom Games.






Freedom at the time was a brand new indie publisher who had yet to announce themselves. They were like us, new and brimming with excitement. Not only did they align with our vision for Sands of Aura, but they had a passion for their role in the industry that attracted us to them.

Our new partners had been hard at work preparing for a little show called E3. It was also the first year that E3 and many other game shows were conducted digitally due to the pandemic. During this E3, our publisher was able to get us set up with some memorable one-on-one interviews with members of the press to give our little game a try.

Trailer shown at E3.

For the next couple of months, we participated in a few more shows and spoke with the press at each of those events. It was an exciting time of the year for us as we were able to gauge interests and talk about Sands of Aura for the first time, publicly.

At the same time, during the summer of 2021, we finally received an update on our Epic MegaGrant submission in February 2020. They have approved our submission for Sands of Aura to be part of their program!


We were elated, everything seemed to fall our way. We have received a wonderful reception at the Winter Steam Game Festival, we have secured a partnership with a publisher, we have been accepted as a MegaGrant Recipient, and our roadmap to Early Access was progressing smoothly.


Early Access Launches!


By the close of summer 2021, our team of nine had grown to a team of twenty. While the additional help brought several advantages, it also was a challenging experience learning to manage a team of nearly double our original size. Despite that, and despite us having so much to do for the Early Access launch just a couple of months away, we elected to add voice acting to our game with the intent of securing just one more element that would bring life to our world.

The initial plan wasn’t to include voice acting, but when creating our Early Access launch trailer and hearing the very talented work of Rhiannon M as our narrator…we quickly reconsidered. To say we were blown away would be a major understatement. Rhiannon’s talent revealed just what we’d be missing without quality voice work and so, very soon after recording her lines for the trailer, we began the grueling process of getting our other characters voiced.


In fact, it was our honor to have Rhiannon cast for the role of Aura, herself! (among other roles)

If you haven’t already guessed, two weeks before our expected Early Access launch date, things began to catch fire. There were performance issues, low frame rates, quest bugs, combat problems. While it wouldn’t be a Chashu Entertainment release without a little drama and chaos, luckily, we now had eleven more team members with us to weather the storm. So, with a lot of effort from everyone, and a lot of unhealthy meals in front of our computers, we narrowly crossed the finish line and officially launched Sands of Aura in Early Access on October 21st of 2021!


We’d made it, Sands of Aura was officially in the hands of our players. We were ready for feedback. Ready to improve our game. Ready to look at criticism in the face.

Or at least, that’s what we thought…




Our first hurdle… Not Recommended

While we had anticipated there would be unforeseen issues missed by our team before the Early Access launch, we had planned on being as vigilant as possible to address issues as soon as they crept up. This is exactly what we did. An issue would be reported, we would race to fix it and push out to our players. What we didn’t expect was just what an impact the negative reviews would have on our team.


Reviews during Early Access were quite disheartening. We didn’t understand it. Each negative review cratered our morale more than the last. We believed in our game. We believed there was something great there. Maybe it was just that our players didn’t understand it? Maybe their opinions were misguided.

I’m sure you can tell how flawed this way of thinking was. It was defensive, rigid. We weren’t listening. Quickly we realized the problem wasn’t with our players but with ourselves, with our designs. It had been our job to communicate the intent of the game, to make sure its systems were clear and concise.


Luckily, we adjusted our outlook rather quickly and began to look and trust our players’ perspectives and used their reviews as a springboard to find exactly where we were letting them down.


We dove into reviews and into the valuable feedback received through our discord. While many spoke of quest confusion, of balance issues and item costs, the crux of the problem appeared to be combat. Unfortunately, that was going to be the most difficult issue to solve.

Fixing anything that has a subjective “feeling” to it is always going to be a challenging prospect. As well, most of the feedback regarding it struggled at pointing to something specific, which is at no fault of the reviewers. It’s just “feeling” is a hard thing to pin down. Regardless, we knew something was wrong, and at least that gave us some direction to begin exploring.


The first of our changes came about a week after launch and was a quick combat patch which addressed the few mentions of responsiveness. where we worked to improve a lack of responsiveness, adjusted speeds, damages, and adding more visuals to combat. The reception to those changes were better, but not perfect. At this point, it would have to temporarily suffice while we spent more time diving into the core design principles around combat.


While a few members of the team focused their efforts on our combat, others began addressing another big concern.


The cost of a beauty…

The next pressing issue we needed to address was that of gameplay performance. Our world was beautiful at its current state but there was frustration among our players about how its current presentation was impacting performance. After many months of consideration, we realized that to address the core of most performance problems we were going to have to change the way we loaded islands into player view. To accomplish this, we expanded the size of our world to keep the islands from loading in simultaneously which was what we discovered was a main contributor to the throttling performance.

Originally the islands were clustered much closer together to allow room for even more islands else where in the world, this caused unforeseen issues with performances, island progression and story development as well.

Before Reshaping Talamhel


After some trial and error, we decided that this would be the proper placement and distance of our islands that also made the progression of the game to flow much better.


After Reshaping Talamhel

As this was occurring, our team was also working on solutions for how to improve combat. We couldn’t fix everything about it right away but after considering a lot of player feedback we spent a few months updating the way Spellblades worked in combat. Despite its appearance, this was a significant change on our end, and it improved our combat ever so slightly.


With patch 0.01.08, we finally felt a small sense of relief. Sands of Aura wasn’t perfect and there were still a lot of improvements to make for us to get to where we wanted but we were getting feedback that our changes were improving things, and this was enough to raise our studio’s morale.


We weren’t alone…

The biggest boon to our studio during this trying time was that we attracted very passionate individuals to our discord. Their discussions of and passion towards Sands of Aura was inspirational for us. It was through them, our Mentor Knights, that we got a renewed sense of what we were working towards.



With a few patches behind us, it was time to commit all our energy to our next major content patch, 0.02.00, the Twin Thorns. To prepare for this we need to take the next step toward growing our team and growing our studio.

Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment


The Journey to 1.0 - 4 More Days

Welcome back Knights-To-Be,


As we come to day four of our countdown to version 1.0, we hope you’re beginning to feel the excitement. To distract ourselves and in an attempt to make the time go just a little bit faster, we’d like to continue regaling you with the tale of our development journey.


Epic Megagrants…

With a new year (2019) came a new GDC and this time we were coming in with realistic goals and realistic expectations. Our purpose was not to show anyone our project but rather to learn from other developers and connect with them. It had also been about 6 months since we’d all last saw each other in person, so this conference quickly became part reunion and part research.

After spending a year analyzing our own failings, we had begun to recognize the weaknesses in our craft. With these in mind, we attended a variety of specific talks, interesting round tables, inspiring meetings, really anything that could be related to the areas of development we needed to improve. The goal was to learn as much as we could and to keep an eye out for any opportunities that would allow us to level up further.

It was at this particular GDC that Epic announced a new commitment to their program, the Epic Megagrant, which was an initiative aimed at providing financial support to projects deemed innovative, creative, and noteworthy. Obviously, they garnered a lot of attention from everyone in the indie community. We knew immediately that Project Terrarium needed to be part of this.


After the conference, the planning for our Epic Megagrant submission began immediately. Within a week we had decided on our short term goals and we began development on yet another demo. We had one year.


The Name of Sands of Aura…

While quickly approaching the one year mark, we realized the name Terrarium was growing stale. It was intimately connected to our early designs, but many of those had been either heavily altered or removed entirely. The game had changed, it had grown. We needed a new name more in line with what our project had become. There were a lot of ideas. There was a lot of brainstorming. But eventually one stood above the rest.


With a new name and a new demo, work began on our first teaser trailer. Looking back on it now, this was the emotional moment our studio realized we were on to something special, and it’s the moment where we got to see just how far we’d come since beginning development in 2017. The first teaser was completed at the end of 2019. You can view it here.


But at this point, we finally had something that we were proud to showcase. Something that we believed lived up to our expectations. We submitted Sands of Aura to Epic MegaGrants on February 10th of 2020.

Now the challenge was waiting…


The Atmosphere of Aura…

With morale high and the stress of submission deadlines temporarily lifted, we turned again to analyzing other areas of our project that need more improvement.

At this stage in development, we felt our game lacked the immersive-ness of the RPG’s that we all greatly admired. Our Creative Director had written a fantastic base of lore for us to build from. His wireframes gave us our island concepts and multiple character motivations that paved the way for further design, but something was still missing.


Many elements add to the atmosphere of a game. From lighting and visual effects to ambient audio, to realistic sound effects, each of these can elevate an experience. But we needed something more to help heighten the mood and the emotion of our world. We need a writer and we need a composer.




New Companions…

As fate would have it, we stumbled upon a brilliant composer in the form of Eduardo L! From his first soundtrack to his last, Eduardo’s compositions have elevated our game to new heights. He quickly became a trusted addition to our small team.

Finding a writer proved much more difficult for us because no matter how great a writer someone is, if they don’t sync with the intended vision of your game, it quickly creates major problems. However, after a long search, we found Henry K.

Henry, and his ability to expand upon what little was given to him, was exactly what we were looking for. He was a fantastic wordsmith and he helped take the bones of our world and give them color. Many of the early characters, their way of speech, the world in which they interacted were expanded upon by Henry. He was a significant boon during the early development of Sands of Aura.


With Eduardo and Henry along for the journey, our team was ready to take the next step and plan for an Early Access release.

We knew releasing Sands of Aura into Early Access would be a risk, but our goal was to get players into our world, to get their hands on the gameplay as soon as possible. We knew we had a fun game and that our world was engaging, but we also knew that we couldn’t see everything and that the feedback from a community of players would be invaluable to truly expanding our vision into something great.


Spreading the word…

Marketing for an indie game is challenging. It is no secret that with numerous titles crowding store fronts, it is difficult for any game to stand out. While at first we believed that we could handle this on our own, we quickly discovered that marketing wasn’t a skill we readily possessed, nor was it one we could dedicate a lot of time to learning.

So, we enlisted the aid of a PR company to get us started. We already had a Discord and multiple social media accounts in operation but none were being managed to maximize their effectiveness. With the PR company taking over the marketing reins, we set our sights on our next goal: getting our game into the hands of players!


Steam Game Festival…

Autumn had just passed and with it went the Autumn Game Festival on Steam. Our goal was to be a part of the next one and so we set our sights on having a playable demo ready by February.

The next few months of development were hectic to say the least. There were major crashes, major blocking bugs, inputs that wouldn’t register, nonexistent frame rates. Each of these issues compounded day by day, and with the looming deadline, let’s just say that this was by far the most stressful experience of development for our team. On top of this, we’re only human and we couldn’t help but be plagued by doubt. We were terrified of player perception, terrified again of not living up to standards.


After a period of crunch and a few sleepless nights (something we always try to avoid), we managed to not only get things stabilized but we felt like the demo was actually fun to play! After a nerve wracking submission, the next couple of days offered us a breath of fresh air as Sands of Aura was out! At least in temporary form. It was such a fun experience to finally see others playing our game, uploading videos, streaming it and discussing it on social media.



And luckily, people liked it! Even in its imperfect state. Before the Steam Game Festival our wishlist numbers were in the low hundreds, but after they had grown by over 12k! This was an amazing milestone for our small studio and was validation that we were making the right choices.






Next time we’ll discuss our publisher journey, what it was like bringing our game to E3 and other events, our Early Access launch, and the creation of our wonderful discord community.


Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment

The Journey to 1.0 - 5 More Days

Welcome back Knights-To-Be,


With just five more days until version 1.0, the challenge going forward is keeping both our nerves and our excitement in check. We’re horrified at the thought of our game not living up to our expectations, to our players’ expectations. This is a feeling we’ve had since very early in the development of Sands of Aura and one we would like to reflect upon a bit.


The first demo…

GDC or the Game Developers Conference is an annual conference for game developers. It’s an opportunity to network, to meet with others passionate about games, and a chance to showcase your work to fellow developers with the hope of receiving some initial feedback. Our goal was GDC of March 2018.

Our demo was to focus on showcasing level and enemy designs, our combat mechanics and the random loot drop rewards. Each of these were to be the main pieces of our game and we were excited to bring them together to show them off.


About a month before GDC, we hit a roadblock. Despite our excitement, the pieces of our demo just didn’t fit together right properly. The gameplay loop just wasn’t fun and we needed to figure out why. Our explorations eventually revealed a main culprit: the random loot mechanics. Every weapon and armor drop had randomized attributes such as stats, effects, and extra gem slots. Combat style was randomized as well, so that when a weapon dropped it could result in being a one-handed slashing style, a dual wielding style, etc. Our intent was to use RNG to make loot feel special, to harness the excitement that randomness provides. However, intent and reality often come into conflict.


This system made creating a good build an absolute slog. While we had wanted the RNG elements to complement our combat system, they had done the opposite and forced our encounters to become stale and repetitive rather than thrilling and unique. With this issue being so complex and one so central to the core design, we realized what had to be done.

We decided not bring our demo to GDC a month before it arrived. Our demo just wasn’t something we were proud of. Such realizations are hard to face.



The value of failure…

Not only did the collapse of our GDC ambitions reveal weaknesses in our demo, they revealed weaknesses within our studio. Organizational structure, task management, timeline projections, development skills, testing structure, asset pipeline management… All those necessary aspects of game making that often go unconsidered…each of these were subpar for our studio at best.


In hindsight, this all seems blatantly obvious, but we were young and our studio was composed of recent graduates. With only one title under our belt—a game that began as a student project—like many who attempt game development, our creative ambitions stretched well beyond our experience. Not to mention, our programmers were actively transitioning from working exclusively in Unity to development in Unreal.

To be blunt, we were naïve. We needed to level up and fast. Luckily, it’s only once you see a problem that you can actually fix it.


Pressing onward…


Back again at the drawing board we fought hard to find a solution to our RNG problem. We tried idea after idea, implementation after implementation. Each time we thought we had something that worked, we would only find it to be more cumbersome later on. However, with each attempt, with each failure, there was a bit of progress that carried over, little by little.

Eventually the randomized loot evolved into a simplified version of the weapon crafting system you’ll recognize in Sands of Aura today. Our armor sets also became fixed but we added an upgrade rune system to capitalize on a bit of variability in the old RNG system.

Turning again to our inspirations, we incorporated a cleansing mechanic similar to the Sharpen mechanic from the Monster Hunter series (spoiler alert, we eventually had to reevaluate this too based on player feedback) and added spell activations into the combat flow. While previously the combat was simplistic and repetitive, it gained a degree of difficulty requiring the player to make numerous considerations.


Eventually, enemies began to evolve to address the changes to the combat system. The level design became more complex with rewards being placed deliberately to encourage exploration. New dungeons sprung up, like the one that exists today as Melgom’s Cavern, which would eventually become the tutorial dungeon of Sands of Aura. Islands become grander, more visually considered as they would be the focal points on the horizon. The sandsea went from static to something kinetic with waves taking on the movement of the ocean.

Things were coming together… Project Terrarium was coming together.




Shifting sands…

The development of Project Terrarium was matched by changes in our studio. We made considerable efforts to address our projections, our structures, and pipeline management. We fought to fail faster, test sooner, and iterate without remorse. We got a little quicker. A little smarter. We grew up.


Soon many of us began experiencing life changing milestones. There was marriage, the beginning of families, the pursuit of much needed changes of scenery. Chashu Entertainment had begun in a small studio space in Culver City, California. It was there that a few recent graduates completed Deputy Dangle, and where we began developing Project Terrarium. It was our starting point. Our home.
But it was time to iterate. Time for one final photo and time to say goodbye.


Chashu Entertainment moved our headquarters from California to Dallas, Texas. Some of us remained in California, some of us moved states, and some (one) of us moved to another country entirely! While this iteration of our studio had its challenges, and the chaos of conducting development in different time zones was no easy feat, given the choice, I doubt we would choose to go back and do things differently.

Chashu Entertainment was moving into a new era! The era of remote work.


Next time we’ll dive into the further evolution of Project Terrarium, covering everything from our first trailer, the Epic MegaGrant, to our painstaking process of selecting a new name. We’ll discuss our experiences with marketing, team growth, and much more!

Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment

The Journey to 1.0 - 6 More Days

Hello Knights-To-Be,


This day, October 21st, 2023, marks the two year anniversary of our Early Access release! It has been an incredible journey for us at Chashu Entertainment and we are eternally grateful you were able to join us along the way.

As we inch a day closer to our full release date of October 27th, we cannot help but look back on how far we’ve come. So, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to regale you with the tales of our journey as we await version 1.0.


A new beginning…

It was the Summer of 2016, Chashu Entertainment has just completed and released our first title to be on steam, Deputy Dangle, a small title that began as a student project.


We were happy with what we have accomplished but it was time for us to move on to something different. A new project, something more ambitious, something more challenging, and something that is better suits our style of gaming. At every end there is a new beginning, this was our opportunity to begin anew.


When Sands of Aura wasn’t Sands of Aura…


It’s often said that the best part of game development is the beginning, when imagination is abundant and ideas strike like lightning. It’s easy to assume that concepts arrive fully formed, that good ideas are just set in stone from the start. But game design is fluid and often messy, it’s iterative and ever changing. Ideas rise and fall, they’re shaped and discarded only to be picked up again down the line. Chashu Entertainment was only a team of seven back then, but each of us participated wholeheartedly in this creative frenzy. There was an obsessive fever in each member of the team to bring our ideas into reality.

As exciting as this was, it isn’t hard to get lost in a maelstrom of brainstorming and creativity. Soon we found ourselves trapped, stuck in a loop of new concepts, new ideas. We needed a way out, a beckon in the storm. We needed Terrarium.


The idea was simple. A game about procedurally generated biomes full of life and nature that you could explore and farm. It was enough to get us out of the storm, enough to give us direction, yet after a year of more concentrated prototyping, we were still missing that real eureka moment.




We see the light!

It was the notion of biomes which evolved into the first conceptualization of the islands. We created our first set: the Player Home, the Red Stone Arch, and Hurwell. Two of these islands still exist today as evolved versions in Sands of Aura. The Player Home became what you know as Tupi’s Grotto, and Hurwell became what’s known as the Ruins of Hurwell. Unfortunately, the Red Stone Arch no longer exists.


As things began to take shape, we began looking to some of our favorite games for inspiration. We knew we wanted to create an ARPG but we wanted to draw on classics like Dark Souls, Diablo, Legend of Zelda, Hollow Knight, and a few others. From these inspirations came randomized loot drops, deliberate combat, and exploration through a top-down camera perspective.

These decisions finally gave us a foundation to build upon, and that storm which had held us for so long was becoming a distant memory on the horizon.


But something was still missing…

From the concept of disparate islands came the question of travel. How does the player get to an island? Is there a choice to be made between which to visit? Our original idea had the player traveling between islands through a portal; it was simple, effective, but lacked excitement, exploration. Each question we asked only led to more questions. Why was the player traveling? Why was the world demarcated into islands? Soon each of these questions began pointing to the same missing piece…a story.

Creating a story for Sands of Aura has been one of the most rewarding and fun experiences for us and our writers. However, it was never intended to be as influential as it became. The scope of the current story in Sands of Aura as it stands today reflects our deep fascination with this world and the characters who call it home.


Thus, the world building began. These brainstorming sessions were some of our most memorable ones. Conversations were heated, papers were thrown, scribbles were drawn and redrawn. There was passion, there was sorrow, there was caffeine. It was fun. We questioned each character’s idea of the world, asking how they arrived at those views and why? Eventually, the thread of “destruction” began to resonate through them all.

Be it muse or luck, the idea of “sand” soon arose and quickly after came the concept of a “sandsea.” With that, the next logical step was to allow our players to sail across the sandsea on a skiff of their own.


Our ideas were beginning to take shape and a shared vision between team members began to develop. From this we continued creating the remaining islands, developing unique enemies, and iterating on a fun and engaging combat loop.


It is all coming together!

Finally, we had all our pieces in place. We just needed to fit them together and create Terrarium! Wait a minute… what? It was still called Terrarium? Yes, it was. That is, until we completed our first demo.


Tomorrow, we’ll continue diving into the struggles of development, focusing in particular on our first demo and how it didn’t necessarily develop in the way we’d hoped. We’ll discuss our strength, our weakness, and we’ll discuss how we managed to overcome the many hurdles it threw in our direction.


Thank you for reading!
- Chashu Entertainment

Patch 0.05.01 Hotfix
We noticed some issues being reported during the last 24 hours and we (John) had to fix it right away!





Patch 0.05.01 Hotfix Notes


  • Fixed an issue that caused menu navigation to break when changing DLSS settings.
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when backing out of menu with broken interface navigation.

PRE-1.0 Launch Update

Hello Knights-To-Be!



I hope you are all as excited about our recent announcement as we are! But in case you missed it…



We are officially launching into Version 1.0 on October 27, 2023! So mark your calendars and sharpen your blades; there is corruption that requires cleansing!

To celebrate we are releasing a major update for early access. The last time we updated Sands of Aura was in late March of this year. And since then, the team have been working tirelessly on the new content beyond the Rotted Throne, improving the existing systems, and tackling all of the feedback we have received throughout all of early access.

We are calling this update our PRE-1.0 Launch Update, and we are just as excited about players experiencing this update as we are releasing version 1.0. A lot of the improvements and changes we’ve made over the past 6 months can be experienced before the 1.0 launch!



So what can you expect with this update?



This update will be the LAST time we conduct a save wipe!


This means that you can now begin playing Sands of Aura and not worry about losing your progress when Version 1.0 launches later this month! All progress will carry over into Version 1.0. In order to properly do this, players will be able to progress all the way to the end of the “Starspire Festival”. However, upon reaching the end of that event, the main story will be put on hold until full release on October 27th.


Every character is now fully voiced!


Chashu Entertainment have had the honor to work with very talented Voice Actors to bring our characters and world to life. We are deeply appreciative of their efforts and we can not wait for you to experience their voices of Talamhel!



Achievements unlocked!



Who doesn't love being rewarded for your accomplishments with achievements! You can now unlock them as you progress through the game.



Tutorial Updated


Melgom’s Cavern, our “tutorial” dungeon, has been reworked to provide a better learning experience regarding the basic mechanics of the game. Many of the tutorial screens have been updated to provide better clarity as well.


A new tutorial guide has been added to the options menu for players to quickly be reminded of certain gameplay mechanics.



Visual Cues in Combat



There are now visual cues on the enemies to indicate when they are parried, unstoppable and hit. We found that these visual cues provided a much more satisfying combat experience. And we hope it helped solve one of our many feedbacks regarding 'combat feel'.



Runes can now be upgraded and deconstructed



The runes are perhaps one of your most important stat boosts to your gear. Previously players would find excess runes that they don't want and not enough of what they need. This system allows you to deconstruct those unwanted runes and use the materials to craft or upgrade the runes you need for your perfect build.





Players can modify their weapons!




Previously when you unlock a new codex or pommel at the forge, you are required to craft a brand new weapon. Now, players can modify their existing weapons with new codex effects, pommels, and weapon heads at the forge without needing to upgrade from level 1! This will allow you to quickly go back out there and test the effect of your newly modified weapon.



YOU CAN HIDE YOUR HELMET!



Now you can enjoy the benefits of your helmet and let your hair flow in the wind as you sail across the Sand Seas.



Fast Traveling have been improved



You can now quickly open a window that shows all of the Resonance Bells you have found in Talamhel and quickly travel there. Like before, you need to be near a Resonance Bell or in the Sand Seas to be able to fast travel by opening your world map.



Spell Blade Updated


There are two major updates to the Spell Blade.


The first is that you can now equip any Spell Blade Element for your Attack, Block and Dodge abilities. Players can now mix and match your Elements based on your combat preference!


The second is that Spell Blade Elements' levels now consume glint to upgrade, and no longer require spell gems.

We have completely removed the Spell Blade Gems that were previously used to level up your spell blades. The reason for this change is that through numerous playtests, we have found that players did not exactly feel rewarded with gem drops. Nor did it feel impactful when leveling up your spell blades. This was due to the fact that you simply were required to find the ones you needed by chance. A lot was left to luck.

The aim of this change is remove the random factor of this important combat mechanic and to allow our players to make choices on how to spend their glint as they progress through the game.



Sand Sea Loot



There are now crates that can be found scattered across the Sand Seas for extra rewards.



And some more, just to name a few!



  • All islands and environments have been given the extra love and care.
  • Widespread balance updates on all enemies, bosses, items, rewards and combat stats.
  • New weapon effects, talisman effects, armor effects, and brew effects have been added. And some existing effects have been changed.
  • More options in character creator.
  • Interface functionality has been enhanced, previous issues have been addressed, and new windows were created to streamline the functionalities.
  • Significant performance updates to improve frame rates and gameplay experience.
  • Added DLSS and FSR functionality.




These are just some of the improvements that you can expect in this PRE-1.0 Launch Update. More detailed patch notes will be provided at full release. And while you wait for that, we hope you enjoy this update as we prepare for launch on October 27, 2023!

Thank you for all the support you’ve given us throughout the past two years of Early Access. This journey through early access would not have been the same without you. We are so excited for you to experience Sands of Aura. This patch is for you!

Come hang out with us on our Official Discord and if you haven't already, be sure to Wishlist, it is a simple way to show your support. Tell you're friends! Tell your family! Sands of Aura is setting sail for 1.0!

Thank you for playing,
- Chashu Entertainment

Sands of Aura 1.0 Launch Date Revealed!

🏰✨Greetings Knight-To-Be! Get ready for an epic journey as we prepare for the 1.0 Launch of Sands of Aura on October 27, 2023!🏰✨





A heartfelt thank you to everyone who's been part of this incredible journey. For years, our team has worked tirelessly, inspired by your dedication and passion. You've challenged us, supported us, and guided us every step of the way. Sands of Aura is a testament to our incredible community, and we could not be more proud of the upcoming 1.0 launch. We cannot wait for you to experience the world of Talamhel as it was meant to be, loaded with all the things you've been eagerly waiting for during Early Access:

✨ All previously locked islands are unlocked, and exciting new ones are here for you explore
✨ Fresh allies and formidable foes
✨ Epic boss battles that will test your mettle
✨ A treasure trove of new items, armor, and equipment
✨ Enchanting new soundtracks to set the mood
✨ And an unforgettable, beautifully crafted story that awaits you


📅Wishlist now to ensure you’re among the first to step foot into Talamhel and ride the sands. 📆




While you wait for launch, join the ranks of the valiant Order or Remnant Knights in our Discord, or follow us on any of the platforms below:


Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Until Launch, Knights-To-Be!
Chashu Entertainment 🗡️🛡️



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