Announcement: Our new game Astral Tracks is available NOW!
Hi dear Schacht community,
we’re really excited to announce that our new game Astral Tracks is NOW AVAILABLE in Early Access on Steam!
Astral Tracks was based on Schacht and you can find a lot of similarities in the two games, but with Astral Tracks we've basically taken Schacht to the next level - adding more high-quality assets, redefining level design, adding online multiplayer, and so on!
We’ve worked really hard to create a solid and fun indie game, but we feel like it would hugely benefit from more player feedback during an Early Access period. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts and improving the game ahead of its full 1.0 release, so please get racing and let us know what you think!
- The LAB132 team
Our new game ASTRAL TRACKS | Similarities to SCHACHT are pure coincidence...
All the people that have played SCHACHT in the past (or may still play it from time to time!) may see some similarities between the two titles... ;) SCHACHT was the very first game we developed and published at LAB132 and while we felt like the game itself was quite fun, we didn't know how to actually publish and market a game back in 2017. That is why we wanted to take SCHACHT as the main inspiration for our upcoming title ASTRAL TRACKS, improve the visuals, improve the mechanics, and so on, and - most importantly - add online multiplayer!
Feel free to head on over to ASTRAL TRACKS steam page and wishlist the game to stay up-to-date!
Best LAB132 team
FINAL SALE: 90% OFF
YOU WANT IT, YOU GOT IT! ːguri_coolː
As per your requests, Schacht will be on sale one final time! Starting NOW - Monday, 18th April, at 7 PM MESZ (10 AM GMT-7) - you can get Schacht for 90% off as part of a weeklong deal!
Thank you all for your interest in our game, we hope you enjoy the sale!
Schacht is retiring
Hello everyone!
Unfortunately, we decided to retire Schacht on Steam, which means selling this title will come to an end soon... If you still want to play Schacht, you will no longer have access to its online components.
Thank you so much to everyone who played and enjoyed our game! We certainly had a lot of fun developing and maintaining it.
But those aren't just bad news - we already have new ideas and plans for the future... ːguri_coolː if you are interested in what's to come, follow us on social media to stay up to date with our developments!
Stay safe! - The team at LAB132
Here you jump!
We present to you a new kind of SCHACHT. From the completely reworked and much more eye pleasing menu to the super friendship breaking local split screen multiplayer, this update is packed with features like nothing you have seen before. At least for SCHACHT.
So don’t waste my time writing this text or yours not playing this masterpiece of good old modern jump’n’run! Start it right away to see and feel what we have prepared for you!
If you are still unsure if it is worth the hassle of clicking one button you will find a full list of all changes right after the following period.
local split screen multiplayer!
many graphical additions and improvements
colourful HDR support
fully reworked and eye pleasing menu
new massive planet decorations
better distribution of decorative scrap
enhanced player movement
refined controller support
more challenging challenges
three enhanced daily challenges
two soul crushing weekly challenges
one monstrous monthly challenge
some of them are multilevel cups to test your endurance
three more languages
Spanish language support
French language support
Russian language support
tons of bug fixes (if you still find one it may help to restart the application - if not, please feel free to send us a bug report)
Within all this glory, there is one sad story to be told. We’ve decided to rip the workshop out of the game. The creative potential of it was surely limited due to the randomly generated nature of SCHACHT and there was no way to bring its functionality to other platforms, which felt a bit unfair to be honest.
Are you still not convinced that SCHACHT is a game exceptional enough to give it a try? Well then we may not be able to help you.
Have a nice time :)
Hotfix Patch
Hello all,
today we updated Schacht with a few important bug fixes:
The Y-axis invertion in the settings menu now works correctly again and persists after a restart of the game
Fixed game breaking bug that occured when returning from a level to the main menu while dying
The Marathon achievement now correctly updates again when finishing a procedural level
Fixed bug that caused other player ghosts to be visible in the main menu
Fixed two bugs concerning navigation inside the main menu using the Xbox gamepad D-Pad
We hope we could make your experience with Schacht even more enjoyable!
Have a great week!
Schacht 1.5 Released
Well hello there! ːsteamhappyː
With Halloween upon us, we thought it was time for a special treat for you guys!
As announced at the beginning of this month, a big content update for Schacht just went live!
There are new features waiting for you (some more visible, some seemingly invisible), we improved existing mechanics and of course important bugs were fixed.
Prepare yourselves for:
New Features:
Massive performance improvements, as announced in the last post
Removed loading screen for any procedural level and added transition animations for a smoother experience
Reworked checkpoint mechanic - You now get a small penalty when resetting on a checkpoint instead of just continuing the timer. We hope this makes the use of checkpoints more competitive.
10 more segments were added to the algorithm to make the levels even more exciting and diverse!
Huge space stations and bigger scrap parts now float around in the levels and add to the overall atmosphere
Several new character accessories were added - among others a special Halloween accessory is waiting for you!
Benchmark for Performance verification
Improvements:
Tweaked skybox to be more diverse in between levels
Improved respawn UI and added sound effect
Tweaked camera sphere to prevent odd point-of-view when coming close to walls or big objects
Toaster accessory now actually toasts
Added even more (and more detailed) graphical settings for you to optimize your experience
Bug Fixes:
Textures do not lower in resolution after the first checkpoint in high or lower texture quality settings
Fixed Xbox One gamepad rumble not working correctly
Camera now recenters on button-press instead of on button-release
Fixed LODs and collisions of several segments and platforms
We hope you will enjoy the new content! Happy Halloween! :guri_happy: :schacht:
Moving Forward
After a longer time without any news from our side, we’re finally able to announce a bigger update for Schacht that is coming to Steam at the end of this month! As usual the update will fix some bugs in the code and the graphics.
But besides that you will get some major code improvements, enhanced game mechanics and enriched eye candy with this update!
We changed a lot inside the core of Schacht to increase the performance of our game. With the switch from Deferred to Forward Shading, the implementation of SSAO and a thoroughly optimization of all 3D assets, we were able to boost the performance overall by up to 70%.
As the update goes live, the time you need for a complete track isn’t running continuously independent of your actions anymore. We think this behaviour was unfair as it punishes the players differently, depending on the place of their failure on the track. In the new system we work with a constant penalty time that is added to your last time saved at a checkpoint.
Space isn’t empty! Or at least it shouldn’t be. That’s why we’re going to push more on our narration of an interstellar battle zone / scrapyard for Schacht. This will be done by adding several new 3D assets to the surrounding space like shipwrecks and dead space stations.
Hopefully this improvement doesn't distract you too much from reaching a high score ;)
So the last words of this post should tell you the date at which to expect the update.
With love,
your friendly neighborhood scientists
P.S It will be the 30th of October
Server Maintenance
Good news everybody!
Wait, these aren‘t good news at all...
Due to a university-wide server maintenance the Schacht servers will unfortunately not be available on the following days:
Thursday, 27th July 2017
Friday, 28th July 2017
Saturday, 29th July 2017
Sunday, 30th July 2017
We are already working on a new and better infrastructure solution to hopefully prevent this from happening in the future.
In the meantime, go get some fresh air and sunshine – we‘ll see you back in the highscore lists on Monday!
Schacht and beyond
Since the release of the first full version of Schacht in February this year, it was quite silent around the game. Nothing more than the reference to a special offer. But today it is time to start a party, because this update is here to spread the good news that there is and will be a lot of work and love put into the game!
Until now, Schacht was a student project made by young talents at the Stuttgart Media University, giving their best under almost real world working conditions and expanding their experience. Without wanting to sound too much like fanboys, we believe they have done an incredible job.
But, just like the students grew during the development of the game as it is today, we think Schacht itself should grow further to become the game it deserves to be. So after a few months with a schedule full of administrative and legal work, we are back on development to create more Schacht for you. Plans on our side include porting the game to more platforms, enhancing the graphics, expanding the feature set and making it more visible for a greater audience.
We hope you will enjoy the upcoming Schacht as much as we enjoy creating it for you!
