We’ve made a significant update to our demo version (0.1.15), so it now represents the current state of the game and includes all the feedback we got from you so far.
What can you see and play in the updated demo version?
An improved set of four tutorial missions that introduce you to the game’s mechanics more smoothly
A playable part of the first biome with access to the game map, missions to choose from, and upgrades for your airship
Updates and changes in the Easy and Hard difficulty modes
Easy difficulty now has the auto-aim and dead zone at aiming options switched on by default
You no longer get killed by colliding with canyon walls while playing on Easy
Updated in-game economy and simplified hangar menu
Updated gamepad controls - barrel rolls on the d-pad, brake and boost on LB and RB
Fixed issues with widescreen displays
We’d like to invite you to try the updated demo of VergeWorld and share your feedback with us on the forums and our official Discord.
Every comment and message is very useful for us as we’re at the stage of extensive playtesting, bug fixing, and improving the game. We want to make sure that you have lots of fun while racing through the canyons and completing missions in our game.
However, this process will take a little longer than we expected, so we decided to update our release window to Q1 2023. We’ll share a more detailed release date later on.
Be sure to wishlist the game and share it with your friends. Thank you for all your support!
First look at the underground gardens and city biomes
So far you’ve seen screenshots and videos from the first, desert biome that you’ll fly through while playing VergeWorld. Now we’d like to give you a glimpse of two other biomes.
Let’s start with colorful and wild underground gardens.
And now let’s visit the grim postindustrial city.
Every canyon and track in VergeWorld is procedurally generated from a set of various building blocks. We want to make them visually distinct between the biomes but also include unique threats and obstacles to overcome, like crystalline structures, falling buildings, laser turrets, etc.
We hope you like these new screenshots and GIFs. Join us on Discord, wishlist the game, and recommend it to your friends!
From Amiga demoscene to your PC - the retro roots of VergeWorld
We’d like to share with you a bit more about the very retro beginnings of VergeWorld.
The idea for the game sparked back in 2018 at the head of Amiga demoscene enthusiast, Arek Kwaśny. He wanted to fulfill the childhood dream of creating an Amiga game, a retro sci-fi project inspired by the likes of Rescue on Fractalus and After Burner.
The first step was creating a brief adventure game prototype using modern software. Unity seemed to be a natural pick as it was supposed to revolve around rendering 360° panoramas in real-time. It provided relative freedom of movement in the 3D world. The second step was creating a voxel game prototype. It lacked the ability to turn in order not to overwork the Amiga 500 system.
Left: poster designed by Gary Winnick, one of the creators of Maniac Mansion Right: artworks made for the Amiga prototype
Then it was time to code the game for the actual Amiga hardware. The first successful version of the demo was made during the AmiParty 2019. It was the first voxel code that ran on Amiga 1200. Even though it ran at 4-5 FPS, it was still a milestone that ignited the whole coding process between September and October 2019. After that, the demo was presented to the team at Bad Bones. The early version of the game’s engine resembled randomly appearing green blocks on the screen. Taking this into account, the progress that happened since then is colossal!
And so the works on VergeWorld: Icarus began with a goal to create a game that the Amiga world hasn’t seen yet. When it comes to the inspiration for the setting, at the beginning it was supposed to be a space opera telling a story of a smuggler flying in his spaceship through a canyon-filled planet. When you say space opera you think Star Wars, when you say space smuggler, you think about Han Solo.
But trying to fill in those shoes would be too much of a gamble, there would be too many similarities. Instead, we toned down a bit and turned to classics and modern titles. Specifically The Mandalorian, Dune, and The Outer Worlds to name a few. This way the team has created a sort of duality - on one hand, the player experiences a lot of familiar elements that they can easily identify with, and on the other, they have a fresh look at the retro sci-fi.
This was also the time when the team was forming - a mix of both demoscene veterans, pixel art maniacs, and those who didn’t really remember the 90s that well - all in order to combine both old and modern approaches.
After months of work, VergeWorld: Icarus became a retro sci-fi shoot’em up racer, where the players pick up the mantle of a mysterious pilot of the Icarus spaceship. The players try to gain the support of the faction of their choice, learn about the pilot, shoot quite a lot, and fly through endless canyons. The world presented in the game is a post-apocalyptic desert planet on which physics doesn’t work according to the rules we know. Under these circumstances, the most prominent human colonization mission is trying to survive in a place that by necessity has become their new home.
By the end of 2020, we were able to launch a second demo, this time for the Sega Genesis console.
By that time we’ve pushed both hardware to their limits. We also felt we could do more and appeal to a wider crowd. That’s why we started working on bringing VergeWorld to PC. This meant pausing the work on the hardware-limited retro version and switching back to the Unity engine equipped with everything we’d need. The team has grown even further, to over a dozen people.
We knew that the pixel art was staying, but the entire gameplay and graphical style had to undergo a redesign. On the audio and video layer, we decided to take our cues from the late 90s, the time when the first PlayStation entered the market and revolutionized 3D rendering in games.
As for the gameplay, we jumped onto the increasingly popular roguelite trend. Thus, we managed to combine retro design, which provides a fresher look than the widely used 2D pixel art, and modern game mechanics. In creating this version, inspiration from classic retro games was mixed with productions such as Hades, Returnal, Everspace, and Star Wars Episode I: Racer. Under the influence of new team members creating this "transformation", the VergeWorld took on a whole new dimension that you’ll soon be able to experience yourself!
If you want to check the VergeWorld prototypes, you can download them for free. Also, be sure to check the PC demo version here on Steam and wishlist if you like it.
Demo update - slow down and aim at the enemies!
Thank you to everyone who already played the VergeWorld demo!
We really appreciate your feedback and decided to implement some of it right away.
We’ve updated the demo with an option to slow down your airship, so you can aim and shoot at enemies more precisely. To slow down hold the bottom D-pad button / Left Ctrl. We recommend that you boost up by flying low in order to regain your speed after this maneuver.
Other things added to the demo include additional tunnels added to the procedurally generated levels, tweaks to weapons (balancing the damage and cooldown times), as well as particle effects fixes.
Wishlist and Follow our game to keep track of its development!
