Hello everyone and let's see what are the most recent news on Astral Ascent !✨
What is new?
Development goes well and our team is more motivated than ever mainly because we can see the potential of the game and we actually have ton of fun playing the current prototypes.
Also, we now have a good idea of every game mechanics we want to have in the game, it means that our game vision is strong and that we know toward what kind of content we want to aim.
This seems like something basic but it actually takes a lot of time before finding all the puzzle pieces and the right way to assemble them together to make a coherent and innovative game.
The spells system
In the game you will be able to collect a vast variety of spells, we actually aim to have a hundred spells!
The different types of spells are:
- Defensive spells:
you can only have one at a time that works with cooldown without using mana
Example of defensive spell that groups all enemies together
- Classic spells:
You will always have 4 at the same type but you will be able to find a lot of different ones while exploring during your runs. It will be your job to find the best synergies between all the different spells to create the most efficient combos.
Spells are either common to all characters
Ayla launches a classic spell: 8 fireballs that explode at impact! This
Or they are linked to a specific character (in that case, only him/her can equip it but do not worry you won't find spells of characters that are not playing, even in coop!)
Kiran specific spell: lighting punch!
Ayla specific spell: ethereal knives go directly to nearest enemy in range!
Graphical Reworks
It is a long progress to find the final artistic direction for a game, even if we now have a bit of experience after releasing Dark Devotion, it remains a very time consuming task.
It takes effort from the artists and the developers that integrate the art to confirm it is looking as desired.
Some elements are good on first time and some other need a lot of iterations before being at the standard of quality we expect for the game.
OLD TREES of the game, made by Alexandre!
NEW TREES of the game, also made by Alexandre!
It has also been the case with our background assets that evolved a lot since we started it
Mixed assets of the game, made by Gaël!
These new assets with our new light system are trully awesome, you can see it there.
But this rule also applies to more generic systems, in particular progression for design and interface for art so when you mix both for our hub ( The Garden ) you have some of the most spectacular iterations progress we have done since the start.
OLD MERCHANT INTERFACE to unlock skills.
NEW MERCHANT INTERFACE to unlock skills.
And it's even more impressive once in movement but we cannot unlock too big gifs there and let's keep some secrets for now!
Even if some things still have room for some extra polish we currently pushed every aspects of the game to reach this new level of quality that we aim to get for the game release.
Musical sneak peak
As previously announced, we are collaborating with the talented Dale North for the musics of the game and we have received some of the musics and they are absolutely perfectly our aerial, fantastic, nature oriented game vision! If you want to listen to a sneak peak of our hub ( The Garden ) you can listen it here!
We also have another surprise with the great Romain Rope, our sound designer on the project, that started to give life to our enemies and playable characters: things are shaping up!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoKLQAHiVC4
Can you guess?
There is obviously a LOT of things that we are not showing because we want to keep as much surprise as possible on some key features but I could not resist sharing this:
Can some of you guess what is the purpose of this? I am very curious of your ideas!
Support us
If you want to talk about these news with community, you are more than welcomed to join our kind community on our Discord server.
If you have not already, you can wishlist & follow the game on our Steam page.
- Wishlists give us more visibility and help the game get known
- Follow notifies you when we release updates and news for the game
As a small indie team that wants to self-publish, this help is very appreciated, thanks a lot!
Thanks for being part of this journey and have a great day 😊
Louis