After more than 4.5 years of work with 18 months of Early Access, we are very proud to share with you all the 1.0 version of Astral Ascent! We gave our very best during the whole development and you witnessed the evolution of the game that changed so much from Kickstarter demo to 1.0!
We truly hope you will enjoy this version as much as we do (we play the game a lot as we are having so much fun on it!). The more success the game will have the more updates we will make (we have many ideas already!) so do not hesitate to share the game around if you enjoy it!
We also want to take this opportunity to tell you once more how important was all your support during the Early Access, it gave us a lot of motivation and inspiration, thanks for that <3
You can see below the Launch Trailer to celebrate the Release on PC / PS4 / PS5 and Nintendo Switch!
Main Game + OST + Artbook Bundle
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/36431/Astral_Ascent__OST__Artbook_Bundle/
Original Soundtrack
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2455290/Astral_Ascent_Original_Game_Soundtrack/
Digital Artbook
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2633220/Astral_Ascent_Artbook/
If you were already playing the game on Early Access, the 1.0 comes with a lot of changes! More than 1000 lines of change to read in our 1.0 Patch Notes.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1280930/view/3776891376332040308
The Master
You will finally be able to face The Master, a final confrontation to escape from the astral prison! We do not want to spoil anything about it but there is a lot about this final boss, it took us as much time as the 3 other Zodiacs combined.
Beating The Master will also lead you to the 17 different Endings of the game!
Aries
Aries is super friendly but she will not hold her attacks on you!
Cancer
Cancer is the leader of the Orphnées family, he fights with a bird named Basileus.
Gemini
Gemini are special, expect an intense fight facing multiple threats!
Star Guardians - Monoceros and Sculptor
Monoceros and Sculptor are joining Pegasus, Lupus, Draco and Hydra as minibosses you can encounter during your escape attempts!
We think it's important for these Fights to not feel too repetitive. You can only face 3 of them maximum per escape attempt. They hit hard but we want you to pick these fights only if you feel comfortable during your run!
Monoceros is based on ice attacks!
Sculptor creates weapons to attack you!
Animated Cinematic
We now have a traditional cinematic introduction when launching the game, giving a mood and first impression we absolutely love. The animations of Tokkun Studio fit perfectly the music of Dale North for an epic introduction to the Astral Ascent universe.
Reworked Introduction and Tutorial
We think the game introduction was not exposing the story and universe enough, we have created a new introduction cinematic!
It is also an introduction to Ayla who did not have a proper pixel-art cinematic yet, it comes with a complete change of Ayla personality and backstory!
For the tutorial itself, we thought the previous one was too static and frustrating because we created a game focused on aerial movement and the tutorial was forcing you to not move much. The new tutorial gives you a total control over your movements from the very start now!
Event Horizon
You will not be automatically killed when accessing the Event Horizon (5th world), instead you will have many elements to prepare before the final confrontation!
Mid-run Saves
This might be the most requested features from the 18 months of Early Access, everytime the icon below appears, you can open your options and safely quit to main menu and resume later.
Combined to Steam cloud you can even do a run on your PC and continue your run on your Steamdeck for example!
Beyond level 8
Maximum level you can reach per escape attempt is 12, once level 8 reached you have 4 perks for your Signature spell and 4 for your Basic attacks but now each level above level 8 allows you to replace one perk to optimize your build even more at the end of your runs.
Stats Window
It was not easy to know how your current build is impacting your base stats, now you will be able to see the stats anytime when opening your inventory or all the time by activating an option in the Gameplay menu.
Itinerant Peddlers
We have made the itinerant peddlers much more interesting. As the spells did not have much and no gambits on them, in late-game it felt not right to pick new spells.
Now prices are much more varied and spells can have gambits on them, impacting their prices up to 2000+ Quartz a spell. You can also find and buy astral Gambits there making Quartz currency much more interesting that it was!
We have also changed the altars to see the elements of spells and the rarity of gambits for a better lisibility.
Storytelling Elements
Narration has been extended and reworked a lot, there is a lot of changed dialogs and many new types of dialogues. For example you can now have self conversations on benches and heroes talk to each others.
Most Memory Fragment have been modified too to give a more complete story of every characters.
Co-op icons
We have given a lot of attention to co-op, one example is these icons that have been requested a lot by the community! But there is many other changes making the co-op experience more enjoyable!
If you want to interact with the community, report bugs or make suggestions, you can join our Discord Server!
Thanks for supporting us through this journey and have fun playing the 1.0 version of the game!
- The Hibernian Workshop Team