ASKA 1 year anniversary!
Vikings, it’s hard to believe, but it’s been officially ONE YEAR since we released ASKA in Steam Early Access! It continues to be one of our greatest adventures and endeavours as of yet! It’s been a very exciting year and jumping from update to update sometimes makes the past blend into a wonderfully hectic and colorful blur, so we’re taking a step back to look at all the things we’ve managed to achieve in this one year of early access.
40% Discount!
And to top it off, we’re lopping off 40% of the game’s price, making it THE best time to jump in the game, either alone or with friends. Let’s dive in the past!
6 major updates
We’ve managed to deliver 6 chunky content updates, making the current version of ASKA quite a different beast from the initial release of the game.
Update 1 - August 2024: Custom Game Mode and more!
The first major update saw the addition of the Custom Game mode, during a time when the game was getting a bit of negative feedback for the base mode being too harsh, one of the most common requests being the addition of a “peaceful mode”. With the Custom Game we allowed the gentler vikings to take it easy and enjoy building and crafting at their own leisure without fear of Revenant attacks. Or, on the contrary, those who needed more of a challenge now had the option to crank up the enemy headcount and biome scarcity.
Among other additions, the Outhouse (“RAAAAGH-OOOF”) brought some relief to both Vikings and farms, the Beauty Pit allowed players to customize their character mid-session, the Metal Parts Collector made Villagers take better care of their scrap iron and the Spiky Walls made life a living hell for marauding Smolkrs and Skellies.
Update 2 - October: Farmers and Fighters
This important update brought a much needed feature to the farming system - the ability to schedule crops, allowing for automatic crop rotation. Hard to believe there was farming before this, right? Another much needed addition was the Militia system and the horn, which overhauled village defense and added another layer of depth to how fighters work.
We also shed light on the Caves, adding the ability to place torches and we made the crawler dens defeatable, and we also added the Steam Cloud Save system!
Update 3 - November: Dedicated Servers Update
November brought on one of the most requested features: Dedicated Servers and in-game chat. The world also changed forever as part of this update were also the new terraforming tools: the Roadplanner and Pathmaker, making ramps and automated road building a reality. Archers also got better and the game received some very important visual facelifts, with new shaders, reworked materials and improved lighting.
Yule Update - December 2024
A festive gift
we had in store
For all you Vikings
Who cried “More!”
December brought in the Yule tree and decorations, as well as a HOST of other improvements for things like the Bloomery, patrol routes and some warehouse wars.
Update 4 - February: Trees Regrow!
This has been our all-time most well received update and made trees an infinite resource with the addition of the Forester. Our metrics so far indicate that you considered this to be the most exciting of all updates. Besides trees, we’ve also added the Explosive Sacks, making iron renewable, virtually making all the resources in the game infinite. Caves were also caught in the spotlight and received a much needed rework.
Steam Deck Update - March
Hard work was also done to make ASKA run smoothly on the Steam Deck marshalling the dawn of a new kind of player: the COUCH VIKING. ASKA would no longer be restricted to the cumbersome desktop, but would learn to travel by plane, boat, bus and train.
Update 5 - March: Lakes and Outposts
Also in March we finished work on the brand new outpost system, which allowed players for the first time to set up decentralized sub-settlements, adding a whole new layer of management to the entire villager system. Lakes were also added, marking the first time we’ve added a major new biome to the game after the EA release. Besides this, we’ve also added a whole new array of thatch buildings and PIES made their first appearance
Update 6 - May: Tinkerers and Armorers
Our most recent update at the time of writing, this update allowed vikings to research new weapons using ancient looted weapons, the armorsmith was added, and probably most importantly: bombs now gained the ability to remove the dreaded unremovable rocks! As usual, a nice assortment of new buildings also graced the Build Menu, like the Lookout, the Proud Chieftain’s House. Also, last but not least, the party system was implemented.
Beyond the major updates, we’ve also delivered tens of patches and hotfixes and we’ll continue to do so - we’ve only just begun!
Our Wonderful Community
But by far our greatest achievement was being lucky enough to gather such a wonderful, friendly and helpful community around the game. Every developer has their concerns when it comes to how a community might evolve, but ASKA has been blessed with one of the nicest playerbases we have ever encountered as gamers ourselves. Your trust, feedback and bug reports are what made ASKA grow and we hope you realize that you’ve managed to help this tight indie team power through one of their most daunting projects ever. In a world where a lot of things can go wrong it seems A LOT of things went GOOD for ASKA, and it’s you, our alpha, beta and early access players we’re thankful for making this happen.
What’s next?
We’re almost done with our next update, so expect good news really soon
Our Community team
We would also like to thank our former community manager Paige for all the wonderful work she’s done for ASKA before passing the torch unto Aleksandar, our brand new shiny community manager! We’ve been fortunate to work alongside some wonderful people from Thunderful Games and this last year of development has been nothing short of spectacular.
An endless round of applause also goes to our faithful Discord mods: Alvoro, Hydra, Khaos, Marvin Redsock, Remize and ZapZockt, without whom we couldn’t have done anything! We’re also thankful to our Viking Veterans who have been with us since the very first versions of the game AND some of whom have been with us since our older days back during BOSSGARD’s development.
Dev Stream Today: Playing old ASKA Builds!
We’ll be streaming today to celebrate the anniversary, and we thought it would be really cool to turn back the clock and play some VERY old ASKA builds, just to remind ourselves of the long road which is ASKA’s development.
Tune in on our Twitch channel at 19:30 CET: View game page