ASKA Weekly
Hail Tribe Leaders!
Here’s the first ASKA Weekly, first of many to come. These will be updates on what the Sand Sailors are currently working on, the state of the game, work-in-progress content and basically everything ASKA.
📜Closing Closed Alpha Thoughts
The first order of the day is the Closed Alpha that ended last week. We had 50 playtesters who got their first taste of the game. For us it has been a source of both joy and anxiety, as we’ve never tested the game for such extended periods of time with the same people. But we were happy to see the game was overall well received, of course with a lot of kinks left to iron out. But on a core level, we consider it a success and it emboldened us to carry on to the next chunk of content and to proceed with our development schedule.
And yes, you can pet the dog.
Our Alpha playtesters have also gifted us some wonderful screenshots from their Alpha adventures, so we invite you to take a look at the wonderful things they did.
📜Next playtest
The biggest question so far has been “when’s the next test?” and the answer to that is early next year. We have a lot of content in the works and depending how we manage to implement it we can come with a clear date. Expect announcements in January-February is all we can say.
📜Making ASKA bigger
As you know, we’re planning on an Early Access release, which means there’s going to be a lot of work especially after launch. To that end we need to make sure ASKA gets the best possible headstart and that people know about us. One way you can help is by following us on our social media accounts, because it helps us break through the algorithm and the noise, so if you haven’t already, please follow us on:
ASKA Twitter
or
ASKA Instagram
or
ASKA TikTok
We’ll also use these platforms to showcase your work, like screenshots, videos and maybe in the future things like theories, stories and fan-art.
📜Development News
In terms of how the game is going, here are several major segments being worked on this week:
📜Under the hood: World generation
Making the game world bigger, better, richer. Since the Alpha the world has doubled in size, so we’re constantly expanding it. Our end goal is not to have a large empty world, but to have a fun world that’s dense with content. There’s always the question of “How big is the world, how many SQMs/KMs?”. We don’t know how big the final world will be yet, but it’s less a question of miles/kilometres and more a question of what’s in that world. We can potentially make it as large as we want, but nobody’s going to enjoy a large empty world. The question is of content, what animals, biomes, enemies, ruins, caves, islands populate that world. We have to build a world that’s as big and open as possible in line with the amount of stuff we’re able to put in it. But this will be an ongoing discussion and we’ll get back to it over and over again. For those of you who don’t know, everything worldgen related is Hyperg’s domain. So if you have questions of how math becomes land, you know where to knock.
📜Boss Battles
This week we’re working on the first big baddie of the game, our first boss battle. This is a boss that should be fightable with the second tier of technology, the metal tier. There are a few boxes we needed to tick, which are:
Accessibility
The first boss needs to be a bit more vanilla than other enemies we have planned. It needs to feel familiar and slightly predictable so we ease the player in the idea of fighting large bastards.
Lore
To that idea, we came up with “The Forgotten”. Folk heroes, legendary generals, fabled shieldmaidens, defenders of the defenceless, or champions of the meek - they would all receive a god’s burial, and when the last sliver of flesh would fall off their bones, a new form would be made for them, one that would not rot, nor wither, so that their service might be eternal.
But time showed these people of old the limit of their wit, and even that which never rots, rots still. The rich engravings which adorned the bodies of these eternal heroes faded away, the power which maintained their sanity and soul faded, and age perverted these former beacons of virtue into mindless and violent earth puppets. However, deep in their bones of rock lies a power that animates them still, a power that your tribe could very much put to good use…
The Forgotten is Cristian’s baby, he made the model and will continue breathing life into the rock behemoth, up to the moment it ends up beating the life out of the player character.
📜Under the hood: Sailing
This week Ionut is in charge of sailing, keeping the Villagers from drowning and having them fish from a boat! We have a nice fishing boat we’ll be showcasing in the near future and everything fish related will get a massive upgrade. For the moment, fishing works by having the Villagers fish from the Fishing Hut’s pontoon. This is valid for Tier 1 (Wood Age) and in Tier 2 (Metal Age) fishermen will be able to go out at sea and fish better fish!
📜Upcoming: Metalworking Industry
Speaking of Metalworking, I’m also working on getting the buildings ready for the metal age. Charcoal making, iron smelting and blacksmithing, these are the buildings currently being under construction and will definitely be part of the next week’s ASKA Weekly.
📜Stream!
This Friday we’re getting back to our regular streaming schedule. This week we’re doing something special, we’ll try to boot up the saves from the Closed Alpha and show you a few of the villages our players made. Hopefully we’ll have the “owners” in chat as well to guide us and tell us what’s what. We’ve already shown you some of their work, now we’ll actually step inside their settlements! So tune in!
That’s the end of this ASKA Weekly! Share your thoughts on #aska-discussion!