- 2020 Astralojia Update - I quit promotion, and the pandemic... - 19 August 2020
While development has been going wonderfully, I love game design, writing, composition and programming this series, at promotion I'm more than terrible. To make the level of quality product I'm doing my best to develop, I can't focus on numbers or promotion. I need to do what I do best, stick to my strengths. Episode 1 is completely finished, Episode 2 is completely finished, and Episode 3's cutscenes are all finished, I'm making great progress and finding my process, the series is coming out better than I had dreamed, I've got this thing completely funded for a good 3-4 years ahead of me, I'm single, live cheaply, have few friends, and I'm going to keep it that way until I can get to about Episode 12 or so. For promotion, I'm just going to polish up a presentation and start e-mailing and messaging publishers. ...you know, when the pandemic started, it really shook my entire world. I ha…
- Astralojia: Episode 1 is Updated and It's Now FREE - 9 February 2020
After re-writing the screenplay for the first 12 episodes of the series I realized that in order to translate to other languages properly, there wasn't any need to have free roaming gameplay or keep the series in a more traditional RPG format, especially considering the whole battle system works off of skill bars. So, I took out free roaming and made the game into just cutscenes with battles. All of the sudden it makes waaaay more sense. It's just the direction that the series needed, it's not only much more engaging, but now I don't have to deal with random NPCs and pointless walking simulator moments. This does, though, mean that the gameplay is now much shorter, so I'm making Episodes 1 and 2 free of charge to play. There are no catches, there will be no DLC. Future episodes after that depending on demand will cost money. Other improvements include: No more 'controller only'! Now you…
- A Semi-New Direction - 27 September 2019
Thanks to everyone who shelled out the $5 for Episode 1, and thanks to everyone that left positive reviews for the game: jeffrey williams Cat Daddy Timster Rika Far2close You guys are the best. If you'd like to keep up to date with the game here are my twitter accounts: https://twitter.com/AstralojiaAvon (Older one) https://twitter.com/astralojia (Newer one I'll be using more frequently) Well, what do I have to say about Steam...It's definitely not what it used to be! On one end, the lack of curation and over-saturated content has me falling beneath a handful of very good products. On the other end, it's gotten me to re-plan on how I can make the series of games much better. My thought at first for this project was to release every episode as a completely separate and new game on Steam. Recently, though, I've found myself looking at isolating each part of the workflow from another. Most…
- Good Progress on Episode 2 - 7 September 2019
While progress has been coming along on Episode 2, Astralojia has been mentioned here: Steam Community Announcement I wanted to talk today about the game's difficulty level just a little bit. I know I've mentioned this before, but I feel it needs to be driven home. When playtesting one of the main changes I had to make to the game was to put in a 'White Belt Mode' that made the game much easier. The problem with this is that because then you just simply win every battle, you end up breezing by the first episode and then it not only lowers the length of the game, but lowers the enjoyment you get from losing, adjusting your strategy and re-trying. In other words, on easy, there's no strategy now, and since there's no strategy, all that I've worked for it looks like doesn't even matter and gets put to the side! This is evident in a game like Kingdom Hearts 3 more recently, in where the Cri…
- The Series New Direction - 5 September 2019
The game has not gotten the interest from the big press that I've worked all these years for, so I'm re-formulating my strategy moving forward. I'm going to be investing another three or more years into this at the very least, so I'm looking at what improvements I can make to the series to get the attention of mainstream press. Mostly everyone that's played the game has enjoyed the gameplay, and while it could always use improvements, I'm going to focus on improving other aspects: Length: The game is too short, there needs to simply be more episodes. Instead of releasing episode 2, I'm considering releasing episodes in digital 'DVDs' so to speak, or just call them seasons. The first season would be episode 1-4 or episodes 1-5, about that. You would have like a DVD select menu in where you select episodes that you want to play. It's designed in where you wouldn't have to play from beginn…
- The game is finally released... - 30 August 2019
So after all those thousands of hours of work on getting this first episode out there, the game is finally released. I've given it my all every day over the course of 3 years to try to make an enjoyable cinematic experience with fun gameplay. At this point, that's all I can hope for now and moving forward. Thanks to all of the reviewers, playtesters and let's players that participated in the release of this game. Thanks to Steam for having me as well and all of the friends and family who gave me support. I hope to make more episodes more rapidly in the future, but September will be a time of focusing on family as we're moving. October will be my big month for returning to the project, and I'm trying to set myself up for a year so that I can crank these episodes out one after another starting then. Again, the price tag of $4.99 helps support me in making future episodes and improve more…
- About the game being short! - 28 August 2019
So, again, this first episode is $4.99 and people have reported the game as being pretty short, most finishing it in 1-2 hours. The idea that I had, though, was to create a game like a Super Mario Maker level, in where yes it's short, but you have to play through it again and again until you succeed. The problem with THAT ended up being that many more casual players wanted me to create an easier mode, as they argued that a story based game shouldn't be as hard, or that they are more casual players and just want to relax more while they play it. So, White Belt mode and Blue Belt mode were born.... The thing is, once I get past season 1, episodes 1 through 4, as these episodes get shorter (and their prices much cheaper by the way), I want to start to make each episode more and more difficult to get through. I imagine it this way...If there's an episode which is 40 minutes long (which I wo…
- Fixed white screen of death, game ready for launch... - 28 August 2019
Hey there, I've fixed the white screen of death recently and the game is now ready for launching in.....now 1 day and 11 hours about! The game has now worked flawlessly on almost any computer I've tested it on, with two exceptions: An older laptop with integrated Radeon R5 graphics has the game freeze on it, but it works at first. My thought is that it has old Direct Input drivers, I'm looking over the crash report to figure it out. I haven't updated it's drivers so I'll have to post back about this one when I get the chance. The game will NOT work on 32-bit systems, so I've made sure to put '64-bit required' under minimum specs. If anyone buys the game and has any trouble running it please contact me right away at astraloja gmail.com no brackets or spaces and I'll see what I can come up with. Happy gaming, Astrah
- White Screen of Death Problems... - 27 August 2019
There are problems happening with a few people that had GeForce cards. Not only would you get a white screen of death, you would get a blast of sound way past max volume, and no music would play. To counter this, I've patched the newest version with a launcher that you can see here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EC9dnW7WsAA6gFL?format=jpg&name=medium The game has been running fine for most people, but this one is a very bad bug because it's completely game breaking. With this launcher you can select between three graphics modes: High End Low End
- Critical Pre-Release Bug Fixes! - 23 August 2019
PLEASE NOTE: If you have the game right now/are a pre-release tester, streamer, let's player or reviewer, your previous save games due to the nature of the update will NOT be compatible with this newer version of the game! Some changes will not take effect with old save files! Please report any graphical issues and other bugs and glitches you're having and I'll get to it asap! There have been some critical bug fixes including: White screen of death should now be fixed for those who couldn't play it before. This was I believe due to DirectX 11 having some problems with newer Nvidia drivers and Unity's screen effects. I switched the game to OpenGL. The 'Some Kid' cutscene in the beginning where he jumps out of the bushes was glitched for some players (thanks to the Youtubers/Streamers: The Francom Brothers for the playthrough!). The cutscene should now be fixed. The Ice Kid in Raynwood vi…
- I hope you enjoy Astralojia - 21 August 2019
Well, I've sent out steam keys to streamers and reviewers and felt that I've done most of what I can do for getting Episode 1 out there. I'm probably gonna slow down a little bit because very overwhelmed with the whole marketing and advertising thing, and quite frankly I want to get back to what I love to do most, which is write stories and music. So, I'll ask who I can on Youtube and elsewhere to give the game a try every day, probably until the end of September or so, but what I really want to do is just work on the series. I'm hoping I can bring on/hire a pr guy to help out and handle the whole 'getting it out there' bit while I can just work on the next episodes and make them as good as they can be. When season 1 is done, I'll look at porting to the Switch mainly, because I think the art style and tone of the series would compliment Nintendo. I hope you stick around and enjoy the se…
- Series Plans, Season 1 Pricing, Future Episodes Will Be Cheaper... - 13 August 2019
Products and Pricing I have this concern that people might think that each game will be priced at $4.99 but this isn't the case. Episode 1 is priced more to hopefully help me out with rent so that I can develop the whole season. The plan is to have seasons release with a schedule, which I'm hoping will be more strict in the future. I can probably promise 1 game a month: Episode 1 - $4.99: Releasing Sept 1st Episode 2 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Nov 1st Episode 3 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Dec 1st Episode 4 - $1.99: Probably Releasing Jan 1st Full First Season - $9.99 Episode 1 Soundtrack - $4.99 Episode 2 Soundtrack - $1.99 Episode 3 Soundtrack - $1.99 Episode 4 Soundtrack - $1.99 Plans Over the years to achieve creating this full series I've developed an SDK for Unity paired with a character generator that generates sprite sheets, then a basic amount of 3D resources to go with it. It…
- The game is about done... - 30 July 2019
I've spent the last two weeks making necessary improvements and fixing little bugs, and I think that should about do it. I'm going to play through it again one more time and try to search every nook and cranny I can. If you find any game breaking bugs, just e-mail me at [email protected].
- I want this game to be a challenge... - 21 July 2019
I'm doing my best to even out the difficulty. I want to make the game difficult but not so much that you're throwing your controller at the screen. I want it to just simply be fun. There are 4 belts: - White Belt - Blue Belt - Black Belt - Third Degree Black Belt (Unlockable when you finish through the game once) White Belt should be like the mode where you mostly win. Blue Belt you should lose every now and then. Black Belt you should lose just as much as you win. And Third Degree Black Belt you should lose constantly and keep trying until you can beat it. The game is designed to be hard. How am I to make big epic story battles in the future if I don't make it extremely difficult to beat? The solution I've come up with is to have the load menu prop up right after you lose any battle. It's a good idea to run through the game I'd say on Blue Belt mode, which is kind of your 'normal' mode…
- New Updates Coming That Will Make It Look More 'Unreal' - 20 July 2019
New Updated verison of the game needs to be tested fully before uploading tomorrow, but can't wait to upload this one because for anyone with a GPU that has 3GB or above (like Geforce 1050 for example or above) the game will now set it to 1080p with anti-aliasing and slight motion blur to give it much more of an 'Unreal ' feel. Updates will include: - BIGGEST UPDATE: Graphics on any GPU that is 3GB or over in memory will look waaaay better now, all smoothed out, so hopefully a lot more like Octopath Traveler now. - Fixing finder arrow that would stay displayed in cutscenes. - Now Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R combo will reset the game to the title screen on PC, akin to resetting a console. - Splashes on PC will follow the camera much more tightly.
- Huge Game Breaking Bug! Updates and a Few More Improvements Coming... - 18 July 2019
There are a handful of new updates coming. I uploaded an updated version and first and foremost the game will not even get past the first loading screen if you installed an older version!! This is being fixed ASAP, for now you can delete your 'Astralojia' folder under your Users/YOURUSERNAME/AppData/LocalLow/ folder and the game will re-create it. It has to do with save files/etc.... being different in there. Here are the improvements for this week: - like Pokemon now the game has a text box that shows up and tells you what the move is that's performed. I believe this adds a huge dynamic to it. - damage increases even more per round so battles don't loop forever - in the menu instead of 'tutorial' it's replaced with 'controls' - the floor for inner battles isn't too bright anymore - Before when you didn't finish a skill bar in time, the 'A' button indicator would hang, I fixed that - La…
- Fixed A Couple of Game Breaking Bugs... - 10 July 2019
Village no music, fixed Unlocking third degree black belt mode fixed at end of game. Ambient SFX not playing fixed No music on squirrel part towards end of game fixed. Difficulty of skill bars increased for lower levels (it was waaay too low). Added 'Warning: Taking too long to load' disclaimer if you're stuck in loading screen infinitely (haven't found any bugs that do this, but if anything occurs it will prop up) When you level up the level up indicator said 'new ability slot' on lvls 3 and 5, when in reality it was lvls 2 and 4 that you get a new one. All of these bugs have been fixed, two of them were game breaking so the game should now play through from beginning to end in a stable manner. If you find any bugs please report them to the discord here and I'll respond promptly: https://discord.gg/8BeQAy
- Updated With New Features - 8 July 2019
I've made a ton of needed updates after taking feedback from initial play-testing. This has included removing the lengthy tutorial images in favor of two simple 'controls' images, slowing down the skill bar in battle in easier modes, making it so that damage scales and scales every turn so that battles don't last forever, and adding indicators in particular menus and in battle. VR is also just about ready and will be coming soon. Thanks for sticking around!
- After Playtesting: A Large Handful of Improvements Coming - 29 June 2019
I want Episode 1 to be as good as it can be, so after receiving a ton of useful feedback from PiroTae (Twitch streamer) and a handful of friends, as well as curators, I will be making the following improvements: 1. Most important of all, the skill bars are too random and too fast, which leads to a lot of frustration, because instead of it coming down to skill it seems like it just comes down to a sense of randomness, which leads to the player feeling like he doesn't have a sense of control. 2. There absolutely NEEDS to be a camera follow mode for the PC version (this version) of the game. Right now you have to turn your camera and it has a hard time following the player when the player gets closer to the camera. 3. Regenerate less less less white magic per round when defending. 4. Attacks take more and more and more damage per round. These two improvements are essential, because otherwi…
- Release Date set for August 30th! - 17 June 2019
Hey there everybody, the release date for the game is now set for August 30th. I'm sending pre-release steam keys to streamers and press now and will be doing that for the next 9 or 10 weeks or so up until it's release for promotion. If you're a streamer and would like a steam key just give me an e-mail at [email protected] and I'll get one to you. It includes the full game, not a demo, for free under the condition that you will stream the game on your twitch or youtube channel (or of course write an article if you're press). Thanks! - Mark
