Welcome to 2022

We hope you spent a good time during the holidays! On our side, the studio members took a well deserved holiday break and had a great time. We feel reinvigorated and we are very motivated for this upcoming exciting year to work on Astral Ascent!

New playtest version is here!

How to better start the year than with a brand new Playtest version? We have been delaying this new version as we wanted to do a major update with polished content before collecting your thoughts about it, this new version includes:

• the Red barrens (second world of the game) with new enemies / challenges
• 5 new bosses to face (Virgo, Leo, Sagittarius, Lupus & Pegasus)
• 3 new room types to discover
• 2 new hub NPCs to meet with new progression systems
• 10+ new Auras
• 13 new spells to use
• and plenty more...

You can check the dedicated patch-note here, it is probably not complete as the update was so massive but we tried to be exhaustive.
Virgo, Sagittarius and Leo

How to participate?

You need to have the Playtest app unlocked on your Steam account, if you already have it the new version will update automatically, if you do not have it already:

• Join our Discord Server and follow our Kickstarter Assistant instructions in the #kickstarter-rewards channel to get your backer Discord role.
• React in the #playtests-register channel to get the Playtester role.
• Welcome to the #playtests channel where you can ask for a key.
• Use the key in Steam.

Can I keep my saves from previous Playtest?

Your last playtest saves will be saved if they were from 0.21.10 or more, if you lost your saves you can now press LB and RB while launching the game to skip the intro tutorial.

Can I help you or share my thoughts?

We have created a new survey here to collect your thoughts about this new version. We have improved the game a lot thanks to your previous feedbacks so thank you if you take the time to answer it this time again. You can also create suggestions tickets in the #suggestions channel of the Discord Server. Unlisted commented Youtube videos (without comments is fine too) are extremely appreciated so we can better see how you react to the game elements.

New level elements - the Red barrens is complete!

The second world of the game is now content complete, we have recently added new traps that will appear on the explorations room to make those rooms more dangerous and lively. We did not want to add traps at the beginning of the development but we love how it turned out. You'll see that they also are tools to deal damages to your enemies.
Fire geysers
Fire Statue We have also added new traps in the Fragmented Plains (first world), these elements only appear in the Exploration rooms to make them feel more unique and more rhythmed.
Carnivorous Plant

New unique auras - new gimmick effects

For some time, we felt that Auras lacked funny and gameplay-changing elements, we decided to work on this giving unique gimmicks to work with and create combo with other effects! There is plenty of new Auras to discover and new interesting combos between the Auras or between Auras and Gambits, we hope you'll like them as much as we do!
Aura combo explosive dash + fire projectiles

Achievements and Auras NPCs

We have also added new content to the main hub: Two new NPCs have joined the cast! The first one is a familiar face, Sieur Bapy from the Kickstarter stretch goals has finally arrived at the hub and will now keep track of your achievements and even giving you extra rewards to help you during your journey.
Sieur Bapy Achievement menu The second one is a mysterious and ancient being that everyone named Dragon for obvious reasons. You will now be able to get access to new auras to unlock during your next adventures!
Aura NPC

World balancing changes and Salvage mechanic

One of the main changes we have made since the previous version is changing the structure of the runs:

• Fight rooms will now exclusively give keys - merchants became much more important
• Higher tier loots are rarer than before - collecting gambits became more interesting
• Exploration rooms have been shortened - experience is more dynamic all around

Those changes implied a lot of changes on progression during runs and, if you try the new version, you will see that it's quite different from what we had before, all of your feedbacks regarding thoses changes are welcomed! Among the progression changes, we decided to add a salvage mechanic to the game, giving you the possibility to salvage unwanted spells/gambits and tranform them into quartz to use in the next shop, you can also salvage Auras into difficulty stars. It is now always exciting to find these rewards because if they are not fitting your current build you will still get currency to invest in something you need for your build at next merchant.
We really hope you will appreciate all this new content as much as we do. Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!
Hard working team Have a wonderful day, -The Hibernian Workshop Team

[ 2022-01-14 18:16:14 CET ] [ Original post ]