Happy new year! New Playtest version is here! 🐲
over 2 years ago – Sun, Jan 16, 2022 at 01:22:50 AM

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

Have a wonderful day,

-The Hibernian Workshop Team

More than 12 Zodiacs, new Room types and much more! ✨
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 25, 2021 at 11:59:48 PM

We did it! We have added a new world to Astral Ascent - The Red Barrens.

It includes 2 new Zodiacs (Leo and Sagittarius) who are even more dangerous than the Fragmented Plains Zodiacs (Taurus, Virgo & Capricorn), 8 new enemies, new interactible elements, new spells and much more (as you will discover below)!

However, we want to take a bit more time to polish all this new content before giving you access for the Playtests, we think it's not very relevant to give you access and get feedbacks we would already be aware of, therefore we will probably release it during second part of December.

More than 12 Zodiacs - The Star Guardians

You might remember the Star Guardians stretch goal from our Kickstarter Campaign, it was supposed to be an extra room shared for each worlds with stronger enemies to fight there. We kept the concept but had the idea of using more Constellations as enemies and they are actually much more than enemies as we consider them as mini-bosses, we have already added 2 to the game: Pegasus and Lupus!

Those bosses are less powerful than the 12 main Zodiacs but will still be a hard challenge to overcome and you should not underestimate them. They can only be met by going through the new Star Guardians room.

Those constellations bosses will give you great rewards so you may not want to miss fighting them. 

Also, we will add more with time to get at least 4 for final release to be able to find one different randomly in each world. Let us know if there is Constellations you particularly like and would like to see there.

Yalee kingdom and Andromeda's bar

In addition to the Star Guardians room, we added two new unique rooms in the game with the purpose of giving you guaranteed access to rare power-ups: Auras and stone altars.

The Yalee kingdom is a small village hidden from the hostility of the world where several Yalees live in peace, they will welcome you and offer you a free Aura to help you in your adventure.

But as you can see, citizens of the village have been kidnapped and it will be your duty to find the missing Yalees in the world and bring them back to safety, the more of them you save, the more Auras choices you will have in the Yalee Kingdom.

In Andromeda's bar you'll meet a new NPC: Andromeda the tenant.

She will give you access to special beverages that will grant you stone altars effects in exchange for a special currency: the difficulty stars (the ones you collect depending of the difficulty you select in each room and that you can use in Difficulty Lotteries altar)

These 3 new room types allow more varied runs and each world takes a little less time to complete as we imagined these rooms to be fast to complete.

New Heroes spells and gameplay features

We added 5 new uniques heroes spells for both Ayla and Kiran with new impressive visuals, unique animations and gameplay features, we hope you'll have fun with them in your future runs!

We also added a little gameplay feature, upon performing a fall attack the character dash will instantly reset allowing you to get even more mobility!

Reworked landscapes

We received a lot of feedbacks regarding lisibility of the game, so we did rework (again) landscapes background and elements of the game to give you a better readability. We think this new iteration is finally solving the issues we had!

New Game + System

Finally, we are in the process of designing and implementing a New Game+ system for Astral Ascent giving the opportunity to those of you overcoming the Red Barrens to play with a bit more challenge. You'll be able to activate various different penalties and personalize your experience. 

We hope you love the recent changes we made as much as we do (we are having so much fun playing the game with all the new changes!) and don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!

Have a wonderful day,

-The Hibernian Workshop Team

New world, bosses and spells are coming soon! ♐
over 2 years ago – Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 09:16:03 PM

New playtest version coming next month!

Good news everyone, there will be a new playtest version on November, we want to make a major content update by adding a lot of new content to the game and what most of you have been waiting for:  the Red Barrens (world 2)!

Finally, Leo will not stop you anymore from going further into the game and you will be able to enjoy a preview of what is coming to Early Access which means a lot of new things!

Second world : the red barrens!

We have made a lot of progress regarding art, backgrounds and new gameplay features.

In the first world, you had bouncy mushrooms and explosive dandelions to play with. In this new one you will have fire wisp altar and lava burst portals!

These new level design elements are both useful for combats, but you will see that portals will also be used in exploration room to have new fun ways to gain height and explore the rooms!

Orchestral surprise

Our music composer, Dale North, worked with an orchestra to record some of his awesome compositions! These records give  a new dimension to the music and we are amazed by this work, we hope you will be too!

New summons and new challenges!

As you may know, our current demo only features one challenge/summon: Virgo.

We increased that number from 1 to 5 new summons available! 

Capricorn, Taurus, Leo and Sagittarius will lend you their powers, if you have what it takes to take on their challenges! Each of these challenges is different and require talent relevant to the Zodiac you face. Virgo was all about speed, Capricorn is about memory and Leo about strength.

Each summoning has a different use in fights and they are all really unique from one another!

New spells concepts!

We have just starting working on new spells ideas and concepts for both heroes signature spells and common spells. Some of them are already integrated in the game and that you will have the pleasure to test out in the next playtest version!

Finally, 3 new bosses in game!

We have done it! 3 new bosses in the next update making a total of 5 bosses available to fight in game! 

•  Virgo has been added as the third and last boss for the first world!
•  Leo and Sagittarius were added as new bosses of the second world! 

We hope you will have a great time battling them and withstanding their epic attacks and spells!

Event : Game Made in France 2021!

Last week, we were part of the Game Made In France 2021 event. Over 12000 people tuned in to follow  the two famous french streamers DamDamLive and MisterMV play Astral Ascent demo! This was really great and Alexandre and Louis were there giving developers insights about the game.

You can find the replay here! (Be warned, it's in french!)

There were also the DechartGames streaming duo that made an english stream for the event! You can find their replay here!

On that note, don't forget about our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to talk with the community and give us your feedbacks on the game!

Have an excellent day,

-The Hibernian Workshop Team

Painted Ayla figure, new Playtest version and more!
over 2 years ago – Fri, Sep 24, 2021 at 04:24:50 PM

Painted figure preview

During last update, we made a poll to get your opinion about having Ayla fully painted (for no extra cost) and making it available on our Backerkit store to cover the additional costs from manufacturer. 

You were 98.2% voting yes! So the figure is available again on the store (as you already backed you will need to wait a final survey before final shipment to add it to your order, you should not add it now). 

We also received the first pictures, not final, from Limited Run Games manufacturer painted version and we love it!

New Playtest version is here - 0.21.0

Thanks so much to everyone who joined our Playtests sessions on our Discord Server. We registered 171 unique testers and 56 of you took time to answer our gameplay survey. This helped us a lot! 

Playstests allow us to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the game and a lot of changes were made according to the feedbacks we received. Seeing many people sharing an opinion confirms that something needs to be changed on a specific feature. An example of that is that several players reported utility spells were slow to use so we made them instant and you can now do it while performing any other animation and it is much better!

We have just launched 0.21.0 on Steam Playtests branch (visible on game main menu). It also comes with a new survey if you have the time to fill it after playing it would be very nice.

To keep track of all the changes that we do, we decided to create Patch notes for each updates that we make. You can see the Patch notes dedicated to this new update here.  This version should be the one used for Steam Next Festival starting October 1st.

These Playtests sessions are like a pre early access as we are able to collect many meaningful feedbacks and we are training to make frequent and stables updates so we can keep a similar rhythm during Early Access. 

If you have not joined the Playtests yet and want to, please check our previous update to see the steps to join.

More news

We have created many things for 0.21.0 like new level design elements that will give more variety to the fights and exploration as you can see below:

We have also created a new gambit type that allows you to unlock a gambit slot on a spell. This will be very useful for long runs to create the best possible builds.

Past months were mostly focused on improve the existing content of the game but we think we have recently reached (with 0.21.0 update) the level of quality we wanted to have in the game. 

Early Access is our next milestone and will now put all our efforts toward it with new summoning, new challenges, world 2 integration and new bosses fight for Virgo, Leo and Sagittarius.

Finally we would like to let you know that we absolutely love how the game is shaping up and your recent feedbacks were very good and motivating too.

Don't forget about our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to discuss about the game development,

Have an excellent day,

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

Playtests are open, Ayla figure news & many changes! ☄️
over 2 years ago – Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 04:08:43 PM

Last month we shared many design updates and a lot of changes all around the place and this month makes no exception: we did it again! And what better way to discover last changes than to discover them yourselves?

Playtests are open!

It is now possible for you to play the game right now through our Playtest versions of the game on Steam. 

We are making it available for backers and playtesters only to get your feedback on the new mechanics and how you feel about the game even if it has a lot of work-in-progress elements. For now it is focused on an improved version of our demo but we hope to maintain these Playtests open during the coming months to share with you more content and get your feedback about it.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

First, join our Discord Server. Once you claimed your backer role, you can see #playtests-register channel and get a special playtester role there that gives you access to private #playtests channel where you will be guided and receive a Steam Playtest key.

Ayla Figure

We have great news regarding the 20cm height Ayla Figure. We have been in contact with Limited Run Games and their manufacturer (they received original model from our sculptor partner) and we have the opportunity of having a fully painted version! It comes at a higher price and we would need to sell a bit more of these figures by making them available on our Backerkit Late-pledge shop to make it possible.

We are then opening a poll to get your opinion if we should make it available and get it fully painted or stick to the non-painted version: poll link. 

(you will not be charged anything more if we go for the painted version)

Iterating is key for rogue-lites!

We are now working on Astral Ascent for more than 2 years and it became clear to us that rogue-lites fun comes from the variety of situations you can find and this variety comes from iterations. We keep improving every aspect of the game and it turns out absolutely great! Most team members are playing the game on their free time because they are loving the how the game evolves so we think we are on the right track.

Here is a selection of our recent work:

Virgo animations are complete, she will be a very fast boss, be prepared!

We have reworked the hub currency, it is now called "Sun Pieces" as we thought it would be easier to talk about it if it has a name and an unique shape and color. It comes with a new currency named Yalee Tickets for the stylist. As the stylist upgrades are only visuals it felt weird to use the same currency than the one that improves your gameplay. Yalee tickets can be found during your runs!

Stress-test of the reworked version of the freeze effect. It is now slowing down enemies before reaching the 10 stacks to freeze!

Burn effects now set stacks on nearby enemies when exploding and it can become very devastating!

We have also created balloons for merchants as it felt like a perfect way of locomotion in this aerial world (and also because we thought it was cool!).

We did not remember this narrative piece and even our Narrative designer did not remember it writing it but who wants to play Chesskers?

We are on all fronts as we now have all enemies from worlds 4 designed and all enemies from world 3 coded. We think that we will need to work on a lot of different matters once we release the game in early access and we want to deliver frequent updates with new content so it is important to us to start making this content before the early access release.

We have created a lot of new effects to add the variety we talked about earlier. Here are 3 of these new effects :

•  yalee madness:  every spell launched spawns a yalee for a short period of time 
•  transe: spells cost no mana for a short period of time 
•  movespeed: player moves faster for a short period of time

There is more effects and the most interesting part is of course the combinaison and builds you can create by mixing them!

New work-in-progress elements for The Garden

We hope you like these monthly updates! On our side it is always great to look behind and see all the progress that has been made recently.

Don't forget about our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to discuss about the game development,

Have an excellent day,

- The Hibernian Workshop Team