Early Access - Release date Announcement!
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Apr 01, 2022 at 06:01:54 AM

Announcement video

Astral Ascent is coming to Steam Early Access on April 12!

The whole team would like to thank you for the great support you have given us since the Kickstarter campaign started, we are now days away from releasing our first self-published game and it means a lot to us so thank you again for making this possible. 🌟

Fully voiced

We are so happy to tell you that we will have every dialogs voiced (English) for the  Early Access release. We have worked with insanely talented voice actors, they gave life to each character and we absolutely love the result.

New Game Plus

We have been hard working on the NG+ elements for some time and we were not really happy with what we had because we used to have small changes for each level. We changed that to focus on 12 levels of NG+ and each level makes a real change by making the game more fun & challenging. 

You will find elements such as :

• Dead enemies can revive as zombies
• Bosses now have elite modificators
• Elites are much more frequent and dangerous
• and much more...

It can quickly become very hard to deal with and we cannot wait to see how far you will be able to go with this system! This system will evolve with time as we do not have all the Zodiacs in the game yet.

Your Steam Key

Those of you who pre-ordered the Early Access version of the game will start receiving keys in the coming days, we will send about 400 keys a days so do not until a few days if you do not receive the email and you will only be able to play on release day (but you can play the Playtest version now).

Have a wonderful day and see you for the release date!

-The Hibernian Workshop Team

New NPCs, New spell system, new dialog system... All available to play right now! ♉
almost 3 years ago – Mon, Feb 28, 2022 at 09:58:39 PM

First of all, we want to left you know that we are getting closer and closer to the Early Access release date, it's no longer a matter of years or months but it's a matter of weeks! Yes, we are that close and we will keep you updated about it.

New Playtest version! ♉ 

This month update makes no exception, we have made many new changes into the game and the good news is that you can play right now with the Playtest version (dedicated patch-note here) ! Do not hesitate to share your feedback about the game either here or on our Discord Server, this is truly helping us making the best possible game as we are currently looking for bugs, balancing and polish in order to be ready for the Early Access release.

Extra NPCs Animations

You might remember our last Stretch Goal from the Kickstarter campaign, we were so close to get it that we decided that we would work on it anyway in order to thank you for the great success of this campaign.

We have already added a lot of new animations for the Garden folks, Papa Yalee even has new visuals.

These new animations make the Garden even more lively!

Spell level up! 🔮 

We added a new progression system: the spell level system!

Spells will now have a level going from 0 to 10. Each level will give the spell a bonus % damage, giving you the opportunity to make your favorite spells even stronger and also to make it interesting to change your builds more regularly as the loot rarity increases with your run worlds progression. 

We had this idea to solve the lack of incentives to change spells once you had 4 different spells, it makes things much more dynamic and interesting in the long run. 

This system introduces a new kind of loot: the peacock feather! This is used to gain spell levels and make them more powerful, it is a new room reward with gambits/spells and crystals.

 They come in several rarities giving from +1 or +2 levels to a whooping +5 for the legendary gold feather!

2 New Constellations NPCs and rooms: Cetus 🐋 and Pavo 🦚 

In our research of more runs variety and adding more unique Constellations NPCs (as we did with Andromeda before) we worked on 2 Constellations NPCs that come with two new rooms with unique mechanics:

•  1 - the Cetus room: A mysterious cave containing lots of treasures and baubles and waiting inside is not a fierce dragon but a giant whale, Cetus! This friendly creature will give you a choice between several categories of gambits and will give you 2 (or sometime 3) gambits of the specified kind. Don't forget to thank the creature on your way out!

•  2 -  the Pavo room: A gorgeous sky structure that seems to be located in an entirely different world. Here, Pavo the peacock will granting you a feather to gain power from (increase spell level). If you feel greedy, you can also ask Pavo for more feather but everytime, you will need to sacrifice healthpoints to do so.

We hope you'll have fun discovering them in your next escape attempts!

Context dialog system! 🗨️ 

We worked on a new system merging narration and gameplay and come up with what we call the context dialog system!

This system is simple, in certain contexts when you go through the game, characters will start talking giving you sometimes advices on what's happening or simply greeting you! 

The heroes also react dynamically in a lot of situations making the global experience more dynamic.

For now the voices are made with an AI but we are actively working on making quality voice-overs with great actors for the game.

Overall bosses rework! 💪 

We spent time to rework every bosses in the game, we have made the decision to make them faster and thus harder but we reworked visual feedbacks a lot to make them more readable and also changed some of their attacks. Also, even if they are harder now, you will always have an healing room option before bosses so you do not start a boss fight with no chances or no possibility to better understand the patterns. Zodiacs want fair fights and so do we but prepare for intense fights against those mighty warriors!

We really hope you will appreciate all this new content we added, do not hesitate to send us feedback about it. Also, unlisted youtube videos with commented gameplay are extremely appreciated to help us understand better your reactions to the different situations. (the team speaks english, french & portuguese)

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

Happy new year! New Playtest version is here! 🐲
almost 3 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! ✨
about 3 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! ♐
about 3 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