Astra - Monthly Update (November 2024)

Hello Patreons,

Hope everyone is having a great weekend! To kick things off, let's first start with me asking you to stop gibbing the monies once again!! >:O

Details as to why are here:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/important-update-111055840

With that out of the way, let's proceed forward with the monthly update. We have a special section about our release plans below so please feel free to take a look at that as well!

ASSETS

Firstly, the updated UI is in full force! You will be able to check it out in the latest version of the game that we'll be sharing soon (or on Steam! more on that in our release plans).

Apart from that, we finished up the last two music tracks for Astra which are available for your listening pleasure here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-epilogue-116612822

https://www.patreon.com/posts/astra-epilogue-b-116612901

Outside of that, we've been doing a lot of little polish and tweaks here and there... stuff like the main cast name finally has color like our other VNs amongst others. Just a bunch of those little things that make a big impact!

FIXES

We finally are fully caught up on all the bug reports that were submitted! In addition to this, all the strange things going on post-Naninovel upgrade are addressed. The UI upgrade also went smoothly and is behaving as intended. Overall, things are finally in a stable spot as we head towards release!

VOICE

Last Update

Current Status

Celeste and Kai is fully completed and implemented!!!! We are also done Luna and almost done Vaela for episode 2 which just leaves Iris. That means we are basically guaranteed to have episode 2 for you lovely Patreons in time for the holidays and I will see if I can even try to push to episode 3. O_O All in all, voice is progressing at a steady pace as you can see!

RELEASE PLANS

The big subject that has been floating around for a while! There are a few things to cover as well as some context so let's get started.

First and most important, we are going to be releasing on Steam Early Access sometime this upcoming week! We submitted a build for Lord Gaben's blessing and then will be good to go shortly thereafter. The Steam Early Access version will be the voiced version of episode 1 and non-voiced version of the remaining episodes. It will more or less be parity with the Patreon build.

That being said, going forward, Patreon builds will always be one episode ahead in terms of voice over work. So when Patreon gets episode 3 voiced, we will push the voiced episode 2 to early access. You all have been very helpful in finding bugs and issues so we hope this staggered launch will both give you exclusive access first and also help shape a cleaner build for the wider Early Access audience!

Why are we going with this approach? Mainly 3 reasons.
1) Voice work is just too much. Astral Ascension is a very big game AND we are doing all the voice at the end. I just didn't realize the sheer amount of work it would take. Since everything else is done, it seems like shame to not release in a more iterative approach.
2) Speaking of iterative approach, going episodically on Steam Early Access will help with bug reports from a larger pool of players to maximize polish on our official launch.
3) Astral Ascension being available for the 2024 holidays will help from a financial perspective since a lot of game sales do happen in December.

That's the launch plans as well as the reasoning behind it! Astra's development was a new approach and there were benefits and challenges with it. At the end though, it's all starting to come together!

Phew, hopefully that wall of text wasn't too bad! Thanks again for your continued support. :^)

- Dishu