Astra - Release Timeline

Hello Patrons,

It is finally time for the release timeline post!! It has taken a bit of time as we wanted to collect our thoughts and also the next steps. To avoid suspense, let's get the main point out of the way which is that Astra will be shifting its release date from 2023 to 2024. Whether that is early or mid 2024, that will be explored in this post.

What caused the delay?

This simply boiled down to the fact that Astra is a very long game. The story grew past what we thought the initial scope was going to be (especially a more elaborate epilogue) and the other factor was the 'horizontal' content for the game to make choices meaningful and impactful.

For comparison, let's look at the word count for the previous PF projects:
ACE - 220k
Crystalline - 180k
KAS - 46k
Ethereal Enigma - 150k

Now let's look at word count for Astra:

As you can see, the word count is already at about 320k which far exceeds our other games and Astra isn't even fully done yet! With the remainder of episode 6, the expanding epilogue which is now its own episode 7, we project the full game to be about 400k.

What this means is that Astra is over twice the length of Crystalline, and almost triple the length of Ethereal Enigma. Those games took 2 years to develop so Astra being in development for 3 going to 4 does look reasonable in terms of timing.

What is the plan moving forward?

One good point is that the game is pretty much wrapped up from a storyboard planning perspective. We know exactly what's left and how to get to it and additionally we also know the retroactive changes that need to be made for continuity sake. With all that in mind, we should be 'story complete' by early Q1 2024.

After we reach the stage of 'story complete', the last piece of the puzzle will be voice over. Voice does take some time as we have to find the perfect cast, get lines recorded, process them, make any script adjustments for adlibs...etc. When we are talking about a game that will have 400k+ word count, the task of full voice over is definitely hefty!

This is where we have two options that become available to us. We'll talk about both and then there is a poll at the bottom to select which path you think is the better approach.

Approach 1: The Episodic Release

Once we reach 'story complete' and are processing voice over lines, we release Astra as episodes as the lines for said episode complete. For example, once all the lines for episode 1 are done, we release early access on Steam. As the next episode lines are completed, we release the next episode. The time between episodes would be like 2-3 weeks since we just need to do voice.

BENEFITS: Get to release much earlier, collect feedback/bugs from a wider audience of players which we can address leading to a cleaner full release
DOWNSIDES: Full game release date will be contingent as lines come in episodically

Approach 2: All At Once

Once we reach 'story complete', we spend the full time doing all the voiced lines. When that is completed, we release the full game in one shot. This will avoid early access altogether and the full game can be played without breaks.

BENEFITS: Can play the full game in one shot without interruption
DOWNSIDES: We don't collect feedback/bugs which means they need to be fixed when the game is already fully released, the release date will be much later since we have to process all voiced lines

Based on the two above possibilities of release, which one are you leaning more towards? Feel free to vote your preference in the poll below; feedback in the comments are welcomed as well.

As always, thank you for your continued support!! :^)