Hello and welcome to the first devlog for Astral Flux!

I’ll start with a bit of background on the game and then get into the specifics of what we’ve been up to.

Meeting of the Minds

Astral Flux started its life as a prototype by my partner, Nathan, called Explorer. I came across it on a mutual Discord and was immediately impressed by his work and the enthusiasm he had for the project. I didn’t know Nathan at the time but asked if I could reach out by DM to chat some more. He said yes and we soon got to chatting. It was clear early on that we had many mutual interests.

I asked if he would be interested in working together in some capacity—whether helping with Explorer, or starting something new—and he agreed. After some back and forth, we decided to do a one-month game jam/prototype. (The result being Cosmic Caves, which, perhaps not unexpectedly, is in many ways a 3D version of Astral Flux. FYI you can play it in your browser right now!

After working together for a month, it was clear we had decent chemistry. We decided to keep working together and shift our focus to Explorer.

But first, a brief background about us: Nathan is a Dutch psychology professor who moonlights as an artist and indie game designer (as Studio VDS). I’m a Canadian game developer who moonlights as an indie game developer (as Cosmocat), musician and sound designer (as Snug).

The Road so Far

As Nathan can likely attest to, I can be a bit intense when it comes to organizing and scheduling! As such, I was very quick to push for an initial milestone. After some back and forth, we agreed that it would make sense to try to create a vertical slice of the game and invite players to try it out. We got to work mapping it out and kept our heads down for a couple of months.

Along the way, I helped out with the things I know well: revamping the audio, refactoring code, optimizing, recruiting playtesters, etc. Nathan mainly focused on adding more content, be it levels, new mechanics, enemies, etc.

We agreed it would make sense to use Steam for distributing playtest keys, and that it would also make sense to have a proper brand identity. After some brainstorming and research, we settled on Astral Flux. The rest (store page, trailer, etc.) came together fairly quickly, as I’ve been through this so many times I’ve almost got it down to a science!

A Way Forward

Alright, with that out of the way, I can finally start talking about what we’re up to, and where we’re going! First up, here are some of the things that I knew I wanted to tackle immediately following the playtest (in fact, I was so eager about some that I started doing them in parallel—perhaps a slightly dangerous strategy, but that’s what version control branches are for):

• Integrating FMOD: Damn do I ever love FMOD (audio middleware); it allows for such immersive and expressive sound design. I knew right away that I wanted to use it on this project, and I knew the longer we waited, the harder it would be to replace what was there.
• Refactoring the procedural generation logic: the code was still very much in a prototype state and I knew it would not scale well. Among other things, it was heavily reliant on hard-coded conditions, Unity rule tiles for prefab spawning (I'm not a fan), and similar things that would become problematic over time.

(I’ll do a more detailed write-up on these in a future devlog. Suffice to say, they are both in much better shape now.)

Full Steam Ahead

Alright, with some of the early legwork out of the way, we're into full production planning! We've settled on four milestones, roughly two months each. High level, we are aiming for four worlds total, therefore this will be the main goal of each milestone. Each milestone also has one or more secondary sub-goals, ranging from necessary evils like setting screens, to adding achievements and story.

Milestone 1: Do everything we need to do to move into full production!

• In addition to FMOD integration and proc gen code refactor, we will also work towards trying to settle on standards for file naming, project structure, etc. Basically, we want to create a "template" from the first level, and use it as the basis of the other three.

Milestone 2: Add the second world

• How this milestone plays out will likely dictate how the rest will go, but likely, we'll start with concepts for the environment, enemies, boss, etc. and then move into production.
• Sub-goal: Weapon upgrade system

Milestone 3: Add the third world

• Sub-goals: Player abilities system, settings screen

Milestone 4: Add the final world

• Sub-goals: Story elements, achievements, key bindings system

Although not final yet, we are considering launching in Early Access at the end of milestone 2: the game will be about 50% done and will have most of the core systems in place by this point. If this is something you would be interested in, please leave a comment letting us know! The more players we hear from, the more likely we are to move ahead with this plan.

A Taste of Things To Come

Although we're planning two-month-long milestones, I'm aiming to write a new devlog monthly. In addition to general updates, I will also pick a topic to deep-dive into (be it FMOD, procedural generation, or otherwise). Nathan has also been toying with the idea of starting a YouTube channel; we will likely use this as an opportunity to create more video content for the devlog.

Alright, I'll leave it there for today, but if it's not too much to ask:

• Please wishlist and follow the game; this way you'll get notified when the game launches and when I post new devlogs
• If you're interested in participating in a future playtest, I would encourage you to join the Cosmocat Discord or sign up for the Cosmocat mailing list

Thanks for reading! Until next time,

Adam/The Cosmocat