As we already announced on the main page in the note section, this is only the first episode and only on Android, because we originally started development with an eye on smartphones, with which most often there are problems when porting. So we decided to get rid of all the touch control issues right away.

In about a month we will definitely try to release the desktop version on Windows and Linux, but we need some time to optimize these versions. Especially because of the engine's unclear behavior with gamepads, we plan to allow the user to customize the keys as desired. Which means it will be a mandatory update to version 1.1.0 (the second number in the version is responsible for additions and the third for fixing bugs, right?).

However, for the first time we are interested in the public's opinion, because we don't know exactly if we should continue this game? It seems like we should, although on the other hand, we are a bit bored with the pixel retro style and would like to return to the modern era with rich colors and good resolution, because we have a couple of more interesting projects with more modern graphics.

That's why soon we will tell you about the path of this game's development. And at the very beginning we'll tell you that everything started trivially, with a simple beautiful mockup, which our artist drew, inspired by old 16-bit games. Especially games on Amiga, whose palette he was somehow inspired to take as a basis. He was followed by our composer and sound designer, who used the most authentic Amiga instruments for the music.

Yes, we realize that this is somehow “backwards” (nice mocap first, then planning), and it's better to plan game development and then draw concepts. But that's just the way it is. So, for about 3 months we worked hard to create the first episode (however, the whole game has already been planned). We tried to make everything very high quality and to make the controls pleasant, we tested often and a lot, but we didn't have enough time and energy to test absolutely everything. If you find a bug, please let us know. But let's get back to development.

Of course, the first week was the most interesting. We've been thinking about the concept, the mechanics of the game... Weight-based jumping is not a new idea (although we can't remember any game that uses it, but we're sure that any developer can figure it out), but anyway we decided to develop this idea for several reasons:

1) Firstly, the initial atmosphere of the game makes you think that Astronaut is like being on the moon, so high jumps with weak gravity are self-imposed.

2) On the other hand, we wanted the character to jump lower as well.

3) This eventually gave rise to the idea of the dependence of the jump on some criteria. And the first thing that came to mind was weight.

The point of the game is still quite casual, although we'd really like to make it develop to metroidvania, but we're realists with limited time, so we decided not to splurge on such a scale yet.

And actually... You know, it might have been four months. O_o We lost count... We'll pull up the time logging records later... Yes, we recorded the time to better understand which jobs take how long. For example, before these logs, it seemed to the artist that programming took 4 times less time, but it turned out to be the opposite (but we'll double-check later). But that's okay: because of this argument about time, the programmer didn't take offense at the artist, because they are the same person.

By the way, in recording time we were helped by a time tracker, which is also on our page. It's called Ergomant. It is free, you can download and use it if you are interested.

In short, wait for the desktop version, subscribe and stay tuned!