Astral Ascent News

Dear Astral Ascent players,

We're happy to announce our first community event on our Discord server! Check out the #octave-thoughts channel if you want to participate.

Suggest what you imagine Octave is thinking about and vote for your favorite line. The 2 most popular suggestions will be implemented in the game in the next major update!



Who is Octave? He is a confident boy. A bit arrogant, he's not very cautious about his word and he doesn't let people push him around. Octave broke into the garden to avenge his mother.
Octave will be the third character playable, you'll be able to fight with him in the next major update.

Happy to report this month the team has made huge progress on all the new content for the next update and soon all that will be left to do is polish and playtest! ✨

So, without further ado, here is our progress report -



The next world is here! The islands are waiting for you to cross them and meet the marine fauna! But be careful, this world is the home of the dangerous Noble Zodiacs, fierce enemies that will never allow you to pass without an intense fight!

The coral archipelago


The Pantheon is a new place accessible from the main hub of the game. When used, the floating orb will teleport you into a place where we immortalized some of our backers as golden statues.

You can access the pantheon from the village

The Pantheon

We initially wanted to have these statues randomly spawning at the merchant's room but this way anyone can witness them directly from the main hub. If you also want to have a statue of yourself (it can be with your pet) and your name appears when standing next to the statue, you can still order it on our Backerkit store.



We also have great news regarding the Ayla figure (also available on the Backerkit store), Limited Run Games manufacturer produced an example version that suits our vision and we really love it - we hope you will like it as much as we do!




A completely new system has been added to the game, the kinship system!

In your runs, you will now have access to a new special room inside wich you'll get a new kind of item: the souvenirs.

Souvenirs will grant you the power of one (or more) of your friend(s) from the Garden! Each character has their own unique power that will surely help you through your journey!

The intent of this system was to make the characters you meet and love a bigger part of your escape attempts and feel a deeper connection to them when they join your adventure!


Work in progress room

If your health is low, Zim-Zim will come to your help!

Look forward to getting the souvenir as they will surely prove useful in your quest.

Octave combo attack


Another accomplishment from this month was the rework of several of our Zodiac summons!

Most of the old summon either didn't fit the zodiac or were lacking in juice! So we decided to rework most of them to become truly impressive attacks!

Virgo new summon

But that's not all we also made summons for the next two A
Zodiacs of the Coral Archipelago, enjoy a sneak peek!

Scorpio summon


We added a new kind of spell to the game, the Zodiac spells! They'll give you the ability to use some of the zodiacs signature attacks as your own.

Don't expect to find them like others spells! They will only be accessible in a special place, but we'll let you find out for yourselves.

Capricorn zodiac spell

The door to the interior of the Andromeda's bar is now open, in here you'll be able to meet the zodiacs and talk with them in a peaceful environment.

Get insight about the world by the mouth of your enemies, learn more about them and if you're lucky, they might even join you directly in your journey!

Interior of Andromeda's bar


We also did something for our lovely discord community. New Astral Ascent emotes have been added to the server for you to express yourself there or on any other place if you have Discord Nitro!


We hope you'll enjoy them as much as we do!


This month has been a great month of progress and we cannot wait to let you play with all of this new content!



Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!


Hard working team
Have a great day and week!

-The Hibernian Workshop Team

⭐Changes inspired by our community!

[h2]Major Features[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• New Language: Japanese has been added in the game.
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• Sand Shark trap: World 2 now has a new trap that replaces the original firing projectiles statues.
  

[h2]Small Features[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Carnivorous Plants: They deactivate less frequently in order to be less visually noisy.
  [hr][/hr]
• Implementation of new context dialogs.
  [hr][/hr]
• Octave and Calie disappeared from the Hub in preparation for their release.
  [hr][/hr]
• Armor spike goes away faster becomes darker when it does not hit anymore.
  [hr][/hr]
• Trees could hide the next level difficulty information in Andromeda's bar.
  [hr][/hr]
• Auto guided spells will not target invincible enemies anymore.
  [hr][/hr]
• Thunder sparks crawl on ground further than before.
  [hr][/hr]
• Level progress UI doesn't open automatically after equiping a new spell
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

[hr][/hr]
• Capricorn books trail would sometime be in front of Capricorn.
  [hr][/hr]
• Sova was not appearing when saving player in hub.
  

- The Hibernian Workshop Team

• Discord Server
• Twitter Account
• Official Store

First of all, we want to thank everyone for making this Early Access launch so succesful! We loved watching your reactions, reading your theories and your suggestions - one major of these suggestions is being developed.

Also, if you have the occasion to leave a review on Steam, it helps us gain visibility and it is much appreciated!

All the team is thrilled for what's coming next and eager to give you the great experience you are looking for!


You are all waiting for it and, as promised, we are working on implementing a new playable character: Octave the gunslinger!
As the name suggest, he will fight at a distance using two guns and bring ethereal weapons to the battle!
We hope you'll have fun playing around with him once the update will be out!



Octave the gunslinger


We also made a lot of progress on the next bosses for the coral archipelago.
Scorpio beat you up again and again stopping you from going through the third world but soon you'll be able to take your revenge!
However, don't expect an easy battle, Scorpio may be arrogant but he has the power to back it up!



Scorpio won't give you any slack!

A new star guardian also joined the frey: Draco!
A mysterious and blazing warrior capable of incredible martial feats!



Draco is a fierce enemy!


We are working hard on the coral archiepelago world and while we don't have suitable visuals to share for now, we worked on some new traps and props for this specific world inspired by the marine life.
We hope they'll be of good use in your next adventures!



Jelly Fish



We also made a big change from the W2 traps, we decided to remove the statue trap that we considered not being a good trap and replaced it by this new sand shark trap! Watch where you are walking!



Beware of the sand sharks!


Lastly for the content update, we are working on additional rooms to the game inspired by the sun and the moon.

These new unique rooms will ONLY be accessible by activating a new rare altar in exploration rooms and will contain the most powerful of spell you ever saw in the game.

In the sun room, you'll have access to 3 altars selling you powerful spell for a great amount of different resources like Quartz, Stars and Keys.



The sun room

In the moon room, you'll also have access to 3 altars selling even more powerful spell than in the sun room however you'll have to bargain with your max health to obtain them so don't get too greedy!



Moon room


We're again thankful to everyone who made our Early access launch a success and we hope you are thrilled to see what's waiting for you in the next update that is targeted to release for mid August!

Don't forget our Backerkit shop and our Discord Server to speak with the community and give us feedbacks on the game!




Hard working team

Have a wonderful day,
-The Hibernian Workshop Team

Dear Astral Ascent players,

First of all, we wanted to thank you for the support and the love you've sent us since the release of the Early Access. It's a huge step for us after over 3 years of work on the game and we're so happy to see how many players enjoy playing Astral Ascent. 🌟

We have received some feedbacks about crashes and bugs related to performance issues. We are really sorry about that, we know that's is a major problem right now and we are working hard to fix this: for the next major update, the game will be ported with a new game exporter, much more optimized than the one we're using today. This change should solve most of the issues encountered and the game should run way smoother across the board.

While waiting for this update, we suggest you to take a look at our common issues guide. You'll find some temporary solutions to avoid crashes.
This guide is updated each time a new solution is discovered. For example, recently, some players noticed a major performance boost by installing the game on a SSD. It turns out it helps a lot of players who had performance issues. So feel free to add a comment if it doesn't work or if you find a new solution.

If you encounter any more issues, you can join our Discord server and send a message in the #bug-report channel or in the thread of the common issues guide.

In the meantime, we are working on a small update that should come in the next few weeks. Some minor changes will be made there and you'll be able to play Astral Ascent in Japanese!


Thank you for everything and have a wonderful day,
- The Hibernian Workshop Team ✨