Akatori News

prologue-style demo for an upcoming action platformer has you wielding a magic staff and two-fisted kung fu to battle enemies and explore a metroidvania-style world of myth and magic. Akatori's big pitch si that your way of moving depends on a magic staff that can be thrown not just as a weapon, but to hover in midair as a pole to jump off of...
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Greetings!

Exciting news! Akatori: Chapter One is finally available! Play now!

if you'll like the demo, please consider leaving a review ❤️


[h3]Join our community:

👾 Join our Discord if you wanna chat with devs
🤑 Subscribe to our mailing list [/h3]

[h3]Greetings,

A HUGE thank you to all our playtest participants! Your feedback, both through the form and on the Discord server, has been incredibly valuable and has helped us improve the demo significantly.[/h3]



[h3]Now, we'd like to invite you once more to delve into the incredible world of Akatori by exploring the lore behind Kohakujō!
[/h3]

[h2]🔮Kohakujō - Homeland of the Gods, Nexus World, Main Hub[/h2]

Let's kick off our overview with (not so) fun fact #1: if you follow us on social media or occasionally engage with the game outside of Steam updates, you've probably noticed that this world is most often referred to as Void. That's because no one on the team bothers to memorize such a tricky word as Kohakujō, and everyone still uses its working title (even the writer, shame on them). But here's the funniest part: no one in the in-game universe calls it that either. Except for the inhabitants of the Land of the Emerald Peaks, one of whom you get to play as. So yeah, the more you know.

What essentially is Kohakujō? To avoid excessive lore dumping, let’s keep it relatively brief: Kohakujō is the very first ‘container’ world, the homeland of an ancient civilization of Gods, and the energetic core of the game universe, as well as the deposit of amber resin, a highly efficient energy resource (time for fun fact #2: its name literally means ‘amber citadel’ or ‘amber castle’ in Japanese. Or at least it should). Kohakujō organically provides all other worlds with basic energy, allowing them to sustain their livelihoods.

One of the very early concept arts. Yup, Akatori could be set in Silent Hill

Monks are convinced that the amber resin is the tears of Akatori the Firebird that gave birth to the universe. They also believe that one of the Bird's tears sprouted the Primordial Tree from which the Gods and then humans were first born. When Kohakujō became a bit crowded, the Gods began to create separate worlds for people and other races one by one (this is why the side realms have different ages and are at different stages of development), but after a while, the destructive behavior of mortals spawned Chaos, from which the Bird hid the Gods, and which plagues Kohakujō to this day. Phew, sorry, that was as brief as possible. So, did things really play out that way? Well, that's for you to find out in the full game.

That’s how Kohakujō looks today. What will it look like tomorrow? We’ll see, I guess

Since Kohakujō plays an important role in the story and is a border world that connects the entire multiverse of Akatori, we wanted to add more flavor to it with unique mechanics. In the current state of the game, the more time you spend in Kohakujō, the harder it gets to actually stay there: there’s a timer, aka the Chaos Meter, causing levels to change and hidden passages or hazards to appear. To reset the meter, you have to either save the game by resting at the altars or hit one of the special bells scattered across the world. But more challenges also mean more rewards, so it’s always a matter of whether a risk is worth taking at a given time.

The corruption mechanic is intentionally not explicit: the world around changes and makes the player going through the same level twice think 'wait, was it always like this here?'.

The real-life reference of the current Kohakujō design, presumably somewhere in California

In the future we plan to expand the mechanics further, not only in terms of environment but also enemies, and add a special boss that will chase the player when Chaos levels are high. We ultimately aim for more risk/reward situations, where high Chaos opens up new zones and shortcuts, but makes traveling through Kohakujō noticeably more difficult. Plus, we're considering introducing items that affect Chaos mechanics. For example, making the world corrupt faster if you want to artificially increase the difficulty.

Of course, in addition to the lore background and mechanics, we will also continue to work on the visual design of this world, where players will likely spend most of their time: improving existing art, adding clearer zoning, catchy landmarks, and so on. However, in such matters it's always better to show than to tell, so stay tuned for more updates.

Please remember to wishlist both Akatori and Chapter One if you’re looking forward to the game, this will help us immensely with upcoming releases.

Cheers!


[h3]Join our community:

👾 Join our Discord if you wanna chat with devs
🤑 Subscribe to our mailing list [/h3]

[h3]Keeping that in mind, we're excited to announce a public playtest of the demo from April 5th till April 9th!

To take part in the playtest, simply sign up on Steam by clicking this button of the game's demo page:[/h3]





Since the announcement is big, we wanted to tell you about something equally important and interesting. So in today’s update, we will shed light on what actually makes Akatori special - the staff.

The game concept originally stemmed from a desire to experiment with staff mechanics. The main inspiration came from Switch Axe and Charge Blade from the Monster Hunter series: both weapons have distinct combat styles that can be switched on the fly. In Akatori, we wanted to go even further by making the staff a weapon, a tool for platforming, and a key to solving puzzles at the same time. The Metroidvania genre was added later but fit naturally with the existing core mechanics.

Our Monster Hunter weapon inspirations (sorry for the awful collage, but it's always better to have a picture than not, right?)

Since then, the staff has undergone lots of iterations. For instance, at one point, it was the player's "HP," i.e. the first hit on the player would knock the staff out of their hands, and if the player didn't manage to retrieve it, the next hit would be fatal. The retrieval process was then manual; the staff couldn't just be recalled back across the entire map.

The oldest iteration we could find, dated back to the age of dinosaurs (actually 2018)

Looking back, not much has actually changed since the initial concept: now we aim to center the entire game around the staff, where it plays a crucial role in combat, platforming, and puzzles.

In combat, we can switch between styles, where fists are quick close-range attacks, and the staff is slower but can stun enemies and has a greater distance. Plus, staff can be thrown as a long-range attack.
Throwing or recalling staff cancels any long animations and allows you to chain together combos that would be impossible without this mechanic.

The staff and fists share a common basic moveset (a series of three strikes, jump, roll, etc.), but everything we get later on will differentiate them more and more.

The very basic fist and staff combos

In platforming, the staff can be stuck into surfaces (including hazards like spikes) to bounce off it, thrown in the air for a mini-double jump, or used to cancel the limit on the number of hits in the air.

Again, the very basic platforming (never make writers record your gameplay)

In puzzles, we can use staff to reach interactive objects that are inaccessible without it, or use the stuck staff to hold down a pressure plate or button.

Guess what? Yeah, the very basic puzzle, you already know how it goes

We aim to cater to both regular players and those who like to "break" games. Akatori has a high skill ceiling, with many high-level mechanics that are interesting to discover. Ideally, we aim for players to initially beat the game "normally," but by the end realize how much their understanding of the mechanics has improved and to replay everything with a new perspective. However, if you're just playing for chill and fun, let this paragraph not intimidate you: in fact, all these words are just about giving room for experimentation and a bunch of mechanics to discover.

Akatori: Chapter One will feature all the basic staff mechanics, but we plan to further develop them and add separate upgrades for the staff in the full game: typically in modern Metroidvanias, you tailor your playstyle using talismans, but Akatori will have separate swappable upgrades for both Mako and the staff. For example, we want to add different behavior for the staff when thrown or recalled: it could damage enemies on its way back or create an explosion where it was stuck. We also plan to introduce staff-based magical attacks, currently dubbed Theurgy, but we'd better discuss all of this in more detail some other time :)

Thank you very much for your attention, and be sure to wishlist both Akatori and Chapter One if this got you excited!


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