Hey all, been a little while, but I wanted to just update everyone on our GDC 2018 plans! This year several members of the team are going to be making appearances and we will also be showing the game off in the Epic Games booth!
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Welcome, New Astroneers!
As many of you might already know, Astroneer just concluded its first year in Early Access with a Sale on Steam and the Microsoft Store. That means there are now thousands of new Astros roaming the solar system, building bases, deforming planets, and having fun with friends. Since we have lots of new faces getting initiated to Exo Dynamics, as well as some old faces returning after a long hiatus, we wanted to spend some time answering some of the big questions new and returning players might have about Astroneer.
Astroneer Enters Alpha & The Research Update
Thats right, we did it. After celebrating our one year anniversary on Saturday, we are finally launching into Alpha! That means a lot of things, but most importantly now with months of planning, prototyping, and systems work out of the way, the team is in full on implementation mode. Players should expect new content and systems every update going forward until we reach Beta! I want to take a second to sincerely thank everyone who has participated in the Pre-Alpha process. You all have been so insightful, diligent, and encouraging during this process, and we as a team cannot thank you enough.
Astroneer @ Pax West 2017
Hey all!
Although Astroneer won’t have any official presence on the show floor while the team is heads down working, we do have a few things going on since PAX West takes place in our hometown of Seattle! Here is the full schedule of places you can catch members of the team.
Astroneer Development Roadmap: Pre-Alpha and Beyond
Hey everyone! I’m Veronica, producer at System Era, coming to you live with my very first blog post.
Way back in December, on the eve of Astroneer’s Pre-Alpha release, Adam shared the first version of the roadmap. With excitement and anticipation, we offered a first look at some of the ideas the System Era team was kicking around along with a promise to keep in touch about how those plans develop. A lot has happened since then, and we haven’t kept in touch as well as we’d have liked, but the team has been steadily growing and steadily working to make Astroneer the best it can be. (more…)
The Last Six Months & The Future
Adam here. Any time System Era updates Astroneer, we spend some time doing a post-mortem of how things went. I thought since we are at the six month mark, I could look back and call out the stuff we did really well, what we could have done better, and what is happening next. Astroneer is in a great place, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have areas that we can improve upon.
Screenshot Saturday: Astroneer Suit Animation
This week the team wanted to do something a little different, and give a behind the scenes look at our #screenshotsaturday post. This week’s visual comes straight from the screen of Gene Blakefield, System Era’s resident animator.
Augments
One of our primary goals with Astroneer is to provide an open-ended gameplay experience that incentivizes creative problem solving. The socket (snap) system is a big part of this desire, and it was specifically designed to facilitate as-of-then unplanned gameplay systems and interactions. With this update, we’re introducing our first new system that leverages that potential: say hello to Augments! (more…)
Making Research More Fun
Hi Astroneers! I’m Samantha, a game designer and one of the new members of the Astroneer dev team. I’m really happy to be here and I wanted to take some time to introduce myself to the community. I’ve got about ten years of experience in the game industry, which have strongly shaped my approach and sensibilities to game design. There are a lot of you who love Astroneer and want to see it continue to grow and evolve in the best ways, so I’ve tried to hit the ground running and start contributing sooner rather than later. The team has an established culture of transparency of development, which I think is great because I get to participate in conversation with all of you. Today I get to start a conversation specifically about the design details of my work so far – the new research system. (more…)
Signal Failure
On April 15th, a mistaken notice was sent out about a Steam Daily Deal that discounted Astroneer. The discount was then ended early. This was the result of an unfortunate series of communication failures, entirely our fault, and compounded by the turmoil of tragedy on the team in the last month.
For this, we deeply apologize. Regardless of how things happen, it’s supposed to be our job that they happen the right way, and that our customers are never misled. We feel that we lost the trust of some of our fans, and that trust is what we value most.
In general, our communication about game discounts hasn’t been nearly as good as it should be. It is our promise that from now on, all discounts will be clearly announced through all our communication channels, and once a sale is announced, it will never be modified or canceled. In the mean time, we’ve reached out to Steam to discontinue any advertising of this sale that may still be public.
– System Era