Managing expectations is (probably) impossible.

admin

Hello — Adam here from the team.

Recently we announced details for the launch of Astroneer and that’s something we’re super proud of. Now that the information is out, there’s been two important topics that come up in discussion amongst the team. How will our game be perceived and are we setting the correct expectations?

I don’t enjoy writing about the missteps of other developers, but in the name of transparency I think this is an important point to make: The controversial release of No Man’s Sky fuels a lot of discussions about the development and marketing of Astroneer and more importantly the reaction the gaming community had to it. A lot of the press coverage about Astroneer links the two games together and we’ve seen a lot of talk amongst our community about those connections.

I’m not going to comment on one specific aspect of the game or the people behind it. This blog post isn’t about that. I want to take this opportunity to put into practice the most important thing we’ve learned from witnessing No Man’s Sky: Know what you are saying, but understand what is heard.

pasted_image_at_2016_09_26_01_39_pm
I grabbed this screenshot the other day when we first implemented some clouds in to the game.

 

(more…)

NEW WEBSITE, NEW BLOG!

admin

newsite

Hey! Adam here from the team.

As we get closer to ASTRONEER launching on Steam Early Access later this year, we felt the website (click!) and blog (click here too!) needed a fresh coat of paint. We swapped platforms for our blog and reworked the main Astroneer website so both are more future proof (and sexier!). This update, while mostly visual, will allow us to grow those outlets as the game and the Astroneer community grows.

As always, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and Twitch. Astroneer also has its community growing on Reddit, and Steam.

LAUNCH WINDOW, FUNDING

admin

Future Astroneers! We have two pieces of news to share with you. On October 7th 2015, when we launched our website and released our first trailer, our team was in a very tight financial situation. We had no external funding, and had made plans to have only three full time partners on the project, living from savings and bearing all development costs out of pocket. Given that unsustainable situation, we had made a deliberate choice to rush the game, in a very early state, to an Early Access launch in late March or early April, because without the early revenue to fund further development, we would be unable to continue.

(more…)

THE ART OF ASTRONEER: LOW POLY

admin

Hello readers, I’m Paul Pepera, one of the artists working on Astroneer. “The Art of Astroneer” will be a multi-part series that will discuss the visual design of Astroneer. We hope to cover a wide variety of topics – from influences and inspiration to technical details and challenges that arose while creating the game.

For Astroneer we wanted an art style that was both visually striking and fast to execute. For a small team it was important for us to make decisions that we felt were realistically possible to achieve – one of those considerations was reducing content overhead. To that end we decided against an art direction that we were used to working in with our full time “AAA” jobs in favor of something much more minimalistic. We felt low-poly art direction was a good choice because it offers us the ability to execute content relatively inexpensively while still achieving a visual style that makes a strong statement.

Early 3D concept image of Astroneer, 2013.
(more…)

LIFT OFF!

admin

The last two weeks have been incredible for us. We certainly did not expect the kind of positive reaction to Astroneer that we saw in hundreds of comments, tweets, and emails. The day we revealed the trailer, website, and blog was one of our best (if not the best) days as game developers. We always felt Astroneer was special, but now we really feel like we’re working on something that will be special for a lot of people.

(more…)