Spiritus Astrum

I have created a simple trailer for Spiritus Astrum, which I have uploaded here:

I have made some more minor UI changes and improvements to the demo, and I have also rebalanced some of the variables, such as the chances of random items appearing, etc.

I have also done some more testing on the demo, and made some more minor quality of life fixes and improvements, but everything is basically ready for an early release now.

There were also some minor issues with item placement, etc, that were fixed too.

The demo will be limited to 60 mins of gameplay per character (using a timer), however, they player can replay the game with different characters an unlimited number of times.

They have the option of following the main story or exploring the world, etc.

The demo is basically done now, and it due to be released, hopefully, next week, certainly by the end of the month.

There are some minor issues with the game still, but I am confident that these won’t prevent an early release of the game.

I have also removed some more features of the game from the demo, such as the advanced build options, etc. Players can now only build simple items in the demo.

The difficulty is also quite a bit lower in the demo, since it is much shorter than the full game, and so the player doesn’t need to survive for as long, etc, but this shouldn’t be a problem.

I am still working on last minute testing and improvements for the demo.

I have made improvements to the player server, and tested the demo extensively on my test machine using steam.

It is possible that players will need to add the game to their firewall as an exception, even though the demo is single player. This is because the single player mode actually uses a server too, it’s just a local server, and so firewalls can be triggered by the network calls.

I have also made several other UI improvements, etc.

I have made various minor improvements and changes to the demo, and it should be ready to release on schedule.

I still want to do some more testing before I release it, I have about a week or two to do this.

Even though this is still a very early alpha build, I think there is enough gameplay to provide a good idea of what the game is about.

I have decided to limit the demo to 60 minutes of gameplay (I may reduce this to 45 minutes). Previously, the demo was at least 3 hours long (And before that, it was nearly 5 hours!) which is way too much for a demo.

A demo should be just that, a demo, not a full game. I think 60 minutes is enough to give a rough idea of what the game is about, and encourage people to play the full game (When it is out).

I am currently planning to release the demo about a week before the next fest, but this release date may change slightly.

I am working on putting the finishing touches to the demo for Spiritus Astrum, I am planning to launch this in time for the nextfest in September (starting on the 2nd).

So far, the demo is basically done, I just need to do a lot of testing and debugging with it.

The Closed Beta is still available for entry.

The demo for Spiritus Astrum is now available in limited, closed, Beta!

I have a small number of Steam Beta keys to give out.

Contact me at:

contact[AT]phoenixgamedevelopment[dot]com

If you would like a key.

The showcase post on the Unity forums is here:

Unity Showcase

I have finished most of the work that was still needed for the demo, including adding in the credits menu, and adding a specific “demo mode” which disables some features, like multiplayer.

I have also prepared a demo build on steam, and configured and uploaded it. This may not be the final releasable demo build, but I wanted to make sure that the process is setup and working properly.

I should be ready to look for beta testers for the demo soon.

The testing for the player server went very well, there were no issues found with the player server itself.

I did uncover some additional issues with the build, but these were minor, and were easily fixed.

The good news is that the playerserver is working properly.

I may release a demo version of spiritus astrum with just a single player mode enabled, to make initial public testing easier?

I have a few more minor bugs and some art improvements that I would like to do before the demo is released, but other than that, there is not much left to do.