Why Early Access?

“Creating a great user experience and combining the different genres of platforming and racing, is our main goal and requires a lot of underlying design and implementation. Especially since we are merging the two genres, we require feedback from a larger community to ensure the best possible player experience. While we have come really far in developing our indie game, we feel like it would hugely benefit from a more community-driven approach and more player feedback, so we can build a great game together! Especially for a multiplayer title, building a community and inviting players to express their wishes and suggestions for the game, telling us what they would like to see and get out of the game, is an important aspect of development.
In Early Access, we plan on tackling three points: Improve and expand existing features (online multiplayer, asynchronous multiplayer with ghosts, highscore system, customization, and so on), add new features in cooperation with the community (local splitscreen multiplayer, time-limited challenges, and more), as well as create more content for the game (costumes, tracks, and so on).”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“The plan is to stay in Early Access for a few months and release in Q1 or Q2 2024. During that time we will keep working hard on our game to make it a full and fun experience. The timeframe may differ depending on the feedback we receive and the ideas that come up.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The main goal for the full release is to improve the detailing and functionality of the existing gameplay and features, add new features in close exchange with the community (our ideas would include local splitscreen multiplayer and special, time-limited challenges), as well as add more content to the game overall, like new costumes and track elements! So the full version will be an overall enhanced experience for the players!”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“In the Early Access game, players will have dynamic character abilities to race through procedurally generated levels in a cyber-futuristic style. Players can choose from several different characters and earn duck-based currency (100% NO microtransactions!) while playing to customize them with many different accessories and costumes. Astral Tracks also already includes several tutorial stages to ease you into the character abilities, like dashing, grappling and sliding, and the racing-like gameplay. Players will also already be able to find several stages with hundreds of tracks to run and various difficulty levels. Each track has a global leaderboard where players can compare their best times to find out who is the very best. The game has online multiplayer, so players can choose to play with and against their Steam friends at any time for any track, and it also already has a kind of asynchronous multiplayer, where players can run against ghosts of previous runs from other players. Additionally, the game already provides various Achievements to be unlocked through regular gameplay, and will be available in multiple languages upon Early Access release.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Since we plan on expanding and improving the game in lots of different ways during the Early Access phase, the price will increase for the release of the full game. We will be adding bigger features, giving more detail and functionality to the existing features, and add more content to the game. The extent of the pricing adjustment will depend on the scope of the final game.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“We want to hear from the community as much as possible and invite everyone to provide feedback, express wishes and suggestions, so together we can make our game as awesome as possible. We will mainly focus on communication through the Steam Community Hub and Discord, and will be answering and reacting to discussions as soon as possible. But we are open to exploring other options of getting in touch with the player base, as well!”