We are less than one month away from Star Renegades launching for PC on September 8th! We've been super busy with wrapping things up here, but I wanted to share with you some hero highlights of renegades that you can unlock and recruit during your mission runs! To give you the basic run down, there are 13 unique classes (but 47 characters) in the game. There are also secret progeny which can be unlocked once you max out the relationship between two destined pairs. Each renegade has skill ratings based on power, support, armour damage, regen, speed, and stunning your enemies.
Hero Highlights
Here is Wynn the Valkyrie- our all around best girl.
Bentley the Commando- another fave that our studio has been using during playtests (some of the folks at Raw Fury love him too!)
Xurx the Archon - shields aficionado and great support
Nava the Spectre - stealthy assassin
Which renegade is your fave so far? Here's a list of the rest of the renegades (endorsed by us and Raw Fury)
We'll be releasing more hero highlights and gameplay videos in the upcoming week so stay tuned or feel free to join our Discord to to grab downloadable Star Renegades wallpaper packs in the BTS channel.
Welp, back to the dev cave so we can finish this game.
We finally have the answer to the question a lot of you have been asking us- when can I play Star Renegades? Well the answer is Star Renegades will be releasing on PC September 8th!
Check out our brand new trailer to see even more of the game in action.
For those of you wondering about the release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we’re still working towards a release this year and will have more news for you soon!
Still got questions?
Head over to the Steam forum and fire away!
Thanks again for following the development of Star Renegades. We can’t wait to get it in your hands. Remember to add it to your wishlist if you haven’t already!
Last time we checked in with you we were sharing the details on the Timeline Battle System.
Now we’re super excited to show you the latest trailer for the game, which is fully animated. It delves into the character of Wynn Syphex, whose battle against The Imperium holds a very deep and personal meaning. This trailer was inspired by Star Renegades’ Adversary system, which generates enemies and bosses that evolve through your adventure, and are unique to your story. We hope you love the trailer as much as we do!
We’ve still got lots more to show as we near the release of the game, so stay tuned for more. And as ever thanks so much for following the development of Star Renegades, we can’t wait to get it your hands!
You can help support us by adding the game to your Steam Wishlist!
Our Creative Director Peter gives an overview of our brand new Timeline Battle System, something we've been iterating on for awhile. We took classic JRPG turn-based combat and layered a very modern twist on it. Let us know what you think in the comments!
As for overall development, we did end up taking a bit of a productivity hit due to the pandemic but we've been working hard and we're still on track for our release later this summer. We'll have a more news in our upcoming Dev Log post once we hit our internal BETA (real soon!)
J5T-1N here- the rebellion's most trusted companion. I’ll be filling you all in on the updates since the team has been knee deep in development getting this game done! Soooo… first thing on the agenda- they’re back from PAX East (and none of them got sick this time!). I’ll be showing you some snippets of the brand new pre-beta demo this time. Pre-beta you ask? Yes! That means we’re all well on the road to beta. Hurrah!
The PAX East demo walks you through the story of Wynn and I fending off a mysterious hostile invasion for the nth time (since ya know.. this is the nature of roguelites and all). Then [redacted] happens and Wynn then sets out to join the rebellion- a rising force that wants to overthrow this force called the Imperium.
Quite a bit of new features we added:
Camping mechanic
Night/Day cycles
World map tactics
Deeper combat strategies
Chimera boss (undefeated this PAX)
Camping + Day/Night Cycles
When you exhaust your rebel power (energy to perform tasks like reclaiming areas), you must camp to replenish the livelihood of your squad. You have available action gems that you can use up by playing action cards to increase your squad’s relationship levels. As you level up their relationships, you can unlock perks, new combo powers, and possibly.. Progeny! The day and night cycles go hand in hand with camping. At the start of a new day, the final boss meter counts down the number of days left before their arrival.
World Map Tactics
In the event of breaching an Imperium blockade, some areas may be unavailable to breach because the terminal controls several artillery cannons to fire at whoever enters the area. If you explore the map, you may find extra blueprints, passcodes, EMP bombs, or call airstrikes that can damage the enemy units in a targeted area.
Almost died for this passcode ...which turned out to be "1234"
Deeper Combat Strategies
We have added more damage types to add another layer of strategic decision-making. Your squad and enemy units may be susceptible to certain types of attacks or more resistant. Additionally, different types of damage may enrage a unit- making their attack power stronger every time they take damage from it. So, this all boils down to whether or not you should go ahead with enraging them for their next deadly snipe, but build up enough interrupt damage to delay that snipe on the timeline so that you can get an extra hit in from a squad mate to kill them. Every decision counts!
New Boss
A new boss was added for this demo- The Chimera. And yeah- he is as tough as he looks. Born from Imperium cybergenetic permutations, The Chimera can return heavy fire, fiercely impale his enemies multiple times per round, and has a deafening roar that debuffs your whole team. This PAX East, many brave challengers have been slain by the unbending Chimera. Sad day. But we'll (probably) get ‘em next time, rebels!
The launch window is August 2020! *cheers* we are excited to show you what we’ve done and I promise the wait is worth it! In the meantime, we do share some sneak peeks of what we’ve been working on recently, but only on our Discord server here.
Thank you for your patience, rebels! Don’t forget to stay hydrated and also sanitize your hands.
HAPPY 2020! It’s been a minute. We’ve been hunkering down to tackle the alpha milestone for Star Renegades. We added more characters, backgrounds, and fleshed out the camping mechanic. Right now, our team is focusing on TWO major fronts for alpha:
1. Making sure the core game loop is fun as heck 2. Making more art in 2DX goodness and mission content population
Lots of work is still under construction, but here’s a suuuuuuper rough BTS (does not represent final art) of the camping mechanic layout.
Your squad will have available action gems (top left) that will deplete itself when you use cards that cost a certain amount of actions to use. For example, Wynn can choose to share a nice warm meal with Nodo if she wishes. In doing so, it will use up one available action gem and Nodo will gain affection points that will go towards levelling up their companionship (as well as a full belly of good food). When you level up the camaraderie between characters to the next level, there are relationship perks that can give extra bonus stats, new traits, new combo powers, or even new progeny!
And yes. You can pet this good boie.
Thanks for tuning in folks! I know we’ve been quiet lately... On a serious note, we would like to take a moment to remember our beloved teammate Christian. Some of you may have met him at Gamescom over the years. He may have talked your ear off about Halcyon 6 or Star Renegades with his contagious smile and warm energy. Sadly, Christian passed away last December. It has not been the same without him. Our team is absolutely shaken by this tremendous loss. Star Renegades has become a very special game for us as it is the last game Christian has worked on. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts.
Thank you all for your support and kindness over the years. It means a lot to our team to be able to share our journey with you all.
Just a quick little recap on our time at Gamescom- if you’ve had time to tune in, you may have realized that we announced our new 2DX look for Star Renegades! We’ve also updated our Steam page description with more 2DX screenshots and GIFs for your eyes o_o
To recap- we revealed our new 2DX artstyle for Star Renegades at Gamescom with a trailer and a demo at the Indie Arena Booth. Our demo was a bit different this time around compared to last year’s demo.
We created a more tutorial-esque demo to show what the beginning of the game may look like in the final game. I say tutorial-esque because it is not a true tutorial with constant skill prompts and hand-holding. We did have hints but took our hands off the reins a bit to let our players choose what skills to use based on their deduction of what was happening in combat (this did lead to a lot of people dying though lol). There was definitely room for error and punishment for errors!
We added new energy systems such as ammo, rage, heat, energy, etc. to combat for an extra layer of complexity. Players would have to take into the account of reloading at proper times and harnessing enough energy resources to execute certain skills. Bosses would enter an exhausted/recover state after executing a deadly attack, which made them more susceptible to extra damage. Funnn!
Lastly (some of you may already know this), we implemented a free exploration map to replace that node-based travel system. We felt that this free exploration mechanic really hit us in the feels with replicating that classic JRPG world exploration nostalgia.
Oh- and we gave out J5T-1N keychains for folks who tried the demo. We still have tons left, so don’t worry if you haven’t picked yours up yet!
Gamescom was much smoother this time around thanks to Raw Fury! Last year, we were lugging suitcases with 40 t-shirts, 2000 postcards, various electronics, and 3 laptops from Canada. This year, it only took Softcookie 5 minutes to get through customs and security. Ahhhh. A happy tear was shed. So- Thank you, Raw Fury Family <3 <3
We survived!! Remind us to take a before and after photo next time.. 5 show days is a loooooong time and we definitely looked more tired than the first day!
Sooo that’s a wrap for a quick recap! Thanks for tuning in, Rebels! ːsteamhappyː
YUP- we have changed our 2D art style to 2DX (X for XXXXXXXTREME). This is why we’ve been so quiet- not to mention we have been re-juggling the UI visuals again to also match this hi-def 2DX aesthetic look, so Softcookie put on her UI art hat again (but still wearing CM socks of course).
By the way, we are at Gamescom showing off this 2DX demo! It highlights the beginning tutorial of the FINAL game- so if you’re here at Gamescom (August 20-24), make sure to swing by Booth 021G at the Indie Arena Booth in Hall 10.2! We’ll be giving out J5T-1N keychains <3
Now that we have the guts of combat mechanics planned out, we wanted to start shifting our focus to other systems like camaraderie/camping, evolving adversary, and narrative/lore. So this new demo takes you on a journey into the lives of our rebels and gives you a glimpse about who they are and what sort of role they play in this grand universe.
If you enjoyed our trailer above, I hope you enjoy this extra GIF below! This scene is from our demo itself.
This whole 2D - 2DX thing started last year (2018) when we decided that we wanted to take pixel art to the next level and create a truly stand out artstyle. We started with some experiments and when we had our first concept test - we instantly fell in love with it.
Here’s a screenshot for proof:
Here’s Peter also realizing that we may have screwed ourselves over (in terms of workload!)
BUT HEEEY- we’re totally in love with this look. And we hope you are too!
Oh and ICYMI from the last announcement, Star Renegades is confirmed to launch on PC and Xbox platforms next year. Don’t worry, we’re still working to get it on other platforms as well. We’ll confirm those as soon as we are able ;)
It’s Softcookie here ːsteamhappyː and YES we are definitely still alive and kickin here. We just have been in quiet mode working on our new demo which will then be a part of the final game. Soooo here’s a quick recap of some of the things that went on in the past few months (that can also be found on our socials).
BITSUMMIT We were accepted to show Star Renegades at Bitsummit in Kyoto! Bitsummit (June 1-2) is Japan’s leading indie game festival showcasing over 100 indie games from around the world. It was our first time bringing Star Renegades to show in Asia, but definitely WON’T be our last becauseeeee… we took home an editor’s choice award by 4Gamer.net! Thank you so much~ Also... ramen. We had absurd amounts of ramen and it was amazing.
E3 Soon after Bitsummit, we made our way back to LA for E3! We showcased Star Renegades inside the Xbox Live Experience at the Microsoft Theatre- right beside Phoenix Point (our lovely booth neighbours). If you were watching the Xbox Keynote, you may have seen Keanu Reeves. You ALSO may have seen Star Renegades as part of the Xbox Game Pass line up among many other unique indie titles. This means that we are confirmed for PC, Steam, and Xbox platforms at launch and we’ll confirm for other platforms as soon as we can! <3
TECHNICAL ARTIST We have a newwwww technical artist! His name is Matt and he will be helping Bryan out with sprinkling his magic on the visual effects. Now our combat animations will look even spicier and sparklier than ever before. All these new visual effects will be revealed in our Gamescom demo.
MUSIC Our composer Steve London pumped out even more NEW awesome tracks for combat and camping scenes! We posted a clip of it on our Twitter for screenshot saturday. If you look closely, you can see a familiar furry four-legged friendo laying down by Wynn. And the answer is YES you can pet this doggo.
GAMESCOM We will be back at Gamescom again this year! Mega thanks to Indie Arena Booth for having us <3 Right now, our team is working on a brand new demo just for Gamescom. So the chance to beat Thorus the World-Throttler is gone...but I’m sure they’ll be back within the next few rebellion cycles. This is a roguelite RPG with an evolving adversary system afterall ;) nobody really stays dead forever.. (that's how it works riiiight??)
In previous builds, we felt that not only did our demo play too long, but the learning curve (since it threw you right into the heart of the game instead of the tutorial) was a bit higher than average. So this time around, we’ll be adding tooltips and re-designed the UI (again) to make it more intuitive and friendlier to pick up.
You’ll be seeing quick recap blurbs here and there since we’re zoning in around the final stretch for Gamescom prep.
By the waaay.. who from here is going to Gamescom?! If you catch me (Softcookie) around, make sure to ask for some J5T-1N stickers and keychains!
Thanks for your patience and tuning in as always, Rebels!
