Hello there my name’s Vince Webb, I’m a composer and today I’m pleased to give you a little insight into the music of Astronimo.

Before we go any further let’s have a quick listen to the main menu theme.


Music in a game like Astronimo needs to play a variety of functional roles: creating excitement, signifying important events to the player, establishing you in a new environment, creating contrast… But over and above all of this is the music’s ability to set an overall tone or vibe. I like to think of it as fleshing out a game’s personality or ‘soul’.

The main theme is most important in this regard, as it is likely to be heard multiple times in a variety of contexts. Of course not every game requires a strong melodic theme, but I find that there’s something inherently ‘friendly’ about giving the listener something clear to latch on to.



This theme magically popped into my head after I had been immersing myself in the world of the game for several days and noodling at the piano. Let’s do a bit of post-hoc analysis.

Firstly, it has a somewhat ‘old school’ quality, with a nod to the nobility of classic, military or space themes (Dambusters, Star Trek etc). While this seriousness is definitely subverted by the tongue in cheek nature of the instrument choice, it still gives us a feeling of sincerity and hope: we are on a mission to get home and we’re going to work together to achieve that goal! It felt important to keep this note of warmth and integrity at the heart of the game’s soundtrack in spite of all the silliness.

The wonderful Basia Bartz adding some violin to the soundtrack

At the same time, all the OTT grandiosity felt like a nod to the bottomless corporate ambition of our employer - Hypergiant Inc. Our boss Croc’s endless supply of (entirely unfounded) optimism makes it all the more funny when our contraptions inevitably fall apart.


A ‘funked up’ version of the theme can be heard on Turilia as part of the background music of that particular world. By displacing the rhythm a bit I found myself writing in a danceable military marching vibe with hints of New Orleans, African and Caribbean music thrown in.





Working on the music for Turilia was a chance to develop and explore the game’s ‘core’ palette, before going off-piste: lots of live brass (especially tuba), uke and plenty of percussion! These sounds in combination with some broadly orchestral colours became my jumping off point for many of the stings and cutscenes throughout the rest of the game.

You can never have too many tracks…

As much as I enjoy working with software instruments and synths, I didn’t want things to be too ‘in-tune’. The music needed to feel ‘organic’ - to use the old marketing music cliche. To achieve this I leaned heavily into my ever growing instrument collection, as well as enlisting help from some top class musician friends.

Rather than doing a lot of ensemble recording, I embraced the experimentation and fine grain control that’s possible with recording one instrument at a time. Lots of layering and a ‘cut and paste’ approach resulted in collages of controlled chaos and playful grooves that hang together by a thread.

Recording my own percussion samples was one way to make things more ‘organic’

One of my favourite things about the game is that you can collect and play little musical instruments. Every instrument was recorded live (including didgeridoo) and each planet has its own ‘native’ set. Best of all, you can use them to jam with your friends in real time! Developing joyful and completely unnecessary features like this are a just one highlight of working on a project from early on. I was able to be very hands on with how the system worked as well as have time to try out different types of musical phrases to figure out what would be fun to play. I’m excited to see players experiment and perform their own music!

Djembe, 2 ukes and a trumpet. Just one of the many possible combinations!

My thanks to Coatsink and the team for bringing me on board.

Astronimo will be arriving in Early Access soon so add it to your wishlist and I look forward to jamming with you!


Bob Payne contributing some particularly aggressive Tuba ‘taunts’ to the playable music system

Join the Official Coatsink Discord
Follow Astronimo on Twitter
Follow Vince's composing activities on YouTube

Weekend rates in Karos:

🌿22.07.2023 - Pet EXP х2
🌿23.07.2023 - Pet EXP х2

Make the most of your weekend!

We have the date for public early access:


Alpha 8 is out, bringing many new features to the game, among these, the upper house/senate which was as well a stretch goal during the Kickstarter campaign. I am now at work to the exclusive kickstarter edition that all backers will receive soon. Development is of course set to go on for many months which will bring the United Kingdom, multiplayer support as well as much more content!

Milestone news: Thanks to your precious support, I am thrilled to announce that I have commissioned the main theme for Lawgivers II 🎶



FEATURES
- upper house/senate and switch to bicameral/unicameral legislation
- two events "Subprime crisis" and "Great recession"
- game rule to choose between unicameral or bicameral parliaments
- game rule to choose between realistic timed events or random timed
- organizations system has been completely redesigned
- world and institution filters/lenses are reimplemented again
- resources, buildings, events and battles can now be displayed on world map
- if nation is unhappy, citizen's protests may occur
- new law "Working regulation" with 2 articles
- low stability may now lead to protests
- added kickstarter politicians
- new parameter "Democratic representation"
- scandal is breaking out if using too much black money
- new gameplay and knowledge tips

IMPROVEMENTS
- regional stability system
- gdp system and growth
- display legislature and constituency representing on lawmaker
- several improvements to text and descriptions
- serious improvements to general AI system
- improvements to voters distribution AI
- link to open law that regulates election
- custom scenarios can now have attached localizations files
- significantly increased end turn performance
- more information for nations at start of game
- switched to vulkan for android with great performance improvements

FIXES
- memory leak in AI system
- fixed buying lawmaker vote
- fixes to party creation at start of game
- bug with calendar indexing, could made it impossible to progress sometimes
- bug in voters distribution
- netcode bug on scheduling some events on calendar that afflicted all games
- freeze caused by wrong multithreading system
- support for ultrawide screens
- rethinked many functions to ensure a more bug-free experience

Hello, MVR players


We apologize for EU server issue. The EU server is momentarily inaccessible due to its unstable condition.

Server normalization is in progress, and we will let you know when the issue is resolved.

We will update you if there are any changes.


Thank you for your understanding.

My latest title is available on Steam right now! Jump on in and claim it for a discount if you're into that sort of thing. It's pretty similar to SPG, but it's an 18+ version of the game. Hope you like it if that's your thing!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2444540/Sexy_Anime_Puzzle_Game__A_Hentai_Girl_Puzzle_Adventure/

Hey Exofighters,

Exoprimal is live and the dinosaurs have arrived! We trust you’ve been collecting the finest quality combat data for Leviathan, whilst avoiding being turned into a crunch dino snack!

From everyone on the team, we’d like to say a big thank you for your amazing support, passion and feedback since launch!

In today’s post we’re going to be chatting launch, taking a look at the upcoming Savage Gauntlet PvE exclusive mode and even getting a first deep dive into one of the new Alpha Variant Exosuits coming as part of free Title Update 1 in August!



To echo what we said in the post’s opening, thank you to everyone who has already joined us in the wargames! We hope you’re having a ton of fun as you clash with dinosaurs and Exosuits alike.

For those of you who have suited up for the first time and dived into your first couple of matches, the wargames will evolve as you play through Exoprimal and discover more of its story. Completing your introductory wargames and initial progress of the Analysis Map will add additional dinosaurs, increased swarm density, new locations, more Final Missions, and even greater threats.



After all, Leviathan can’t have its favourite test subjects getting devoured immediately! But fear not, once you’ve got your first few wargames completed and the Analysis Map updated; Leviathan, *REDACTED* and the dinosaurs won’t hold back as the swarms turn your mini-map red and your screen a writhing mass of teeth and claws.

But this is just the start of your time with the Hammerheads and Leviathan’s wargames! Let’s take a look at what’s on the horizon:



That’s right, new Exosuit variants, maps, Final Missions, Capcom Collabs and more are on the way!

Let’s delve into a bit of what’s coming now.



Get ready for Savage Gauntlet, a dynamic new mode coming to Exoprimal on July 28!

A separate mode from Dino Survival, Savage Gauntlet is a pure PvE mode designed to put veteran 5-person Exofighter teams to the test in special rotating weekly missions.



It’s just you, your team of 5 and the dinosaurs. No rival Exofighters, no dominator. What will determine your success is mastery of your exosuits and your teamwork as you take on endgame content specifically designed with encounters and challenges on the upper end of the difficulty spectrum.

You can play this mode purely for fun and to test your team in high intensity PvE dino chaos, but this mode also comes with leaderboards! So, if you’re feeling competitive you can show exofighters from dimensions far and wide just how strong and robust your combat data generating skills are!
As mentioned, these missions will rotate each week, bringing with it new dino encounters for you to overcome and a fresh leaderboard to climb!

Savage Gauntlet is an endgame experience with difficulty that reflects that and as such, will be unlocked for exofighters who have completed the game’s story.



On August 16, free Title Update 1 comes to Exoprimal and with it 10 new Alpha Variant exosuits, one for each current suit – no one’s missing out!



Each Alpha Variant exosuit has new playstyles, weapons, abilities and looks! We’ve spoken to the game’s director, Takuro Hiraoka, and got a deeper look into one of the suits, Skywave.

The concept of the variant suits is giving them different weapons to bring new range and strategy to each one compared to the base suits,” he explained before going into more detail using Skywave as an example.

By default, Skywave has abilities that allow it to attack or interfere with enemies while healing allies, including its default weapon the Aether Lance, and the active skill Optics Jammer. So the main strategy when using this Exosuit is deciding whether to be attacking or healing at any given time.



However, the Alpha variant’s main weapon is the Tempest Lance, which allows you to choose between two different moves depending on whether or not you’ve charged the attack up: an offensive attack or a charged bolt which hampers enemy movement. This means players will have to switch between using their main weapon on enemies and their active skill when they want to heal their allies. So, all in all, you have to get into quite a different strategic mindset with the Alpha, which I think should be a lot of fun.



Skywave is categorised as a Support suit, but the Alpha variant has less of a focus on healing, so I expect to see this lead to some changes in team composition as well as players rethinking their rig loadout to perhaps add in more support functions.



That wraps up the latest Hammerheads HQ post!

We hope you’re all having a brilliant time with the wargames and thank you again for joining us in the battles against the dino threat!

We’ll be back again in the near future for our next community post, but in the meantime, follow Exoprimal on Twitter and like us on Facebook for the latest Exoprimal news.

If you’re keen to see a little more of the Alpha Variant suits, you can get a little look at them in action here:



Thanks, Exofighters, see you in the wargames!

- Exoprimal Community Team

Fixed a hole in the final level.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931730/Fort_Solis/

Welcome to our 55th Development Status. You can see what we were working on in three weeks!

We have begun to design two difficulty levels for Tank Squad: Normal and Hardcore. In both difficulty settings, we are going to modify some of the game parameters:






In this gameplay preview, we would like to show you a fragment of the footage showing the second main objective. The task of the players is to locate the enemy artillery position, which can be located in one of three positions - where two of them are decoys.



During mission selection, we have added additional overlays showing main and side objectives as well as enemy forces positions etc. This should give a more immersive and mission feeling.



We have also made significant changes to the level design. The current maps for scenarios are quite large, so we decided to split some of the longer missions into two shorter ones. This aims to intensify the gameplay and reduce the distances between objectives, so players won't feel fatigued from long tank rides without combat.



For instance “old C1M1” was 5.125 km x 3.075 km, around 15.75 km2. New C1M1 and C1M2 missions will be 3.075 km x 3.075, around 9,45 km2.



Additionally, the objectives themselves have changed. We are continuously making improvements to the mission's logic and modifying the environment and terrain to deliver the best possible experience from playing through the scenarios.

For every ground type, we have 15 variations of VFX. Right now we have about 90 effects that correspond to the type of shell, its payload, penetration, directional impact, and ricochet. Bear in mind that as much as we would like to have it perfect, there will be inconsistencies in how things look like. The main reason why we want so many variations is to give players another visual clue, about how their shells are interacting with the enemy and environment. You can visually distinguish which type of shell is shot, and roughly what caliber it was.



Of course, most of it is just a simple approximation, just to set the adequate vibe of the fight and create space for the player to easily understand in what circumstances he currently is in the battle.

In the video below, you can get to know some of the variations we did since the previous Dev status. Type of ground shown: Vegetation, Stones, Tank hits. Types of shells presented are: High Caliber, Medium, and Light, for HE and AP rounds.

These are still works in progress, and a lot of them need adjustment. It's the first solid take on the Effects department, and as much as we need to do yet, we are proud to show what we did to this point. We want to know what you think about it.




We are currently under QA from PlayWay group. More info as we will get through it :)

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

Thank you so much everyone for your support!
Here is a small update with mostly quality of life and balancing changes 💖

- Sprite ordering: I reworked the layering system so that important things are not hidden behind other images. "WTF I didn't see that CanonBoi behind the boss" is not a valid excuse for your failed run anymore!
- You can now play with the gamepad stick.
- New tips! I hope you like them!
- Back hand equipments now state in their texts that they will attack behind Froggy
- Spiky hat has less hitstun

- You now have more base chance to find rare upgrades in hard mode. Should lead to less unwinable runs!
- Removed some CanonBois from wave 14 of hard mode (wth did I think when I put so much in here)
- JumpyBoi's hitbox starts to be active a bit later

- Fix typo on spear
- Fix tiny bugs on controls that could make the game a bit laggy if you went back to main menu during a tutorial or when the upgrade pannel was opened
- Fix bug on upgrade that could lead to no selectable cards: not only this should not happen anymore, but if it does you can quit the upgrade screen and continue your run so it's not game breaking anymore