Presenting TWO DOLLAR SUITS - The A-Star Theft Remaster | WISHLIST TODAY

Two Dollar Suits

After a year of development, a long break, and much emotional turmoil, I am finally in a place where I feel ready to properly announce the long talked about remaster of A-Star Theft, first announced in 2023.

WISHLIST THE GAME TODAY

Two Dollar Suits

What does this remaster mean?

In short, a whole lot of things.

New Story

Writing the new story has been an incredible process. I have taken in feedback from years of play testing to construct a brand-new experience for Logan Huntborn and his daughter Vanessa. This time, my most important goal has been to make players connect more deeply to the characters. The structural story events are similar to the original, but told in a very different way. All dialog is rewritten, the characters are rethought, and Logan's connection with Vanessa is explored to the fullest it can be.

New Weapon System

A new internal weapons system leading to better stability, more weapon stats, faster development of new weapons, and even allowing entirely new weapon concepts that do not fire bullets (eg. flame throwers). Various melee weapons are added too. This is usable within a completely new interface built from the ground up.

Skill System

Get ready for more play style variation than ever before. With Two Dollar Suits, I introduce a skill system to complement equipment for delightfully creative synergies. These skills are designed to deeply modify your strategies instead of being simple stat changes.

Graphical Style

Major graphical overhauls make the game feel more immersive. I have iterated intensively on creating a style that captures the brutal feelings of the world we play in, and at the same time improves clarity during stressful gameplay moments. Vibrance and dynamics have intensified, the world is more colorful now.

So much stuff is going to change now. Don't believe me? Take a look at this scientific table to compare:

This is by far the biggest project I have completed, and I am honored to have your support.

Full change log (so far)

Story

• Rewritten story, including new characters, events and missions

• Improved character depth and motivations

• Improved conflicts

• Multiple facial expressions in dialog

• Dialog boxes now have controls to rewind text for convenience

• Major level design improvements

• Theme-appropriate safe house music

Art Style

• Established a new art style

• Lowered ambient lighting

• Created new color filters to shift dark colors gray-blue

• Added outlines to objects

• Generally made the game more dynamic and colorful

Weapons System

• Created a new internal weapons system and unified handling of different weapon types, leading to better stability, more weapon stats, faster development of new weapons, and even allow entirely new weapon concepts that do not fire bullets (eg. flame throwers)

• Created a new melee system

• Added a new store system

• Added new weapon: Plastic Pistol

• Added new weapon: Hand Cannon

• Added new weapon: Precision Sniper

• Added new weapon: Light Machine Gun

• Added new weapon: Minigun

• Added new weapon: Knife

• Added new weapon: Baseball Bat

• Added Katana as a purchasable weapon, defaulting to fists again (The purchasable katana is a lot stronger than the current default one)

• Added new weapon stats: Recoil, Damage Falloff, Bullet Speed, Ammo Pickup, Noise, and Headshot Distance

• Further reduced store prices

• Slightly improved weapon icons in the store

• Reduced credit cost of the Loot Bag to 1

Skill System

• Added a skill system

• Added 30 skills, organized into 5 tiers based on their power level

• Skills are divided into the categories Action, Stealth, and Money

• Skills are intended to significantly change playstyles in different ways than equipment

• Like equipment, skills are purchased using money, then equipped using credits

Hard Mode

• Added a setting to enable Hard Mode

• Hard Mode affects many aspects of both action and stealth approaches, including the following:

  • Enemy reaction times

  • Enemy sight distance

  • Damage taken

  • Maximum police on the map

  • Police response times

  • Stealth detection speed

  • Body bag size

  • Police call speed

  • Ammo drops

  • Amount of healing stations

  • Amount of guards on some Freeplay maps

  • Amount of cameras on some Freeplay maps

Settings Menu

• Redesigned the settings menu from scratch

• Categories are now displayed in separate tabs

• Keybind settings are now displayed like other settings

• Added reset settings button

• Greatly improved gamepad support

• Added several new settings

• Removed True Pixel Style setting, deciding to always leave it enabled due to graphical issues (All new graphics has been designed to look best with this setting enabled)

• Removed Relative Movement mode due to quality issues and difficulties keeping both movement modes up to date

Help menu

• Redesigned the help menu from scratch

• Contents of the help menu has been updated to reflect the current version of the game

Interactions

• Added ability for explosions to destroy nearby explosive barrels

• Added ability for crew members to enter the van during escapes

• Added ability to carry multiple keycards at the same time

• Added ability to melee kill civilians

• Added ability to step on rats to kill them

• Added a rat infestation problem to the Freeplay safe house

Combat and AI

• Improved NPC combat stability

  • Enemies are less prone to stay still for prolonged periods (Still happens sometimes)

  • Enemies take cover more consistently

  • Enemies are less prone to run in huge packs toward the player

  • Possibly fixed NPCs sometimes walking through walls

  • Improved smoothness of crew members finding a new path to the player while the player is moving

  • Improved decision making when enemies consider opening alarmed doors

• Removed leaning mechanic due to animation issues, reliability issues, AI issues, game balance issues, usability issues, and production issues (probably also other issues)

• Improved NPC pathing to make them less prone to moving very close to walls and have their shoulders clip inside

• Improved guards escorting players

• Fixed NPCs sometimes running through security bars

• Tweaked gamefeel when kicking open doors

• Reduced frequency of enemies dropped their weapons when punched

• Removed SWAT bomb planting teams due to quality issues

• Added a new gamepad aim assist system, active when not manually selecting targets using the cursor. The aim assist intensity can be modified in the settings

Improvements

• Redesigned internal Freeplay heist management to be unified with the remastered story system, leading to faster development and ability to add story heists to Freeplay

• 15 new Freeplay heists added from the new story, giving a total of 30

• Slightly increased EXP needed to level up in Freeplay for improved progression balancing, but reduced additional EXP needed per level

• Added a new sound effect for the Improved Drill, so it sounds different to the normal drill

• Added headlights to vehicles

• Added siren audio to SWAT vans

• Added red and blue lighting to SWAT vans

• Added ability for SWAT to turn on power during combat

• Added a timer to intimidated civilians to better show how long they will stay still

• Added over 30 more environmental car designs (Thanks to PKPain!)

• Added flies that fly around garbage bags

• Driving into cash registers now destroy them and drop money like other loot objects

• Changed so you have to release the shoot button before you can start melee attacks, to prevent accidental melee in close battles with many enemies

• Improved visual effect when destroying military turrets

• Improved unplanted bomb visual clarity

• Tweaked camera shake to emphasize certain moments, but be more mild in others

• Tweaked gamepad functionality to be more consistent (still struggles in some areas)

• Removed zoom out effect on some camera shake events because it was annoying

• Decreased ammo drop rate from killed enemies to better balance different weapon ammo amount and pickup rate

• Reduced crew cuts for both stealth and loud

• Improved light blurring at screen edges

• Improved door kicking predictability on double doors

• Improved clean up body parts: Players should no longer accidentally clean up body parts instead of stealing loot, if both items are nearby

• Lowered shooting and explosion volume for more balanced audio

• Improved explosion sound when destroying fuel tanks (no longer multiple explosion sounds on top of each other)

• Improved spatial audio

• Improved reliability of the Stuck In Wall button

• Improved item wheel UI

• Improved character appearance menu UI, especially for gamepads

• Improved some minor UI elements

• Fixed pause menu not working using a gamepad, if paused while overview mode is active

• Fixed characters pushing Logan in the safe house

• General improvements to gamepad support

• Miscellaneous improvements

Bug fixes

• Tweaked hospital penalties to be less expensive for revived crew members, but more expensive for those left behind

• Fixed cameras triggering immediately if players had been hit by a bullet

• Fixed inability to steal loot if police were called while cleaning body parts

• Fixed ability to disable electrical objects while the power is down

• Fixed stoves and kitchen grills not able be destroyed by driving the van into them

• Fixed moving multiple nearby characters at the same time when dragging them to a new target location

• Fixed a few keybinds showing in the wrong category in settings

• Fixed the same keybinds not being reset when clicking the Reset Keybinds button

• Potentially fixed dropped weapons getting stuck in walls

• Other minor bugs fixed