STARDROP - Final Chapter Released + More

Hey Everyone.

Today is a very important personal milestone. The base narrative is finished and the game can be experienced from start to finish. Now, before I go onto the meat of this news update, I have to stress the fact that while the story is pretty much done, development is not. Not just yet at least. IMPORTANT: German localization is not yet implemented and will be added in a few days. There's a lot that I want to say in this post, since it's the second most important update till date. I don't finish a game's narrative every day, surely not when it's been in development for so long. But, there's a bit more that I want to talk about, so, I will now go into the details of this update. Hold on to your butts.

Chapter 4 - Released

A little over three years ago I set out to create a game. I had a basic story-line in my head and an idea of what I wanted the game to be, I set out and started prototyping. From that initial premise STARDROP was born.

Today, anyone who bought the game in Early Access will now finally be able to finish the main story! It's kind of a scary thing for me to conclude a narrative that I have been working on for so long, hoping it will do justice to everyone who has been with the game's development for so long.

I have done my very best to keep the ending true to what I set out and what I envisioned. I do believe that its true to what STARDROP has been about in its core. I can only hope that you guys will enjoy it as well.

Echoes

Echoes is back. For those who have been around for quite some time already know about Echoes. It's one of the SRO side missions that becomes available when completing the game. It used to be part of the demo and also of the main game but it was simply outdated and had some bugs. I have done my best to bring it back.

I am not completely finished yet, a few dialog overlaps happen so I'll need to tidy all that up some more. But the overall experience is there. I might also tweak some more visuals here and there as well and try to optimize it a bit more where able.

New Trailer

I also wanted to showcase the new trailer I made. It's based heavily o nthe old one but with all new and current footage. I think it's pretty solid I hope you'll like it. :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuATMY1BDS4

Smaller Fixes And Tweaks

I have also yet again fixed a few minor issues. A prominent one was that you could keep running forever if you would hit shift and walk at the start of a level. Acceleration now ramps up and down smoothly as was intended. For Echoes I tweaked how the player collides with other objects in zero gravity, which was always really odd. Things seem to be fine now. On top of that I have lowered some of the Zero-G sound effects so they're far less intrusive. I also fixed most issues where the subtitles would disappear. I think there's only one instance left of this happening and I also have to fix some remaining overlapping subtitles, mostly in Echoes. I tweaked / fixed the Android remote control mechanics. I feel this bit is a bit underused and I'm planning to do more with this but I can't say more about how and where. But the system now works as I intended it.

Steam Is Changing

I usually end with some last words but today I wanted to have a bit of a talk about what's been going on the past few months right here on Steam. I feel that not saying anything would be unfair and I am not really one to keep things quiet when there's stuff to be said. Steam as a platform for indies has always been something I have been grateful for. Steam's underlying mechanics are robust and very powerful. Updating games on steam is awesome and my general experience with the support from the Valve guys has always been solid. However, I am pretty sure everyone by now kind of knows that the Steam of 2018 is not the Steam I started development of STARDROP with in 2015. When I launched STARDROP in Early Access on June 2017, things looked bright. I've done a lot on my end to try and promote the game outside of Steam and we even won something. Recently it seems Valve has tweaked the way the store algorithm decides when/how/what to show on the storefront and it's been a slaughter for not just myself but a lot of other indie devs the past few months, sales wise. None of us are sure what entirely has changed, nor how, nor why. We don't know if these changes and the results of them are desired by Valve or not. What I myself can tell is that Early Access visibility has decreased a lot. What this means in general is that I don't have the time to sit in Early Access that much longer. I am in a way forced to release the game as soon as possible. Luckily STARDROP has always been in a pretty solid state in general and has never had too many game breaking bugs. I will now go into the polishing phase of the game's development. I will do my best to polish out the most annoying bugs. I will do my best to add in whatever smaller details I have planned. What I don't know yet is how much of the extra stuff I wanted to add will actually be implemented on release. There are things that will be added prior or after release but I am unsure how much extra I can do on top of that. I always wanted to make a bunch of side missions, and I still do, but I have to look towards the future as well. This game has always been a bit of a niche, simply because this game is not a gameplay centric experience. While the game means a ton to me, I will have to make sure that whatever I do next is able to reach a broader audience. Looking back at the game's narrative and things like that, I believe there are some really cool opportunities to do something with what I've done in STARDROP on a narrative level and translate that into a more action oriented project. I will be taking a few steps back with this release and listen to the feedback. I'm going to play around with a new project I started a few days earlier. I will then go right back into finishing up STARDROP as best I can and prepare for its full release. I can only hope that I have been able to entertain you guys well enough and that you may understand where I'm coming from. Whatever happens my goal still is to release a quality product. I might just not be able to do it to the extend that I would liked. Whatever happens, I am happy I at least made it to the ending, I still am planning to add a few more levels to the main ship to explore optionally with some narrative elements to further deepen the lore. I'm sorry for this massive Wall-O-Text but I had to share my thoughts and plans.

The Future

So, yeah. As I mentioned before I will now go into polishing the rest of the game. I surely have not rushed production, not skimmed any of the overall quality, it does feel that it's time for me to move on once I feel the game is at a proper level of quality. I also don't think I will make another game like this any time soon. As much as I loved making it, the sad truth is, for me at least, that games with actual mechanics and more action oriented overall do better. I also don't like to just make the same stuff over and over so there's a very good chance my next game will have more traditional gameplay. That said, I also LOVE telling stories so I will probably find some way to marry the two. Does this means I will never make a game like STARDROP? Or maybe a sequel? Well, never say never. My time spent with the voice actors and the other team members have been amazing. I will remain in contact with pretty much most of them and if I can ever muster up a proper budget I will most certainly revisit the universe, one way or another. I also still want to make some more side missions. I'm not sure how many, or how often, but it's a nice way to explore new ideas and new stories.

Thank You

To each and every one of you that plunged into this Early Access title, never sure what to expect, if the game would ever be finished, and all the other uncertainties a title in development may bring, I am so incredibly thankful to have been allowed to make this game. I'm proud of the Voice Actors, proud of Adam, the composer and I'm also very proud of our QA team who've done all they can to make sure bugs are caught before release or put onto the bug list. For now I will take a tiny break before I finish the game. Thank you all!!! Joure & Team V