[GAME] StarAir - An Episodic Action-RPG Shoot-em-up!

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Hi! It's been quite awhile (and I'm not often always active on here anymore), but I've been pouring a lot of effort into game development projects, a dream come true for me! I figured that I could give one of these projects a forum post, as it's something I've already shown on various status updates. So this is StarAir!

Coming Soon! Stage Diagnostics (Prologue Demo) is coming in 2018.

https://gamejolt.com/games/starair/334932

What's StarAir?

StarAir is a weird Action-RPG bullet hell shooter featuring everything from weapon decks to skill trees! Play as Max, who's on a adventure to find out who's responsible for his father's death many years ago. Prior to the events of the game, Max learns that his father was the legendary StarAir, a bounty hunter chasing after a criminal organization (in space! of course). Donning his father's title, Max revives the StarAir in a effort to gain the attention of the very people he's after. The game takes place after he gets the details on the whereabouts of some of the higher-ups of the organization, and from there leads to a barrage of battles against crazy and powerful enemies. And robots.

The game's been in development since sometime in late April and was originally going to be my first project in GameMaker (that ended up being StarTower instead!), and I'm excited to let everyone try the game when a early version of it, StarAir =Stage Diagnostics= comes out sometime later this year with both a prologue episode and early version of the Arcade Mode! While it's made a lot of progress and development has been going smoothly in between other cool projects, it's got a long way to go before I think it's something truly special (mainly balancing...and probably invulnerability frames). I'm not so worried with how ambitious the project has gotten since I initially came up with the concept back in 2017, because it's just been a lot of fun working on the project and working on things in whatever pace I see fit.

(also yes all of the art is not final)

Features

• DRAW A DECK OF WEAPONS! Using a card deck system, Max can pick up cards that transform into weapons or items for his ship! Feel free to discard cards into parts to further upgrade Max!
• PILOT STARAIR YOUR WAY! Thanks to robust upgrading technology, both OS and System upgrades can be applied to the StarAir with skill points earned from leveling up! The possibilities are endless with 12 unique abilities (from the OS Upgrades Module) and 12 stat upgrades (from the System Upgrades module)! Play with choice unprecedented in a space shmup!
• WORLDS OF ALL KIND HAVE JOINED HANDS! Taking place thousands of years later in a world where StarTower was a hit video game and the events of Deceived Voice took place in another dimension, StarAir's many weapons carry their origins from all sorts of games, including crossovers with other games!
• GAMEJOLT SUPPORT! Unlock achievements, and compete in online leaderboards for both Story and Arcade Mode.

Updates:

StarAir Update: 6/30/18

StarAir Update: 7/7/18

And...

I'd like to lastly give thanks to @Spin Attaxx who's helped with testing the game and providing feedback on it! I wish you luck in your own projects as well, and if you have any interest in his TSOTS project, there may be a little something from that in the game!

Update: 10/17/18: The game's scope has since changed drastically and a final description containing the game's final content will launch soon.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Hey there! I've updated the game since the past few weeks. Admittedly, things have been a bit slow as I took a week off and am putting a lot of work into other game projects as well, but both me and my friends are still planning on getting Episode 0 and the first version of StarAir: Arcade out by the end of this year! Another thing, all in-game abilities have been added! Check out four of em!

GameJolt Blog Post

Spoiler

New ULTIMATE Abilities: SMG Blast and StarShot

SMG BLAST

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Max's signature move! Blast the entire screen full of bullets that can tear through enemy bullets and cause a whole lot of damage! Available to use when your Ultimate Gauge is at Lv. 2!

StarShot

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The StarAir's Ultimate move! Named after a weapon from a millennium old video game, this weapon shoots a massive laser beam covering the screen! Nothing will be able to last it's intensity! Available to use when your Ultimate Gauge is at Lv. 3!

NEW ABILITY: StarSlash

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The StarAir can conjure a sword that performs a thin horizontal cut in front of the enemies! After activating it, it will deactivate and have to recharge!

NEW ABILITY: STARTHRUST

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Boost up Max's thrusters and dodge bullets at a blindly fast speed! If you continue to overuse it, it's effectiveness will decrease.

 

There's probably some more abilities I haven't shown, but I think I'll save that when people get to eventually try them in-game! Thanks for taking a look! I'll probably be back with a lot, lot more the next time I update on this forum thread specifically. More consistent updates can be found on my twitter and the game's GameJolt page.

[Nast]

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[Kaze no Klonoa]

40 minutes ago, Nast said:

The last gif doesn't seem to be working. Either way this is looking pretty rad. Looking forward to trying it out!

Thank you so much!! I apologize for that, I'll see about getting it to work when I'm not busy with other things, I tried reuploading it multiple times to a image hosting site so it can display normally on the thread.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Hey! Haven't updated this in awhile, got a reason as to why:

https://nikobackgames.weebly.com/blog/october-16th-2018

Quote

Hey everyone! So if you’re seeing this, you may have noticed that we haven’t talked about StarAir in awhile. Due to some shifting priorities between the whole dev team, the project has currently been left in stasis for quite awhile. 

So here’s what I’m gonna do. 

StarAir will be releasing in it’s simple, arcade-mode state as StarAir: -Arcade- in Late 2018. This version of the game is stripping the game’s story mode and arcade levels, and will primarily be a score-em-up bullet hell game. All of the game’s main mechanics will be implemented, but a variety of content in the game will be cut. I have not determined yet if I will be adding any additional weapons beyond the ones already made for the game, but I will probably try designing one or two more to fit. It won’t be a fully complete game; the reason why we’re still doing this release is because we want StarAir to at least exist to a certain capacity before we move onto something else. Future updates may or may not be considered either, but given the amount of other things I’m working on, I will likely leave it behind for the unforeseeable future. While I still think the game could had achieved it’s ambitious scope, things didn’t ultimately pan out that way. That sucks, but I’ve decided it’d be best to at least polish up things a little, release this version as is and move on to bigger, more exciting projects. The game still had quite a bit going for it so it would had sucked if I just dropped the project as is. I think if anything, some people might get a kick out of the weird ideas I implemented in the game. 

Another thing, StarAir will be the last game for Team Fuzzy Tail before we officially rebrand ourselves to Sky Hour Games. A few of my friends are joining on a new project and we’ll have more details to share about that sometime soon. Working on StarAir was a fun way of trying out new gameplay mechanics and I had fun with the many different systems and mechanics I added. I'm glad I at least tried, haha! Hopefully you'll give it a shot and see what it ended up being like.

Note: The game's page and GameJolt page have not been changed yet to reflect these changes. They will be modified later.

Thanks for reading, 
MeltingComet/Chi

The long story short, I will be releasing StarAir as a more simple game and cutting both the game's story mode and arcade mode since I am currently focusing on larger projects, and the majority of the people that were working on StarAir have rapidly changed priorities since the beginning of the game's development process. It sucks that I have to make such a post/drastic change after wanting to try something really large in scope, but it's all fine! You guys will be able to get to play the current version of the game sometime later this year.