Unfortunately, Astra Etherium didn’t make the end of March date I had hoped. There were some other issues that popped up, the HUD had to be redesigned and just a bunch of other things that are out of my control. Anyone who knows me knows, I hate when things are out of my control when it comes to my projects.
Astra Etherium will still have most of the features mentioned like leaderboards, achievements, etc. but Nuggeta changed their API so 2 player online may be dropped for now. Every time we seem to be near the finish line, something else pops up. Just like when I thought I had an easy solution to the localization issue and the asset had to be pulled. I have someone helping on the code side and he actually coded something himself which I’m sure took time though he hasn’t told me how much time he spent on that (he might be avoiding answering the question.)
While all this has been going on, I have enlisted a few people for the remastered version of the game. I call it remastered because it will add stages and dialogue to what we already have and it will be mainly for the bigger stage – Steam, Wii U and PS4. Previous platforms will receive the update too so don’t worry about not getting the extra content, you will. By the time it’s ready, it will probably add 4-5 stages, an RPG like upgrade system and who knows what other surprises I may come up with.
OUYA will still be the first platform release with others to follow. I’m old school, from the time when people wanted EVERYONE to play their game, they didn’t worry about chasing every dollar. If I release on iOS and it doesn’t sell, so what, maybe it sells somewhere else. These days it’s easy to port games to other platforms, especially using Unity. It sickens me to see people say they won’t go to one platform or another because time porting when for most it doesn’t take much time.
Sure, there are some circumstances where it may take a while like 100 Rogues when he ported to OUYA. He re-coded the whole game just to do that. He earned my respect ith that gesture. I even picked up the game for that reason alone. So I apologize for the delays again. Unfortunately sometimes things are not in your control. I also want to add that in the near future, I will be posting updates at the company blog at porkpieplatypus.com. I will start working on getting that together soon.
As for a date, I’m just going to leave it at soon. The remaster will probably be this summer.