Zakumba: Astraia
(Prologue Alpha Demo) 2020
Zakumba: Astraia (Prologue Demo), is an early version of what we intend for our main title Zakumba: Astraia. In its current iteration, the game demonstrates a real time action combat system with crystals as equipment that will give the player different types of attacks. In the final version, we intend to add more crystals, polish its effects, add variety to attack types, and fine tune/balance combat. This demo will be limited to one area known as the Abandoned Factory.
The Abandoned Factory is located in the world of Zakumba and will play a major role in the final title. The final title release will have several areas to explore which will include puzzles, enticing narrative moments and many items to collect. The narrative for this prologue is limited to a specific part of the Astraia’s story while the main focus of this demo is to demonstrate How combat and exploration is designed and intended for. The main title will have a fleshed out narrative that focuses on Astraia's origin and her pursuit to build the perfect golem.
As we are currently in development, we look forward to sharing our progress and journey building our first game. Check out our Blog for our most recent status update. We welcome any and all feedback and look forward to building a community around our studio.
Early Demo Gameplay Trailer
Gameplay gifs
All assets and animations that were created for the demo was done in Aseprite, a 2D Pixel editing Software. The engines used for the game was put together using the Unity Engine. Here are a few Gifs of the current demo release, now available on Steam!
The Fire Generator was designed with a rustic feel in mind. The actual design of the Generator and the room is based off “Mechanical Stokers” and an amalgamation of “Nikola Tesla’s EarthQuake Machine”. Unrefined Fire Crystals are harvested from this generator, which when refined are used as a pure power source for tools and weapons.
Every door in the factory requires a specific Crystal to be placed for the door to open. Refined Nature, Fire and Water Crystals are gathered after each generator is fixed.
The Crystal Harvester sits in the first room off the factory. It functions by taking Unrefined Crystals and harvesting them until they are refined for domestic and industrial uses. This machine design was based off real world Automated Gem Cutting Machines.
The Nature Generator was based off the idea of utilizing the gathered earth as construction and energy resources. This was also used for the gathering of Unrefined Nature Crystals that would then be refined for common domestic use. This design was based off real world “Bucket Wheel Excavators.”
Mechanical Stokers were a large inspiration in the design of the Fire Generator room. The swinging basins signal the transportation of large quantities of Unrefined Fire Crystals that would have been used all over the factory.
Screenshots
Zakumba: Astraia (Prologue Demo) was released October 11th 2020 on Steam and was showcased at the GDEX Expo, a Columbus based gaming expo. This year was repurposed for a live twitch stream which allowed us to share our demo, trailer and conversations with the developers.
The Water Generator, used for gathering Unrefined Water Crystals, was based off real world Offshore Oil Drills, which extracts water from a large underground pool for survival and industrialization.
There are some rooms in the Abandoned Factory that contain nothing more than scrap minerals and random pieces of paper. A factory is abandoned after all, so what would be left?
Experimenting with lighting helped us create the Abandoned factory with more depth in a 2D style setting.
Astraia launches attacks Fire Attacks at her enemies after gathering the necessary Crystals.
Nature attacks against Water type enemies are extremely effective. Plant vines will burst through the ground to impale enemies before dissipating back into the earth.
Enemies can follow Astraia almost anywhere, meaning she will have to think on her feet to either escape or fight to reach her goal.
The creatures seen in the Abandoned Factory are known as Morps. They have the ability to change their shape and texture to attack and defend against their opponents.
All the art displayed in the game was created by our extremely talented animation team. Countless hours of feedback and reiterations were put into the designs of the factory, characters and all aspects of the game. Pushing the abilities of our team has only helped grow our skill and allows us to press forward.
The first draft of the Pause Menu UI, which we dubbed as the “Kente menu”, was intended to be simple enough for the player to navigate easily, but also have an interesting design that fit the aesthetic of the game. Our focus included identifying the current objective without the need of moving around the menu too often.
Astraia is a curious individual. What may seem simple to her may also be more complex for others. Designing her personality and how she looked in the game was one of the best parts of creating this world.
The Abandoned Factory is massive and offers a whole lot of room to move run and dash around. We purposely did this to give the feeling of a large scale room that would take someone time to explore.
Launching Fire Attacks against Nature type enemies increases the amount of damage dealt. The strategy is always to utilize the best Crystal for the right situation.
Water Crystal attacks against Fire enemies are done by exploding Bubbles. When launched, the bubbles explode on contact and force enemies back. If done well, this can be used as a combo with a normal melee attack.
The design of the Nature Generator and all the other assets in the game was completely done in a 2D pixel program called Aseprite.
Getting cornered and surrounded by enemies can be unfortunate, especially when barrage of attacks stop you from being able to defend quickly. Be careful and utilize the space around you well.
Throughout exploration, Astraia will need to repair the broken generators in order to acquire the necessary crystals needed to open the final factory door.
Zakumba: Astraia (Prologue Demo) also had the honor of being nominated as Runner Up for Crowd Favorite. Achieving this award as a first time independent studio on its first ever demo release was a monuments honor and we were humbled to receive it. We thank all the members and community from the GDEX and Playvue team for this award.
For more information on our development, click on the buttons below to navigate through our content. Feedback on anything you have read or questions you have are always welcome. Thanks for checking us out. Hope to see you around the Pond!