brightatmidnight

[brightatmidnight]

The Final Systems Check Update for The Chaser’s Voyage (Version 0.9.0.14) is Now Live!

Hello everyone! Happy New Year (in late March)! We’ve been cramming away at one hell of an update for The Chaser’s Voyage. This update doesn’t contain one single big change like the rest of our big updates, but instead is crammed full of a bunch of random changes we’ve wanted to make for while and even more bug fixes. This is our last big planned update before we tackle finalizing the options menu, so we wanted to go all out! Details on the update under the Read More:

First up on the list was performance. Since this update was to serve as our final big systems check, I wanted to go through and improve performance related to collisions. It’s a small thing, but definitely something we had to do before we exit Early Access. This involved making the Player’s hurt box a little more forgiving towards the player, enemy hurt boxes more generous for the player, and simplifying obstacle hit boxes. We also made sure all unnecessary collision checks were removed, like the player’s shots checking if they are colliding with the player. Thankfully most of those were already squared away, but we did find some more while we were double checking!

With the performance & collision changes done, we started to add a few balance changes that had been on the back burner, since they were lower priority than implementing the Crew Journal and Flight Simulator. One such change was to slightly buff Bounty Hunters against undesired player behavior. Since the hunters only have one gun, the player could too easily turtle their attacks depending on the hunter’s weapon preference. So to fix this, we made hunters switch their weapons to laser shots when they notice that the player has not moved in a while. This lets them break through the player’s defenses and forces the player to focus on dodging shots again. We also buffed missiles, by increasing their speed more when the player’s engines are low and also by increasing the time between the player’s burst fire volleys. This makes it much harder to just sit there against missiles with low engines and high weapons. After lowering the level 4 weapon fire rate, we needed to increase the damage of each shot at level 4 to keep max weapons feeling impactful. That change then made it so that we needed to increase the health of large debris in Ship Graveyards and the health of sentries in Sentry Fields to not have weapons be too strong in those environments. In a small nerf to asteroids however, we did not change their health at all, so level 4 weapons will now be more effective in an Asteroid Field.  Next, we now have the player go straight into a Captain mode Voyage after finishing the tutorial, as opposed to a Voyager mode Voyage. This way, players can complete “The Chaser’s Voyage” from prologue to credits in what we lovingly refer to as “the canon story.” (Because the Chaser does not have the power to rewind time or magically respawn.) Finally, we decreased the amount of money clients offer. We had previously added a bonus to their offers of 1.3 times, but we’ve reduced that multiplier to 1.15 as it was too much money too consistently.

 To account for the fact that new players will probably get a game over after being put into Captain mode, we added a redone version of the tutorial’s death notice, which explains the game over conditions and our three modes. This notice appears the first time a player dies in the main game. Finally we made the enemy fighters in space battles no longer wait to start opening fire on the player. The space battles are chaotic, not time to waste, fighters!

Oh look, new mine effects and a new sensor function!

Our next changes were focused on adding some cool new features to already existing game systems. First, thanks to some feedback from the wonderful ROOKRULES, we decided we wanted to make it a little clearer which obstacles the player could collide with. We did this by buffing the sensors (level 2 of Auxiliary) so that they highlight incoming obstacles if they will collide with the player if no movement is made. This gives the player more use out of the sensors, but we didn’t stop there! We also made sensors show how far away Pirate and Bounty Hunter ships are from the player, similar to how Battleship distance is shown. This lets the player know not only when these enemies are falling back, but also gives the player an idea of how far they have to get away before the enemy retreats. Next was mines! We used to have mine explosions be stationary so that they could trigger other mines that flew into them, creating chain explosions. It felt weird having only those explosions not move, so we made them move just like every other explosion in the game. However, now we needed a way to keep chain explosions, as they are one of the coolest things about Minefields. So after a bit of brainstorming, we landed on shock waves as a trigger mechanism. Now, when a mine explodes, it sends out a sizable shock wave of shrapnel. This shock wave deals no damage to anything, but does cause mines hit by it to explode, creating more impressive chain explosions than ever before!

We also did a batch of small changes that can be split into 2 groups: quality of life changes and random minor adjustments (aka, the rest). Here are the changes, rapid fire style!

Quality of life changes include:

We made Clients show whether you’ve been to a planet before, to make planet hunting for filling out the Crew Journal easier.

If the player asks for help in a Space Battle, their side will no longer have their Battleships fire when near the player.

Repairs will now automatically start once you dock with a fleet or a space port. After all, you docked specifically for repairs, might as well get them started faster!

We slightly reordered the Tutorial’s first death notice and added back buttons to it.

For minor changes we have the following:

We made the Battleship laser shots cast more light on nearby objects to make them seem more powerful and made Battleships in Space Battles move their guns slower and have a delay before moving them again after shooting.

When a Bounty Hunter chases the player off from a dock, the Live Feed display for your crew mates will now display their names instead of their stations.

We updated some names of Crew Journal entries for length and lore feel and edited the “Guide to Battleships” Entry to better reflect the player’s ability to sense Battleship Cannons in storms.

We increased the volume of enemy shots to make them slightly more noticeable.

In the end game victory cutscene that plays after the player delivers their 1.5 million bounty, Pirate Lady Styx will now be in shadow, adding more mystery to her. Now she will only be unveiled if you pay your debt off in time!

Speaking of cutscenes we also bit the bullet and decided to flip some sprites to always face the center since it just plain looks better.

The LONG awaited Anchor Pirates!

And FINALLY we fixed TWENTY SIX different bugs! (And quite a few typos!) Too many to list here, with 1 slightly humorous exception. We have a lot of really cool pirate ship designs, with one of Eos’s favorites being the Anchor Pirates. This is the design the player fights at the end of the tutorial. Now, Eos had noticed something while she’d been playing through the game. She wasn’t seeing them. We thought she was just being unlucky, but since we were doing our final systems check, we decided to dig into this and see if she really was just unlucky, or if we had errored. . . We had indeed errored. Pirates 21-25 would never appear in the main game, nor the Flight Simulator. An embarrassing oversight, but one we are very glad to have fixed! So enjoy the “new” pirate type, the Anchor Pilots!

With this update now live, our plans are to finalize the options menu and to get the game officially out of Early Access and launched! We’re so close we can taste it! So until next time, safe flying!

You can read the full patch notes for here. If you'd like to give feedback directly to us, then join our Discord! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam.

-Cameron

[brightatmidnight]

The Chaser’s Voyage is 49% off during Steam’s Spring 2025 Sale!

Hello everyone! We're still chugging away on a beefy update for The Chaser's Voyage, but in the meantime, it's that time of year again, Steam's Spring Sale!

Do you want to live out your space smuggler fantasies, piloting your very own ship in a galaxy full of adventure? Do you enjoy casts of diverse oddballs and misfits with lots of heart? Do you like Star Wars-esque universes and the writing style of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Do you want to support two queer game developers? Then get The Chaser’s Voyage on sale for just $10.19!

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The Chaser’s Voyage is 49% off during Steam’s Winter 2024 Sale!

It's the end of the year and we've launched our practice mode, the Flight Simulator, so now's a great time to get The Chaser's Voyage on sale!

Do you want to live out your space smuggler fantasies, piloting your very own ship in a galaxy full of adventure? Do you enjoy casts of diverse oddballs and misfits with lots of heart? Do you like Star Wars-esque universes and the writing style of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Do you want to support two queer game developers? Then get The Chaser’s Voyage on sale for just $10.19!

[brightatmidnight]

The Chaser’s Voyage is 49% off during Steam’s Autumn 2024 Sale!

Last week we released the Flight Simulator update, adding in our customizable practice mode! We're now only a few big updates away from our full release!

Do you want to live out your space smuggler fantasies, piloting your very own ship in a galaxy full of adventure? Do you enjoy casts of diverse oddballs and misfits with lots of heart? Do you like Star Wars-esque universes and the writing style of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Do you want to support two queer game developers? Then get The Chaser’s Voyage on sale for just $10.19!

[brightatmidnight]

Surprise! The Obstacle Revamp Update AND the Flight Simulator Update for The Chaser’s Voyage (Version 0.8.0.03) are Now Live!

Hello everyone! Sorry for the weird mix up, apparently our posts for the Obstacle Revamp Update never got pushed through. So now you all get to hear about TWO updates worth of info for The Chaser's Voyage! Read on for Info about how we reworked our obstacles and how the new Flight Simulator works. There's a lot to these two updates!

Obstacle Combos

As we were working on the UI finalization of the Flight Simulator, Eos had a devious idea: “Can we have multiple obstacles active at once?” This prompted quite the conversation regarding how we would attempt this (both design wise and implementation wise) and, more importantly, the pros and cons involved. Long story short, the pros definitely outweighed the cons, so we got right to work with revamping how we do obstacles in The Chaser’s Voyage. So let’s get into it!

Obviously the big feature in this update is Obstacle Combos, so here’s the run down. We’ve made it possible for up to 3 different obstacles to all be active at the same time! So you could have something like an asteroid field and a ship graveyard near a star! Speaking of stars, we decided that stars and the electrical obstacles wouldn’t make sense to overlap, so stars cannot combo with Sentries or Mines. Also, now that stars can have obstacles you have to dodge AND enemies to fight off, we decided that a Star with a radiation storm is just too much to handle with all the different sources of system breaks, so we’ve made stars no longer appear with radiation storms. They already could not spawn with a hail storm, since we found it silly to have everything frozen AND on fire.

As if stars weren’t bad enough, now we have to dodge Asteroids as well!?

For determining how often to have Obstacle Combos and how many obstacles to be active at once, our existing tier based encounter randomization system worked wonderfully. We normally have 1 Obstacle, 1 Encounter, and 1 Storm and depending on what Tier the player is in, we’ll limit how many of these can be active at once. So we just added in Obstacle #2 and Obstacle #3 to those calculations. This means in Tier 1 you’ll get no Obstacle Combos, as you can only have 1 thing active at a time, but in Tier 2 you can have 2 active at once. So you can then get an Encounter + Obstacle, Encounter + Storm, Obstacle + Storm, or now, Obstacle + Obstacle.

As you continue to progress we keep upping how many things can be active at once, maxing out at 4 different things. This gives a good amount more variety than previously and also makes for some really kick ass jumps. Fighting a Pirate in a Mine/Asteroid field with a Radiation Storm is TERRIFYING. It’s wonderful! This also lets us make the Ace, Voyager+, and Captain+ modes a little more. . . devastating. Since Tier 4 maxes out at 4 things active at once, you can’t actually get all of 3 Obstacles, 1 Encounter, and 1 Storm active in the same jump. Which is good because that’s really challenging. So we made the non-Tiered modes have that option available, and from the get go! Good luck everyone!

Running into a Pirate hiding out in obstacles has never been scarier!

While testing out these Obstacle Combos, we realized that when using autopilot, the day timer and the life support gauge were changing at half the rate compared to when autopilot was off. That’s quite the bug, so we fixed that immediately! But, by fixing that bug, we also increased the amount of time it takes to complete voyages. Every mid-jump that was autopiloted through was now twice as long in-game. This paired with the now more dangerous Obstacle Combos required us to make some balance tweaks. We reduced the damage the Chaser’s hull takes by 10% and increased all client payments by 1.3 times. Since the Obstacle Combos resulted in harder to dodge obstacles and the autopilot bug fix resulted in more in-game time being taken up than before, we felt we needed to slightly compensate on both damage and money. Even in a good run, repairs were stacking up to be much too expensive and the 100 day goal was significantly harder to reach.

For more minor changes, we added minor randomized pitch shifting to most of our sound effects, increased the sound effect volume for obstacles being destroyed, edited “KTC CEO Defends Illegal Minefield After Fatal Disaster” to no longer say that battleships don’t go through minefields (since, you know, they DO go through them now), added destroyed battleships to the background of space battles, fixed some typos, and squashed SO MANY BUGS. We’re really happy with how the Obstacle Combos have turned out and how they add more variety and a fresh layer of difficulty to the game and hope you guys enjoy them as much as we do!

Flight Simulator

The Chaser’s Voyage’s Flight Simulator is finally completed and available for you, the players! We’ve been using the Flight Sim for ages to test various things in our game, and from an early point, planned for it to be accessible to players as well. It has been functional for quite a while, but with incomplete and outdated UI. We obviously had to give it a fresh coat of paint before letting our players get our hands on it, but that also was one of our lower priorities. We already made it so that when the player loses to an encounter, they could practice it in the Flight Sim and playing the game itself also serves as great practice. So having a mode dedicated solely to practicing and training for certain encounters felt less urgent than adding in features like the obstacle combos, crew journal, playable tutorial, etc. But those updates are already done, and now the Flight Simulator is too!

Before I get into the details on the Flight Sim, I want to do a quick look back through the year and a look forward. This year, we got THREE major updates out vs the two per year we’ve had before! The crew journal was on of our biggest updates and we could not be happier with how it came out. The obstacle combos were a pleasant surprise tangent, but they’ve added a really great level of variety to the game. And of course, the Flight Sim is now out, which leaves only 2 main updates left, options and release! Next year we will be finalizing the options menu and after that, adding in some final polish and then we’ll be leaving Early Access and fully releasing The Chaser’s Voyage! It’s been one hell of a voyage and it’s so nice to see the the release coming up. Okay, with that stuff out of the way, let’s dig into the Flight Simulator!

The Flight Sim lets the player customize and practice almost any encounter that they’d find in the main game. The purely friendly encounters, like Merchant Fleets of Neutral/Friendly Aligned Fleets are not selectable since there’s nothing in those encounters to actually, you know, practice. Every other encounter is available though! The player starts by choosing their difficulty and insignia, just like when starting a new Voyage, then they select their encounter. Each option in the Flight Sim is accompanied by a fun little wireframe depicting the option. There’s also a preview window that shows what your encounter settings are. After that, if the encounter can have any obstacles, the player chooses how many and which obstacles to have. Just like the main game, only 3 obstacles can be active at once, and stars are incompatible with the electronic obstacles (Sentries and Mines). After the obstacles comes the storm if applicable, then onto the Chaser’s Options. Here the player can customize exactly how damaged the Chaser is, including which systems are disabled and the hull integrity. Once all those setting are chosen, the player can go up against their chosen encounter as many times as they want! One of the neat things about the Flight Sim is that it lets the players choose some options that are a bit more hidden in the main game. You can choose what bounty level the bounty hunters are, how dense asteroid fields are, and what the sentry affiliation is!

We also made a couple of changes to mines to make them a little more interesting and have a few more ideas for them for next year. We fixed a bug regarding Pirate’s chances to be friendly with player over Space Ports and straightened out a continuity error in one of our Crew Journal entries. Until next year, safe flying!

You can read the full patch notes for Obstacle Combos here and the Flight Simulator here. If you'd like to give feedback directly to us, then join our Discord! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam.

-Cameron

[brightatmidnight]

12 Hours left on our 10/19 Sale!

The 10/19 Sale for The Chaser's Voyage!

Hello everyone! Our space flight adventure game, The Chaser's Voyage, will be on sale on Steam for $10.19 all day on 10/19 (from 12am to 12am Pacific Time)! Survive this perilous journey through space and pay back your debt in 100 days!

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The Chaser's Voyage 10/19 Sale is now live for 24 hours. Enjoy!

The 10/19 Sale for The Chaser's Voyage!

Hello everyone! Our space flight adventure game, The Chaser's Voyage, will be on sale on Steam for $10.19 all day on 10/19 (from 12am to 12am Pacific Time)! Survive this perilous journey through space and pay back your debt in 100 days!

[brightatmidnight]

The 10/19 Sale for The Chaser's Voyage!

Hello everyone! Our space flight adventure game, The Chaser's Voyage, will be on sale on Steam for $10.19 all day on 10/19 (from 12am to 12am Pacific Time)! Survive this perilous journey through space and pay back your debt in 100 days!

[brightatmidnight]

The Chaser's Voyage: Update 0.6.1.00 is live!

Small update this time, we fixed a couple bugs with the newly implemented Crew Journal. The Unlock Progress of the Alphabetical Planet Categories will now properly update as you unlock more entries and we fixed a rare bug with gamepad navigation that could happen when the Crew Journal was opened.

In future news, we're working on a new update that will really spice up obstacles! Until next time, safe flying!

-Cameron

[brightatmidnight]

Hey Tumblr, do you want to live out your space smuggler fantasies, piloting your very own ship in a galaxy full of adventure? Do you enjoy casts of diverse oddballs and misfits with lots of heart? Do you like Star Wars-esque universes and the writing style of Kid Icarus: Uprising? Do you want to support two queer game developers? Then we have the perfect game for you!

The Chaser's Voyage is a 2D single-player space flight adventure game where you have to pay off your debt to a notorious pirate lord before it's too late. Shake off hostile pursuers while transporting clients to earn money. Pilot your ship while also managing your systems to survive your voyage!

Cool things our game has: • Random Runs! Your clients and encounters are procedurally generated, so no two runs are the same • Fun and lovable characters! Fully voice-acted and with lots of backstory • Cool, creepy, and cute aliens who all have a story for why they need your help • Multiple difficulty modes for gamers of any and all skill levels (Including one-life modes for those seeking a challenge) • Tons of written lore, split up into over 300 entries, complete with crew commentary • 23 unlockable modifiers that drastically change how the game plays • Complete control customization for gamepads and mouse and keyboard • Customizable ship colors • An escalating war between two galactic factions • Asteroid fields, ship graveyards, minefields, and other obstacles await • Face bloodthirsty pirates, ruthless bounty hunters, and more!

Buy the Chaser's Voyage on Steam now!

[brightatmidnight]

The Chaser’s Voyage is 49% off during Steam’s Summer 2024 Sale!

We JUST released our biggest update yet today, a Crew Journal full of lore & character interactions!

If you're a fan of great character interactions, learning about the world(s) from the view of the underdog, or just engaging sci-fi space stories, then there's never been a better time to get The Chaser’s Voyage on sale for just $10.19!

[brightatmidnight]

It's Finally Here! The Crew Journal Update for The Chaser's Voyage (Version 0.6.0.06) is Now Live!

Thanks for waiting everyone! As the title says, the Crew Journal Update for The Chaser's Voyage is FINALLY live! A lot of things delayed our work in real life, but we managed to hunker down and finish what I consider to be the biggest update to The Chaser's Voyage since we first launched on Early Access.

The main screen of the Crew Journal, with the default entries unlocked. Will you unlock them all?

For those who haven't heard about it yet, the Crew Journal is a collection of written in-universe lore that the crew uncovers and comments on while you play the game. There are over 300 entries in it, short ones for each planet, and a bunch of longer ones covering a wide range of topics: gameplay tips, galactic news of the war, species you encounter, and even silly junk mail. There's a short novel's worth of lore now in the game for players to unlock!  The Crew Journal is the players' window into the larger story of The Chaser's Voyage universe and we are so excited to finally be releasing it.

Ironically this is the first entry unlocked!

Alongside learning about the greater universe through your crew's eyes, you will also learn more about your crew mates' pasts! My favorite part of the journal is the crew's comments at the end of each entry. The journal has gone through many edits (both writing and UI) and we hope you enjoy it! You can access the journal through the main menu, pause screen, and mid jump screen. It will even tell you if you have a new entry every time you jump, so you can take a breather in between encounters and read the latest that your crew has to say.

This button's finally active?! It's a miracle!

Alongside adding the Crew Journal we also changed how the crew's voice lines are selected. They will now cycle randomly through all of the lines for an event at least once before repeating a line again! This should make for a more immersive and less repetitive experience. (Yes Tai, we've heard that war story already!) This update is the final planned lore update, so if you're a fan of great character interactions, learning about the world(s) from the view of the underdog, or just engaging sci-fi space stories, then there's never been a better time to get The Chaser's Voyage! Especially since it's now on sale via Steam's Summer Sale for $10.19, 49% off! (There's even a journal entry that will shed some light on our repeated use of 10/19, it's got everything.)

And of course, no update would be complete without bug fixes and typos. We fixed a bunch of random ones as well as some huge ones in the Tutorial. Big shout out to our Discord for pointing out some nasty bugs, it means a lot to us!

The next major update on the list is our training mode, the Flight Simulator. It's been a wonderful dev tool for us and hopefully shouldn't prove too hard to finalize with some pretty UI elements. (Famous last game dev words.) Until next time, enjoy discovering the newly expanded galaxy of The Chaser's Voyage! Safe Flying!

You can read the full patch notes here and can follow The Chaser's Voyage and Bright at Midnight on Twitter! Bright at Midnight on Twitter, or join our Discord! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam.

-Cameron

[brightatmidnight]

The Chaser’s Voyage is 49% off during Steam’s Spring 2024 Sale!

It's a new year and time for a new sale! We're hard at work getting our Crew Journal implemented and can't wait for you guys to get your hands on it. In the meantime, be sure to get The Chaser’s Voyage on sale for just $10.19!

[brightatmidnight]

Update On the Crew Journal

Hello everyone. Last update I said how were hard at work on the in-game lore for The Chaser's Voyage, which would take the form of a Crew Journal. Well, here's some screenshots of what the Crew Journal will look like.

As you can see, not every category will be unlocked at the beginning of the game. As you progress through the game, making it further and further into your adventure and unlocking insignias, you'll learn more and more about the history of the galaxy and just how all the pieces line up and affect your voyage.

The banners were made by me using both original assets and repurposing those already in the game. Stylistically, I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

Your crew will also be providing insight by leaving comments on each entry. These little dialogue exchanges can expand on information presented in the main entry, talk about something tangentially related, or reveal a little bit more information about themselves.

We hope that everyone uses the Crew Journal as a way to measure their progress. It's the main tracker of meta-progression we have in the game and acts as a non-gameplay-affecting reward for players who keep playing on their voyage to improve and try out all the game's features.

With most of the general layout completed, all that's left now is to further polish it, design the layout for the entry selection screens, and implement the text. And there is a lot of text.

For more updates on The Chaser’s Voyage, be sure to check back on our blog, follow The Chaser's Voyage and Bright at Midnight on Twitter, or join our Discord! If you wish to play The Chaser’s Voyage, you can buy it while we’re in Early Access on Steam.

- Eos//G

[brightatmidnight]

Here’s a sneak peak of the Crew Journal in The Chaser’s Voyage. Your crew will comment on various pieces of data they find in it. In this case, it's the last entry in the ship’s computer before your engineer Wolfe found and rebuilt your ship (well, her ship)

[brightatmidnight]

In the Crew Journal, your crew will leave comments on various messages, articles, etc. that you've unlocked over the course of the game. These comments often give you a different perspective or greater insight into the entry.

Here are the crew's icons!

[brightatmidnight]

Still working on banners for the Crew Journal. Pretty happy with how these turned out. Can't wait to see them in the game.

- Eos//G