- A Panel Shaped Screen: the disjointed universe of Lightstep Chronicles - 15 August 2019
A Panel Shaped Screen is a monthly column where Giada Zavarise explores how comics and video games inspire each other. This time Giada dips into the world of Lightstep Chronicles. Every writing class has an over-enthusiastic writer. You know the type. All his writing exercises are set in the same elaborate setting: the fantasy world he has been working on since he was sixteen. He s currently writing his debut novel, the first in a trilogy. He already has three more trilogies planned out. He also plans to make a videogame about this cool side-character, and a comic set before the events of the main story. He s struggling to find someone willing to draw the first story arc for free, but only because artists don t understand that once the project takes off, they ll be millionaires. He already has vague movie ideas plotted down, in case Hollywood takes notice. Lightstep Chronicles feels lik…
- Updates: New patch, retrospective, and a big thank you - 8 August 2019
Greetings Steam, Some of you reported that the game crashes on Windows 7 machines. Thanks to your feedback, we've managed to identify the issue, test it, and fix it. The game should be good to go! Thanks for your patience! Hope that you enjoy the game. Be sure to write the review, and join our Discord server to have an additional game discussion. While we are at the subject at thanking - we would also like to say big thanks to the press that supported us, and to our players. Thank you for your kind words. Be sure to tell your friends about our game as every bit of visibility help. Enjoy the new 1.1.0 version, everyone! Lightstep team
- Lightstep Chronicles is OUT NOW + launch discount! - 1 August 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F1e93a8b8aaa3f6572d6c6552d3d6a04560c9b6c2.png Our narrative adventure in which you are the prisoner of an AI with multiple personality disorder is now on the Steam store for the price of 9.99$! With lunch discount, you can support our game with -15%. That's right - you can buy the game and tell your friends about it. We would appreciate it to keep those spoilers to a minimum for now as the story is a pretty big part of the game, and since we are a small indie team - awareness is super important to us. Thanks for being with us on this journey, and thanks for the support. It would mean a lot to us if you could support us by buying the game as well as sharing about it to the others. Support your indie developers. Thank you all from the Lightstep team! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68QfOb4bpUQ https://steamcdn-a.ak…
- Giveaway Week: Lightstep Chronicles launches in 3 DAYS - 29 July 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F6fb462c1ffa04a768277749cd8fb44690d3fd8e3.gif Hi Steam, Big week in front of us! Our game is launching in 3 days! Thursday, August 1st, 12:00 PM PDT! We'd like to call this week our 'Giveaway week' since we'll be giving away Steam keys on our social channels every day, starting today! If you are on Facebook, here's what you have to do: https://www.facebook.com/lightstepchronicles/videos/1072962266427590/?__tn__=-R. Mention your gaming buddies, help us spread the word and get a chance to win a key for our very first game launching on Steam in a few days! We're sending love your way for every share, retweet, mention, 'tell a friend' this week! Thank you very much for your support. It's much appreciated! Til next time, LSC team
- The prequel to the Lightstep Chronicles - 22 July 2019
Here's a log report that works as a prequel to the Lightstep Chronicles the game. This post will not be mandatory to understand the game's story, but they'll add a bit flavor to it. What will be presented down below are a series of reports from the officer Jacob Umbra to his supervisor. REPORT #1 "Sir, We've finally managed to lock down the signal. That's the same signal we've been tracking for weeks, only this time it's different. It's like it wanted us to find it. Before, it would appear randomly, all over the nearby planets. Soon after that, it would go silent, the speed would be so fast and hectic, that it would be impossible to lock precise location. But now, now it's different. The signal is strong and precise. Located on planet Kepler 452b, its frequency is so mighty that it's creating earthquakes. I will update you as things further develop. Officer Umbra." https://steamcdn-a.ak…
- Lightstep Chronicles launches on August 1st! More details here. - 10 July 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F9775e503b27e7cbedb12550bc7b1da4638be454b.png Hello Steam, Here is the big news: Lightstep Chronicles release date is August 1, 2019. That's it. Definitive release date. It's been a long journey, but we're super excited to see people finally playing and completing our game. We'll be curious about all the story discussion you guys will have, all the SF homages you'll notice, all the easter eggs you'll find. If you'd like to help us spread the word and get a chance to WIN a free Steam key, retweet this post: https://twitter.com/colony_66/status/1148918731189473281. Also, inviting friends to wishlist the game and joining to Discord is a HUGE bonus. We'll be forever thankful! :) Indie love
- FINAL DEMO OUT + sneak peek of the RELEASE DATE - 5 July 2019
Hello Steam, Are you ready? We have a lot of stuff to announce - new demo, sneak peek of the release date, AND Steam key giveaways! Let's get to it. JUST PUBLISHED FINAL DEMO There's a new, final demo in the town. After you've played the last one and gave us your feedback, we've noticed areas which we could improve. So, this demo is the final representation of the game that we will publish on the store. Here: https://gamejolt.com/games/lightstepchronicles/400809. We're so close to the end of the development! All the major things are complete. That's right! Optimization? Done. Texture polishing? Done. Sound effects and music? All done! Sooo… release date announcement coming next week. PREQUEL STORY AND DISCORD We have prepared you an interesting prequel story that works as an introduction for the game. Is it necessary? No. Will it provide additional context to the game? Yes. The optional…
- PUBLIC DEMO REMINDER + Dev update | May 20, 2019 - 21 May 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F0762c246177c6800a84b544d0b9f058649122273.gif Hello Steam, It’s been a while since you last hear from us and the reason is mostly because our work is now - bugs and fixes. We are now aware too - that is how the final process looks like. During what we thought was our final playthrough of Lightstep Chronicles, we came upon some lackluster moments that wouldn't do for a game of this size. So, beside bugs and fixes, we are back at polishing and touching up the lighting, some animations, and the sound effects. Here is what we did (and still doing) since our last update: Sound effect and music polish Postprocess optimization Lightning rebaking for several locations Texture polishing Animation improvement in final scenes Also, we wanted to highlight here that we have a public demo - for all of you new to our game and u…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - April 25, 2019 - 25 April 2019
Hello Steam, Last week, we looked at all the Lightstep Chronicles images we released so far, and realized that we put a lot of focus on our animated sequences and skimped out on actual gameplay. We're very proud of our animation work, but to be fair, most of the game is based around conversations with Aleph. We made this pretty video of a situation you will encounter in the game – or already encountered if you played our public demo (still available on Game Jolt and Itch.io). Here's a very reassuring Aleph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thlpniewtyA Due to a series of national holidays, we won't be posting any updates in the following two weeks. After that, we're back on the job, back with release dates and the likes. 'Til May!
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - April 17, 2019 - 17 April 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F58e6c24f34a48f29de040c47a59eae0ac1cd88ea.png Hello Steam, We'd like to maintain our weekly update tempo, but the closer we are to finishing our game, the less we actually have to write here - once again, our work has become: play build find bug fix bug polish scene start over https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F2b48d6b210b4450ece200138fa37f5920715327d.jpg Devlog: As promised, this is what we did in the past week: UI animations editing the text where QA found typos, discrepancies, etc bug removal optimizing lighting and particles showcasing more of the in-game text rather than cutscenes Next week, we will work on bug fixes optimization looking for a viable release date reaching out to the press We've got some time set aside for more traditional marketing (gaming media, stre…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - April 11, 2019 - 11 April 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2Fbd0dda42a15e23490ea4f6646c6a9850297b25fe.png Hello Steam, We are in the last leg of development and these updates are starting to feel a bit repetitive – polish, bugs, audio, polish, bugs, audio, and so on... It sort of looks like we're running in circles. The good news is that there is a reason for that: Lightstep Chronicles requires a beastly setup, and optimizing it is extremely important. In our last leg of development, we are all about making the game more accessible. Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: - had some more people playtest the full build - prepared the final build for said playtesting - polished additional sound effects and music - locked down all gameplay. We're only polishing animation and graphics from now on! We also had the QA test out the game with the new music and s…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - April 3, 2019 - 3 April 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2Fcf898e0e54e5d929a06a4dac103080de180be19a.png Hello Steam, We have reached what we feel is the end of an era in the Lightstep Universe – the last issue of the comic book Lightstep (Dark Horse Comics) comes out today! https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F2f58dfb744bf8ff90207533405360e9736e1db2c.jpg It all started out as a Kickstarter project in 2017. We gained some traction because the art of Miloš Slavković is Just. So. Good. and also because of the hilarious promo video that we had so much fun making. Please note that this is ancient and that like 95% of the information is redundant - still funny, tho. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sof7U8R3kKM Then we started working on our game heavily. It went through many iterations, it was scrapped and rebooted several times. When we…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - March 27, 2019 - 27 March 2019
https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F97dc6d2bfe288f3af561337e2c59544c29d53a61.png Hello Steam, We've been featured on Game Jolt yesterday, and seeing our community grow so rapidly has been exhilarating. This means that we'll posting there more regularly for a while, but we'll set aside some eye candy for our Steam friends, too. :) Check out this Amarok image pack (features a communications helmet, a med bay pod, and a spheric AI bot): https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2Fc43ca8b56dbb6b549d35b7c8a0fcca809dc8b363.jpghttps%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F60277dd8e91edf17b49a43ead14a104c9ab8bcec.jpghttps%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F5bf3e7b6520659979459b2b854a8d65f2502d8ae.jpg Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: -…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - March 20, 2019 - 20 March 2019
Hello Steam, It's been a week since we released a free demo for our game. Did you know that you can download a free demo of Lightstep Chronicles? You can do that through Itch.io and Game Jolt. If you like the demo, Wishlisting us here on Steam will help us get the word out before a lot more people. We are eternally grateful to all of you who did that.
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - March 13, 2019 - 13 March 2019
Our game's most unique feature is also its biggest weakness: What kind of game is Lightstep Chronicles? We always announce it as a text-based adventure, and then the graphics throw people off. Everytime. It is a new breed of text-based adventure, but there have been similar games in the past. Mike Bithell's Subsurface Circular is a text-based adventure that feels like a movie, and it was a big inspiration to us during development. The cool thing is that when players enter either Subsurface Circular or Lightstep Chronicles, they don't know what to expect. It is mysterious! It's exciting! It's really difficult to market! We spent the past week making ourselves known across the internet – we now have an Itch page and a Game Jolt page. You can download the first chapter for free on either one of these sites. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2F74f1628%25E2%2580%25A6
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - March 6, 2019 - 6 March 2019
Hello Steam, The past week has been interesting because our Discord community gave us a lot of feedback on the first chapter. To be honest, we should have done this earlier. We strive to keep our egos in check when we design the game, but it is the players who are truly objective, and they helped us see some flaws with the UX that we missed. Then again, Lightstep Chronicles is the first game of this caliber that we're making, and it took us a lot of time to optimize even the first chapter. Had it had any bugs or glitches when we sent it out, we'd be hearing about those instead of design issues, and the latter is more valuable feedback. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F33972272%2Fdf5aac9328bcd8d2d0426db6727e1405c7f16633.png Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: - added Star Map animations - polished the final scene graphics, attaching t…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - February 27, 2019 - 27 February 2019
Hello Steam, We are stoked to be doing an Update today, because today is also the day we received our first gameplay stream! We are thankful to Youtuber THE LAST GAME for playing our first game and sharing his experience with the world. We can't wait to see more of your thoughts on the Lightstep Chronicles demo (↓public demo announcements down below↓)! We'd also like to thank our Discord community of beta testers for helping us clear up all the bugs that we couldn't find on our own, ultimately leading to a far more playable version of a final Lightstep Chronicles game. Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: - worked on the Space City scene, character animations and framing - worked on the Medic Bay scene, programming additional gameplay and completing zoom zones with text - worked on Nature scene, Space City, and Medic Bay music and sound effects - edited game endings…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - February 20, 2019 - 20 February 2019
Hello Steam, We've been teasing the release of a demo for the past month, and it happened this week. Keys for the first chapter of Lightstep Chronicles were sent out to a few curators and those members of our community who asked for them, and we are excitedly waiting for their feedback. This will be the first time someone who's not a member of the dev team or our close friends and family play the game, which is a bit of a milestone. Fingers crossed, the first community playtest will result in some very insightful comments by the next time you hear from us. Hopefully, we'll feel confident enough for a more public demo showcase. Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: - additional programming for the Simulation Chamber scene gameplay - nature simulation animations - framing and programming the dialogue - adding more zoom zones and interactions to the Control Room scene W…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - February 13, 2019 - 13 February 2019
Hello Steam, Last week, a member of our team spotted the Lightstep comic book in person, in a comic book shop. Wild. We aren’t based in the States, this is a big deal for us. It also got us thinking how we, too, have a product to release, pretty soon. Q2, everybody! And until Q2, here‘s what we‘ve been up to: Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past week: - uploading the demo build to Steam and testing it out internally - making a list of Lightstep Chronicles Discord community members who will get the demo key before anyone else (holla @ us if you still want one) - inserting the complete, final, proofread dialogue into the second chapter - replacing dev notes with actual in-game text in the Ship Log - graphics and animation ｐｏｌｉｓｈｉｎｇ We didn’t import any audio into the second chapter (whoops), but we worked on the Simulation Chamber gameplay (saved!). Next week, we will work…
- This week at Lightstep Chronicles - February 6, 2019 - 6 February 2019
Hello Steam, We've had a huge week behind us, lots of ideas, lots of polish. The first chapter of Lightstep Chronicles is pretty much complete. We will be giving away some keys on our Discord server very soon, so be sure to get in on that! Devlog As promised, this is what we did in the past two weeks: - inserting the complete, final, proofread dialogue into the first chapter - inserting final audio and SFX into the first chapter - polishing camera movements into the first chapter - polishing the UI and intro animations - fixing some Control Bridge glitches and editing its lighting - testing out the first chapter demo build in-house Next week, we will work on: - uploading the demo build to Steam and testing it out internally (we've never launched on Steam before, so double-checking is crucial) - inserting the complete, final, proofread dialogue into the second chapter - inserting final a…
