It’s with a heavy, tired heart that today we’re announcing the cancellation of the RPG VN play mode of Asterism.
We’ve always had struggles getting the battle system for Asterism in a good enough state to call it an “RPG”, given what that entails. While testing the full game with players, I (Arimia) came to realize that, yes, Asterism is fully playable, both as a VN and an RPG VN. However, the RPG VN (namely the battle system) was lacking in the qualities that regular RPGs should have.
Basically, the RPG VN play mode is playable. However, the level of polish in the battle system is not where I want it to be, and even with a few more months of tweaking, it might not be enough. The original programmer for the battle system went MIA last year and has been unresponsive to messages ever since. This has slowed down progress significantly, causing the scope to balloon and a lot of time has been lost. The past couple years of work on Asterism have been dedicated almost solely to the RPG VN play mode.
In the future, I’d like to revisit the possibility of adding in the RPG elements, whether to this game or as a remake (a remake being several years in the future, of course). This isn’t something I’m planning right now, but I don’t want to dismiss the idea of working on it again entirely either.
Thank you everyone who’s supported Asterism so far, who’s been with us during its long, long development. With this mode cut out, I’m happy to announce Asterism will be releasing as a pure VN (with action cutscenes instead of turn-based fighting) on Steam & itch.io on July 22nd.
