Kromaia reaches Desura news

KROMAIA is a six degrees of freedom adventure shooter which takes action, speed, agility and immersion to a new level. Insane enemy patterns and swarms, giant god-like guardians, ancient temples, contraptions and treasures, visual ecstasy... All in a vast and unexplored universe only ruled by physic laws. What if the coin-op machines golden age started today, adding complex maneuverability abilities, encouraging spatial awareness, as well as an A.I. adapting to the way you play? Here is the chance to know.

Early access to the current version of Kromaia!

KROMAIA is currently on Alpha, the gameplay is final and game content grow fast, as well as different worlds to be unlocked trough the quest, which are in their way. Each one of this dimensions will feature its own scenarios, creatures, bosses and gameplay thematics, providing a different experience depending on the unit controlled type and the way you play!

· Four armors, four dual weapon packs, four different philosophies, but just one pilot: You. Make the environment react to the way you fly, explore, attack or avoid combat.

· The original adventure featuring the multiverse and the journey in search for the final answer. Kyllene system activates your armor and awakes you after your soul calibrates the unit. The year is NaN. Along with the story mode, some secrets and trophies remain hidden, waiting for the most tenacious players to unveil them.

· The award winning Score attack mode. An action mini-game which condenses all the piloting and fighting gameplay from Kromaia in a vintage arcade style experience. Now the only goal is to survive in order to face a bigger swarm, achieve a longer combo, fight a harder boss and get to the Olympus of High Scores.

Additional info:
· [DRM Free digital copy]
· [Current version: PC-Windows]

• Unique and immersive journey, mixing technology and myth, in an innovative gameplay experience
• Get your hands one of the fastest and most agile gameplays to date
• Interact with hundreds of physical objects, like asteroids, structures and devices, and fight dozens of enemies at once
• Believable and destructible world with its own rules and physic laws
• Breaking visual atmosphere which combines ancient architecture, mechanical artefacts and weird creatures
• Artificial intelligence based on independent simple brains that cooperate creating emergent behaviours
• Different selectable ships with unique weapons and capabilities
• Moddable content using plain text (XML) including levels, objects, weapons, player and AI units...
• Several playing modes for every kind of player: Story Mode (adventure), Score Attack (arcade), Timed Circuit (racing)...

Kromaia takes place in a multiverse and tells the story of a stranded soul who awakens in a weird shrine, finding itself sealed inside a mechanical unit. Having no memories at all, it must make its way in search for answers, in a world of forgotten devices and hostile creatures, while a somehow familiar voice within claims to know its mind better than itself.

According to the mechanical armor system log, the shrine and the infinite void surrounding it, Kyllene, is actually an artificial anomaly. It serves as an access port to several parallel realities, recorded copies of the original Universe, presumably collapsed. Kyllene's very existence seems related to this copies and its machinery appears not to be 100% functional.

Is it still possible to make something different set in outer space? We do think so. For that reason, you will not find in Kromaia slow movement, ships maneuvering like planes or boats, nor endless steering pursuits in circles, but a completely different approach. Our navigation system is entirely driven by physical forces, a different set of thrusters is arranged for each ship in order to maximize maneuverability: Fluid displacement for novices and, for experts, impossible turns and extreme dodging, combined with a powerful multidirectional boost system that allows moving over the real speed of sound in any way you can imagine.

Forget all the vehicles you have already controlled like aircrafts, rockets, choppers or traditional spaceships, think of all of their capabilities available at the same time at the tip of your fingers. Besides, Kromaia features a special kind of emergent gameplay: Here we will use the word "procedural" for something different than just randomly generated worlds. The advanced A.I. system in Kromaia uses physical parameters and a sophisticated prediction model to adapt units speed, attacks, flocking and smart group formations to the actions you take during your quest. The results: the game experience is different every time depending on the way you play.

One of our main motivations was that we think of space as a great game environment, but we wanted to try something different from the standards prevailing in most of games. For that reason, what you will find in Kromaia is a different approach.- ZERO G MEETS ÜBER AGILITY -Our navigation system is entirely driven by physical forces and consists of a set of thrusters arranged in order to maximize maneuverability: Fluid displacement for novices and, for experts, impossible turns and extreme dodging, combined with boost, while moving over the real speed of sound ( 340m/s!! ). The power curve of the thrusters is directly controlled by the inputs specified on XML files which defines them, in addition to other structural and modular features.

As we said before, not like aircrafts or traditional spaceships, but all of them at the same time: you can even edit the unit file to change the position/orientation used by thrusters, add or remove them and modify their power capabilities; assign thrusters groups for certain inputs, as well as tuning or disabling the artificial friction system, which eases navigation in a vacuum environment like outer space.

-EMERGENT GAMEPLAY: PROCEDURALITY AT ITS BEST -Here we will use the word "procedural" for something different than just randomly generated worlds. The advanced A.I. system in Kromaia uses physical parameters and a sophisticated prediction model to adapt units speed, attacks, flocking and smart group formations to the actions you take during your quest. The results: the game experience is different depending on the way you play. Maybe you ace at dodging at full speed or you prefer shooting and killing everything that moves around.

Maybe you prefer shooting while stopped or at a low speed, you can even move backwards while shooting. Our AI will adapt to your gameplay style and your experience will be unique, just as your game style is.- YOU MAKE THE WHOLE THING BE GREAT -The strategy chosen by the player will lead an enemy swarm to adopt an aggressive behaviour to defend an item that you are supposed to pick, or gather in number to pursuit you when you decide to be more conservative. A straight line is not necessarily the fastest/smartest to reach your goal: use asteroids to cover yourself from enemy attacks or break them to generate shockwaves; if a giant creature looks at you ready to fire a fatal beam, throw a gravity bomb to attract and turn his head. Physics + A.I. + Your Brain in all their glory!


- WEAPONS -The way you play is also the way you attack and defend. Through your adventure you will be able to use a wide range of technologies, including

• High speed impact projectiles
• Precission laser beams
• Smart bullets and homing missiles
• Special items as gravity bombs
• An energy blades melee system!

- MOVE THE STORY FORWARD -We strongly believe that truly immersive experiences start with an underlying big, deeply complex system able to make the player feel like a drop in the ocean. And giving the game a story is giving the game a soul. To create this universe, we have taken inspiration from ancient mythological poems. It involves a solid cosmology, hidden legendary treasures and a "hero" gifted with great abilities, confronting by himself a whole world commanded by machine-like gods. And, like in many mythological stories, there is no good, evil or time limits. You are just given the option to trigger events and advance to see what's next, using your power.



- EXTREME ENGINEERING -Piloting at ultra-high speeds; moving and colliding hundreds of physical objects simultaneously; soft bodies like physical hair; multi-hull breakable entities... Is this possible avoiding at the same time those typical vibrations and precision glitches affecting ships, projectiles and cameras movement? And still have a good and fluid performance? Yes. We decided to create our own engine to break these barriers and it's being tough, but we are passionate and mad enough to bear with that. No fairy tales here: We've spent more than two years since the first prototype, refining and optimizing our engine before reaching what we talk about today.



The game we want to create demanded from us to forget about some indie-related assumptions regarding "fast development". Keeping that in mind, and after being told several times we were nuts, we decided to combine our passion and experience in the games industry with the most technical aspects regarding our professional and academic background. As a result, we built what we call an "extreme software engineering project" to achieve a powerful, highly flexible environment or universe in which no object could move by means of nothing but physical forces.- XML MODDING -A huge and modular system allowing customisation for a lot of physical parameters and behaviours is great to experiment with, but complicates a bit the creation of The Editor. Anyway, We don't want Kromaia to be a "closed" reation. We're assembling a version that we think you will like, but this does not mean you can't make another one by yourself! We are considering making a modding manual, so don't be afraid of XML files, they are not only technical, but also fun!Some examples:

• Modify the scale, mass, local position and orientation for each hull of every structure unit, enemy or boss.
• Redesign your propulsion system. Add or remove thrusters, modify their power and arrangement. Set movement inputs for groups of thrusters.
• Modify your weaponry module. Do you want to fire at a higher rate? Do you want to use another type of projectile or a beam weapon? Do you want more cannons? Do you want to fire backwards? Do you want to throw enemy units??!! Up to you...

• Modify projectiles features. Right, they have their own files, so you can edit their linear and angular velocity or set them to scale themselves with time.
• Tune your units and your enemies, even bosses. Add extra and removable hulls which will come off when they are severely damaged. Attach them with fixed joints, or use physical ropes. Add layers of weak points and set physical hairs to achieve an organic appearance.
• Create and add new units. You will decide whether to include many hulls, modules for weaponry or A.I., a powerful propulsion system...

• Copy modules from one unit to another. If you think that a certain enemy is too friendly, give him a pair of laser cannons and regret later.
• A.I. tuning for every enemy unit. Experiment with different values for angular and linear velocities, accelerations, movement type... Besides, select the behaviours to be used by A.I. groups, group movement and formations, as well as how close do you want the enemies to be before they start firing.
• Create new planets and black holes with custom physical parameters, which determine the range for their gravity field.
• Edit the colour layers for areas/levels and their units and structures.

To sum things up: You can edit almost every aspect in the game using XML

Hey, Daniel here!Hi there! I'm Antonio!

Our team consist of just two developers, Daniel Blasco and Antonio Iglesias. All the design, engineering and art you can see in the game are the work of two guys doing their best in all the fields they know about. Music is the only thing we have outsourced.We met at university while studying "Informatics Engineering" in our hometown, Zaragoza (Aragon, Spain), where we began to develop small games and have endless discussions on design and gameplay. Later on, we met again and worked together in a studio called "Enigma Software Productions" where we developed "War Leaders: Clash of Nations" (PC), "History: Legends of War" (PC, PSP, PS Vita, PS3, Xbox360) and "Music School" (Nintendo DS). During that time, and using the little spare time left between crunches, we started putting together a set of ideas we had been discussing for years in a new project, trying to create a different space game experience: the goal was a complex, highly immersive system or universe able to support a high amount of compound physical entities, in which no object could move by means of nothing but physical forces, while keeping a good performance.

The project kept growing and at some point we realized that the engine had the potential to become something great and worthy to share. That's how we decided to start our own studio to develop Kromaia, and that's what we have been doing for three years with no external funding at all, work, work, more work and good advices from great people in the indie community, as well as volunteers who selflessly helped us out to polish the gameplay. Additionally, the talented composer Josh Whelchel is creating an awesome soundtrack for us in order to complete this experience that we feel is so unique.