The day has arrived to let Solaroids: Prologue out into the wild. Early Access began today at approximately 2:40pm PST. I hope your as excited as I am — this is a big step for me as a solo/part-time indie developer.
Many thanks to all those that helped with play testing and localization.
Most of my goals for hitting this milestone have been met, but there are a few stragglers.
Known Issues
- Japanese translation is currently rough and incomplete both in game and missing from the store page. I expect this to be resolved over the coming weeks.
- The planned Turkish translation had to be put on hold.
- The game credit screen has not been translated yet, and some of the high score text. This should also be resolved in the coming weeks.
- Due to current steam limitations, only player 1 can submit to Leaderboards using a steam ID. All other players only qualify for local high score tables even if you enter your steam ID as the name.
- No mouse support for menus.
- If you reconfigure the keyboard or controller controllers, they are not saved between games.
Issues / Feature Requests
It’s my expectation that no one should encounter any serious issues, but we all know that is a silly expectation. Please post any issues you may encounter to the Issues sub forum.
Also I’ve created a Feature Requests sub forum, so please post any suggestions for enhancements and tweaks. I want the evolution of the game to align as much as possible towards what the community would like to see.
Early Access Tips
A full option menu will come later during Early Access, but there are a few hot-keys that can be used for some rudimentary options now:
- LeftShift+F1 – Toggles the bloom compositing effect on/off. If you happen to have a system with an extremely weak GPU, turning this off can remove some burden at the expense of some visual ambiance.
- LeftShift+F2 – Changes the music to a random selection within the soundtrack.
- LeftShift+F3 – Cycles between system supported resolutions. This can also be useful for systems with weak GPUs. <i>Solaroids</i> defaults to the highest resolution supported (so 4k if you have it).
- LeftShift+F4 – Toggles between fullscreen and windowed mode. At the moment there are some known cosmetic issues with windowed mode scaling on Linux/OS X.
- LeftShift+L – Cycles between supported languages. Currently this is the only way to access languages that steam doesn’t support. For the current build this is Catalan and Serbian.
- LeftShift+Minus – Lowers music volume.
- LeftShift+Plus – Raises music volume
Notes:
- Pressing the Enter key or Start/Select/Options on a controller brings up the pause screen.
- From the Pause screen you can change the controller type by quickly pressing the left/right bumper/shoulder buttons. This is not yet documented in game.
- Playing the game starting at level 1 without continuing qualifies you for the “First Credit” Highscores/Leaderboards.
- Joining the game after level 1, or continuing qualifies you for the “Any Credit” Highscores/Leaderboards.
- Local Highscores are mirrored via Steam Cloud between your machines.
- Currently <i>Solaroids</i> supports levels 1-10 officially, though level 10 will “repeat” at that point allowing continued play indefinitely.
- The Free Play mode unlocks all powerups and bosses and is effectively the same as level 10. Don’t go into that mode until you’ve sufficiently practiced or you could get frustrated pretty easily.
- I’m planning many other features, some of which are listed in the Early Access description in the store page. On-line multiplayer is one important feature I’ll be working to complete.
- I’m planning to include Trading Cards, they just aren’t ready yet.
I hope this is helpful. Please ask questions, post reviews, let me know what you think, what you like, what you don’t like, and where I should head!