[Background Blog] February Development Update (Patreon)

Hey Patrons,

Compymono here! Sorry about the lack of background blogs the past two months, things have been hectic with the holiday season and the lunar new year, but now we’re back on track and working on our tasks for 2026.

Since our last blog we released first two parts of Astatos Chapter II on Steam! Around the time this is published the third part will also be live!

We’ve also put out a new background art post for higher tiers, featuring artwork from Astatos and the Adastra collab!

[Background Art] Astatos [Neferu - Pound Pumper]

[Background Art] Astatos - Washing Sin CG

[Background Art] Astatos [Amicus - Radiant as the Sun]

[Background Art] Astatos x Adastra - Key Art

[Background Art] Astatos - Chapter II Key Artwork

[Background Art] Astatos [Krokos - The Final Remedy]

New Year Roadmap!

As it’s the beginning of the new year, I wanted to focus this post on a roadmap of what we’ve planning to work on for the next few months.

The immediate roadmap for our team includes:

[Astatos] Chapter II story release. (Until May 2026)

[Astatos] Gameplay code refactoring.

[Astatos] Next Minute MV & Soundtrack Update

[Astatos] New game mode: Cascade Trial

[Astatos] Pre-production for Chapter III.

[Nekojishi L&P] Artwork production.

[Nekojishi L&P] Gameplay code work.

[Astatos] Chapter II Story Release

This content is mostly complete and is expected to conclude with the final patch released in May!

[Astatos] Gameplay Code Refactoring

The game design of Cascade Trial has exposed many shortcomings in the current data architecture and in-trial networking. In order to resolve these issues, I’ve been working on rewriting much of the gameplay logic under a new data structure.

Immediate goals of the gameplay code refactoring include:

Improve stability of online matches, particularly those between 3-8 players.

Resolve long-standing bugs related to the card deck, Trial Stage, Sulpicius, and more.

Implement a rollback system to revert the game state when errors are encountered.

Make certain elements of the game more modular, and expose more parameters that can be used by Cascade Trial.

Long-Term goals of the gameplay code refactoring include:

Enable players to rejoin a Trial mid-game after a disconnection to the server. (This is important for any potential mobile port)

Please note: This is a fundamental rewrite of much of the gameplay logic and is actually a huge task! This version of the game is now functional up until the Trial Stage, however a lot of work remains.

With luck, we’ll be able to complete this update by the end of March with testing occurring in April.

[Astatos] Next Minute MV & Soundtrack Update

Ever since the release of the Chapter II trailer, people have been asking us when the new music featured in it is going to be released. The cool news is that we’ve been working on a full Music Video for the track!

Mamaduo has been hard at work drawing illustrations for this, which we expect to be completed by the end of March. Along with that we have to work on the backgrounds and then send the materials to the video editor! (We don’t have an ETA on this yet)

Believe it or not we started working on this MV over two years ago, but scrapped it until Chapter II was released to focus on more important tasks. It’s really exciting to get the chance to work on it again!

Along with this music video we plan to release soundtrack versions of all the new music featured in Astatos Chapter II from Esteban Tamashiro and Adapt9.

[Astatos] New Game Mode: Cascade Trial

As mentioned across several updates previously, we’re still hard at work on the rogue-lite game mode for Astatos. We hope to have a playable version that we can release by the end of April or May.

[Astatos] Pre-Production for Chapter III

With Chapter II complete our efforts will be turned towards working on the next chapter. This work involves story planning, and the production of new sprites, backgrounds, CG’s and music.

While this is a long-term task we’ll be able to get some stuff out of the way early such as the sprites for the new characters expected to appear in the chapter. 

[Nekojishi L&P] Artwork Production

With the shift towards completing Astatos Chapter II in the second half of 2025, we paused work on Lin & Partners illustrations. We still have several character designs ready to work on, along with revisions to Lin Hu based on public feedback. We’ll be sure to share more progress in future development blogs!

[Nekojishi L&P] Gameplay Code Work

This one has been admittedly put on the back burner for a little while. (As you can see above we already have a lot on our plate keeping things going.) But the Astatos gameplay code refactoring and Cascade Trial are expected to be the last major gameplay system changes to Astatos. 

After those are done our programming efforts can be shifted to working on Lin & Partners some more! 

At the current stage battle and traversal systems are functional, however both need further iteration. The design documents for the ‘Garden” game mode have been completed but we have yet to do programming work. We’ll be sure to share more progress in future development blogs!

Wrapping Up

And that’s everything for today’s background blog! Hopefully the extra detail makes up for missing the last two of them, hahah!

I hope everyone is able to look forward to our work in the new year! And thank you so much for your continued support.

- Compymono