Interview: The dynamic brothers who made Astral Gunners

There is a great horizontal shmup that's smashed onto the scene recently. Astral Gunners blasts personality and it's excellent mechanics make it just a super fun experience. Sami and Erick Sati were kind enough to swing past the hanger on their way to collecting some more astral cores to tell us a bit more about their game, the dev experience, Sonic, Bionicles and a bunch of other 80/90s inspirations.

Can you tell us about the team who put Astral Gunners together?

Sami: Sure, Astral Gunners was developed by my brother Erick and I. My brother did a lot of work as a graphic designer, and I had a background in music and programming. One night around 2:00AM we were driving through a Taco Bell talking about life and the universe and all that, and we realized we have the perfect two man team to create a video game. We started working on a metroidvania, realized the scope was far too large and settled on making a shmup. We've spent at least 7 or 8 years working on this game on and off throughout the years, so it's been a passion project long in the making.

Erick: What Sami said.

What would you say are your three key shmup/game influences for Astral Gunners?

Sami: On the gameplay side of things the first three that come to mind are Soldier Blade, Deathsmiles and Jamestown all for completely different reasons. Soldier Blade was my first shmup I played and loved, to the point that the first song I ever fully wrote and recorded was named “Soldier Blade.” As far as I understand, that game was created within an insane timeframe like 9 months, which is something I admire deeply. I think my love for that game and the Turbografx-16 with Bomberman as its mascot was what led me to agreeing on our final art direction for Astral Gunners. The look felt right to me for a shmup even though we were doing something completely different in the genre. 

Deathsmiles was the first shmup where the scoring system really clicked for me. It gets some criticism for having to memorize which enemies give which items with which shots, but I love it when games get complex enough to make me pull out a notebook and start taking notes. Whether it’s making a map or writing down frame data or anything, I really enjoy trying to piece everything together. I probably get the most enjoyment out of shmups when I’m trying to learn an obtuse scoring system, and Cave has a goldmine of games that satisfy that itch.

Jamestown is a unique inspiration in the sense that, while I really enjoyed the game, it inspired me moreso in how it managed to attract and hold on to a less hardcore audience. Sure, right place right time and all that. But there was something much more to the Jamestown formula that got things right. It took a typical shmup experience of five levels and made it feel bigger than it was. It had a lot of stuff to unlock. The macro design of Jamestown is incredible even if it drops the ball on a few of the moment-to-moment design choices. And co-op is a blast in that game.

Erick: Megaman was an early influence for the art because of how we set up our hitboxes. Early on we tried a few versions that had the bullets shooting from a position higher than the hitbox, but it didn't feel right. So if the bullets have to be horizontal with the hitbox then we have to use gun arms like Metroid or Megaman. 

Halo was oddly a huge driving factor for me to make games because I would spend hours in forge mode trying to make maps and modes to play with my friends, and one day I realized that I couldn’t take any of that work from Halo and put it on my Resume. Same thing with Minecraft, I was pouring my creativity into these games and I refocused that into Astral Gunners. 

Sonic in general has always had striking linework and Sonic Battle for the Gameboy was one game Sami and I played a ton, and if you know Emerl from that game, we planned on having a character that you would get to swap moves in and out to change your playstyle. Indirectly the Bionicles had an influence on what the Astral Gunners are in their world. 

The first thing that strikes me about Astral Gunners is jam packed personality - the character designs, the narrative, the scenes and animations, all add up to this vibrant rich feel. If I had to guess, I’d say it takes something from a nostalgic Saturday morning cartoon vibe - like resonating with Power Rangers, or Astroboy. Am I close to the mark or were there other influences that got you to your overall aesthetic?

Erick: Astral Gunner's Aesthetic started from a desire to have colorful characters and colorful backgrounds. Most shmups are ships or anime girls, which can be cool, but we wanted to go in a more unique direction. So giving each character a color as an identity and their own planet was always critical for me. Since the very start our characters and bullets were designed with a bold black outline and a white glow around the edge to ensure visibility on the most vibrant backgrounds. And I was always pushing for clarity in the madness to hopefully clear up game mechanics to new players, best example is the hitbox, once you're close to danger the hitbox starts to glow to show players exactly where the line is.

There definitely is a Saturday morning cartoon influence as well. My brother and I would love drawing comic books in elementary school and I believe my main influences came from that time in my life. At that time we were playing Bomberman, Megaman, Sonic, and everything Nintendo. Games on the N64 would often use ball hands to save polygons but as a kid I thought it was more stylistic and the comics I drew would feature simple ball hands. I think the most influential toon in my life was the Sonic CD intro, the animated short with the Sonic Boom song, that intro lives rent free in my head and I can see sonic hopping across the river kicking up rainbows right now.

Sami: To add a little bit to that, I think when making a horizontal shooter you really need to feel less like you’re the pilot of a ship and more like you’re playing as a character. And then if you have multiple characters it’s really important to at least have basic personalities in place, so detailed animations and dialogue help a lot with that. None of this is necessary for a shmup but it helps a lot with making a game feel like a full package.

Gameplay wise, it really seems to match up with the characters and theme that you have a few different special attacks. Thinking through their use and deploying them effectively in combination with the levels is a really enjoyable shmup headspace. Was this element part of the gameplay ideal from the start, or did you have a different core gameplay desire that you started from?

Sami: One genre we both adore is fighting games. The best part of that genre is having characters to choose from and finding your main. Having multiple characters with unique abilities was probably the only core concept that stayed from start to finish.

Erick: Originally the game always had special moves that would get rid of bullets. And we wanted to give the characters unique identities within that, but things always change along the way. Originally Red Gunner had a flame jacket that would turn them invincible but it just didn’t give the impact we wanted, and he’s switched over to the super flame cannon that he’s got today. Interestingly the defensive moves were not part of the original plan, and we had, at the time, just made Light Gunner, who had a shield but didn’t use it to block bullets. I think I brought up the idea of giving Light Gunner a little defensive option and Sami ran away with it because it allowed our patterns to get more intense while making the game more approachable to casual players.

Sami: Yeah, the defensive abilities really brought the whole game together. Characters felt very distinct and it added a much needed risk/reward to our scoring system.

I really appreciated the ‘the boss is here’ left hand marker (something I associate with danmaku more specifically). Do you have any other examples of features that you might have borrowed from other parts of the genre or other types of games?

Sami: I had already played a lot of shmups before ever starting on Astral Gunners, but after deciding to develop a shmup I made it a personal mission to play as many as possible or at least watch high level play to see what every game was about. Basically any time I noticed a QOL(quality of life) feature I tried to implement it into Astral Gunners if possible. For some more direct inspirations, we had already had a section of the game that combined all of your high scores into one big high score but never had an online leaderboard for it. When I was playing Devil Blade Reboot I had so much fun trying to climb it's Total Score leaderboard that I scrambled to get our Combined Score feature set up as an online leaderboard.

Our progression system is taken somewhat from Kirby's Air Ride. I love achievements in games and when designed correctly I believe they're a great way to add challenge to a game and communicate how to unlock content. Additionally if unlocks are tied to challenges/achievements it helps a ton with making a game feel less grindy. While we didn't get the whole achievement grid set up, it was still very much a north star for developing progression in the game. I doubt I'll ever develop a game that has an unlock shop or anything like that, even if it really helps with your Steam playtime metrics I find it always ends up with the player's final play session ending on a bit of a sour note.

Erick: Features that were from other games, hmmm. Not directly gameplay features but Dark Gunner is inspired by both Ganondorf, the clear, black and white depiction of Evil, And Chaos from Sonic Adventure. Chaos transforms as you progress through the game eventually turning into a monster the size of a skyscraper. If you get to the true ending of the game I hope can see that connection. X Gunner is Death from Castlevania, and X might be responsible for more of the story than is directly stated. Oh also Level select is Starfox.

What do you hope shmuppers will take away from the experience?

Sami: I hope shmuppers recognize how hard we worked to keep the core of an arcade experience intact with Astral Gunners. We've got some ideas on how we'd like to try and push the arcade shmup genre forward and I believe having a game like Astral Gunners on our resume will help a lot with those future endeavors.

Erick: After their first playthrough I hope shmuppers are eager to try another playthrough, hopefully discovering new places to score big. And I hope Non-shmuppers are eager to try another run unlocking more credits and making it farther into the story.

What words of advice do you have for aspiring shmup developers?

Sami: I think this is probably the most common advice I read from game developers but it's an important one: keep your scope in check. We got a bit carried away on pretty much every element of AG and while it made the final product better, it's very clear to me now that it was not worth the time and mental health debuff. As an artist you can get carried away focusing on things most people don't care about. End of the day, if you focus on making a fun game then most people will be very forgiving of many perceived flaws. Anyone can make their "perfect" game if you give them enough time but it'll probably drive them crazy. It's much better to find a sustainable development cycle and learn when the time is right to let your creations out into the world.

Erick: Make a shorter game.

Your favourite obscure shmup (that you think not everyone might have heard of)?

Sami: rRootage. The bullet patterns in this game are mesmerizing and fun to dodge. I never really thought of Kenta Cho as an obscure developer, but I think as time has gone on his work has been largely overlooked. The only people I talk to who seem to be familiar with his work anymore are other shmup devs, so if you play a lot of indie shmups I can guarantee you the entire body of work from Kenta Cho has been hugely influential and it’s worth digging into. And completely free and open source. No excuse not to check these games out!!

Erick: RefleX is a dope shmup that I don't hear much about anymore. It has a defend ability so no matter how crazy everything looks you always know that there is a way through the madness. If you're reading this article because of Astral Gunners you're going to love RefleX!

Thanks so much to Sami and Erick for dropping by the hanger, and being the very first dev interview on Uchikudake.com! It's really possible to see how the game is a culmination of all the things you have mentioned.

You know your mission from here pilots, go grab yourself a copy of Astral Gunners and just have some 90's inspired fun. There's a free demo to try too, so there are no reasons not to dive in and try out this gem for yourself.

_DYR