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PUBLIC DEMO A IS OUT!

If you like the demo, consider buying it as a donation to support the game's development!

The game is in development so almost everything you see here is subject to change. 

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ABOUT THE GAME

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Mechanical Star Astra is a colorful, stylish, high energy bullet hell shoot 'em up. It mixes a solid arcade foundation with more modern elements to deliver a full package filled with a large variety of content that many kinds of action game players can enjoy.



In Astra, you take the role of a character in the world of New Humanity, a shell of what was once known as "Earth", inhabited by androids fighting against berserk machines that want to wipe them off the planet. Blast off in your Machina Striker of choice, and dismantle a variety of different threats, from aggressive jets and tanks to great mechanical beasts. Generate tons of energy cubes, convert it into massive destruction and huge points, and stop Astra from causing another apocalypse!

This game is developed by:

boghog (@boghogooo)
Director & Producer, Programmer, Game & Level Designer

lyn-marie charlene excelsia (@CHARLENEMAXIMUM)
Lead Artist & Art Director, Animator, Scenario Writer, Co-Designer

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WHAT TO EXPECT?

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• Bursts of thrills from start to finish.
  A classic arcade experience, featuring 5 stages packed with over 30 minutes of intense action -- and plenty of bonus arrange modes with unique combat adjustments.
  
• The game revels in excess.
  Colorful, detailed, stylish pixel art, constructed and animated with great care... Take apart large machina piece-by-piece, ranging from assault jets, to giant battleships, enormous mechs, and even small galaxies. Enjoy a variety of stage locales... overwhelming firepower on both sides... massive explosions... punchy effects... pretty bullets littering the screen... and shiny cubes splashing onto the field with everything you destroy.
  
• Spice up your runs with different character/ship combos.
  Pick between several different ships, each with their own play-style and set of special mechanics to master. Augment your ships further by selecting from multiple Pilots, each with their own unique modifiers that add a further degree of play-style customization.
• Unrelenting, aggressive gameplay.
  Get up-close to enemies to collect bigger energy cubes, and let loose your special attacks to increase your rate of destruction and paint the screen in gold and explosions.
• Achieve high scores, and push your skills to the limit.
  Discover the scoring system of Astra with easy to understand basics, and a lot of extra layers for players who dedicate themselves to learning the nuances of scoring. Gold cubes are the secret to prosperity.
  
• Fight together, survive together. Or perish together.
  Astra takes the two-player shooting game experience further beyond the standard, with interactive co-op modes with remixed storylines and some varied encounters in battle. Bump into other players, protect them from bullets, assist them from beyond the grave, spare your shields to revive fallen teammates, & more.
• An experience tuned for all skill levels and player types.
  Novice modes provide an accessible entry for new shmup players, and multiple routes of varying difficulty offer greater challenge and variety for players who master the scoring system. A plethora of bite-sized challenge missions, tutorials that teach
  genre fundamentals to beginners, extra score-attack based stages, main stages remixed with unique modifiers, challenge missions that will give even veterans a hard time, an in-depth training mode allowing you to practice against invididual foes, & more make sure any kind of shmup player will find plenty to do!
  
• Configure your experience to suit your needs.
  Easily change your button layouts, research your strategies with a built-in replay storage feature, and many different settings for screen resolution and rotation, including robust support for vertical monitor setups (TATE).
  

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Long ago, humans were the dominant species on the planet. Civilization was divided, engaged in a pointless war for power, resources, and domination. War, conflict, and violence became routine in the lives of these tragically doomed creatures.
To replace their dwindling numbers, the greatest minds of their era began building highly advanced weapons, with their own AI -- Machina, and Androids.

Androids were granted a modicum of free will, where machina were bound to the whims of a central AI satellite in space, known as “Project Astra”.

Eventually, humans brought about their own extinction. Their lust for war became memetic, inherited by the weapons they gave life to, and the war between androids paradoxically became about mutual destruction for the sake of protecting a humanity that no longer existed.
Time passed, and some androids became more self-aware of their paradoxical war, and formed anti-war collectives dedicated to creating peace.

One collective, known as “Outers Libera”, embarked on a mission to stop the war directly at the source -- Astra.
Utilizing a small armada of highly specialized fighter jets -- referred to as “Machina Strikers” -- Outers Libera set off into space and shot down Astra, sending her crashing into the planet.

With the machina deactivated, the androids agreed on a total cease-fire.
Eventually, they came together and began efforts to reconstruct a peaceful society among the ashes of battle, forming a New Humanity in the image of the old.

Decades later, a large, monolithic structure began to grow from Ground Zero into a massive tower. Machina had suddenly begun re-awakening and autonomously attacking android civilization.
The Ghost of Astra -- a satellite turned star -- commanded her machina to destroy all of the androids, in order to “save the world from humanity”.
With the birth of the mechanical star Astra, came the resurrection of Outers Libera and Civilization was once again thrust into another war. The pilots and ships of Libera were all revived, given upgrades, and reluctantly thrust back into the fight against Astra.

They had grown weary of these wars; this time, the destruction of Astra would be absolute.
Their jets roared and sliced through the air as they began their flight towards Ground Zero.
The sounds of machina destruction begin to echo through the atmosphere.

"Her star calls to us..."

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