After a year of almost complete silence from our part, we are proud to announce Steredenn: Binary Stars, a hugely expanded and massively improved version of Steredenn¹.

It’s coming to Nintendo Switch on March 8th, 2018, in its full glory.

This version is the ultimate Steredenn experience, bringing many new features and frequently-asked requests from the community, as well as more polish and bugfixes. It’s Steredenn at its best.

Enough said, here’s the teaser:

You can find a brand new website at steredenn.pixelnest.io. It will be updated with fresh content progressively.

🎉 Announcement 🎉#STEREDENN Binary Stars is coming to the Nintendo Switch on March 8th! https://t.co/XBRygHBeMj

The countdown to the bulletstorm
HAS
BEGUN! 😱#Nindies #NintendoSwitch #indiegames #shmup #pixelart #madewithUnity

— Pixelnest Studio (@pixelnest) February 15, 2018

You have some questions? Read on!

FAQ #1: Binary Stars what?

Steredenn: Binary Stars is the name of this massive expansion. Steredenn: Classic is the game you already know (and love! 😉).

FAQ #2: You said that the final release of Steredenn was exactly what you wanted to do with the game. U lied?

We were (and still are) very proud of Steredenn: Classic. The game was everything we wanted it to be.

But after listening to our community, and thinking about the game again and again, we thought that we could do even better. We took the time to really analyze the game once more, and devise a plan about what could be a great Steredenn expansion. That’s how Binary Stars was born.

FAQ #3: Okay, great. Whatever. So, what’s in for me?

• A local two-players co-op mode. This was initially planned for Steredenn: Classic, but because we didn’t have the time and didn’t anticipated it in the code, we decided to ditch it for the first release. This was the only thing we dearly missed and regretted. But no more: you can finally play Steredenn with your mate or best friend, and test the hardness of your relationship. Indeed, there’s only one lifebar for the two players!

• Five playable ships. This was the number one request we got. People wanted more ships to play with. We thought about this for quite some time, and decided on a roaster of 5 different ships.² Each ship has its own playstyle (more or less life, more or less damages, speed, etc.) and, more importantly, a special ability. This special ability is a huge departure from the original game: it adds one more button to the control scheme. This might be the biggest and most-breaking change, even if it doesn’t look like it. We won’t spoil what they do, but they are pretty fun.

• The original ship, now called the “Tempest”, can deliver a close-combat punch with its special ability. We loved our melee weapons in the original game. However, they were really difficult to use and took one weapon slot, making the combination weaker than the rest. After observing the players, we knew that it was not working as much as we wanted. That’s why we decided to make the special ability of our original ship a melee attack: it can save you in a difficult situation, give you more options, but it does not take a weapon slot. This is very powerful. It’s time to give back a place in our heart for the melee weapons!

• A new mode: the Boss Rush. It’s a weekly challenge, with a selection of bosses each week, and a special leaderboard. Like the Daily Run, except you can play as many time as you want.

• Tons of new weapons and upgrades. Each category has the same number of weapons, so each strategy is viable now. We also reworked some of the old weapons. The Shockwave and the Stasisgun are way better now, for example. More combinations = more fun!

• New bosses, new landscapes, new music tracks, new waves, new scoring system, and an improved balance. Fiouu.

• Unlocks! A problem of the original game was the lack of progression. Almost everything was unlocked from the beginning. This was too bad, because we all love to unlock new things as we play the game more and more. In Steredenn: Binary Stars, you will find a new motivation to play: you can unlock new ships, weapons, modes and bosses throughout the game.

• Cargos can, sometimes, drop health capsules. This is rare, obviously. 😘

• We also refined every aspect of the game: the UI, the flow, some animations, sounds and GFX, etc. For example, the explanation of the upgrades is clearer, and you shouldn’t make any bad decision now. You can also remap your controllers the way you want: you have the complete control.

• And, last, but not least, 6 new radically different secret bosses. We won’t tell you how to find them, of course. If you beat one of them, you can choose a game modifier to twist the game in a new interesting way. 😋

And there’s more. We will publish a detailed changelog when the expansion is out, the 8th.

It’s huge. It’s a culmination of one year of work. And it makes Steredenn an almost brand new game for us. That’s not to say that Steredenn: Classic was bad — we are prouder than ever of what we accomplished with the original game, and still think it’s a worthwhile game in its own.

FAQ #4: Well, that’s cool, but I want Binary Stars on my current platform!!

Don’t worry, we will update the game everywhere: Steam, Xbox One and PS4. We have no release date for the moment, but it’s coming.

We are deeply focused on the Nintendo Switch version and release right now. We will communicate later about the plan for the other platforms. Remember: we are a very small team and our bandwidth is limited. We have to pick our priorities carefully.

We plan to bring Binary Stars to iOS after the other platforms too. Because of the strong constraints of the platform, we will need more time to adapt it in a way that fits the devices.

FAQ #5: I already played 1000 hours of Steredenn. Is it for me?

Thanks! You can re-experience the game with new ships, bosses, weapons and upgrades. There’s enough new content to unlock to make a new playthrough worthy of your time, don’t worry.

Besides, we have added 6 secret bosses (and 1 hard-to-unlock ship), that will require your skill to find and beat them. This is a content specially crafted for hardcore players like you.

And if you have a Nintendo Switch, you can bring Steredenn: Binary Stars with you all the time, and play another 1000 hours! :)

FAQ #6: I like Steredenn the way it is!

We do too. We are still thinking that the core experience of Steredenn is exactly what we wanted to do.

And that’s why this expansion is “additive”. The game is still the same in the end, but with many many more layers on top, making it bigger, richer, and ultimately, better.

If you have any other questions, ask us on Twitter or Facebook. ;)

Stay tuned for more Steredenn: Binary Stars! Be ready for the 8th March. It’s going to be great.

– Damien & Matthieu, Pixelnest Studio.

Steredenn is officially available on the App Store for $3.99/4.49€!

With clear and precise controls, Game Center integration, and a stickers pack included, you will blast through the game at the speed of light!

If you enjoy the game, leave a review on the App Store: that makes a huge difference for us. Thanks! 💖

The road to the App Store

What a journey!

When we started the development of Steredenn during the spring of 2014, we originally planned to launch the game on mobile a few months later. We were so young and naive… ;)

In the end, we took one year and a half to complete the game, and we released Steredenn on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux). We then changed our focus to the consoles, with a release on Xbox One and PS4 later.

But secretly, we still wanted to port the game on mobile devices… and the first step is complete today! Get the game on the App Store for iPhone and iPad now.

But what about Android?

For Android users: we know that you also want to play the game, and we don’t forget you. But, alas, we have limited bandwith (we are only two people) and we can’t test and polish the game enough at the moment. We are still working on it, and we do want to release it on Android.

We don’t have a release date yet, neither an estimation of the time we will need, so stay tuned. ;)

presskit() has successfully become a videogame industry standard for press kits¹. It was created by Rami Ismail of Vlambeer, along with some other fine people.

presskit() is great: the format that it provides is clear, well-known and practical. That’s why we use it at Pixelnest.

However, presskit() didn’t match our development process and technology stack, so we had to hack our a way around its PHP-based codebase. Moreover, like many people nowadays, we grew fond of static site generator like Jekyll, Hugo or Gatsby. Simple HTML pages are more efficient, robust and simple for many cases… like a press kit!

So, deep down, we knew that we had to re-implement it for people who use static site generator, like we do.

Moreover, presskit() development has staled since 2014. It’s not a problem: it’s an open source project and people can get and change the code as they like. But we didn’t want to invest time in a PHP project that didn’t fit us. So instead, we decided to re-implement presskit() the way we prefered: as a static site generator.

So please, welcome presskit.html, our static site generator for presskit(), with a permissive MIT license. 🤘

And read the quickstart for existing presskit() users. 😉

There’s a complete documentation and introduction to the project on the GitHub page. It’s available through npm.

A fair bit of warning: it’s still a beta and can/will have bugs. However, it’s completely capable of re-creating an existing presskit() (see ours or the example). We have some small additions to make before considering it an 1.0.0 project, including a visual application for non-developers. As it stands today, the project requires some basic command-line knowledge, which might restrict non-technical users.

So, ready? Go check presskit.html!

Hello!

After a few months in the work, we are happy to announce the new face of Pixelnest!

For the occasion, we revamped the whole website as well. If you find any problem in your browser or any dead link, please tell us. ;)

Our old identity wasn’t representative of us anymore. The pirate (George) meant nothing to many of our followers, and the website seriously started to feel dated. It was time to do something. And now that most of the work on Steredenn is over, we could really take the time to reimagine ourselves for the years to come.

I will probably write something about the process behind the redesign, but now is not the day.

If you are wondering what is the meaning of the logo… well, it’s open to interpretation. I personally see a mask, but some think it’s a cat, while Damien thinks it’s a fox. It’s up to you!

Thanks to you for allowing us to continue Pixelnest, almost two years after its debut. Be ready for the launch of Steredenn on PS4 in a few days!