Aberrate Inc. | Ask the Devs #1 - Chilltop Games Answers Your Questions!
Aberrate Inc. · published
Hello Puzzle Fans!
Welcome to Aberrate Inc.‘s first-ever “Ask the Devs” feature, we’re excited to kick things off! We’ll be gathering your questions throughout development and answering them right here. Below are our answers to questions sent in on socials over the past few weeks.
Let’s dive in!
Q1. “Flat floating characters to an expressive CRT face is a real animation problem. Did Lachlan add more frames, or lean on squash and stretch with what you already had?”
- GameBrief, Bluesky
Great question! Honestly, all of the above. Lachlan added eye bones to the character animation rig and stuck 3D text on the ends – and with that extra dimension, it opened up a whole new world of squash and stretch to play with. It's a small change, which led to a huge difference in personality. We're really excited to make more use of N.T.R.N.'s new expressions.
Q2. “Congrats on landing a publisher! How many puzzles are there in the full game?”
– Abandoned Sheep, Steam
Thank you! We’re planning 25+ puzzles at launch. Plenty to keep you busy on day one - with the potential for even more on the horizon.
Q3. “The game looks like a lot of fun! Was it inspired by games like Biped, and did you ever consider adding a co-op mode?”
- Lost_Cartridge, Reddit
We’ve absolutely considered co-op - a few of you have suggested it to us directly! For our debut release, we’ve chosen to keep the scope tight and focused so we can nail the core experience. But we never say never…maybe for an Aberrate Inc. 2 if this one does well. 👀
Q4. “The visuals look great, but the trailer doesn’t give a clear clue of what the puzzles actually are. Could you show some of the later puzzles – even partially completed - so we can see the bigger picture?”
- McPhage, Reddit
Totally fair! While the puzzles may look simple - each one is a single room - the depth comes from the complexity and order of the moves you make to solve them. It's difficult to demonstrate that in full in short trailers - but we’ll be sharing dev previews of later content closer to release, and we’re toying with the idea of filming one of our own team (or the folks at Ripstone - our publisher) attempting to solve a puzzle for the very first time. Should be fun to watch us sweat!
Q5. “Looks great. Is there a demo planned? It’d be nice to check it runs on my hardware (RP Flip 2).”
- gaokerena30, Reddit
Yes! There's a demo coming to Steam soon - we can't say when just yet, but it's not too far away. As for hardware compatibility; we’re building in scalability settings to support a wide range of device specs, so while we can't promise specifics yet, we’ll do our absolute best to keep things running smoothly as wide a range of setups as possible.
Q6. “Will there be fun unlockable outfits for N.T.R.N.? I want to be a pretty princess!”
- ayden.devine, Facebook
We love the enthusiasm! We’re planning some customisation options for N.T.R.N., with hopefully a few skins available at launch and (tentatively) some more arriving post-launch through patches and updates. Pretty princess dreams, we hear you 😅
Q7. “This looks so cute ngl, how much is it gonna be on Steam?”
- HadesExplainsHisFriendGroup, Facebook
We’re staying tight-lipped on pricing for now, at least until the launch content is locked in. Whatever the final price, we’re committed to making sure the game is fairly priced and well worth it!
Keep your questions coming!
We’ll be answering more in our next entry, so if you didn’t see your question this time, feel free to ask again on our socials, Steam, or Discord. And don’t forget…
WISHLIST NOW
The Chilltop Games Team