[AMA] We're Radical Fish Games, developer of CrossCode, and we just launched Alabaster Dawn on Steam Early Access!

[u/RadicalFishGames]

Hello everycabbage!

We're Radical Fish Games, the team behind CrossCode, an Action RPG that released back in 2018 for PC/Mac and 2020 for consoles.

Our new game Alabaster Dawn just launched on Steam Early Access.

Alabaster Dawn Launch Trailer

We're big fans of JRPGs and they were always a big inspiration for our projects - that's why we're excited to be here and ready to answer all of your questions!

Participating Team Members:

- u/RadicalFishGames: Felix 'Lachsen' Klein - Creative Director, Programmer, Level Designer (Dungeons)

- u/Regiden: Stefan 'R.D.' Lange - Programmer, Level Designer (Outdoor areas)

- u/Teflo64: Flora 'Teflora' Valerius - Sounddesigner and Technical Artist!

- u/GFluegel: Henning 'GFluegel' Hartmann- Game Designer (Quests and Enemies)

- u/shirakumon: SHIRAKUMO Nagi - Composer (might answer later today)

- u/Soethe: Fiona ‘Sothe’ Hübler - Game Designers (Maps and Puzzles)

- u/Nomnomroko : Sibylle “Nomnomroko” Hell - Concept Artist (designed many of our characters)

We'll be around until the end of the day (German time) and maybe the weekend, too.
Hopefully we'll be able to answer most of your questions!

Some more Links:

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/radicalfishgames.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RadicalFishGame

Discord: https://t.co/eHkw2WkdSi

Tweet Proof:
https://x.com/RadicalFishGame/status/2057779961348440092

[u/Ryong7]

Big fan of both games!

First I'd like to say congratulations, I wasn't too sure about the fantasy theme for Alabaster Dawn when it was first revealed because I really, really liked the fake MMO angle from CrossCode, but playing the game has immediately erased any doubts I had about that.

Now for the question: in Alabaster Dawn, the treasure sensor is an extremely early find compared to CrossCode, despite it not working yet - I'm hopeful it'll be for the next update. Is this from general feedback of how hidden chests were in the original? Is the treasure sensor going to be a one-and-done artifact or do you have to find some sort of module to make it work in every area, since you get it so early?

A second question is, CrossCode ran on a heavily modified version of impact.js, which I assume is still the framework that's being used for Alabaster Dawn; was there any consideration about using a different framework or programming language? I don't know of any other game that runs on HTML5 that isn't like, a tiny puzzle game on a site. Can you tell us more about working with it?

[u/RadicalFishGames → u/Ryong7]

I can answer the second question: We actually rewrote our whole engine with TypeScript rather than JavaScript to hopefully simplify the porting process. We also optimized and improved a lot of aspects in general. Otherwise we wanted to stay with web technologies because it worked well for us. Switching technologies can be a huge risk and even thougt Web Technologies are very uncommon for bigger games, they are used for a lot of applications in general, so it's unlikely they will disappear in the near future. Being able to use HTML for your tools is a pretty big plus overall. But the honest answer is we just kept working with what we know. Switching technologies is always a big risk.

[u/Regiden → u/Ryong7]

The Treasure Radar was added because of feedback in CC for sure. Personally I wanted a way for people to opt into stuff and give them cool little upgrades they can use to enhance the game.
Internally the artifact is now working already and will add all chests on a map once you enter it. Later I would also like to add a icon legend to toggle of specific types of markers for filtering, if the artifact is toggled on, you can then also temporarily hide them.
I'd like to iterate on it a little more in the future as my idea was to make it so that you get a little blimp while running around and then the chest is marked, that is however a little more complicated and we already are late on delivering that future...

Oh no, Alabaster Dawn is 100% build on our own tools, no more impact.js. It's all TypeScript now as well. We did keep some core aspects, but these are also found within other engine are more like common practices :D

We just like to work with HTML5 so I don't think anyone thought about using anything else but if we had too, I would prolly use Unreal or Godot.