Old School Gamer Magazine chats with Astro Burn developer HaZ Dulull, who discusses their game, Astro Burn, which is gearing up for a physical release on PC and Mac.
About Astro Burn:
Beyond The Pixels®, a London based transmedia media studio dedicated to bringing modern retro to today’s generation, announced today that they are partnering with 33 Games to launch the collectors edition of their debut title, Astro Burn. Oozing retro nostalgia on the outside, developed for modern gamers on the inside, the collectors edition will include the Astro Burn USB Cartridge for PC and Mac, and will mirror the game’s release on Steam, GOG and Epic Game Store!
No mere shooter, this modern day cute ‘em up is an outer space adventure that’s out of this world, and guaranteed to put a smile on the face of any retro shooter fans! Astro Burn is a love letter to a gone but not forgotten era of video games, taking inspiration from icons such as Parodius and Pop’n Twin Bee, and providing a much needed power up for retro fans looking to scratch that itch. Astro the space cat and her quirky companion AL are on a mission to return home, but to do so they need to reign bullet hell over the cute and chaotic critters in their path.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How was this game born?
HaZ Dulull: The concept really began with one simple moment: I was looking at my retro game collection, those chunky cartridges, old consoles, the beautiful SNES box art, and I felt that familiar spark of nostalgia. I missed the days where you could just pick up a game, dive straight in, put it down whenever you wanted, and still feel that magic. No over-complicated systems, no 20-button combos, just pure fun. And pixel art… it’s timeless. Unlike 3D, it doesn’t really age.
So I started sketching ideas that combined my love for space sci-fi (which runs through all my films) with the classic shoot-em-up games I grew up on: R-Type, UN Squadron, Axelay, and of course Star Fox. One morning, as I was staring at that row of SNES cartridges with a coffee in hand, my cat Mia tapped my arm for food. I looked at her, then back at the cartridges, and it hit me.
What if the pilot of the game was a space cat?
And just like that, Astro Burn was born. (And yes, Mia absolutely got an extra treat.)
Balancing nostalgia with modern polish was the real challenge. Adults crave that 16-bit magic again, while younger players (Gen Z especially) are discovering retro for the first time thanks to things like Stranger Things, Atari’s relaunch, and the explosion of pixel-art indies.
To make it work for both audiences, I focused on simplicity, clarity, and personality, while ensuring gameplay feels smooth, modern, and satisfying. The key was early and constant playtesting. I took rough builds to small game events, handed people a controller, and just watched. Their reactions told me everything: what was instantly fun, what felt dated, what needed tightening.
The game really found its identity in that process, sitting between classic nostalgia and modern accessibility, wrapped in a playful, chaotic, cat-powered universe.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What is your role in the game?
Dulull: Well as an indie developer, I wear lots of hats, so its Game Dev, Game Designer, Game Producer.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What has development been like?
Dulull: Game development is a rollercoaster, full of highs (“This is incredible!”), lows (“What on Earth am I doing?”), and constant twists and turns where you pivot creatively or technically to make the game better than you first imagined.
I started Astro Burn completely on my own back in March 2025. But as the vision grew, I knew where my limits were. By August, I began bringing in freelance help for the more complex systems, like local leaderboards, datastore logic, and variable structures. By September, I pulled in pixel artists to replace my placeholder art with something beautiful and polished and that included collaborating with the awesome Canadian based Japanese artist Q-Yoneda!
I also imposed a 12-month deadline. I didn’t want to fall into the classic indie trap of building an overly ambitious game that drifts into a five-year production cycle while scrambling for funding. I gave myself a clear financial runway and adopted a game-jam mindset: weekly milestones, iterative builds, fast decision-making. That structure let me evolve the game while still staying on schedule.
Being an indie dev, especially one self-financing, comes with pressure. But I had to make sure that pressure never overshadowed the passion that drove me to make this game in the first place.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What makes this game special?
Dulull: Well firstly this game is unapologetically delightfully bonkers!!! It’s a game that will constantly make you smile (I’ve noticed some of the most hardcore serious players at game conventions we showcase the game at, they would approach all hard faced, but then when they play it you can see them cracking a smile – that’s the special factor this game has, it makes you feel joy!.
The controls are simple, and its only two buttons of action (fire weapon, and trigger Special power moves!). It’s a game anyone can pick up and play without any intense onboarding, and most importantly it’s so insane that it doesn’t take itself seriously, and nor should you as the player too!
Old School Gamer Magazine: What games influenced this one the most?
Dulull: This game is a love letter to the classic cute-em-ups in the mid 90s such as Parodius and Pop N’Twin Bee. But also other cute-em-ups like Cotton for example.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What was behind the decision to do a physical edition for PC and Mac?
Dulull: Honestly, it was a pretty natural decision, and not really a market or technical one.
A lot of my network comes from film and TV, and most of them are on MacBooks, it’s just the norm in that world. I rarely knew anyone in Hollywood using a PC laptop. So, if I wanted those people to actually play the game, Mac support just made sense.
Since Steam supports both PC and Mac, and GDevelop lets me build for both pretty easily, it felt like a no-brainer, just making the game accessible to the people around me 😊
Old School Gamer Magazine: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?
Dulull: Honestly, Astro Burn has been a bit of a rollercoaster, in the best way. It’s full of those weird little moments that ended up shaping what the game actually became.
It all started pretty simply. I was sitting there with a coffee, staring at my SNES cartridges, when my cat Mia tapped me for food. I looked at her… then back at the games… and it just clicked, what if the pilot was a space cat? Gave her a treat, and that was the spark.
The biggest turning point came halfway through development. I’d been showing the game at events, and people loved the cat, but the gameplay felt too serious. That Sunday morning, I went back and played stuff like Parodius and TwinBee, and realised I was playing it too safe. So I did something a bit mad, I mocked up a panda riding a giant mech and threw it online. The reaction was instant. That was the moment I knew… lean into the chaos.
Another big shift came when I met Q Yoneda in Canada / Winnipeg. After I got back to London, he sent over some fan art based on the demo, and I remember thinking, this is it. I couldn’t unsee it. That 90s Konami vibe just clicked into place.
Then there were all the smaller, but equally important moments. Watching players instinctively press A to shoot while I’d mapped it to X, that got changed the same night. Or when people said, “I want to read the story… just faster,” which led to replacing the skip button with a fast-forward.
And then there’s the Meow-doken… which basically came from us asking, how far can we push this? That idea of turning Astro into this giant burst of feline fury just felt right, and it quickly became part of the game’s DNA.
Looking back, all these moments, big and small, are what shaped Astro Burn into what it is now. It wasn’t one big decision… it was a series of instincts, experiments, and just listening to what felt fun.
Old School Gamer Magazine: What were the major lessons learned?
Dulull: The players are always right!! No matter what you think is in your head as a game developer, when the players feedback, take that seriously because they are the players the ones that will be buying your game! It’s like the classic saying “the customer is always right”
Old School Gamer Magazine: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?
Dulull: 100% if anything, it’s those early mechanics that paved the way for games today, but throughout the decades we have seen games get technologically much more advanced with graphics and immersion but at the same time they have gotten bigger and more complex, and often forgetting that less is more, and working with restrictions (graphically memory etc) leads to out of the box thinking with game design. Yet mobile games rely on simpler mechanics often referencing those retro games, which is why I think mobile gaming is so much bigger than PC and Console gaming combined! (yes, controversial statement but just look at the Matthew Ball Report that was published recently!).
Old School Gamer Magazine: The marketplace is crowded. How do you think you stand out?
Dulull: Astro Burn got signed to Publisher – Pixel Doors in Mid-March, and I remember asking them what made the game stand out for them to sign it, and they said it was the most bonkers game they have ever seen, yet it had so much heart and soul in there with the space cat character layered with the retro fun vibe. So far, the trailer has been very popular because of the vibe, perhaps it’s the vibe of the game which makes it stand out.
I am very fortunate to have found a wonderful and experienced publishing partner with Pixel Doors, we are currently hard at work together getting the game ready for Early Access.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How have your previous experiences in industry helped this game?
Dulull: Having worked on PS1 (omg, that’s now considered as retro too!) games (such as Motocross mania) back in the day, I appreciate the restrictions of creating art work on a 256×256 texture map to fit every component of a character or vehicle and then use UV unwrap to texture onto low poly geometry, but also fast forward decades later working on massive games like DUNE: Awakening, both scales and times have taught me a lot about game development and how to navigate it, and it’s not easy! It’s not for the faint hearted!
The key thing when making games of any scale or genre, is team communication, if you have that (if anything) in a good place, then the process of making games will be fun and creative led and in turn gets the best ideas and results.
Old School Gamer Magazine: How do you want this game to ultimately be remembered?
Dulull: FUN, FUN, FUN!
Old School Gamer Magazine: What’s next?
Dulull: We are currently working on some licensed IP projects which we can’t talk about (yet), and also doing some early concepts for the next original title coming out of Beyond The Pixels, although it’s early to announce anything, what I can say is, it will be in the cute-em-up genre and will be even more delightfully bonkers! ☺
Old School Gamer Magazine: Anything else you’d like to add?
Dulull: Please play the demo and Wishlist the game if you like it, we need more support for indies to survive this insane business that we all love.
Follow the Kickstarter project here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/beyondthepixels/astro-burn-limited-edition-physical-indie-game
Join the Discord: https://discord.com/invite/qV9u6krj4c
Play the Demo on these platforms:
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3810660/Astro_Burn/
GOG: https://www.gog.com/en/game/astro_burn
Epic Games Store: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/astro-burn-fdb205
About Beyond The Pixels®:
Founded by HaZ Dulull with a mission to create games in a smarter, more agile way—capturing the same thrill and wonder he felt playing arcade and 16-bit console games as a kid. We use the latest tools and technology to design and produce games that reflect the simple plot and mechanics of the games we loved when growing up on consoles like SNES and the Coin-op Arcades. The simple run and gun / shoot-em-up button-bashing games that require speed, coordination and skills, layered with an engaging story that isn’t complex. Our games are that but delivered with the slick visual design flair, high speed frame rates and graphics fidelity on next gen PC + consoles for today’s generation of gamers, whilst staying in lean and smart game development approaches to keeping costs and schedule as tight as possible. We leverage smart social media and brand partnership strategy to create community for our games from day one.
The post Old School Gamer Magazine Exclusive: HaZ Dulull Talks Astro Burn appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
