Latest in Cosmorists - Aug 2026
Hello Cosmorists! It's been almost a full year since I last talked about what I was working on. That's on me. Side tangents Lack of action I worked on the game so infrequently lately that in some ways, I feel out of touch. Working on the same game for multiple years (since at lea
Hello Cosmorists!
It's been almost a full year since I last talked about what I was working on. That's on me.
Side tangents
Lack of action
I worked on the game so infrequently lately that in some ways, I feel out of touch. Working on the same game for multiple years (since at least 2022), and having no clue what the game should be like aside from being a survival-crafting game and updating based on vibes, was not a sustainable game development loop. I focused on other things unrelated to game development most of the time lately, even though there's a smolder within me telling me to keep going because it's still in Early Access and not done yet. Progress was still ongoing, but it was very slow. It's as if I've "moved on" to something else.
That's why the game has felt rather neglected for the past year. It's also why the Discord server doesn't work sometimes because I gotta admit, I'm not familiar with using Discord all that well let alone how to run and maintain a server, hence, broken links. That neglect is the same reason for why the Wiki is outdated and most of it was last updated in 2023-24, or why the YouTube channel hasn't had a new video in over a year.
Even though it's been nearly a year since I last updated the game, I still worked on update 0.2 in the background, but at a roughly 10x slower rate than before.
Uncertainty over the direction
Honestly, even I had no clue what the game's direction should be aside from a vague end goal in space with a tech theme and that this will "come later". A lot of what I added was based on vibes in the moment, not a design document. I jumped right into developing the game without even considering a design document. Something I've never done prior.
I pretty much create a vague list of what I want to add, add a few of them from the list there, then never bother to touch it again. It lacks any sense of structure. The game feels wide, but sparse, and stretched thin at times.
Progress teasers
Even with that uncertainty, the one thing I did promise over a year ago, which is a space realm, has finally been done. Here's a screenshot I took 4 months ago:
At the moment, you can now place any tile there except for cave entrances (intentional design), and those spacecraft are so far the only enemies. There's one space realm at the moment. The beginning asteroids. The physics is also different, as the space realm has no friction. Once you move, you move at the same speed until you bounce off the edge.
And here's one screenshot from this month, August 2026:
Here, asteroids and drops from these spacecraft enemies are the foundational progression for the space realm instead of tiles with resources. There are no tiles so far except the ones the player places down.
Items
Each ore type will have a scrap equivalent. Smelting 15 of them gives 1 / 4 of an ingot. It will soon be possible to recycle your leftover copper or tin or other ore-based tools into hundreds of units of scrap, with less scrap being returned the lower the durability. That's what is in the screenshot.
Aside from that, a few new machines, toolsets, and other resources have been added since.
One small change is that "Iron-Steel" will be renamed to simply "Steel", as the former is already iron-based.
Removing planetary content
After such a long lull as to what I've been doing in development since September 2025 (11 months now), I feel that the game is too bloated and directionless, and stretched too thin. Now I'm deciding that Luna and Aquatica are going to be removed from the game, and the planned migration of Aquatica content to Tierra won't happen. Achievements relating to world exploration beyond Tierra will also be removed. Since these worlds were part of the game since 2023, it's a little sad for me to see planetary exploration go after 3 years.
I'm doing this because I don't want Cosmorists to be in a liminal Early Access state, not knowing when to stop adding content based on vibes in the moment. I'd be in this scope creep loop for years and years with no 1.0 in sight. Removing it is my brake petal to that, and from now on, the space realm will be where I'll focus my space-themed efforts.
I'd much rather have a finished game that's around 5-10 hours long and is fun and meaningful to play with the game throwing occasional surprises and unexpected angles throughout the gameplay loop, than a 30 hour long one that's fun at first, then feels stale after a repetitive gameplay loop of explore → mine new resources → unlock items in the tech tree → upgrade gear → conquer threats in the area → explore, over and over for those 30 hours until the end goal.
It's a drastic change in direction after nearly a year of silence, but one that I think is necessary to avoid excess scope creep, and cut off the repetitive gameplay elements.
As always, for backwards compatibility reasons, existing saves from 0.1.5.1 and older will still be able to explore Luna and Aquatica, but new saves from 0.2 onwards wouldn't be able to explore them. Technically removed for new saves, but in a retired state for existing saves.
Where new content will go from now on
Since I'm deciding to remove Tierra and Aquatica, a lot of the new content that'll be added will go towards smoothing out all the rough parts and making the game denser instead of wider, going all in on concentrating content to Tierra and the newly added space realm, and making the gameplay loop shorter but more satisfying. Instead of adding new major biomes, I add smaller sub-biomes for existing ones and give them a purpose (i.e. a handful of useful resources and unique dangers compared to the main biome) or enriching existing ones. Instead of adding new enemies, I polish out the behavior or add new abilities to existing enemies before I add new ones. Instead of loads of new resources with only one or two uses, I add new uses and incentives for existing resources (i.e. A new gadget with special abilities crafted from those existing resources) and theme many of them on one or a few abilities before adding new ones.
Instead of a linear tool upgrade from Stone → Copper/Tin → Iron → Magtise, I add tool sidegrades with their own advantages and disadvantages to the main upgrade branch to make their incentives situational and have the progression more web-like instead of simply adding more tools beyond Magtise. (i.e. a tool themed on the wilting caves will have poison abilities and higher damage, but be slower to use and be more complicated to craft compared to magtise and be a different branch on the tech tree)
Since Cobalt and Titanium are Aquatica-exclusive resources and are already water-themed, especially Cobalt, with its removal, they're likely gonna go to the space realm asteroids instead and have some kind of ability regarding water on Tierra or maybe a water themed-space realm (i.e. faster water walking speeds and water-themed abilities relating to tiles) instead of removing them altogether.
I did add the space realm for the upcoming update, but this is the only time I'd justify expansion from this point forward. Maybe 3 new realms, each with a clear increase in difficulty and new strategies before the last one is where the end goal might go.
Aside from that, I'm also going with identifying the game's underlying design infrastructure before building on top of it. That infrastructure would be the "design document", where I'll use that to come up with a concrete ruleset for which content should be added, which should be modified, and which should be cut, and having a concrete finish line.
That density over expansion, web-like progression, and shorter duration from early game to end game is my starting infrastructure.
Possible update pace
I'm probably gonna update the game more slowly given the speed deficit, but I'd go with making the updates more deliberate.
Would I do Latest in Cosmorists every month? Likely not given the pace of development has been around 10x slower in this period, but I can see myself doing it much more often than that year of silence, potentially once every month at times, or around once every two or three months.
0.2 release range
Since this update has been in development for over a year now, I'm now considering releasing 0.2 sometime in Fall 2026, likely October or November, maybe late September if progress was made faster than even I expected. I still want to release it before the end of the year, even if the scope is smaller than I hoped a year ago.
I'm still working on the game, and 0.2 is around two-ish months away, but I just wanted to break the year's long silence and give an update as to what progress I made, even though it's slow lately, and the new direction the game is going.
When the next update eventually comes out, there will now be the ability to repair your items, as exemplified in this gif via a repair station where it's not just iron pickaxes that can be repaired, but any item with durability, where the required item will show up as transparent. This repair station is planned to be unlocked fairly early in the game, available after researching the Copper and Tin Metallurgy tech.
This is another machine. This will be an item that produces several chemical-related items, and those items will be used in a recipe that allows chemical science automation, and some of those new items will then be used for more advanced tech in a future update.
The very first electric weapon has been added to the game, called the Plasmathon, which shoots plasma balls in a linear path until it hits an enemy, a wall, or 10 seconds have passed. It consumes energy from the player's fuel chamber, and doesn't rely on ammo like bows do, only your energy reserves. For now, it'll be found in treasures in Tierra's dark caves (layers 100-239)
This is an empty science vessel. Instead of using glass to craft science at the research station, they'll be used to craft empty science vessels, which can then be crafted into different sciences.
(Hazard icon indicated by the spike icon)
[damage multiplier] will always be a value between 0 and 1, and the armor always has a minimum value of 0. Once [damage multiplier] is calculated, the damage taken by the player is multiplied by [damage multiplier].
E.g. The player gets 80 damage, and has 50 armor. [damage multiplier] is calculated to be 0.571, whose product is 45.71. Its rounded up to 46, and the player receives 46 damage as a result.
Here's a graph displaying the relationship between [damage multiplier] and armor:
And here's a table for the damage multiplier (DM) as a percentage at certain values depending on the armor!
In the above screenshot, instead of each shield having a general armor stat that blocks nearly all types of damage, each shield will block different types of damage, blocking one type of damage very well but offering weak protection in others. So far, it's melee, projectile, and blast armor, but I'm considering adding a 4th one, one for hazards, a stat that blocks damage from cactus floors in desert caves, poison in jungle/wilting caves, or lava in lava caves, anything static that damages the player on contact!
In the screenshot shown, copper shields will be great for early defense against melee attacks, but will offer little protection against explosions or projectiles (stats are subject to change).
Tin shields are strong at blocking projectile damage, but less so with melee or explosive damage.
Iron shields will offer the best protection against explosions, but blocks slightly less melee damage than copper shields, and slightly less projectile damage than tin shields, but has higher durability, and so on.
Another change made is that copper swords and tin arrows will now deal 50% more damage, and tin bows will shoot arrows around 40% farther.
This rebalance is primarily to give existing resources more contrast with others, and a stronger sense of identity instead of rare metals having strictly better stats than metals before it. In the early game combat space, copper tools will now be best for melee combat, and tin is best for ranged combat. For the shields, it still uses that same formula as described in the technical implementation, but now applied to different damage types!
Beyond just combat, I have plenty of ideas on where to take this, something like a gadget giving +20% movement speed but only in a specific biome found in that biome's treasure or a rare enemy drop, or a gadget that gives the player immunity to a certain debuff, or a set of 2 or 3 shields in the shields slot giving the player something like +10% melee damage or +25% movement speed when damaged, the ideas can go on and on!
If I do go through, this will likely be a low priority thing at first due to the focus on resource functionality.
With this update also come new inventory slots dedicated to shields. The number on the top left is a new stat: Armor! It determines how much damage is blocked by something physical, such as direct enemy damage or a projectile, and has no effect on damage taken by status effects such as Burning or Poison. (Note, Stone shields have 5 armor and 504 durability after a rebalance instead of 8 and 630 as seen in the screenshot)
There are also several different types of shields as well for each ore, each giving varying amounts of armor to the player, and different durability amounts, and if an enemy damages the player, the shield absorbs some of it!
Here's the revamped damage of a Large Molten Slime for instance. It has the same AI as before, but now able to one-shot any unshielded cosmorist, even at full health!
Note: Existing saves will automatically have the map unlocked regardless if the spaceship is repaired. Since the game didn't save which chunks have been explored before the update, existing saves will initially have empty maps, even in already explored regions. For new saves, it'll be locked and inaccessible until the player has repaired the spaceship, where a map icon flashes green at the bottom right corner of the screen to grab your attention, intended to let players know about the unlocked map!
(Same GIFs from LIC (Latest In Cosmorists) Apr 2025)
Those gray blobs are rocks, the light-green ones are the rocks in the jungle, and that green wall is mostly vegetation, trees, and other jungle tiles.
At this point, the frame rate drops to around 20 FPS when it's opened, and there are many map bugs that needs to be worked out, so some optimization is needed before an update that adds maps will be launched.
There's a new hazard to look out here, as any cosmorist can step on some spiky cacti!
A new set of tools exclusive to this biome has been added, and it does the opposite of the ones in the taiga caves! They increase the player's body temperature per use!
The save at the top uses the new data structure, and the save at the bottom stores data in the older less organized way. The new file size relative to the old will vary for different saves, but it's still be small enough to easily be uploaded to the cloud!
This conversion is also the reason for the v 0.1.2 spaceship deletion bug, as the game now either deletes or overrides files that use the old format, one of which was spaceship data. The data was deleted, but wasn't replaced by the file that was supposed to override it when saved.
After the update, it now has treasure containing a new toolset called permafrost tools that can only be found here, and it's also crafted by some resources that can only be found here as well, a lot more decorative plant life, and slippery ice patches in the freezing parts of the cave! Here's what it looks like now!
Most of that change was made after the refactor in roughly a week similarly to the Verdant update!
Now for an area of the biome that's below freezing!
Using any of these tools also lowers the player's body temperature by a certain amount per use when one durability is taken! A lot more dangerous to use in cold biomes such as the taiga caves that they originate from, but very useful if you find yourself in blisteringly hot biomes such as the hottest of deserts, lava caves, or magma forests! They're still not as effective in hot underwater environments such as the equatorial region of Aquatica.