Fabular: Once Upon a Spacetime

Released: Nov 10, 2022
Platforms
Last updated: 14 Sep 2026, 07:57 GMT

Updates & announcements

20 posts

22 Apr 2026Developer post
Game update: Save Slots
Hey, all! We’re back with a smaller but very important update that many of you have been asking for. While we’re still working on more content behind the scenes, we wanted to get this specific feature into your hands as soon as possible, as it has been one of our most requested q
Hey, all!

We’re back with a smaller but very important update that many of you have been asking for. While we’re still working on more content behind the scenes, we wanted to get this specific feature into your hands as soon as possible, as it has been one of our most requested quality-of-life improvements.
New Feature: Save Profiles
We have officially added Save Slots to the game. This gives you four distinct sub-profiles under your single Steam account, each with its own independent progression level. This means you no longer have to worry about losing your endgame progress if you feel like starting the journey from scratch. It’s also great for sharing the game; if you have a friend who wants to try Fabular, they can now jump into the early-game experience on their own slot without touching your main save.

A quick heads-up: Because we haven't collected play-time data until now, your existing save will show "Playtime: 0" in the stats. Don't be alarmed—your progress is perfectly safe; the game just doesn't have a historical record of your previous hours to display.
Help Us Test the Progression
With these new slots available, we’d love for you to start a fresh run and revisit the early game. We feel that the early-to-mid game is currently in a good spot in terms of content and unlockables, but we need your help to be sure.
It would be incredibly helpful to get your feedback on the overall progression as you play through those early stages again. Specifically, we want to know how the "pacing" feels to you—are you getting the right amount of tokens, and does the speed at which you unlock new items features and throne room vendors feel rewarding? Your input here is vital for us to fine-tune the balance before we move forward.
Thanks for sticking with us as we continue to refine the Fabular experience. We’re really looking forward to hearing how the save slots work for you and—more importantly—how the early-game pacing feels on a fresh profile. Let us know if the token counts and unlock speeds hit the right mark here in the comments or over on our Discord.
--Batowski
Save Slot update full patch notes:
Save Slots have been added to the main menu
Starmap reward node screens have been redesigned to allow tabbing between the inventory and back
Overforge and reward screens now have their own music and ambient instead of regular starmap music
Fixed a visual glitch where you could push Dax’s scattered remains around after his ship exploded
Original post
07 Apr 2026Developer post
The Moreoverforge Update
Greetings, fellow Space-knights! As a direct follow-up to our Overforge update , we are keeping the momentum going with another smaller expansion to the Fabular armory. While the last update focused on upgrading your existing gear, this one is mostly about quality of life additio
07 Apr 2026Developer post
The Moreoverforge Update patch notes
Here are the full patch notes for the Moreoverforge update . Thematic loot for Bosses Every boss now has a chance to drop 1 of 2 pieces of thematic loot (besides dropping regular loot) Thematic loot includes gadgets that mirror the skills used by the specific boss, such as Dax’s
Here are the full patch notes for the Moreoverforge update.
Thematic loot for Bosses
Every boss now has a chance to drop 1 of 2 pieces of thematic loot (besides dropping regular loot)
Thematic loot includes gadgets that mirror the skills used by the specific boss, such as Dax’s stunner and wavy missiles, M’urdu’s repeater blaster and mine automatons or The Endkeep’s laser beam and catapult orbs
Some of these weapons have been rebranded from existing ones and all are locked from the beginning of the game.
Unlock thematic loot by defeating their respective bosses and dropping these gadgets for the first time. After unlocking, these gadgets can drop in regular loot chests as well.
Fabular (thematic) items now have their own icon background in the cargo hold and equipment screen as well.
General
Loot drop chances now use pseudo-random number generation instead of full random. Meaning there is a lesser chance of edge cases where the same result is picked in succession.
Fixed the player ship being unaffected by Dax’s stun effect
Fixed the player ship being unaffected by the Endkeep’s repel effects
Fixed an issue where the wrong kind of item description was shown after the player tabbed to the inventory tab from the loot screen
Streamlined the position of the selection cursor to be more intuitive when swapping between the loot, inventory and shop tabs
Fixed an issue where the explosion visual effects of missiles, Mine-O-mat and Explosive Holo-dash were not properly aligned with their actual area of effect
Fixed an issue with Sharpshooter enemies attacking the player at the start of battles, before players could gain full control of their ship
Fixed an issue with the skill bar not properly displaying items on cooldown. Cooldown display is now much more visible.
Pocket Wormhole gadget now produces a warning sound and can be used again immediately, after trying to teleport towards an inaccessible area
Seeker Missiles’ icon graphics now mirrors the increasing number of missiles being fired by the weapon
Fixed early bosses dropping items with abnormally high item tiers
Fixed an instance of a placeholder text remaining in one of the events
Original post
18 Mar 2026Developer post
The Overforge Update
Greetings to all Space-Knights! We are back from our winter slumber with a major rework of how gear functions in Fabular . This update brings you two massive changes: a total overhaul of the game's itemization system and the addition of specialized starmap reward-nodes . Itemizat
18 Mar 2026Developer post
The Overforge Update patch notes
Here are the full patch notes for the Overforge update. This update brings you two massive changes: a total overhaul of the game's itemization system and the addition of specialized starmap reward-nodes . Itemization System Overhaul: Most items in the game now have 3 item tiers .
Here are the full patch notes for the Overforge update. This update brings you two massive changes: a total overhaul of the game's itemization system and the addition of specialized starmap reward-nodes.
Itemization System Overhaul:
Most items in the game now have 3 item tiers. The tier of the item is indicated by + signs after the item name, and at the bottom of the item’s icon.
A lower tier item can also be upgraded to a higher tiered one, which gives you an opportunity to keep your favorite weapon or gadget you found on Realm 1 and take it with you to the endgame.
You can accomplish this via a new starmap node that allows you to select one of your items and ‘overforge’ it to a higher tier. This node is present on every starmap starting from Realm 2.
While creating the item tiers, every item in the game has been re-evaluated and tweaked in some way or another. There are a few new items added as well, mostly themed around the end-bosses.
Starmap Changes:
5 new reward nodes have been added to the starmap providing instant rewards without an event:
Overforge (item upgrade)
Melee Weapon Cache
Gadget Cache
Consumable Item Cache
Main Attribute Upgrade
Nodes have distinct visuals on the starmap and provide a strong lure/focus point for players when planning their journey.
Nodes must be unlocked at the Arch-Architect token vendor in the throne room.
Subsequent purchases of these boons provide more item slots in these events, so you have more variations to choose from.
Reward nodes can only contain rewards for the current ship class you play with.
First starmap now always contains a melee weapon reward node; you can practically change your starting weapon if you aim for this node.
Starmap nodes now have a text description that is shown when you hover over a node. You can display all node descriptions at once by pressing TAB on keyboard or BACK/MENU on controller.
There is now only 1 shop node on each starmap; the Starsmith. Wares formerly sold by the alchemist may now be sold by the Starsmith.
Starsmith now starts with a limited set of item slots (4). More shop item slots can be unlocked via a boon in the throne room.
General:
Throne room boons have been rebalanced. +Armor and +Energy boons have been moved to the Architect, while +Moonchill and Armour Repair boons have been moved to the Chamberlain.
You can now delete items from the cargo hold by pressing DEL on keyboard or R3 on controller.
Fixed the duration of Malfunction effects not restarting when applied to the same target subsequently.
The Explosive Holo-dash item’s explosion no longer damages the player
Punisher Flow modifier now gives a bigger malus to Spiritus Rank than before.
Thumper type gadgets now push enemies away multiple times over their duration, rather than only once.
Stunner type gadgets and effects now properly stun, damage and knock back in the same range.
Missile type gadgets now properly do area damage instead of applying single target damage.
Fixed beam type weapons’ beam graphics not aligning properly with their actual collision line.
Item descriptions now can display the maximum values of certain stats, where applicable.
Base damage display was removed from the item description of projectile weapons with multiple modes (quick, heavy, perfect). Instead we display a range of values for each firing mode based on how many projectiles are being fired.
Fixed some item descriptions being too long so they don’t fit.
Dozens of other item changes and balancing…
Original post
13 Dec 2025Developer post
New Events Update is LIVE!
Hey everyone, We're rolling out a fresh update to Fabular today focused entirely on injecting more life and story into your cosmic journey! This update is packed with new text-based events —the little story encounters that make each run unique. These events were originally planne
Hey everyone,
We're rolling out a fresh update to Fabular today focused entirely on injecting more life and story into your cosmic journey!
This update is packed with new text-based events—the little story encounters that make each run unique. These events were originally planned to launch all together with the final Realm 4 release, but we decided to push them out now! Our goal is to make our updates more frequent, giving you some new content while we finalize the major release.
New Stories Across the Spacetime
We've added a sizable batch of new events across the galaxy. Roughly two-thirds of these new encounters are specifically for Realm 4, bringing the realm's story content pretty close to completion!
Look out for some quite complex events that will challenge your planning on the starmap. For example you might find yourself hauling heavy cargo from one Starmap node to another, and yes, your ship will slow down the more loot you carry.
Or my personal favourite: try to deliver a dragon's egg in time before it hatches into a baby dragon that starts chewing up your ship from the inside.
We’ve also added lots of smaller, general events to keep your journey unpredictable:
You might stumble upon a black hole that spits you out randomly across the starmap, forcing an immediate tactical reassessment. But as they say, the abyss often belches, and it may spit out something else alongside yourself.
Beware of intruders! Your ship might be suddenly assaulted in a manner reminiscent of old sea warfare—a grappling attack allowing a party of marauders to breach your defenses. You have to deal with the problem internally if you don't want to get robbed.
General fixes and updates
We've also made a few fixes and changes, here's the full patch notes for this update:
FIX: Token display did not update when spending tokens on the Vendor screen
FIX: Fixed a small bug caused the Benevolent Hermit event to get stuck in some cases
FIX: Some events make you lose all current energy, and the notification said "Permanent". Removed this because it's misleading you can pick up energy orbs to refill, it was a one-off loss.
FIX: Some battles start with enemies already damaged. These were incorrect in some cases.
FIX: Meanwhile events were missing, a bug introduced by a previous update
FIX: Some events with fortune wheel were not working as expected
FIX: Fixed a crash while loading saved game if there is an item in the cargo that gives any effects to the player ship's stats
Added a new Steam achievement
Added UI popup to notify players when event choices raise the Alert Level
'Energy Damage' damage type was renamed to 'Elemental Damage' to be more distinguishable
Survival mode now shows global leaderboards and not only your friends
What's Up Next?
With the event content nearly finished, our focus is twofold:
Finalizing Realm 4: We'll be polishing up the remaining assets and working on game balance so we can take Realm 4 out of Open Beta and release it in its final form.
The Itemization Update: We've started working on a major itemization update. We want to introduce new systems that allow you to upgrade your items during a run! This is looking very promising and provides exciting new ways to reward you in various forms such as items or special starmap nodes. More details on this system to come later!
Thank you again for your continued support and for exploring the Fabular universe!
-- Batowski & Spiritus Games
Original post
01 Oct 2025Developer post
Fabular at BPGDD 2025
Hey everyone, We wanted to share an update on something a little different this time! We recently got to attend and exhibit Fabular at Budapest GameDevDay 2025 . This conference brings together developers, creators, and enthusiasts from the Central European gaming scene for a day
18 Jul 2025Developer post
PATCH 0.9.7002 - Skill and upgrade bug fixes
Hey all, We're pushing a smaller update that fixes some bugs related to upgrades and skills, and introduces an additional function to Guard-O-Mats. List of changes Guard-O-Mats now give a passive damage resistance bonus while in your cargo hold, as well as helping out in some eve
Hey all,
We're pushing a smaller update that fixes some bugs related to upgrades and skills, and introduces an additional function to Guard-O-Mats.
List of changes
Guard-O-Mats now give a passive damage resistance bonus while in your cargo hold, as well as helping out in some events
Fixed an issue with the Paladin’s shield charge getting an increased amount of momentum when it was used right after firing projectiles
Fixed an issue with the Manticore not being able to execute full melee combos, when the ‘Tinkering’ Flow Modifier and the ‘Speed’ main attributes were maxed out.
Fixed an issue where decoys spawned while having both the ‘Dramatic Departure’ (explody decoy) and the ‘Manifestation’ (decoy comes alive) subroutines wouldn't explode at the end of their lifetime.
The ‘Enthusiasm’ subroutine now correctly gives an action speed buff when swapping to a decoy
Fixed some minor graphical issues on the GUI
Thank you all for submitting bug reports and suggestions, keep'em coming!
-- Spiritus Games
JOIN OUR DISCORD
Original post
06 Jul 2025Developer post
HOTFIX 0.9.6992 - Fixed a crash on entering a new realm
We've deployed a hotfix that fixes a crash on entering a new realm, related to unlockables.
06 Jul 2025Developer post
PATCH 0.9.6989 - QoL changes and bug fixes
Hey all, We're pushing a smaller patch that fixes some bugs and introduces quality of life changes. List of changes Enemy homing missiles can now be perfect-blocked by the Paladin’s shield. If you have the ‘Return to Sender’ subroutine as well, they will also seek out the enemy t
Hey all,
We're pushing a smaller patch that fixes some bugs and introduces quality of life changes.
List of changes
Enemy homing missiles can now be perfect-blocked by the Paladin’s shield. If you have the ‘Return to Sender’ subroutine as well, they will also seek out the enemy that launched them originally
Enemy explosive missiles no longer have a larger blast radius than their explosion effects would imply
Beam Ward enemies no longer leave their beam effects behind after they die
Steam achievements are now granted retroactively, if you've completed them earlier, before the achievement was created (such as rescuing the Arch-Architect)
Fixed a bug where defeating the Realm 3 boss would not result in a loot screen
Fixed a bug where the quick attack of your ranged weapons would get ‘stuck’ if you had any kind of beam weapons equipped as well
Fixed a bug where dashing with the Manticore at the same time as releasing a perfect shot with a ranged weapon would produce more projectiles than intended
Fixed a bug where Sniper enemy types drift aimlessly and do nothing
Fixed a bug in the Breakaway event, where you could pick up Sir Archibald twice in your cargo
Fixed a glitch where you could teleport inside the walls during the Realm 4 boss-fight
Thank you all for submitting bug reports and suggestions, keep'em coming! We'll probably do a smaller patch like this in the near future.
-- Spiritus Games
JOIN OUR DISCORD
Original post
30 Jun 2025Developer post
HOTFIX 0.9.6978 - Game crash in event
Hey all, We're pushing a hotfix to address a game crash that occured in the Travelling Ferrier event. This small update fixes only that. Here's the full list of previous changes: View game page
25 Jun 2025Developer post
Fanning the Flames update is live!
Greetings Space Knights, The Fanning the Flames Update is now live, bringing the Open Beta of Realm IV with new content and many more improvements to Fabular. This is a major update to the base game, and we're really excited for you to dive in and give feedback! Realm IV: The Iro
Greetings Space Knights,
The Fanning the Flames Update is now live, bringing the Open Beta of Realm IV with new content and many more improvements to Fabular. This is a major update to the base game, and we're really excited for you to dive in and give feedback!
Realm IV: The Iron Kingdom - Open Beta is here!
Get ready to explore Realm 4: The Iron Kingdom, now in Open Beta! This new realm is packed with fresh content to challenge you, including new enemies, maps, events and, of course, a formidable new boss waiting at the end!
How to jump into Realm 4:
For Regular Players: Simply continue your journey and you'll encounter Realm IV naturally when you reach it
For Dedicated Realm 4 Testers: We've added a special "Realm 4 Open Beta" option directly in the Main Menu. This will launch you into Realm 4 with a pre-upgraded ship and a cargo full of items, letting you customize your starting build and dive straight into testing. There's also an option to play and test the boss fight only.
Why Open Beta for Realm 4?
We know you're eager for new content, and we've poured a lot into Realm 4. While developing all its content is taking a bit longer than we initially expected, we feel the core experience is ready for you. The base game itself has also progressed quite a lot since the last patch, and we want you to experience all those improvements now!
The basic gameplay structure of Realm 4 is fully in place, and its enemies are mostly finished and balanced. You'll find plenty of events as you journey through the realm, with even more "in the pipe" for the final release. We've also spent a lot of time on the boss fight – it's the most complex one we've created yet, and we really want players to experience it! Just a heads-up: while the gameplay for the boss fight is ready for testing, it still lacks its final audiovisual content, so please don't expect the polished quality you'll see in the full release. Your feedback on its mechanics will be invaluable!
Other major improvements
Starmap Rework - A New Path Forward
We've given the Starmap yet another substantial rework, and we're confident this is the right direction for the future of Fabular! It now looks much more exciting visually, and from a gameplay perspective, it creates clear loops for you to go through, completely eliminating those frustrating dead-ends. We believe this will make your galactic travels much more enjoyable and strategic.
Ship Updates: Paladin & Manticore
We've also got some exciting changes for your favorite knight-ships. First up the Paladin's brand new core ability: Shield Charge!
The Paladin now has a powerful new ability: Shield Charge. This lets your ship charge forward with its shields closed, allowing you to break out of situations where you're overwhelmed by enemies in a truly spectacular fashion. You take no collision damage while charging, so it is a perfect escape and movement tool that was missing from the Paladin's arsenal since the beginning.
Then we have the Manticore's Holo-dash Rework:
The Manticore's Holo-dash has also been refined. It now leaves a Holo-copy behind after each dash, that can be used to swap positions with. The Holo-decoy mechanics (where a Perfect Dash leaves a decoy that attracts enemies) are still intact, giving you more tactical options and repositioning opportunities with the swap mechanic.
Full patch notes
If you're interested in the full patch notes, check out this separate article:
View game page
We'd love your help!
We would greatly appreciate it if you could test Realm 4 and especially the new boss fight, and share your valuable feedback with us on our Discord server! Please use the #feedback and #bug-reports channels there for all your thoughts and bug reports.
JOIN OUR DISCORD
Thank you again for your continued support and for being part of the Fabular journey. Your feedback is invaluable!
Spiritus Games
Original post
25 Jun 2025Developer post
Fabular patch notes - Fanning the Flames update
Here are the full patch notes for the Fanning the Flames update. This update introduces the open beta of Realm IV - The Iron Kingdom. You'll also find substantial improvements to the starmap, new and revamped class core abilities, new events, balance changes, bugfixes and more. G
Here are the full patch notes for the Fanning the Flames update. This update introduces the open beta of Realm IV - The Iron Kingdom. You'll also find substantial improvements to the starmap, new and revamped class core abilities, new events, balance changes, bugfixes and more.
General:
The beta version of Realm IV. - The Iron Kingdom is now available to play. You can experience the content via Journey mode.
A ‘Playtest Realm IV (beta)’ main menu option has been added that allows players to start in Realm 4 or play the bossfight only, with upgraded ships and items. This is for testing purposes only and progress does not carry over to profile.
10 new Steam achievements have been added
Paladin now has a new baseline ability: Shield Charge. When holding down the shield hotkey, an indicator arrow appears and starts to grow. Upon releasing the key, you charge forward and knock back enemies in your path. The longer you hold the key the further you can go and the harder you knock back. Collision damage is ignored during the charge.
Manticore’s Holo-Dash has been redesigned: you now leave a Holo-copy behind after every dash. If you execute a perfect dash, you’ll leave a Holo-decoy, that taunts enemies or has various other functions (depending on the Holo-dash item equipped). You can swap positions with any Holo-copy or Holo-decoy. This way the Manticore may have more copies on the battlefield to execute the Holo-swap move more often, while retaining the potent effects of the perfect dash mechanic.
Starmap:
The Starmap's node generation algorithm has been substantially redesigned
Starmap graphs are much more visually pleasing, and they feature distinct ‘loops’ that can be explored, while containing less junctions and crossing paths
All dead-ends longer than 1 jump have been eliminated
There is a much lesser chance of adjacent nodes of the same type spawning
Paths to the boss node always contain battles and events if possible
Starmap background graphics have been finalized and now thematically appropriate for each realm
Starmap node graphics have been polished, some nodes have been redesigned
Hidden starmap nodes can no longer be revealed by traveling to an adjacent node. You have to use a revealing mechanic such as a Scanner item or an event.
Starmap nodes can no longer generate under GUI elements
Fixed a bug where no quest nodes generated on the starmap, making some multi-step quests non-finishable
Fixed a bug where hidden nodes showed on the Starmap regardless of them being revealed or not
Fixed a bug where the Starmap player indicator would not fade back to 100% after teleporting
Fixed a bug where some GUI elements would disappear on obscure window sizes or resolutions
Fixed a bug where certain multi-step events could not be completed due to not enough quest nodes available
Gameplay:
You can now block and perfect-block the Hinterland Warriors’ throwing attacks with the Paladin’s shield
Hitpoints of the Paladin’s shield can now be restored by picking up a power orb. This used to be The Shield Mender subroutine, but it is now baseline. The subroutine further enhances the amount of hitpoints restored this way.
Projectiles from the the Manticore glaive weapons now deal diminished damage vs. the same enemy if they hit it multiple times. This reduces its single target damage, but retains its high damage vs. multiple targets.
Player ships now regain control much sooner after being the victim of a big collision or stunning blow that disorients them
Laser beams emitted by enemy Beam Wardens now have a shorter length
The Manticore subroutine Harmful Connections now work properly in every circumstance and connects the decoy and the player with a damaging beam. It now works together with the supreme upgrade Manifestation that makes decoys come alive.
The Paladin subroutine Ambuscade now gives 10% critical damage bonus per level (down from 15%) and requires 11 Speed to purchase (up from 9)
The Paladin subroutine Berserk now requires 9 Speed to purchase (down from 11)
The Paladin subroutine Outburst now stuns for 3 seconds (up from 1.5)
Holo-decoy’s swap mechanic now much more adeptly finds a landing location around the target if the way is obscured
Moving asteroids on a map now have a bigger variety in speed with smaller ones moving much faster. Asteroids are now less likely to clamp up in one area of the map.
Beam type weapons now can be perfect blocked with a shield and perfect dodged with a Holo-dash if timed correctly
Perfect block can no longer be abused by deliberately ramming into asteroids and blocking
Homing missiles can now be repelled with most melee weapons
Fixed a bug where the enemy Mine-O-Mats would damage the player even when they strike them down in melee combat
Fixed a bug where using melee attacks while holding down the button of some other abilities would cause and ability to be no longer usable
Fixed a bug where gaining attack speed would decrease the perfect attack window on most weapons and gadgets
Other
The tutorial has been updated with a segment on how to use the Paladin's Shield Charge ability
Most transition screens such as the battle and realm intros can now be skipped after a short while by pressing any button
Gaining or losing resources during events now properly shows a floating number next to the resource indicator on the HUD
Fixed some graphical inconsistencies on the Upgrade screen
Some extreme cases of performance drops have been eliminated
Fixed a lot of visual and UI bugs associated with resolutions larger than 1080p.
Grappling hook and various beam texture scaling errors have been fixed
The realm Grit Flow Modifiers have been unified into one True Grit modifier that now increases/decreases the difficulty of all realms at once
Fixed a bug where the longer the game spent in a paused state, the longer it took for it to unpause
... and possibly dozens of tweaks and fixes we forgot to document 😅
Original post
26 Feb 2025Developer post
Development Update: Realm 4 Open Beta Incoming!
Hey everyone, We're dropping in with a quick update on the development of Realm 4 for Fabular. As you know, we've been hard at work crafting this next chapter of the journey, but it’s taking a little longer to bake than we initially anticipated. Currently, the content for Realm 4
16 May 2024Developer post
Developer blog: Designing the Iron Kingdom
The next milestone of Fabular’s Early Access development is the 4th playable realm; the Iron Kingdom. In this blog post we detail some of the design philosophies behind its creation. Setting the tone After fighting fierce battles on the Hinterlands, we leave our father’s crumblin
31 Oct 2023Developer post
Development Update
Hey all, just a quick Fabular update: We've had some internal hiccups that slowed down development in the last couple of months considerably. We're now gaining back momentum and working on the next big update, which is Realm 4. It's an open secret that thematically this realm wil
22 Jun 2023Developer post
The Starmap Revealed!
Greetings adventurers, The starmap has changed significantly since we began working on Fabular: Once Upon A Spacetime and this update brings with it another slight modification to the way it works. Although we really enjoyed the exploration element of the starmap, we are now at a
Greetings adventurers,
The starmap has changed significantly since we began working on Fabular: Once Upon A Spacetime and this update brings with it another slight modification to the way it works.
Although we really enjoyed the exploration element of the starmap, we are now at a stage where the remaining exploration factor was minimal. Ultimately, it appeared to be more of a hindrance than a source of fun for most players.
Our original vision for the starmap was based on exploration, with the player ship at the center of the screen and the camera following it around. The idea was that each realm was this big unknown ‘terra incognita’ that had to be explored, and should’ve conveyed the feeling of ‘you never know what lies ahead’.
But the need quickly arose to show more of the surrounding nodes to allow for some more player agency on which nodes to visit and how to progress towards the boss. Because of this, we moved the player indicator off-center and zoomed out the view a bit, but the rest of the experience remained the same.
After the teleport mechanic made it into the game, we introduced the minimap, but it always felt like a patchwork of a feature rather than something that felt intuitive and fun to use. And as we’ve continued to introduce more kinds of starmap nodes, the need for plannability and strategizing was on top of the list of player feedback. Not to mention running out of fuel due to an unforeseen dead-end, which is probably the #1 most reported negative feedback.
So after some careful consideration, we came up with this new version of the starmap:
We did not want to ‘reinvent the wheel’, and tried to stay true to our original vision as much as possible while prioritising player feedback.
We hope you're as excited about this new direction as we are, and if you like the new direction, we have plenty of ideas regarding expanding the starmap experience for the future.
There are exciting things in the work for Fabular (including Realm 4 👀) and we can't wait to share more with you.
Stay safe space adventurers
- Spiritus Games
Full patch notes:
Starmap

The starmap is now revealed from the start, and no longer has to be explored.
The entire starmap now always scales to one screen, it no longer needs to be scrolled.
The minimap has been removed.
Teleportation between nodes can now be achieved on the regular starmap, similarly to how you travel between nodes (different hotkey though).
Every teleportable node is now connected to the player’s current location with a visual effect.
New node added: Battle. This will result in an instant battle. Note that event nodes can also result in a battle scenario.
New node added:
Revamped visuals for the player indicator, nodes, and the overall look of the starmap.
Each realm on the starmap now has a more distinct visual appearance by having differing backgrounds.
Alert level display has been moved to the bottom left corner of the starmap.
Added a banner that displays the current realm name below the alert level meter.
Instant starmap nodes are somewhat scarcer and can no longer contain negative resource values.
You no longer gain Tokens of Exploration for revealing starmap nodes (since they are revealed from the get-go). Instead, they gain them when they travel to unvisited nodes.
Some nodes and connections are now hidden on the starmap, waiting to be found
nodes can contain a event. Ssshhh…
Fixed: player indicator no longer stays opaque after a teleport jump on the starmap.
The first realm can now only contain a Starsmith but not an Alchemist.
Some events and items dealing with old starmap mechanics have been removed or re-worked.
Notes: While we all liked the previous emphasis on exploration and random elements, a lot of our players found it frustrating at times, especially if the randomness resulted in dead-ends or backtracking that led to a depleted fuel tank. So we did away with the exploration, but deem the result to be a more strategic starmap experience, where you can plan your route in advance, and hopefully only run out of fuel on your own accord, such as when you take an obvious risk.
Teleporting to distant nodes is now much more intuitive as well, due to the removal of the minimap as it no longer served a real purpose or added value. All in all, we hope that these changes make the starmap experience much more accessible and enable new ways of strategic planning.
General

Player ships now spend much less time in a helpless ‘spinned-out’ state after colliding with scenery or other ships. This will hopefully make collisions much less frustrating.
The Orb Recuperator item now has its own icon.
Survival:

Fixed: Challenge screen settings no longer apply to Survival mode.
The ‘undo upgrades’ button’s hotkey is now ‘X’ on the controller. It was wrongly mapped to ‘B’ which is used to go back to the starmap from each screen. It also caused issues in Survival mode, where you couldn’t continue without resetting your upgrades.
Cleared up button text even more to reflect where you end up when you continue from a given screen in Survival mode.
Original post
09 Jun 2023Developer post
WDC World Oceans Day Charity Sale
Greetings Adventurers👋 The WDC World Oceans Day Sale runs from Thursday 8th June at 10 am PDT until Thursday 15th June 10am PDT and during this time, we'll donate 10% of the net profits going directly to WDC to support their conservation work! WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation
Greetings Adventurers👋
The WDC World Oceans Day Sale runs from Thursday 8th June at 10 am PDT until Thursday 15th June 10am PDT and during this time, we'll donate 10% of the net profits going directly to WDC to support their conservation work!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/645720/Fabular_Once_Upon_a_Spacetime/
WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation is the leading global charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of whales and dolphins.
Their aim is to reverse the global decline in whale and dolphin populations by:

Stopping cruelty from deliberate harms such as whaling and captivity.
Creating safe seas, free from the threat of pollution, collisions with vessels and accidental entanglement in fishing gear.
Winning recognition of whales and dolphins as sentient, socially complex beings, and our allies in the fight against climate and nature breakdown.
More information about the World Oceans Day Steam Sale and the Games for Waves Streaming Week can be found on the official Games For Waves website here: https://games.whales.org/its-game-on-for-world-oceans-day/
Original post
18 May 2023Developer post
Blast off with Fabular's latest update!
We’ve just pushed a big update filled with bug fixes and changes to the game. The biggest change is: Undo Upgrades! You can undo upgrades any time before you travel to your new starmap node and get all your resources back. Full list of updates: Fixed: Challenge screen settings no
We’ve just pushed a big update filled with bug fixes and changes to the game.
The biggest change is:
Undo Upgrades!
You can undo upgrades any time before you travel to your new starmap node and get all your resources back.
Full list of updates:

Fixed: Challenge screen settings no longer apply to Survival mode.
Each realm on the starmap now has a more distinct visual appearance.
Starmap boundaries are no longer as apparent as before.
The name of the current realm is displayed in the Starmap lower left corner.
Player ships now spend much less time in a helpless state after colliding with scenery or other ships.
Fixed: the heavy and perfect attacks of the Shuriken gadget now properly benefit from Rapid Fire subroutine’s extra projectile.
Fixed Shuriken gadget’s heavy and perfect attacks not having the same cooldown values as its quick attack.
Fixed a bug where the Sharpshooter enemies would stop acting after getting stunned by the player.
Fixed ranged damage modifiers not affecting beam-type weapons.
Idle Hunter and Idle Protector subroutines now have 4 levels (up from 3) and cost 5 Subcomponents (down from 6) with each level giving a +5% (down from 10%) bonus.
Fixed Ambuscade subroutine increasing all damage instead of increasing only melee critical damage.
Critical damage multiplier for daggers has been increased to 2 (up from 1.75).
The Ward-O-Mat gadget’s deflection area now ignores projectiles fired by the player.
Ward-O-Mat automaton now follows the player around more tightly and is much more agile.
Picking up an energy orb that you have dropped in the past (due to Discharger enemy’s attack for example) does not count as an energy orb pickup action anymore. Meaning it won’t recharge your shield if you have the Shield Mender subroutine and it won’t give you Kinetic Energy if you have the Kinetic Recharger gadget.
Survival mode begin button now reads ‘Begin Survival’ (instead of ‘Begin Journey’).
Changed the iconography of event choices. A regular choice is now indicated by a pointing hand, and a special choice is indicated by a star.
Fixed some typos in the Challenge screen lore text
An ‘Undo Upgrades’ button has been added to the upgrade screen. This button can be used to undo upgrades you’ve made since the last time you travelled on the starmap. This refunds all resource costs associated with the undone upgrades.
All subroutine descriptions on the upgrade screen have been revised and made visually richer with the addition of icons that represent the most important recurring game mechanics.
The bottom of the right panel on the upgrade screen now displays the requirements for each subroutine and their cost in a more prevalent manner.
Selecting a subroutine on the upgrade screen now displays animated arrows that pinpoint its requirement levels on each Main Attribute’s bar.
Purchased subroutines are now visually connected to the Main Attributes with an animated line.
Cleaned up colors and animations on the upgrade screen.
The Paladin upgrade subroutine ‘Abusive Relationship’ has been renamed to ‘Harmful Connections’
Original post
09 Mar 2023Developer post
Ways of the Flow Full Patch Notes
View an in-depth guide to the Ways of the Flow update, here: New Meta-currencies Instead of the old singular Token, we’ve implemented 4 new types of meta-currencies that can be collected and kept between runs. Meta-currency types and their default collection method: Token of Expl
View an in-depth guide to the Ways of the Flow update, here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/645720/view/3689048990890936704
New Meta-currencies

Instead of the old singular Token, we’ve implemented 4 new types of meta-currencies that can be collected and kept between runs.
Meta-currency types and their default collection method:

Token of Exploration: gained when revealing starmap nodes
Token of Valor: gained after victorious battles and doing good deeds in events
Token of Glory: gained after defeating realm bosses
Token of the Void: gained after completing the game Note: in the future we’re planning to add more ways to collect tokens, for example Token of the Void would be granted after defeating a Void Lord and not strictly when you complete the game. For the current Early Access content though, defeating the final boss (The Endkeep) rewards one of these tokens.
Meta currencies are currently used to unlock and buy Boons at throne room vendors and to unlock Flow Modifiers on the Difficulty screen.
Note: we have more long-term plans with the new meta-currencies besides using them for unlocking Flow Modifiers (see below), such as unlocking more ‘cosmetic’ types of content in the future.
Challenge Screen and Spiritus Rank

A brand new Challenge screen has been implemented that allows players to customize game difficulty with unlockable ‘Flow Modifiers’. Flow Modifiers can either make the game easier or harder, depending on player choice. This screen is accessible from the ship selection after the player’s second failed run; it will trigger an event featuring the King.
Introducing Spiritus Rank: this number displays the overall difficulty of a run, as set by Flow Modifiers. Adjusting a modifier to make the game harder will increase the rank, and vice versa. Each point in this rank will increase the chances of getting additional meta-currencies, when you gain at least one during a run. With a higher Spiritus Rank, you unlock high tiered currency faster, which allows you to unlock higher tiers of Flow Modifiers to make the game even more challenging. What’s the highest Spiritus Rank you can master?
The previous automatic realm difficulty (star ratings on Cosmic Chart) has been reworked into 3 Flow Modifiers, allowing players to set the individual difficulty levels for each realm. Note: this is just the very first iteration of the Spiritus Rank system. If players respond well to it, we have plans to expand upon it in the future. Your feedback is crucial in order for us to make the best game possible for everyone, so please share your opinion on our Discord or on the Steam forums. Thanks a lot!
Starmap Experience

Introducing starmap nodes with instant outcomes: there’s no event, you just get the outcome by travelling there. Outcomes can be positive or negative as well.
Currently implemented instant nodes: ±Moonchill, ±Stardust, ±Subroutine, ±Token of Exploration, ±Token of Valour. Other node types are in the pipe such as ± to current Armour, Starmap scanner, Instant teleport node, etc. By default there’s only one instant node unlocked (Token of Exploration). You can unlock more node types at the Architect in the throne room.
All node types (including shops) are now visible when you reveal them.
Event nodes are now marked with a ‘?’. These include events with a battle outcome.
Event generation has been reworked. Encountered events are now less likely to come up again in the next run. This should result in overall more event variety. Note: Our hope with introducing instant nodes is to further enhance strategizing on the starmap. These changes will hopefully result in more battles, less events and a snappier starmap experience overall. We hope you’ll like the changes, do let us know!
Boons & Meta-progression
Some of the throne room boons got reworked, some got removed or worked into Flow Modifiers, and we have a lot of new additions as well.

Boons regarding effectiveness of the main attribute upgrades have been reworked into a singular Flow Modifier. In addition, the default value of each main attribute upgrade is now 3% instead of 1%, which makes upgrades feel more meaningful by default.
Vigorous: has only 2 levels now.
Energetic: has only 2 levels now.
Navigator: has been renamed to ‘Starhopper’ and moved to the Architect.
New boon: Explorer. Start your journey with more Moonchill (+1,+2,+3)
New boon: Introvert. Start your journey with a Thumper in your cargo.
Several new boons added to the Architect that unlock new types of instant starmap nodes.
Lord Chamberlain and the Architect now mention all types of tokens in their respective throne room events, instead of just the one.
General Changes

Fixed: when you have the Cripple subroutine, Malevolent Beam’s malfunctions now correctly apply a slow effect.
Added cooldowns to player starting gadgets: Plasma Blaster (5 sec.) and Shuriken (4 sec.).
Added visual and sound effects to the combat UI when an item comes off of a longer cooldown.
Sound effects added to the UI when you gain/lose resources.
Slightly enhanced the readability of the Paladin ship’s visuals.
Spiritus Rank is now displayed on the Game Over screen.
Survival mode end-screen has now more emphasis on player score.
The icon for throne room vendors has been reworked to indicate the new meta-currencies.
Throne room Boon vendors now display a hint at the bottom when you don’t have enough tokens to buy something.
Cleared up item descriptions involving Kinetic Charge. Now every description contains an info icon and text on how to gain Kinetic Charge by default. This info icon is used in other places as well for general tips about game mechanics.
Original post

Updates & announcements

New Feature: Save Profiles

Help Us Test the Progression

Save Slot update full patch notes:

Greetings, fellow Space-knights!

Claiming Boss Powers

Better Loot Logic

Combat Fixes and Cleanup

Thematic loot for Bosses

General

Greetings to all Space-Knights!

Itemization Overhaul & Item Tiers

Tier+ and Tier++

The Overforge

Balance & New Loot

New Starmap Reward-Nodes

Full Patch Notes

Itemization System Overhaul:

Starmap Changes:

General:

New Stories Across the Spacetime

General fixes and updates

What's Up Next?

Meeting the Community

Art Direction Talk

The Best Feedback

List of changes

List of changes

Realm IV: The Iron Kingdom - Open Beta is here!

Why Open Beta for Realm 4?

Other major improvements

Starmap Rework - A New Path Forward

Ship Updates: Paladin & Manticore

Full patch notes

We'd love your help!

General:

Starmap:

Gameplay:

Other

Setting the tone

Combat and enemies

Events, locations and characters

Full patch notes:

Starmap

General

Survival:

Undo Upgrades!

Full list of updates:

New Meta-currencies

Challenge Screen and Spiritus Rank

Starmap Experience

Boons & Meta-progression

General Changes