It's time! The first big update to Slipways is now available! So, you should probably start that download.
...Still here? Oh, then I'd like to mention that Slipways is taking part in the Tiny Teams Festival, which is a super-cool event here on Steam, showcasing titles like Slipways - big games by small developers. To celebrate the update and the festival, Slipways will be 10% off for a week.
You can also get the Slipways soundtrack now right here on Steam! It's available in a bundle together with the game, but I set it up so that you can use the bundle discount for just the soundtrack even if you already own the game itself.
But back to the update, this post wouldn't be complete without a list of new...
...features!
- achievements to highlight your progress (integrated with Steam's, GOG's achievement systems)
- stat and run tracking to let you look through your past results and see how your runs developed
- updated pinning system to make it more comfortable to use
- more work on the undo system (more insight into what will be/was undone, better behavior around eg. council tasks)
- key rebinding and various UI settings to help you adjust the interface to your needs
- switchable view modes to easily assess your planets
- easier navigation, eg. jumping to planets/structures of a specific type/level from the "Domain" list
- map generation tweaks to make it more consistent and make truly bad starts rare
- a new overlay triggered by [Ctrl], showing all available colonization options simultaneously
- better support for community localizations
- more information available at a glance at various places where people wanted it
- various new accessibility options and UI settings
- tons of smaller bugfixes and improvements
What next?
Well, the second update, of course! Our simple naming convention makes it easy to come up with those.
The first update focused on Make it Better™. The second update is a little different, since it's all about More Stuff™: the second act of the campaign, plus new additions in many parts of the game, including new council tasks, new technologies, new sector types, quirks and events to encounter around the galaxy.
But before that can happen, I, the developer, need some rest. I was supposed to take a break after Slipways released in June, but that didn't pan out - I got pulled in by the whirlwind of feedback and there were always things to do and bugs to fix, resulting in a flurry of patches all the way into July. The rest of July was all about getting the update ready for you as soon as possible, and that job kept getting bigger and bigger as I was doing it.
Now, it's August, and it's finally time to hang up my keyboard for a while and take care of some big non-Slipways things in my life. I'll be fixing any bugs that pop up (they're probably inevitable with a big update like this), but I won't be doing new development this month. I should be properly back some time in September and that's when you can expect a more detailed roadmap for the second update :)
Until then, see you around the galaxy!
