Hey folks, Cave here. Today I am absolutely thrilled to announce that after over two years of development, my casual strategy board game Spread: Transmission is now available in Early Access.
Charge cells, spread and take over opponent territory. Play against friends on a wide variety of maps exploring different concepts or create your very own map to play on! Mix and customize the three additional game modes to craft unique game play experiences.
There is a 15% discount happening right now to celebrate the launch of the game! 🎉
Unleash the Storm
Let's take a look at the latest update and the additions made since the Open Beta event in June. With the "Unleash the Storm"-Update I aimed to introduce more content for casual players, so there are plenty of ways to enjoy the game while I am busy tinkering with community feedback and working on smaller updates to the game.
Cell Lab
This update introduces the third additional game mode "Cell Lab", which adds five special cells to Spread: Transmission: "Locked"-Cells preventing players to charge the cell directly, "Rotation"-Cells which after every turn the cell spread rotate in the indicated direction, "Double Charge"-Cells which once per turn after it gets charged will charge again, "Double Spread"-Cells which once per turn after it spreads will spread again and "Double Distance"-Cells which spread one cell further in every direction.
As always you can mix and customize this game mode with the other Labs, crafting your own personal experience. For example, you could exclusively enable "Double Distance" and "Rotation" Cells, so the board slowly turns into a maze over time; or you could combine Box Lab with Cell Lab if you want to increase Box Lab's pacing a little bit. The possibilities are endless.
While I managed to fix Box Lab replays for the Early Access release, I am afraid Cell Lab replays will not playback correctly during the initial release of the game. Replays are the bane of my existence. This will likely not affect many players if any, seeing that replays are not a highly popular feature of the game, but I felt like I should probably call it out. I will try to fix it as soon as possible.
Map Creator
Creating maps is easier than ever before. The new map creator will guide you through the rules of making a Spread map, pointing out issues with the map visually and generate previews of what the map will look like in-game. Take a look at what one of the testers created:
Yup, I know this feature is gonna haunt me already, haha. The map creator will probably get more features in future updates, things like map variation support or the ability to recommend certain game modes with a map, but for now it mostly expands on the old custom map system, allowing the players to give their creations names and automatically generating preview images and tags for the map. This leads me to...
Steam Workshop Support
Yes, you will be able to share your creations with the world. Did I already mention that this feature is going to haunt me? The game will automatically determine all the appropriate tags for your creation, so you will be able to browse them accordingly. I've already published some bonus maps for you to enjoy, so make sure you check out the workshop whenever you long for something new!
This feature was difficult to test, so please bear with me if there are any stability issues at launch. Feel free to reach out on the Steam forums or our Discord server if you encounter any problems at all.
Steam Achievements
Last but not least, this update finally introduces Steam achievements to the game, rewarding you for playing and accomplishing special feats! The first batch contains 27 achievements, but more will be added in future updates.
So, what's next?
After the release of Prototype 5, I want to slow down content development for a bit. For the past 6 months I have been primarily focusing on adding content for players to enjoy during the Early Access, introducing Labs in Prototype 3, Bots in 4 and now another Lab and Level Editor in 5. That's 3 major updates in just 6 months! While I haven't received lots of feedback during that time, a lot of stuff has accumulated still and for the next few updates I want to work on these. Things like tool tips - which might just be the most requested feature at the moment, or new options. I would also like to start a dev log series on YouTube at some point.
For now I will focus on resolving issues that require my immediate attention, if any arise. If everything's resolved I am going to take a break for a couple of weeks and recover from all the stress that comes with releasing a game. Thanks everyone for your continuous support. Your feedback will shape the future of Spread: Transmission, please don't hesitate to reach out on the Steam forums or our Discord server!
~ Cave ːluvː