Dev Notes

This update was a long time coming, its been a few weeks since the last patch. A lot of things has contributed to the slow down. For one we have moved back to sprint based work, which means there isn't a convenient time to upload patches. But I hope to address this and just release a patch a set number of days to capture any work we have done. Maybe a weekly patch would suffice instead of daily. Anyway, I'll briefly outline the changes in this patch below and be on my merry way,

Tutorial Questions

The focus of this patch (and the next one to come) is to improve the onboarding experience of the game. We are doing this in multiple ways:

• Improving the handbook

• Adding visual interactive demos

• Fixing unintuitive design

• Adding "training tutorials" (as a last ditch effort)

Below you can see what the questions in the handbook look like, excuse the poor cropping. Oops.

Aside from just questions, I've been working on an interactive demo system. This will be a visual aid to tutorials to better communicate ideas, without having to read a mountain of text. I think these two things hand in hand will go a long way in making the game easier to approach. I haven't gotten around to adding all the necessary interactive demos but I hope to get it done this week in time for the next patch! You can see how it looks below.

The Many Faces of Boxxy

Boxxy has been getting some new artwork. It's been fun drawing variations of him. As I made more variants and started to place them around the game, the idea of Boxxy as a proper assistant came to mind. Much like Clippy from old Windows versions.

This idea of Boxxy as an assistant is a very interesting and useful tool for assisting with our onboarding issue. We can have Boxxy actually give hints to the player to help them with the game. One example could be when you are assigning an anomaly a cell, and maybe Boxxy could give a hint about whether the cell is inadequate.

Another idea is to have boxxy give suggestions in the construction menu. The types of suggestions might fall into the following categories:

• Layout & pathing problems

• Power & infrastructure problems

• Containment design problems

• Security problems

• Safety problems

• Staff efficiency problems

• Resource & budget problems

• Risk & hazard problems

There may just be a system that can check for these problems, probably common problems, and Boxxy can give a go at helping you figure them out. I think there's a spectrum of it being a very simple mechanic to very complex. I think the most effective would be Boxxy highlighting the problem and pulling from a list of preselected suggestions to resolve the problem. For now he lives in the bottom corner of construction mode. Waiting for whenever we add this suggestion feature in. But we think its a golden opportunity to give players assistance whilst having it fit into the games fiction.

New "Rebuild Facility" Scenario

I have completely gutted and removed the campaign from the game. It just wasn't working. It would require too much time to polish to perfection, whilst just not really being effective at what it set out to do: teach the game. So its gone! We will just work on making the game intuitive from the get go instead of having an elaborate story mode. Maybe something like that is best reserved for 1.0. But definitely not now. But not all hope is lost! I have repurposed the map for the campaign into a new scenario: rebuilding the lost and forgotten Facility 13. The scenario isn't as exciting as it could be. I tried to add a group of invaders that had taken hold of the facility, but combat and unit selection is a bit too janky for it to work. So currently, its just a empty broken down facility which you can rebuild.

I think for players who want to jump in without having to build a lot initially, it will be quite good! I will add another scenario in the near future where you are taking over a already functioning site, but with the goal to improve its operations, and I think that will give a good amount of scenarios to satisfy most player urges.

My new Job: A spanner in the works

The last major update, and not necessarily a game one, is that I have a new job. Well, not really a new job. I was unemployed before. I have my first job. This might raise alarm bells because how can I possibly work on this game whilst also working a job? Well good question! I am fortunate in the fact that my job has literally 0 commute time. My office is a 5 minute walk away. So I still have many hours in my evenings to hack away at this game. I don't know how much my productivity will take a hit, but I haven't been very productive in the past 2 months and progress was still good. With the full time job, if I apply myself properly, I should actually be more productive than I am now. But I won't be able to reach my productivity peak (which frankly I don't want to reach anymore because burnout can be pretty bad).

I'll have to see how I handle my job and working on the game. The early access release is still going to be in mid 2026 any how!

What's Next?

The next patch will fix some of the issues that have come to light recently. We had a youtuber play the game as it gave us some valuable insight into some design issues. You can check out the videos here:

View game pageView game pageThey are really funny!

Aside from fixes and polishing. I will be introducing the full suite of interactive demo tutorials and improving the suggestions of tutorials so they more closely align with player activity. There'll also be a slew of game design changes in the next patch, but I am too lazy to type them out. After the next patch, I hope to start adding more anomaly content and getting those anomalies finished. But I am going on a 2 week long holiday over Christmas, so those changes will come in the new year. My job also starts in the new year too! Hopefully I find a decent balance. I am feeling optimistic about it!

Changelog

• Removed "Hauling Missing" Issue

• Added questions to handbook tutorials

• Added interactive demo tutorial system

• Renamed "Campaign" to "Training"

• Rewrote tutorials for accuracy

• Added "Building", "Profiteering" handbook tutorial

• Clicking on border of modal closes modal

• Plus and minus keys can be used for zoom control

• Removed campaign mission 1

• Added Ignore All button to issues

• Added issue count to issues

• Nuggets no longer try to shoot through ceilings

• Added new rebuild facility scenario

• Fixed issue with lag on construct mode when time-warping, and hovering over objects

• Fixed bug where UI reload would make scrollbar reset to system default