Hello and welcome to the 18th devlog.
Going full time
As some of you might know, this project is something we've been working on in our spare time as we both have jobs. This is part of the reason the game has been in development for 6 years. The reality is that after 8 hours of work at a day job that's just as intensive as working on the game, plus all the little life admin, there's very little time and energy left.
I'm pleased to say that I have resigned from my job and will be working on the game full time starting in October. We're in a very fortunate position where we can afford to do this without starving, and the timing just feels right. I'll be the only one to do this, at least for now, but most of the time the bottleneck has been programming and game design, not art.
This is something we're very excited about because it means more focused work on the game and a bit of personal life back.
Roadmap
Something that we've been asked more and more about is whether we have a roadmap, and now we finally have one.
The next few updates are Industry (prospecting, mining stations, rare metals and high voltage power), then Thermal (temperature overlays, heat dissipation, radiators and frost snaps), then Liquid (pipes and plumbing, liquid thermal transfer, hydroponics) and Botanical (light, oxygen and CO2 mechanics for plants, glass hull, reworked farming). The Medical update you're playing in the demo is the first one on there. Early Access is currently targeted for February/March 2027.
Keep in mind that this is not final and things can always shift, but this is the current plan. There are plenty of things to do beyond the list, and they're all part of a clear vision, but as the game evolves some details might change. The entire process so far has been iterative and it will continue to be so.
Addressing feedback
The demo was released about a week ago and we've received a constant stream of feedback from people enjoying the game and from people reporting issues, some bigger, some smaller. We're still going through them all. There are many people who have been playing it for 20+ hours already, and that surfaces more issues than we could ever find ourselves.
Many of the simpler things reported have already been addressed. We released patch 0.0.9.5 yesterday (check Discussions for the release notes) and we're already working on the next one. We'll continue with regular releases until things are in good shape.
Still, there are some topics that came up repeatedly:
1. Key bindings - I hadn't realised exactly how many people require this feature to be able to play at all, but I hear you loud and clear. I've already started working on a larger change that both auto-adjusts to the keyboard layout and allows rebinding of all keys and mouse buttons.
2. Colonist behaviour - There are some reports where colonists behave in weird or unexpected ways. These can be real bugs where the behaviour is not intended, or cases where the behaviour is correct but the reason for it is not communicated well, like colonists not using toilets because there isn't enough oxygen there. We're addressing all of these as we're made aware of them.
3. Base expansion - There are a number of people for whom the base expansion is unintuitive. Due to the way the thermodynamics simulation works, the mechanics have to stay the same and hull integrity has to be maintained at all times. This has been a recurring issue that we've improved on iteratively through the guide and tutorial, and we already have several ideas about how to improve this further.
That's all for today. If you haven't tried the demo yet, there's no better time since it's improving with every patch. Don't forget to wishlist and follow the game!
See you next time!