One of the... exciting* things about returning to features that were technically present in the game and giving them a presentation polish pass is you get to discover all kinds of... exciting* that had been right under your nose the whole time.

Navigable Family Trees

Each of the procedurally generated characters in GenExile has a multi-generational lineage preceding them (back several generations to before the ship left Earth) and this continues to simulate as time within the ship moves forward. All this data has been in the game for quite a while, but surfacing it hadn't gotten to the front of the priority queue until now.

Here's the family tree of good ol' Harvey Holub and his kin. The visuals here are first-pass placeholders that are now having proper UI styling applied to them, but the functionality is more or less complete. It's possible to browse up and down the family tree, seeing who is related to whom and watching that develop as generations continue onward.

And also, let's just take a moment to appreciate that Harvey's grandparents were so into each other that they even had the same haircut:

(as a genuine aside, this is one of those things that technically we could write data selection rules to detect and prevent but in doing that, would kind of exciting/dramatic/touch/just-plain-funny emergent moments would up as unintended casualties? it's always a fine balance trying to prevent things that are so unexpected they just appear like bugs and in this instance, two old people who identical haircuts seems like a hilarious moment worth preserving)

Supporter Collaborations Continue Apace

We're continuing to step up the Support Collaborations for GenExile, so if you've purchased the Supporter Sustainability Pack DLC, we'd love to ensure you're included in future possible collaborations. If you haven't yet, jump into our Discord and then follow the directions included therein:

https://discord.gg/dKaCuJm3M6

We continue to tremendously appreciate all the folks who have shared their thoughts about the game, either as players or just as someone looking in the shop window. It's genuinely tremendously appreciated. More updates coming soon!

See you among the stars,

Nels & everyone at Sonderlust Studios

*ahem,.. incest, it was incest, because some (simulated!) people just couldn't stop marrying their (simulated!) uncles, I guess, but we're pretty sure we've shaken out all of the... problematic relationship edge cases that were lurking in generation simulation, much to the chagrin of perverts everywhere