We're very excited to turn it on and see who (not counting our mother) turns out to play!
Prizes
At the start of the Playtest, we have three Steam leaderboards for you to compete in:
- Hub Gauntlet Best Time, a short race to help you practice piloting, but there are no rules in terms of what loadout you use to complete it!
- Best Run (Solo and Co-op separately), looking the pilot who finds victory on the hardest difficult with the shortest duration!
The prize will be an invitation to help us design and name a new item for the game, e.g. a ship, weapon, or something akin to that.
Highlights
Akin to the leaderboard prizes, we're also inviting all players to take clips and screenshots from your play and submit them on our discord server! Our hope is to make a full trailer sometime in the future, and we'd love to compose it of moments from people other than our immediate family.
Polishing
Here's a look at all our changes in the last few weeks since the announcement in the hopes for the best playtest possible!
New Ships
- Added 8 new ships, including a default 2-player option an 3 and 4-player options
- Co-op ships now always require crew to fire weapons
The Gauntlet
- New timed combat course in the hub
- Steam leaderboards track best times
Major Mods Update
- Added a second, more powerful tier of mods
- Added new mod types: cooldown, hull HP, mass, blast radius, projectile speed, multishot, and thrust
- Items now roll a random number of mod slots when they spawn
- Same-type mods can now be stacked on a single item
- Mod descriptions now list which items they can be applied to
- Increased mod drop rate from 3% to 4%
Shields & Defense
- Added prototype directional shield Aegis Vane
Balance
- Spectrum shields cost a bit more when you get hit
- Reduced Catalyst shield cooldown from 5 to 3 seconds
- Shotgun is now semi-automatic
- Increased Reacher projectile speed slightly
- Weakened Repulsor push at the edges of its range
- Refined Dendrite Vale enemy spawns
- Reduced starting fuel from 50k to 30k per player (3 lives)
- Lowered defeat threshold to 4k fuel per player
- Random store items can no longer be ships
General
- Added a ship's log to keep in-mission events around longer and out of the way
- End game screen now shows cause of death
- Stinger sound effect now more... impactful
- Vasek now spawns guardian gnats instead of soldiers
- Updated Commander Vasek sprite to something less placeholdery
- Mod item sprites no longer AI generated
- All players must confirm at the end screen before returning to the hub
- Added MacOS support
- Added Steam leaderboard support for solo/co-op runs
- Significant general performance improvements
- Moved the Headhunter's utility button back to Space
- Bug reports now include the save file when one exists
- You can now see your own ship's description in the hub
- Improved flow for opening ship items as containers
- Repair, hull patch, and oxygen use now show in the ship log
UI
- Hovering items in the stash now shows the currently equipped item for comparison
- Drag-and-replace target slot is now more visually obvious
- Run history duration now shows as hours:minutes:seconds
- Armor tiers now show distinct outline thicknesses; cleaned up armor outlines across all ships
- Equipped armor is easier to see
- Rounded mass values (mt) in item descriptions
- Added feedback when trying to refuel in the hub with a full cargo bay
- Added a hint when first opening the upgrades screen
Tutorial
- Added a hint the first time you board a crewable ship
- Tutorial items are now reserved per player to avoid confusion
- Prevented proceeding through the tutorial with the wrong ship
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Nomad ships occasionally not spawning in the tutorial
- Fixed Split Stack requiring two clicks to open the count modal
- Fixed player names clipping through the box in 4-player lobby
- Fixed Rover (co-op only) appearing in solo games
- Fixed spectator mode getting stuck when the followed player boards another ship
- Fixed projectiles damaging the owner or their allies
- Fixed mission-specific objectives not restoring from saved games
- Fixed the store repopulating after saving, quitting, and reloading
- Fixed a player being able to fire multiple ships' weapons at once
- Fixed crew being able to pick up items at any speed
- Fixed extra enemies appearing in the Gauntlet at higher wanted levels
- Fixed issues with players who hadn't done the tutorial joining a loaded game mid-run
- Fixed sporadic inability to use the swap weapon slot
- Fixed debris persisting into missions from the hub
- Fixed run history forgetting missions from sessions before loading a save
- Fixed Start New Run button stuck disabled after leaving a joined lobby
- Fixed max wanted level not saving correctly on victory
- Fixed enemy debris getting stuck after destruction
- Fixed enemy sniper and telegraph jankiness
- Fixed enemy telegraph not canceling on being killed
- Fixed error when thrusting before ship was fully loaded
- Fixed ship hover appearing while the hub UI was open
- Fixed mods displaying as 1/2 applied when 2/2 were applied
- Fixed explosion radius mod not applying to explosive weapons
- Cooldown mod no longer attempts to apply to Spatial Sensor
- Fixed shield item world object being in the wrong place
- Fixed debris not despawning at the end of a mission
- Stability fixes for several rare exceptions
Under the Hood
- Full input system refactor w/ better key glyphs, preparing for controller support