Hi everyone!

I'm excited to announce that Cellscape is officially registered for the upcoming NextFest. I've been hard at work setting up a demo build.

This newest version of the playtest is the work in progress of the demo build, so you'll notice you can no longer play in endless runs as before. The demo will be limited to the new Timed 5 mode, which lets you play in 5 minute sessions, but you can play as many times as you want.

Here's an overview of what's new in this update.

Timed Game Mode

• Each run ends after 5 minutes (unless you die first)

• The timer will change colour and pulse to warn you when time will run out soon

• Temporarily removed the timer toggle in settings

  • Timer is forced visible in timed game modes, in future it will be able to be toggled during other modes where time isn't important

UI Overhaul

I've completely redesigned the look of the UI panels and buttons. I hope you like the new changes!

I've also fixed a lot of newbie mistakes with anchoring etc in the UI, so hopefully things will generally feel more solid and polished, and can accommodate unusual screen dimensions without becoming misaligned or having things fall off the screen.

Please let me know if you find anything that looks or behaves weird, or seems inconsistent in the UI.

Mode Selection

This is included in the demo to show that the full game will have more than one game mode, but only Timed 5 Minutes is enabled for the demo.

Score Chart

We finally have a high score chart! Woohoo! Scores are saved per game mode. In timed modes the score is calculated as your divisions per minute + 10% if you complete the full run. Endless mode will just show DPS.

Each of the chart headers is a button that lets you sort the chart by that column, so you can decide if you want to prioritize survival time (more relevant in endless game mode), total divisions, or your division rate.

When you complete a run (or die), the score button indicates if you've added a new score to the chart, and the new score will also be clearly highlighted when you open the page.

Creature and Ecosystem Updates

I made several changes to ecosystem progression to make sure enough happens in the 5 minute run to give a good sense of the game, while keeping things dynamic and based on ecology.

Creature population changes:

• Colpoda first spawns earlier

• Colpoda and NPCs need less food to divide, so they populate faster

• Viruses are now shoveable!

• Biofilm bacteria need fewer members in a cluster to form a biofilm patch

Heliozoan also got a special TLC:

• Helio now has a growth cycle

• Changed how and when helios appear, and how they move, so they should be more of a factor in gameplay, especially in the last couple of minutes

Misc bug fixes and other changes:

• Added FPS limit in settings

  • VSync also controls FPS, so it must be turned off you want to use the FPS setting

• Fixed some inconsistencies with pause and ESC across different menus and popups

• Changed orange biofilm particle effect, which should fix the severe lag it was causing on some devices

Still needs work

The demo is not completely ready yet, but I wanted to push this update asap to give testers enough time to play the new timed mode and see how it feels. My next priority is to work on the tutorial, adding more tips like how to use "boink" and the speed boost, for example.

If there's enough time, I also really want to add a journal where you can read tutorial messages again and see info about creatures you've encountered so far.

Aside from that I'll be continuing to polish things and fix whatever bugs come up during testing.

Thank you again for all your help testing so far!

Kate