Hey everyone, another demo update today. Many of the changes should be fairly minimal but there are a few that will affect gameplay. Additionally there's now a release date for the game. Tentatively this is May 4th, 2026. I'm working on fixing up a bunch of content in the full game, including the prestige / galactic jump system, and the advanced tech tree. This current update is a good one to recommend to anyone you know who might like the game, it's more polished than the original versions and a bit more representative of the final game (especially if you know some content creators that would love it :D).
Thanks again to everyone who's played so far, and all your feedback. I'm excited for the road up to release, with a concrete date out there it's now much more real than ever.
Prestige in Demo
Part of the prestige system is now included in the demo. For those who want to keep playing and face some of the escalating challenges, this will hopefully give a little bit of that picture though right now, everything is automatic.
Once you unlock the "flagship" features, you'll be able to jump to a new galaxy which has stronger planets, more resources, etc.
In the full game, there's a who flagship construction and management phase when you initiate the jump which will present a bunch of options related to your current campaign.
While In the demo, you'll be sent directly to a new galaxy with some automatic changes. Planets have better stats, hostile planets are harder to conquer, 5 of your techs will be carried over (cumulative with every jump), and resource rates will receive a global resource boost.
Visual Feedback
This version of the game has more visual feedback when you conquer planets. NPC ships will start traveling between planets, fleet sizes for attacks and scouting change based on strength, improvements on planets now show visually with most of them spawning orbiting effects and structures.
Additionally, planets can now spawn with more cosmetics like moons and other effects, and have varying sizes thanks to a recent bug fix making this possible.
The traffic and visual effects will dynamically scale themselves down if your framerate drops too low, so it should not impact gameplay as your empire grows. But let me know if this doesn't work correctly and I'll be sure to fix it.
UX Changes
Some of the placeholder UI became less placeholder over time, and this bogs down a lot of the in-game experience. Thanks to some great feedback, I've re-designed several parts of the UI to make them much easier to quickly grasp while also freeing up space and streamlining some of the more needlessly complicated elements.
Hope you like the new changes! See you all at release!
*Screenshots and trailer will be updated soon to match the new in-game look and feel. More on that to come! So if you're a returning player, definitely check out the demo again as a lot has changed that isn't currently reflected on the page.