Hey everyone!

Early Access starts this Thursday, September 24th! I am excited and incredibly nervous. I have a bunch of cool stuff planned for Early Access; content updates will start right away and I'll have the development roadmap updated by Wednesday night.

I know I said v0.4.5 would be the last demo version, but here we are with v0.4.6 of the demo! I decided not to have a specific cut-off date for the demo and instead it'll keep getting updates just at a slower and more limited pace than the full version.

Due to a hiccup with Steam, v0.4.6 has to be on a separate Demo branch temporarily. Right-click in your library > properties > Versions & Betas > Select v0.4.6.

This update is deserving of a major version bump because I've replaced the unfortunate tutorial with a story-driven mode instead. Writing these levels takes quite a bit more time so I am only including the first two in the demo, possibly a third but it depends on how things go. The rest of the story will be exclusive to Early Access. I haven't really talked or shared much about the story and world of S:E but it's really special to me and the development of this "little" artificial life simulation. I wish I made the tutorial around it sooner.

I can't say how much I appreciate all of the support everyone's been showing for S:E lately, it's really awesome ːsteamhappyːIn case anything serious breaks (I am uploading this build at 3 AM, after all), I put the previous build on the previous branch on Steam.


Changelog:

v0.4.6:

* Tutorial is now story levels

* BIONET introduced

* Cryobank renamed Biobank

* Plasmodia soft rework to improve network behavior

* Crychondrion get a dedicated gene

* Mutagenic compounds no longer universally increase mutation rates for all genes

* Grant contracts should no longer include objectives that require waiting for spontaneous events to occur

* HUD, UI and input improvements

* Crash reporting added behind consent toggle