Hi everyone!
This week has been incredibly busy and rewarding. Before dropping our demo on Steam, we decided to launch it early on Itch.io, galaxy.io, and IncrementalDB. Our main goal was to gather fast feedback, catch critical bugs, and buy ourselves some time to polish everything before the big Steam Demo debut.
To say we are thrilled would be an understatement! The traffic and attention we received completely blew past our expectations. We even climbed to the top rows of the "Popular" and "New & Popular" sections on Itch.io! (Check out the screenshot below!!!) This amazing response has energized the team to work even harder. It’s been genuinely fascinating to see both positive and negative critiques regarding our design choices alongside the expected bug reports.
Here is a look at what we’ve updated and fixed this week:
Mechanics & Systems
I completely rewrote the Comet system. You no longer need to buy the first comet upgrade for them to appear; they now have a base, albeit small, spawn chance right from the start.
Comets now operate on a dynamic timer. At the start of each turn, it waits a random 0-15 seconds, and then performs an RNG check every 10-20 seconds. If the roll succeeds, a comet spawns!
We completely removed the ability to shoot by clicking on celestial bodies. The game now fires automatically at a steady rate, making the idle experience much smoother.
I rewrote the tutorials from scratch. Instead of dumping a massive wall of text at the very beginning of the game, tutorial pop-ups will now trigger dynamically right when you actually need that specific information.
UI & Visual Overhaul
Added some very satisfying new visual effects when a celestial body is completely destroyed or when a Comet is successfully caught.
Added a subtle shake effect when you hover over upgrade tooltips! Almost every game that inspired us has this juice, so we knew we had to bring it into Planet No More.
Players found the raw math and multipliers in the stats page and upgrade descriptions a bit confusing. We replaced the complex economic multipliers with much more intuitive, easy-to-read numbers.
As I was writing this devlog, our artist just showed me the newly redesigned Steam capsule. Safe to say, she is cooking something special......
Balance & Optimization
We were experiencing some performance drops when players transitioned to massive celestial objects (like stars). We have officially resolved this issue for now.
As mentioned above, the playable demo is now officially live on Itch.io, Galaxy.io, and IncrementalDB! (You can visit here.)
What's Next?
Next week, we’ll be focusing entirely on preparing the demo for Steam, guided by the incredible feedback we’re getting from Itch.io. To give you a small teaser: adding audio settings and a proper volume slider is a top priority for our next build...
If you haven't yet, please add Planet No More to your Steam Wishlist. Every single wishlist helps us with visibility and keeps the momentum going!
Thanks for following our journey. See you next time!
— Cos @ WiseMonkeES