Hey!
A fairly big update is waiting for you: lots of fixes based on player feedback, plus brand new mechanics.
But first, thank you for playing, for the feedback and for helping to build this game! We're already at almost 600 wishlists and almost 400 people who played the demo!
A small request: if you enjoyed the demo, please leave a review on the demo's Steam page. The game will take part in the autumn Steam Next Fest, and reviews genuinely help developers (10+ Steam reviews push a game into recommendations for people who like the genre).
Alright, on to the substance!
1. Updated art and presentation
I've updated every icon in the game and commissioned a more professional logo than the one I "glued together" myself 😂
Here's how the changes look:
The closer we get to release, the more the game will look like one coherent style!
2. New feature: futures
A new tab under Market. I have fairly big plans for this mechanic, but for the demo I want to test it on the content that's already there. How it works:
You can bet (long and short, on a rise or a fall) on coins and syndicate shares
Up to 2 open positions
All bets in USD, from $50,000
Every turn a position charges a holding fee. Go deep into the red and it gets force closed: your margin burns
Leverage x2 / x3 / x5 (up to x3 on Hard)
A position lives for 6 turns
DARKCOIN positions attract Interpol
Trading halts during a war
3. Big perk system rebuild, part 1
Previously you could unlock up to 12 perks in the demo and they stayed with you forever. Now it gets both harder and simpler:
30 perks instead of 12
Perks are tied to syndicates. At the end of a run you're offered perks based on whose contracts you took most often
On the run start screen you now pick which perks come with you. Up to 3 at a time
4. Route draft
You can now lay out a route before accepting a contract.
On turn 2 you'll get a letter offering to enable planning (if you don't, the feature switches itself on a little later)
After that every order card gets a "lightbulb" icon. Click it to build a route and see what you'd actually earn. If you like the draft, you can launch it right there as an accepted contract
The estimate already accounts, roughly, for potential losses from events in individual countries
5. The Y social feed
Before, 95% of the feed was decoration. Now it's a working tool:
During the rumour phase, leaks name two countries: one real, one fake
Plenty of people try to call the coin market, but only three are never wrong. Watch them!
Posts also report a rare flash drive in the Darknet, an offended syndicate, a closed exchange, and they're clickable, taking you to the right screen
6. A bit of new content
Regular flash drives got 2 more minigames:
XOR: rebuild a key from two halves, working out the missing one from hints
TRACE: route a packet through a grid of nodes to the right exit with the right value
7. Bugs, fixes and quality of life
Cold wallet: broken logic fixed. A freeze now locks the amount you held at that moment, not the whole account. Coins sitting on your cold wallet are free to spend (mind the withdrawal cooldown) until everything unfreezes
Right panel of active contracts: added scrolling and a counter, so contracts past the edge of the screen no longer get lost and rack up penalties
Event icons are back (they went missing in release 2.1)
Balance: the Interpol hit from the hacker quest has been reduced
Switching the coin on the farm before mining starts no longer costs a turn
The same event no longer lands in the same country twice in a row
Fixed clipped text in the 4th puzzle of the "Traitor" flash drive
Thousands separators in every money value
Fixed coin input: you can now exchange as little as 0.01
Tooltips: transfer methods and firms in the route tree, plus capital top up and firm closing buttons with exact numbers
Some notifications are now clickable and take you to the relevant tab
A guide letter explaining limit orders arrives on turn 3
A reminder letter during the agony stage that you can pay a big (special) bribe to drop Interpol fast
On Hard, Interpol can be brought down again
I expect that, bugfixes aside, this is the final version of the demo. That said, within the next month I'll be talking about and showing where the game is heading and how the full version at release will differ!
-BadGafi