- Playtest builds can now run either full-game or playable-demo rules while remaining private on the Playtest app, with separate save slots, settings, UI preferences, and unlock records for each ruleset.
- Playable-demo rules now show an active-development thank-you notice on the opening splash after the first click or eight seconds; it remains open until the player closes it with the Esc tab or Escape, then continues to the title screen.
- Window close tabs are now consistently larger and labelled Esc, with shared grey, purple-hover, and cyan-press feedback across title, splash, and in-game menus.
- The save-slot screen now gives direct access to both the Main and Dust Rush leaderboards from two new top buttons, with its save-slot heading moved down into the former empty gap. Each leaderboard slides in as a nested page, closes through its new Esc tab or the Escape key, and returns one level to save-slot selection. Choosing Dust Rush now opens an authored challenge explanation first, with a bottom Start Dust Rush button and the same Escape-to-return behavior instead of launching the run immediately.
- The title-screen family portraits now arrive as one layered group, smoothly fan out to their individual places, then continue into their slow parallax sway with family members farther left travelling slightly more than those on the right.
- Story dialogues triggered from the Homeworld Surface Vista now return cleanly to space, pan to the mining ship, and restore normal space controls.
- The Planet Health panel now combines total progress and percentage into its heading row, keeping every health readout clear in a smaller footprint.
- The Planet Health HUD can now be shown or hidden at any time with H, while still opening automatically when planetary healing first begins.
- Selling clean dust through the Space Trading Outpost or Direct Dust Shuttle now gives the planet an immediate one-off health benefit divided equally across Air, Water, Plants, and Wildlife. The first sale opens the Planet Health HUD and introduces the mechanic through a dedicated story dialogue; the permanent background decline is now a gentler -15 per minute in every category and remains active alongside later healing equipment.
- The placed Family Eco Mountain Cottage now opens a fullscreen split-layer balcony vista through a smooth near-black 0.9-second fade-out and 0.9-second fade-in, then plays a slow tracked-dolly treatment: the distant landscape remains nearly fixed while the balcony, family, and plant move left by subtly different amounts, a shallow midpoint zoom-out keeps the motion organic, and the roof masks distant clouds; completing the Homeworld landing sequence opens the same scene after three seconds.
- The Family Cottage ending now adds two barely visible Surface Vista boats on slower bounded ocean routes, a configurable swarm of tiny flapping butterflies with a wider/upward flowerpot range, a softly animated golden water reflection below the sun, and a sun-warmed balcony lizard that uses correctly cropped poses plus editable railing-path anchors as it walks in, rests, turns, and leaves. The title-screen Game Credits panel now reliably restores its visible scale, returns at the bottom-left eight seconds after the scene fade completes, can be closed normally, and reopens when the flowerpot is clicked. A new master-audio hook supports a dedicated looping restored-world soundtrack while preserving and resuming the prior ambient track on exit.
- A generated red-and-white hot-air balloon now drifts slowly across the Family Cottage sky while shrinking toward the horizon; a tunable near-linear/ease-out blend starts moving promptly and gently loses screen speed with distance. It begins in front of clouds and birds, switches behind both at a configurable travelled-distance point, and pairs intermittent burner-flame bursts with a synchronized warm envelope glow. Two reusable back-facing adult sprites form independently anchored basket-passenger silhouettes behind the basket rim. Route, movement curve, depth switch, scale, timing, bob, opacity, and glow controls remain prefab-tunable, while authored flame/passenger RectTransforms expose visual position and size tuning.
- The complete ending now continues from the restored-world cottage into a dramatic far-space black-hole finale: a slower Vesta pullback and broad full-map pan establish the journey while live ships and shuttles retain their normal movement until the post-instability snapshot handoff. The overview now uses Vesta and the black hole as its diagonal composition anchors, placing them near the upper-left and lower-right edges with a tighter safety margin so the intervening world fills the frame. Complete buildings/items/ships plus the Rare DustRock remain visibly grouped as they drift and accelerate on near-linear paths before developing a short late liquid-like tear; ordinary dust remains point-like until the final pulse. The Sun joins while ordinary targets are still travelling, healed Vesta begins three seconds earlier while both earlier layers remain active, and Vesta disappears last as the camera closes in near the event horizon before silence, `The End`, and `The End?`; the caption is left-anchored around the centred base phrase so adding the question mark no longer shifts the existing letters. The opening finish/preview notification and replay Escape hint have been removed from the finale, while the suspense captions and the undisplayed replay-skip control remain. The directed camera is locked against wheel, drag, keyboard, and follow input throughout. Missing Alien Trader/Pirate participants now instantiate their authored gameplay prefabs and fly safe staged routes with their real propulsion, rotation, smoke, and ember-sail presentation, while finale-only setup suppresses interaction/combat/theft and normal despawning. The official completion time is locked when the final engine launch succeeds, survives an interrupted ending, and feeds a new lower-is-better Steam leaderboard. After one completion, the title screen keeps Vesta healed, adds a clickable cottage replay, and opens the main or Dust Rush leaderboard from the family portraits once each mode is unlocked. Closing a cottage opened directly from its placed world object launches the same view-only finale without granting completion or submitting a time.
- The official completed-run ending now preserves live shuttle, Alien Trader, and Pirate movement through the full Vesta pullback and instability build just like cottage preview. At the snapshot handoff the Superdust Processing Plant enters a persistent idle state that prevents the unscaled finale simulation from reactivating any of its tractor-beam lines, while complete Area 2 production walls and warehouses—including their line-rendered frames—join the grouped black-hole pull instead of remaining behind.
- A staged family Dream dialogue now appears 470 seconds into gameplay, foreshadowing both the family's hope of saving Zoveka and the danger of a black-hole catastrophe; its hopeful cottage and destructive black-hole lines now play matching dreamlike video visions that hold until the player advances.
- Playable-demo rules now follow the Spaceport Trader's normal welcome conversation with a dedicated Demo bonus dialogue and award a 4,000-credit assistance grant without treating it as earned-credit progression or a 10-second credit record.
- The woman's rear-view family portrait now uses the correct swept-back hairstyle, keeping her left profile clear instead of covering it with a stray lock.
- The retired F11 display shortcut has been removed; with developer shortcuts enabled, F8 now opens the Family Mountain Cottage as a view-only ending preview whose Escape exit continues into the full finale, F6 grants 1,000 playtesting credits without counting them as earned, F7 toggles News Flash articles for uninterrupted recording with a live On/Off HUD tooltip, and hidden `+`, `5`-`9`, and `0` keys create specific dust tiers at the map cursor.
- Space Pirates now remember an attack for the rest of their current visit: they refuse loans, leave payments, and Dark Wares trading while retaliating with full ship-held clean-dust theft, then return to normal interaction on the next visit.
- Dust Rush final scores now count banked clean dust at full value and unbanked raw dust at 50% value.
- Dust Rush milestone queue drains now begin at 2.5 seconds and become 4% longer each round, reaching about 7.2 seconds by round 28 instead of remaining almost constant as the queue grows.
- Empty Dust Dronies now keep their prefab-authored body colour instead of reverting to a hard-coded purple tint, while carrying Dronies still brighten to white.
- The ship Pull Field now draws dust toward the centre of the visible field under the pointer.
- Tractor beams moving equipment now retain a clear minimum glow at long distances instead of fading out completely.