We're releasing into Early Access on August 5th 2021! It's a Thursday.
You can still pre-order!
You'll get a Steam (or GoG) key automatically on release day (and the pre-order price will be slighly cheaper).
In all cases, you should definitely wishlist on Steam. Wishlisting boosts our visibility and gives us better metrics for which languages need to be translated.
Video Version
I also recorded a video version of this post. Watch it if you want to see the new stuff in action(it’s hard to show off things with just screenshots).
Early Access
Our plan has always been to release Starmancer and continue adding new, free content for a long time (until way after it's responsible).
We have high level plans for post launch (weapons, livestock, bots, genetic augmentation), but our most important goal is to be as flexible as possible and address the least fun areas of the game.
The element of fun adds a constant, unknowable cost. It's not easy to play your own game and figure out what's fun and not fun. We need players to help.
We're a 2 person dev-team--we need the community for this. Show us what you like (we'll add more of it), but also show us what you don't like.
On a more personal note: we want to make something that's fun. There's a person out there having a bad day, we want to make something that makes their day slightly less bad. We're not trying to make a game with a profound message, or to prove how "creative" we are.
If another game does something better, we want to know about. Maybe they solved the same problem we’re having—good—everyone benefits from using their solution
It's a game. Games should be fun.
What We Work On
You can view what we're working on, and what we've already implemented on our public page.
Here is a link.
This is almost exactly what we're working on, updated in real-time. I do my best to keep the patch notes as accurate as possible.
(We recently switched from Asana to Clickup, so some tasks got lost)
Year Recap
Here are some of the changes we've made in the last year. These are the types of changes and content we'll be adding for a long time.
I briefly summarized each change, to keep it short
New UI
We completely overhauled the UI. The new design is much more extendable for future mechanics and objects. It removed lots of clutter, and overall feels much less stressful to interact with.
Colonist Control
Colonists can now be directly controlled, with a context menu (more information below). Actions can be queued up. This is very similar to how the player controls people in The Sims, and allows you to do just about anything you want to do, whenever you want to do it. It's also similar to draft mode from Rimworld or Space Haven (stop what you're doing and going check it out).
Low Morale Perks
We added more interesting low morale perks: Talking to inanimate objects, hunger strikes, refusal to leave bedroom, graffitti artist, fire-starter, incontinence, and a few more. The intent here is to make colonists troublesome without turning into murderous psychopaths (don’t worry, they can still do that too)
Acquiring Colonists
Colonists are now "purchased" with DNA fragments. In the universe, you're actually reconstructing corrupt colonist files with DNA Fragments. This provides less randomness. Colonists with “bad” perks cost less than colonists with “good” perks.
You can “sell” a purchased colonist at any time for a full refund. You would do this if a particular colonist is consistently troublesome.
Ego Levels
Colonists now have ego levels. Think of these as "brain levels". As colonists level up, they learn skills faster and have higher success chances in most activities, but they receive increase morale penalties. Colonists are upgraded with DNA fragments (same currency used to purchase them).
Tech Tree
We added a Tech Tree, which is much more fun than the old design. Colonists now perform research at Research Stations
Toilets, the base of science
Batteries
The power system is slightly revamped. You now store power in Batteries, where it's drained on use. Colonists generate power by running on connected treadmills. (There's still Generators and Solar Panels).
Floor Attributes
Floors now have several attributes: beauty, noise, and germs.
Beauty increases colonist competency and morale. It's positively affected by cosmetics and nice furniture, and negatively affected by ugly machinery.
Noise is generated by machines, and decreases colonist morale (and increases sleep duration).
Germs are created by Biowaste and rotten foods. Colonists transport germs around the station. Colonists have a chance to get sick with fun diseases like The Runs if they accumulate too many germs.
Star System Warping
You're no longer stuck in one Star System, and can warp to new systems (once unlocked). Every system has randomized planets, asteroids, and stations.
Each system has a randomized star color, which affects both the Starmap and the in-game skybox color. Internally, every system can have different monsters and planets.
Some systems are hot, and will cause your station to passively heat up over time.
Mechanically, warping allows you to re-roll for new asteroids and planets. We also use it as an opportunity to perform garbage collection (unloading unused assets, returning allocated memory, etc)
Please bring all colonists inside before warping
Enemies
We added enemies: Zombies, Cuddlers, and Slimes. They periodically spawn at external floors of your station. We also added a Power Leech (a friendly mob that drains batteries and drops Upgrade Modules).
Monsters drop various items when they die: Upgrade Modules, DNA Fragments, etc.
Most enemies can infect colonists, creating more enemies (you could create some sort of monster farm)
As a side note: it’s pretty funny when you send wave after wave of a colonist to fight their zombie-self (a colonist can be regrown once they turn into a zombie).
I may have spawned too many
New Objects
We added many new objects. Here are some of them:
Dreamcatcher: Place near sleeping colonists to monetize their dreams. Small chance to cause nightmares.
Cryptominer: Converts electricity into money.
Arcade Machine, TV, Casino Table: Free-time objects
Atmosphere Flow
Atmosphere is now tile-based, and flows between floors. This makes the game feel much more like it takes place in space, where low oxygen is very serious problem
And Other Stuff As Well
Objects can now be repositioned after being placed. Repositioning is free and instant. Technically you could use this to cheese…so don’t.
These are the types of changes that you'll see post-launch (and pretty much forever). Starmancer will always be improving with new content, better mechanics, and more ways for your colonists to have accidents
Brand New Stuff
For the Beta players (and anyone else interested), here are the things we added to the game since the last patch (around 6 weeks ago). These will be live on Monday (the day after this post goes live)
Context Menu (the problems)
It's difficult to make a game in which the player only has indirect control of their colonists.
Here's a few random problems this creates:
How do you craft medicine? Do you select the medicine machine and order medicine creation? How do you choose which specific colonist should craft the medicine? Does it matter to you if it's a specific colonist?
How do you make a specific colonist use the medicine? Do you click the colonist and then choose, "Use Item...", followed by a menu that shows all possible items that a colonist can "use" (filtering out the ones that the player doesn't have)?
How do you control where that medicine is stored before someone uses it?
How do you equip weapons or armor on a colonist?
How do you make your colonists fight threats (zombies, crazy colonists)?
Not to mention the biggest issue: the AI better be pretty good. There's nothing more frustrating than your colonists marching to their deaths because they lack the complexity to avoid fire or atmosphere leaks.
These are the types of problems that we've always struggled with.
New System
So we implemented a system where you can select a colonist, and then order them to do pretty much everything in the game:
Withdraw Item
Deposit Item
Eat Item
Go to floor
Sleep (in bed, on floor, etc)
Fight
Extract Head
Clean Blood
Fix Object
This turns the colonists into little dolls. You could make 2 colonists fight each other, and then extract the head of the loser. Once you have the head, you can do whatever you want it (recycle to regrow the dead colonist, deposit to a shelf, place in toilet, eat the head, keep the head).
Multiple orders can be queued up, as in:
Use Toilet (and then)
Eat Food (and then)
Go to sleep
It’d be nice if the order queue was displayed above their heads on mouse-over?
There are a few conditions in which you can't order a colonist around. Like if they're dead, on a mission, or have negative morale.
If a colonist refuses to perform a task, you can't order them to do it. You can't order a Germaphobe to clean floors, or a Pacifist to fight.
For the future, we're going to do a lot with this system:
Equip weapon
Comfort Target Colonist (hug them or something)
Dance
Hide in locker (prevents monsters from finding your colonists)
Change ammo type in turret
Study a skill
Bots?
We'd like to add various services bot as well. Medical Bot, Security Bot, Cleaner Bot, Social Bot, etc. Maybe they must be directly controlled at all times, and have no mind of their own (as a side note, it would be really really cool if you had to place a colonist ego into a bot for them to be operational. And it would be even cooler if colonist perks and skills affect bot efficiency).
Context Summary
This system is the first step towards giving you a physical, controllable avatar (something that we might do...eventually)
Starmancer is still largely an ant farm, in which crazy stories happen to the unfortunate colonists living on your station. But now you have more control over which stories happen. This also fives us the freedom to make many mechanics much more punishing--colonists can die faster if a room has no oxygen, because the you are able to order them out of the room immediately.
Atmosphere Overlay
There's many floor attributes:
Oxygen
Temperature
Noise
Beauty
Germs.
Keeping track of them was difficult for players, so we added overlays for each type. Select an overlay to view areas with low beauty, high temperatures, or inadequate oxygen.
If the overlay is off, there is no visual indication of oxygen
Internally, the overlays use the lighting system (because it was much faster to implement. If we have time, we’d like to create something more detailed.
Starting Items
You now start with supplies from Old Earth. In the short term, you cannot choose which items to start with, but eventually you’ll be able to. You could start your station with nothing but Space Rock--just to see what happens.
The current starting items are:
Water (and the O2 creators now require water, in any form--ice, dirty, clean)
Space Rations (food from Old Earth. We also increased how disgusting colonists think that Biomass and Nutrition Bricks are)
Alcohol (because everyone wants to have a good time)
Medicine (for boo-boos)
Fuel
Bullets
Supplies spawn in "Item Caches". These can be locked, to prevent your colonists from getting into them (looking at the alcohol).
The intent is that you'll start with a surplus of resources, and you have to set-up production systems to replace your supplies. Maybe your colonists start bleeding at some point, you can now give them medicine right from the start of the game (and the context menu makes it very easy to do this). This could give you the goal of getting a medical system up and running.
We also removed the Ice Rod and Fungus Collector. We're reworking the passive collection system so that instead, resources spawn around your base. This will require an "Outside System", with space traversal, better helmet systems, enemies spawning around your base, etc. So it will be included in a big update post launch.
Lighting System
We added lights to Starmancer...because lights are cool.
Every single floor is independently lit, based on nearby light sources.
Light sources turn on/off when colonists enter or leave a room.
You can change the color of the lights, using the palette system, to whatever they want (blue, red, purple, green, white, black)
The rules for how floors are lit by a light source are somewhat interesting:
Find all floors within my light range
Raycast from each corner of the floor, for every corner that has line of sight increase the light intensity
In this way, you get a basic illusion of shadows and corners. The lighting system could be improved, but it’s pretty good. We can come back to it later if we have time.
New Tutorial / Mainquest
We finally overhauled the "tutorial". It's now in-line with the intended lore and back-story for launch.
The basic story is:
Colony ships leave Earth as a fleet
During the journey, your ship crashes in a strange system.
Reconnect with the fleet, by any means necessary
Along the way, you meet a small cast of characters, and we provide some basic world-building to explain the currency, monsters, and other various mechanics.
Our philosophy is that the best tutorial is no tutorial, and that the game itself should be understandable with no tutorial. This is a very difficult thing to do, and we're doing our best. At the same time, we try to be pragmatic--if the game is confusing, we'll still add a tutorial (so we did).
Small Changes
- We added a better UI for monsters, to show what they drop on death and other similar types of data.
- Mousing over colonists will now display their inventory. This is very useful when you’ve ordered colonists to squirrel away random items.
- Colonists will now find an alternative route if stuck for too long, and they won't even attempt a route if a colonist is blocking it.
Bonus Image
Here’s a new tile-set that will be in the game soon
