Development Update - July 2026

Dear Backers,

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer! We’re excited to bring you another batch of important updates as we make final approach to our initial release.

Death of a Spaceship

We’ve completely reworked the way ships are destroyed to make it more realistic and interesting. Previously, ships would simply explode upon losing the last of their structural hit points.

Now, the first thing that happens is their reactor goes cold. The ship loses all motive power and all systems become unresponsive. As a result, the ship continues drifting out of control with whatever momentum it had, potentially colliding with others. Fires begin raging out of control, and the crew rushes to the escape pods to abandon ship. Displaced cargo has a chance to be ejected from the ship too, which can be collected by the player if they have room in their cargo hold.

A victorious Clipper circles a defeated Barque as it burns and sinks slowly into the void

Defensive Boarding & Mutiny

Enemy ships now have the ability to conduct their own boarding actions against the player, which I can confirm from testing is absolutely terrifying when it happens. Additionally, if your crew’s morale gets too low, your own crew may decide you are unfit for command and mutiny! In either case, the player must fight a defensive boarding action.

A pirate sloop attemps to board the player

Unlike a normal boarding action, the player’s party of officers begins on the bridge, and must prevent waves of enemies from reaching it and taking over! Since this is an all-or-nothing fight, the normal party size restrictions are lifted, and your other loyal officers will also try to make their way to the bridge to reinforce your desperate last stand!

The player's crew intercepts the enemy boarding party in the hydroponic garden to prevent them from reaching the bridge.

A surviving officer inspects the aftermath of their successful defense.

Ship Livery

One of the coolest new additions this month is adding different color schemes for every ship in the game. All ships now support multiple liveries, which will eventually allow you to personalize the colors of your ship and of ships in your squadron. The ships you encounter now feel more alive, with corporate transports sporting bright company liveries, and pirates rocking dark, intimidating colors.

Taste the rainbow

Smuggling

Get ready to unleash your inner Han Solo, smuggling is now in the game! Every planet has one or more cargo items they consider contraband and prohibit trading, which means a lucrative opportunity for you if you’re willing to risk it. If you’re carrying any contraband, you can attempt to arrange a sale at the spaceport tavern. At the deal location, the player then has several opportunities to negotiate the price based on their skills and attributes. Success means a bigger payday, but failure could result in the only thing being exchanged is bullets! Such illegal activity is not without other risks. The authorities or rival gangs may catch wind of the sale and attempt to intervene, and there’s always a chance your buyer might double-cross you!

The player negotiates with a buyer for their smuggled contraband

Trailer

Last but not least, we’ve completed the draft for our gameplay trailer and are moving on to final production.

What’s Next?

This month, we’ll be preparing a demo branch of the game for both our Steam Store Page and for Steam Next Fest. We’ll also be adding multiple quality of life features, such as the ability to respec and change the appearance of the player character and officers, and adding an event system to deepen the captain simulation aspect of the game.

As always, thank you all for your continued support in making this project a reality. Be sure to check out the full changelog below to see all the exciting new features available that didn’t make the highlight reel above. 

Best Regards,

Vincent De TommasoGame Director

General

• Gameplay difficulty options in character creation - players can customize their combat and simulation difficulty settings during the character creation flow

• Bug: Equipping outfits doesn't change appearance - fixed a bug where purchasing and equipping a new outfit from shop vendors wouldn’t update the character model appearance until loading a new scene

• Overworld Memory Leak: Time Progress Display - fixed a memory leak related to the time display textures

• Autosave when leaving planet - the game now creates an autosave when leaving a planet

• Character Creator Backstory boolean variables for dialogue - the dialogue system can now compare the player’s backstory choices to make additional dialogue options available

• Dialogue system supports multiple speakers - the dialogue system now supports multiple speakers

Missions & Economy

• Selling Contraband - Players can now set up a buy for their illicit goods with a smuggler, who will meet them at a clandestine location to negotiate the sale

• Smuggling negotiation - When selling contraband to smugglers, players can use their attributes to negotiate better prices (or start a gunfight if they fail)

• Smuggler Double-Cross - Based on the player’s luck attribute, there is a chance smugglers will attempt to double-cross the player and keep the goods and money for themselves

• Raider Base Mission not always available - raiders no longer repopulate their hideouts immediately after being cleared by the player

• Smuggling gone wrong - there is a chance, based on the party’s luck attribute, that the authorities or a rival gang will catch wind of your smuggling activities and attempt to interfere with the sale

• Ship descriptions - added an Info button to the shipyard that displays information about each ship class

• Equipment sells for half price - equipment sells back to vendors at half-price base, increased by your commerce skill

Ground Combat

• Disable FoW when all enemies defeated - defeating all enemies in a scene will remove fog of war

• Sound Effects for Melee Weapons - added support for melee weapon sound effects

• Music for Ground Combat & Exploration - added music to planetside gameplay

• Sight for downed units - downed units still provide sight in the fog of war. Dead units do not.

• Add slight y oscillation to drones - added a slight oscillation to drones to make them appear floating

Space Combat

• Ships drop cargo when killed - when a ship is destroyed, there is now a chance that some of the cargo it was carrying survives and can be collected

• Different SFX for ship projectiles - different ship cannon projectiles now have their own individual sound effects

• Ship Texture Recoloring - support for recoloring ships

• Space Combat F Interact is press & hold - space combat interactions (boarding, disengaging, etc.) are no longer instantaneous, but require the interact key to be held until the action is completed

• Ship Death - The way ships die has received a complete overhaul. Instead of exploding immediately upon reaching 0 structure hit points, ships now “sink”, losing all motive power and drifting with their leftover momentum as they slowly burn away. While sinking, the ship acts as a moving obstacle and can still be collided with.

• Armor Sector Center Offset - Game designers now have more precise control over designating hit sectors for each ship hull

• Report what cargo recovered in log - Cargo recovered from space during space combat is reported in the space combat log

• Better Space Combat Camera - added additional space combat camera modes, toggled with the V key

• AI initiates boarding - AI ships will attempt to board the player when advantageous

• Defensive Boarding - When defending your ship from an enemy boarding attack or mutiny, you and your officers will spawn in the bridge and enemies will spawn in waves. Additional officers in your crew will also spawn in the bridge to reinforce you as time goes on

• Post-boarding scuttle - ships scuttled as a result of boarding now perform the new ship death behavior

• Mutiny on Flagship - So long as morale remains at the terrible level, there is an increasing daily chance your crew will mutiny (doubled if there is no food onboard), triggering a defensive boarding action against your mutinous crew

UI / UX

• Character Creator Game options touch up - replaced settings radio buttons with selection carousels and dynamically adjust the description to reflect the current setting for better clarity

• Hide Skill Unlock Button when not available - for better clarity, the unlock skill button is only displayed if the character meets the requirements to unlock the skill

• Change Att/Skill Panel to look like tabs - instead of clicking a button to change windows, the attribute and skills panels are now tabs for better navigation

• Skill Filtering - added filter options to the Skill panel to filter by all skills, possible skills (i.e. skills the player has enough unspent attribute points to become eligible for if spent), and available skills

• Respec on Character Creator Attribute/Skills - Players can reset their attribute & point distribution during character creation without having to backtrack from the confirmation page

• Change sorting order of save files - saves are sorted by most recent at the top

• Hide health bars for units not in combat - units not in combat no longer display health bars over their head