Development Update - February 2026

Dear Backers,

I hope you’re all staying warm this winter. February marks another exciting month of progress for us as we march towards our game’s opening debut at Steam Next Fest later this year.

Our partners at MLC have delivered the finalized ground and space combat UI assets and we’ve been busy integrating them

With the help of playtesting feedback, we’ve made significant improvements to ground combat. We've layered in armor and armor penetration mechanics, added new skills like Double-Tap (double shots in exchange for an aim penalty), allied NPC squad support, smarter cover usage, scalable enemy spawns, auto-recharging consumables, and polish like better zoom and hotkeys.

In space, your ship’s sensors now provide intel on the ships you encounter, including their squadron size and the faction they belong too (civilian, pirate, navy, colonial militia, etc.). Upgrading your sensors can even provide the exact classes of ships plus the presence of any high-value commodities being transported. We’ve broken down ship detection into sensor and visual detection ranges. Long-range detection adds tension, you spot blips first, then close in to confirm friend, foe, or prize. Spawns are smarter, with squadrons generating classes of ship and cargo based on the faction they belong to. Scan the void, spot opportunities, and decide to engage or evade.

Crew skills now have a greater impact on space combat. Your cannoneer's accuracy attribute tightens volleys, enemies use special ammo intelligently, ammo swaps are quicker, and the new Boarding Expert skill lets your bosun pull off daring maneuvers.

Lastly, we’re thrilled to announce that Marco De Tommaso has joined the Digital Tinker team as our new Executive Vice President of Midnight Operations. Responsibilities include high-stakes resource allocation (milk), crisis management (sudden volume spikes), and strategic crying campaigns to secure additional crew support. His leadership style is bold, vocal, and refreshingly honest, and he promises to ensure zero tolerance for leaks in critical systems (namely, the crib). Congratulations to the new boss baby!

As always, check out the full changelog below to see all the exciting additions to the game, and thank you all again for your support in making this possible

Best Regards,

Vincent De Tommaso

Game Director

Full Changelog

Ground Combat

• Armor - Implemented the concept of armor into the game. Armor is provided by items equipped on characters, and each point of armor provides a flat negation of one point of damage. Each point of armor penetration on weapon attacks ignore one point of armor

• Dialogue can switch ground combat & navigation - the dialogue system now has the ability to transition play in and out of combat

• Allied Team in ground combat - the ground combat system now supports friendly NPC controlled units

• Increase zoom out distance for ground combat/exploration - increased the distance the camera can zoom out in ground modes

• Bug: Enemy Death During Movement Blocks Grid Spaces - fixed a bug where enemies killed by sentry shots prevented movement over the location they were trying to reach

• Shooting around Cover with Nearby Obstacles - improved the targeting logic when shooting out of heavy cover. Unless blocked by another character or object, units can side-step out before making their shot, potentially increasing the number of valid targets

• Enemy Spawn Points chosen at random - enemy groups spawn randomly across the spawn points determined by level designers, improving replayability and preventing players from memorizing where enemies spawn on each level 

• Ground Combat Enemy Spawn Tables - game designers can create various spawn tables of increasing difficulty for each faction based on player level

• Change consumable item behavior - utility items like medkits and grenades are no longer destroyed when their charges are exhausted. The charges are replenished automatically once out of combat, meaning players no longer need to manually re-equip those items between fights. To balance this, the cost of such items has increased significantly

• Double Tap Action - added an action to ground combat that allows you to take two shots at your target instead of one, but with a significant aim penalty

RPG Mechanics

• Refactor Outfits  - the physical appearance of characters in game is now determined by the outfit they have equipped

• NPC’s Spawn in Taverns - Game designers now have the ability to procedurally spawn characters in taverns for the player to interact with

• Generate Officers to Spawn in Taverns - Hireable officers spawn in taverns and can be recruited by the player

• Implement Dialogue Variables - game designers can access different variables, like costs, characteristics, names, etc. when creating dialogue

• Scene transition points unlock planet map locations - certain map transition points can be set to unlock new locations when reached

• Dead characters become lootable objects - enemies defeated in combat can now be looted

• Update Skills - added more skills for characters to unlock

UI / UX

• Add player money total to inventory screen - players can now see how many funds they have available in the inventory screen

• Bug: Assigned officer stat summary doesn't update after assigning points - fixed a UI bug where officer attribute summaries were not updating after assigning attribute points from leveling up

• QoL Improvement: Party Selection Menu - players can now double-click to add and remove officers from boarding/landing parties

• Name Cards over Inetractibles - a name appears over objects and characters the player can interact with

• Character Inventory: Equipment Comparison Tooltips - players can now easily compare different weapons and pieces of equipment using comparison tooltips

• Camera adjusts height when moving - ground camera changes elevation with terrain

• QoL: Party selection persists - the party selection screen now remembers your previous selection

• Ground Exploration Pause Menus and Hotkeys - the ship management menus can be accessed while in ground exploration mode. The Character and inventory menus can now also be accessed directly with the C and I hotkeys

Space Exploration 

• Update Neutral Ship Interaction - interacting with a neutral ship in the overworld now reveals how many ships are in the squadron and to which faction those ships belong too (civilian, pirate, militia, corporate, navy, etc.). Players with upgraded sensors can also detect the exact class of ships and if there are any high value commodities being transported in their cargo holds

• Overworld Ship Detection - There are now two detection ranges for identifying NPC ships while traveling through the Cortesia system. At long range, the player will only know there are ships present, but will need to close to visual range to identify them and determine if they are friendly or hostile

• Refactor Overworld Spawning & Behavior - Improved spawn behavior to prevent ships spawning in locations and directions the player will not encounter

• Jettison Cargo Improvements - When jettisoning cargo, players can now enter the exact amount they wish to discard

• Spawned Ships are assigned a name - Every ship spawned into the game is now given a name

Space Combat

• Bug: AI Ships in Space Combat Move Too Quickly - AI thrusters no longer violate the laws of physics

• Ship AI - Special Ammo - Enemy ships are no capable of using the special ammunition types in space combat

• Allow Ammo Swapping without triggering reload - switching ammo type in space combat no longer forces all cannons to reload, speeding up combat

• Accuracy Attribute Affects Space Combat - Your cannoneer’s accuracy attribute now decreases the spread of cannon volleys. 

• Boarding Expert Skill - Added a skill that when present on your bosun, allows you to board a ship even if facing the opposite direction, so long as speeds are close and you are parallel

General

• Fix Music Import Settings - dramatically reduced load time by streaming background music rather than preloading it

• Bug: Scene transition sending officers to limbo - fixed a bug where transitioning scenes would cause officers assigned to positions to be banished to the nether plane

• Collision Mesh and Wireframe Image for Cutter - created engineering menu wireframe image and collision mesh for new Cutter class ship

• Collision Mesh and Wireframe Image for Clipper - created engineering menu wireframe image and collision mesh for new Clipper class ship

• Create Gizmo for ship collider and allow angle to be adjusted - game designers can easily modify the impact quadrants (port, starboard, bow, stern) for new ship models

• Occlusion of roof meshes when under them - level designers can identify which objects should be occluded when characters are under them or the camera is over them