Development Update - March 2026

Dear Backers,

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter holiday. A lot of focus in March was spent on improving the look and feel of the game, both visually and in terms of gameplay balance, in preparation for our game’s debut at Steam Next Fest. As you’ll see in the changelog, there have been dozens of improvements made this month to graphics, UI feedback, sound and visual effects, and combat skills.

One of the coolest new improvements is the ability to fully customize the color of a character’s skin tone, hair color, and even outfit. Not only with this allow players to tailor every aspect of their character to their liking, it also allows us to fill the universe with a well-rounded backdrop of characters, preventing locations from looking copy/pasted

In going from our placeholder space and ground combat UI to our polished design, one major change was the swapping of the temporary action button text with proper icons. However, this meant we needed a new way to provide the player with feedback on what they were selecting. Ground and Space combat now support action and weapon tooltips. Mousing over 

This month we’ll be focusing on replacing all the placeholder ship management and store UI with final assets, and implementing the quest system and numerous procedural quests, such as delivery missions, bounty hunting, escort missions, and clearing out raider bases. Thank you all again for your support. Looking forward to the next update!

Best Regards,

Vincent De Tommaso

Game Director

Full Changelog

UI Improvements

• Raise starting angle of ground camera - adjust the starting angle of ground scene camera for better visibility

• Hide Action bar when navigating - ground combat action bar is hidden when not in combat

• Replace Action button text with icons - replace placeholder action button text with action icons

• Space Bar Confirms Actions - pressing spacebar can be used to confirm use of a selected action that doesn’t require a target to be designated, like sentry or reload

• Ground Combat UI: Change Weapon Panel acts as button - clicking the weapon panel itself will allow the player to swap weapons

• Action tooltips - added action tooltips for each combat action

• Cover Icons Red if Flanked - changed the color of the flanked cover icon to red to increase urgency

• Weapon Tooltips on Swap Panel - mousing over weapons in the swap weapon panel will display a tooltip with the selected weapon’s statistics

• Hotkeys for ground combat actions - hotkeys for ground combat displayed on the action bar

• Space Combat UI: Active ammo type highlighted - the currently selected ammunition type (plasma, cannister, or disruptor) is highlighted

• Space Combat UI: Refactor interaction Indicator - changed the interaction indicator to use the new UI buttons rather than the placeholder icons

• Space Combat UI: Squadron Ships Display Size & Spacing - fixed the display of squadron status indicators to fit the new UI

• Space Combat UI: swap squadron status background based on number of ships - the Squadron status panel adjusts in size based on how many ships are in your squadron

• Skill: Lightning Reflexes & Close Combat Specialist - added new skills to ground combat that allow units to automatically take sentry shots against enemies who get too close if they’re equipped with a pistol, rifle, or shotgun

• Character models valid click target for actions - in addition to the grid space, the character model is now a valid click target for actions

• Space Combat Close Log button - the space combat log can be opened and closed

• Action Bar Enemy Icons - added enemy indicators to the action bar for each enemy the currently selected unit can see. Clicking the icon will focus the camera on the respective enemy

• Display action name above action bar - mousing over an action displays its name over the action bar

• Hide character panel when dialogue open - the character panel is hidden when dialogue is active

• Don't allow opening ship management menu while dialogue is active - players can no longer open the ship management menu when in dialogue

• Display attribute & skill requirements in skill description - attribute and skill requirements for skills that have them are now displayed in the skill description, along with feedback to let the player know if the character meets the requirements or not

• Space Combat Action bar can be edited - players can now customize their space combat action bar in the Ship Engineering menu

• Add screen shake to space combat - added screen shake when firing cannons or taking cannon fire

• Report completed ship upgrades in the over world log - Completion of Engineering upgrades is now reported in the ship’s log

• Officer Name Tables - exposed the tables officer NPC’s derive their names from so that players can edit them to taste 

Ground Combat

• Allow move and Cleave - units armed with 2h melee weapons can now perform the cleave action after moving

• Lightning reflex / CCS / Attacks of opportunity can be triggered on an enemy's free set-up move - enemies trigger sentry shots and attacks of opportunity when making their set-up move after being revealed

• Change Grenade Damage to range - grenade damage is no longer a fixed amount but a range like all other weapons

• Run and Gun - added a new ground combat ability that allows units with light weapons to dash and shoot in the same turn

• Bleed-out Timer - adjusted the bleed-out timer for incapacitated units to tick at the start of the enemy turn

General

• Bug: Enemy fleets spawning no ships - fixed a bug that sometimes caused enemy fleets encountered in the overworld to spawn no ships

• Randomize cargo store amounts - cargo store item quantities are now randomized

• Clothing Color Swap - game designers have the ability to recolor our clothing textures, increasing outfit variety exponentially 

• Add appearance slot to NPC's - added an easy way for game designers to dress NPCs in the new outfits

• Unit Ragdolls inherit outfit/body/hair of parent model - unit ragdolls (the dead body that flops on the ground when a character is incapacitated) inherit the customized appearance of their parent character

• Characters put away weapons when out of combat - characters no longer run around spaceports swinging their machine guns around

• Saving and Loading: Overworld - players can now save and load their game when in the overworld

• Implement Luck Attribute - The Luck attribute now functions, providing a slight benefit to numerous skills

• SFX on weapon prefab - added gunshot and reload sound effects to all ground combat weapons

• Multiple shot VFX for certain weapons - added more bullet effects for machine guns and shotguns

• Skin Tones - character creation now supports a variety of skin tones