Ever since launching the game, I've been working on adding depth and immersion to all of the various game mechanics. Airplanes got seating classes, airports got improved buildings and concourses, and manufacturers got a massive ordering system overhaul. Well, I'm sure many of you will be happy to hear that CEO Rating is the next game mechanic to get this treatment.

Internally referred to as CQGR (Compound Quarterly Growth Rate), this is the rate at which your airline grows in three key metrics:

1. Passengers Delivered

2. Cities Served

3. Planes Owned

If you have a high growth rate, then your board of directors will be happy and your CEO rating will naturally tend towards some higher value (approx. 80-85% in the above picture). Many of you have rightly pointed out that it never really made sense that you could be the largest, most terrifying monopoly in the world and the board of directors could get angry at you and fire you for not building a Fuel Depot in Bozeman or establishing a new hub in western Australia.

• CEO Rating now gets its own section on the navbar that shows you the rate of change as well as whether or not you are adequately meeting your KPIs.

• The bird you're playing as now sits smack dab in the middle of your navbar so that you never forget 😎🐦. This became especially important recently now that I made random bird selection the default choice when creating a new game.

You can now shift+click to assign multiple planes at once in the flight assignment GUI.

Another small QoL feature that many of you have asked for: you can now selectively keep or liquidate different parts of any airline that you acquire.

Sorry for the really long image. These are smaller airlines that operate only out of a specific hub city (it's in their name). They're easier to buy out, and are mostly just meant to add some spice and decision-making to the early game.

• You can now have up to 16 major carriers per game, and up to 24 regional carriers.

• New airlines can now spawn mid-game. This is configurable in the settings if you don't want this.

• New permission setting: "Everyone can do this, but not to players". Meant to help those of you who don't mind AIs buying each other out but don't want to randomly get bought out yourself in the middle of a playthrough.

I spent a week or two experimenting with advanced concourse gameplay. The idea was that you would play "cards" or "tiles" in airports that would give bonuses to throughput, rent, reputation, comfort, or any number of things really. I eventually cut this feature because it seemed very micro-managey, and I was trying to move the game away from micromanagement. But here are a few different prototypes in case you are curious what that might have looked like:

This is the build that includes the changes posted in the last Dev Update Aug.2025

Beta testing is underway!

This update brings a number of small balance and QoL improvements that have come out of playtesting, but the biggest changes are the updated skill sets for Hunt, Moon, and Vengeance, which have been improved to be a bit more dynamic and focused.

For simplicity, only changes that impact the demo content are listed here.

This update will most likely be the last major demo update prior to release. I do not have a definite release date just yet, but I am targeting end of Q3 or possibly early Q4, so we're almost there.

Below are the updated skill sets up to level 4 (the max level in the demo). Some higher-level skills not available in the demo have also been modified or replaced for these and other classes, but all aspects' overall combat roles are the same.

• HUNT

  • Snakebite - auto-hit one enemy and inflicts -DEF

  • Leaf Step - damage one enemy, refresh Hunt debuffs, +SPD for one turn

  • Harpoon - damage a back-row enemy and drag them into the front row

  • Tear Shadows - damage an enemy and inflicts -ARM/MRM

• MOON

  • Moon Ray - deals minor non-resistable energy damage. Restores MP if the target dies before its next turn, or restores twice as much if killed by Moon Ray.

  • Infusion - transfers 20% of max MP to an ally.

  • Lunar Blessing - cures silence, +MPW/MAC for one ally.

  • Lunar Cloak - +MDF/MRM for the party.

• VENGEANCE

  • Dispatch - damage one enemy, inflicts bleed (physical DOT), costs HP

  • Overpower - normal attack with high accuracy, 0 MP but stacks -DEF/+threat on user. Short-range only.

  • Requital - damage an enemy and heal self proportional to missing HP, can consume bleed for +50%

• Commander - now has a -2 SPD penalty.

• Pursuit - now triggers a stronger attack on a missed/resisted damaging attack, rather than minor extra damage for all actions.

• Redoubt - now reapplies when healed to max HP, instead of when healed while already at max HP.

• Riposte - now has no trigger limit, but adds a stacking -20 ACC per trigger until the user's turn (all stacks clear at start of turn).

• Status effect cures (e.g. Comfort, First Aid) now attempt to cure the most severe effect first. Control effects are cured first roughly in order of severity (e.g. Hold is higher-priority than Stun), followed by damaging effects, then finally stat debuffs. If there is a tie for severity, the effect with the longest remaining duration is cured first. The status summary window will also display effects sorted in this order.

• Applying hostile status effects can now gain additional duration from a critically successful magic attack roll (>50 points above the target number). Thus, stacking M. Accuracy can help extend your status effects.

• Combat now awards a 3% bonus to total XP/Rm for each enemy defeated beyond two (e.g. defeating five enemies grants a +9% bonus).

• Consumable items now stack to 99.

• Igniting Ray's burning effect can no longer be resisted.

• Significantly reduced damage of Chemical Splash.

• Slightly reduced the impact of damage on sleep/confuse duration.

• Characters revived in combat will take their next turn slightly sooner.

• Key items now have flavor text (item descriptions).

• Numerous minor adjustments to text, damage curves, MP costs, item prices, etc.

• Fixed Salts delaying the target's turn for much longer than intended.

• Fixed incorrect shading on certain hair/face combinations.

• Added test language to cutscenes.
  
• Change font for cutscenes to something more reader friendly.
  
• FIXED - player could trigger the cutscene before reaching the top which ended with the game crashing.
  
• FIXED - player could keep the ducking collision box in the air or on the wall in some situations (player can no longer drop through platforms as a result).
  
• Main layout for world 5 boss now completed. Only a few minor gameplay additions to add now!
  
• The player no longer instantly stops moving when connecting with a wall but instead their speed will quickly decelerate to 0 meaning you will slide up the wall very slightly making it feel less sticky.

Today I reached an important milestone: switching from a pure 2D setup to a real 3D top-down perspective.

• My camera is now perspective-based, looking down at the scene from an angle.

• My character no longer moves on a flat XY plane, but across the XZ plane – just like in proper 3D games.

• This instantly gives me real depth, shadows and lighting, which changes the look and feel a lot.

This was only the first step. Over the next days I want to implement player rotation towards the cursor, adjust aiming and shooting for 3D, and rebuild the enemy AI. Step by step my project will grow into a full 3D top-down shooter.

This patch addresses difficulty issues in the Singleplayer Run, visual readability issues, card balancing as well as some changes to the tutorial.

To address visual readability issues reported by some players, a Glare setting was added to the graphics settings defaulting to a "Low" setting. If you wish, you can now turn off Glare entirely or if you liked the original glow, you can set it back to "High". Some battle UI, background and text colors were also adjusted for better readability.

The difficulty was tweaked across all difficulties with Normal difficulty receiving the most changes. The opponent AI skill on Normal was reduced and the difficulty curve of the singleplayer run was adjusted to be quite a bit easier.

The ability to spend money to repair the ship after every battle was also added to Normal. This is a feature that used to be present in all difficulties, but was moved to Easy difficulty only. This made Normal difficulty unnecessarily difficult for new players and it should be a much more welcoming experience now that it's back in Normal mode. If you wish to experience the challenge of not being able to repair your ship after battle, it is still disabled on Hard mode.

A number of cards were balanced to be more fair, especially in the first sector of the singleplayer run.

The unit movement system was changed to allow for units to move after attacking. Instead units having 2 action points and losing them after attacking, units now have 1 action point they can use for an attack or movement and a second movement point they can use for an additional movement before or after an attack or to move twice per turn. This change allows for easier ship boarding and is easier to teach to new players.

• Added a glare setting to graphics options defaulting to "low" and with an option to turn it off.

• Updated some map UI elements and colors of unit and mount stats for better contrast.

• Updated some ship tiles for better contrast.

• Updated game backgrounds for better contrast with ships.

• Shields are now colored after the unit's team to prevent confusion.

• Tweaked difficulty curve across all difficulty settings.

• Normal difficulty now allows to repair after each battle like in Easy mode.

• Normal difficulty AI is now slightly less intelligent.

• Units now have a dedicated second movement point allowing units to move after attacking.

• Tutorial updated with some more details and opponent deck is made easier.

• Grenade now does 2 damage.

• Bounty Hunter is now 1 DP, 3 CP and special changed to "Add targeted to the untargeted unit or mount with highest HP on the ship when played."

• Federation SpecOp now does 2 damage and is now a Rare card.

• Fragile Android now 1 movement range and 3 CP.

• Reduced price of Mentat.

• Thorn Shot now has a 2 turn charge.

• Time Warp now affects everything on ship.

• Void Saboteur no longer Infiltrator and HP increased to 4.

• Armor Plating now Basic rarity.

• Armor Shard now Magnetic.

• Increased Crystal Growth cost.

• Energe Bubble HP reduced to 3.

• Fixed Federation Cop playing its special animation before every shot.

• Increased Laser Cannon cost.

• Increased Mecha Crab cost.

• Modular Bot move range is now 1.

• Orbital Lowlife move range is now 1 and Common rarity.

• Robot Factory now requires 4 power.

• Reduced Targeting Computer cost and made it Common rarity.

• Robot Factory Boss: removed weapon and reduced max ship energy.

• Hypnotentacle is now 3/3.

At Once Upon a Galaxy, we believe that art is more than pixels on a screen—it’s heart, it’s story, and it’s a shared vision brought to life through human creativity.

In an age where AI-generated images are faster and cheaper than ever, it can be tempting to automate the creative process. But we’ve made a conscious choice to stand by human artists.

Why? Because the spark that brings our galaxy to life, all the whimsy, the emotion, the charm can’t be generated. It must be crafted.

And there’s no better example of that than our new favorite card art: Bedtime for Barky by Ekaterina Lusupova.

When we reached out to our wonderful artist, Ekaterina Lusupova, we knew she’d bring something magical to the table. Here’s the prompt we sent her:

This is the cutest little werewolf you ever did see! It is bedtime, he has his PJs on, his nightcap and is tucked snug into bed. He is holding tight his stuffed animal sheep, who he always sleeps with. He looks sleepy but very content.

It was a short and sweet concept — just a few lines — but Ekaterina instantly understood the tone we were going for: cozy, charming, and full of character. What she delivered absolutely melted our team’s hearts.

In a game like Once Upon a Galaxy, where fairy tales meet space fantasy, the tone is everything. We rely on our art not just to make things look good, but to make them feel right. Every card, every background, every silly creature or joke has a purpose and we need artists who understand that, who feel it with us.

Supporting real artists is also a way of investing in our broader creative community. When we commission a piece, we’re not just buying art, we’re building relationships, supporting livelihoods, and making a game that we can be proud to have people play.