Happy New Year starchasers. I’d give some big speech about peace and love and the brotherhood of mankind, but you’re busy. So let’s move onto the REAL stuff.

First off, demo 1.95 is now out! This is a smaller update that contains a smattering (that’s a real word) of bugfixes, along with some new immersion features and more. Check out the changelog and give it a whirl!



Starting soon, we’ll be opening up the rest of the galaxy to our playtesters, hand-selected via advanced machine learning techniques on our Discord. You can check there for more information in the coming month. Now, let’s get into everything.

As always, this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.


I’ll start by saying the most important thing: the plan now is for Underspace to be released in 2022. We’re at the stage now where so much of the game and its content is far enough along that I can give at least that vague release date with something resembling a kind of confidence.



The reason for that is that, as this month opens, the game is very much in a playable state. Indeed, it has more content and features than certain… other games it may have been inspired by. There’s a huge amount of things that can be seen, done, fought, and more.



Every star system is in, every station and equipment sold on that station is in. Of the 20 ambient bosses, 15 have their first drafts finished (as in, playable to completion but lacking polish), and of the game’s some 75 vignettes/points of interest, every single one has its first draft finished.



The first draft of the main campaign has been written and scripted, but not fully implemented. In general, quest and storyline work is one of the three big blockers that still remains. Many of these have their first drafts done, and around 20% are implemented to some capacity.



However there are well over 50 quests in the game, some of which can get quite extensive. The irony is that writing these takes far more time than actually putting them in game however. You can see more on what’s been done there in the questwork section.



The next big blocker is station/planet interiors. There’s no functional difference between the two, but we’re talking some 150 small levels that need to be detailed with plants, furniture. Jars of vegemite. Whatever people put in their homes. Jars of vegemite, right? Anyway this is one of the biggest blockers, but luckily we have extra level designers working day and night on it, leaving me free to do other things.




The final big blocker is multiplayer. That includes making sure singleplayer mechanics work, allowing for server hosting, and the massive amounts of bugtesting. This is my white whale right here. There’s not actually a whole lot to be implemented in fact. But implementation and smooth implementation when it comes to multiplayer are two different beasts.



Then there’s a smattering of your usual polishing, texturing, assetwork, etc, etc. Expect always to see this in between updates on new quests and space dungeons.



And that’s what has to be done. So, onto what has been done.


As mentioned, I spent this last month writing the first drafts of as many quests as I possibly can. It’s not an easy task, as altogether you’re talking about six hundred or so pages of dialogue. Happily, that number has been majorly chipped away at, and of Underspace’s 58 or so sidequests, 18 remain.



Quests mean dialogue, so I’ve also spent the end of last month adding new camera controls to on-foot dialogue, allowing names, focused characters, and the camera to change on the fly. Good for sorta-cutscenes and multi-man conversations.




NPCs have lots of new things to say out in the stellar now too. Service ships can now repair and restock your ship, for a fee of course. Meanwhile Us traders (those green zombie ships) now carry and offer, if you can afford it, extremely expensive and rare items for the discerning starchaser.




And pirates now will shake you down for money, valuables, and your worldly possessions while raiding lanelines.




All these new features are in the new demo, so check it out!

I’ve gone and done a great deal of work on pathfinding. Again. The results are good though, no more NPCs flying through things. Hopefully.




Furthermore, you can now properly enter formation with ships and follow them at a good pace, I’ve even added dialogue controls to detect WHAT you’re in formation with.





Speaking of following, NPC followers are better about avoiding colliding with you. They’re a little more careful now.



Large ship colliders got a refactor. They’re far more accurate, but in addition can now specify weak points on a ship (where they take extra damage).



Some asteroid models got a rework to bring them up to the graphical standards of their fellow asteroids. Low poly asteroids on pirate bases and similar were also reworked into new models, because why not?




Your UI also now gives detailed information when it updates about WHAT it updated. A useful tool.



And finally, we’ve added booster rings. After all, there is racing in this game. What would a space race be without a booster ring?



Finally, there’s the usual modelings of bosses (not all of them though, we’re keeping a few things secret), alongside tilesets for big space dungeons. Because I know, deep down, you’ve wanted to fly through a space cathedral.




That’s all for this month, ideally next month I’ll have all quests written up, along with more content-related progress to share. Check back then!

Happy holidays starchasers! It’s the Wintery times, when the red liquid in the thermometer that mommy says you shouldn’t drink drops to a pinprick of nothingness and ninety tons of white pain descends from the sky to ruin your plans to wash your car and freeze your knuckles until they bleed.

In other words, it’s the perfect time to sit inside, mope about, and get a HUGE amount of progress done! Actual work. You know, content and stuff. I could talk about all the things that got done and the current state of all those things here, but I’d rather cover them in each individual section. Let’s get to it!

As always, this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here. And of course, as always, be sure to check out our demo and Discord.



Last month I talked briefly about adding detail to star systems. Not points of interest, bosses, or quests, but the little things that add that much needed quality that Skyrim modders sometimes call “immersion”. This month, EVERY single star system has reached its goal for detailing! That’s right, EVERY single one. But what does that mean?



It means hazards around the wreck of every large ship (and mechanics for them). Asteroid miners and big asteroids in asteroid fields. Ships in every shipyard and billboards along most every highway. Subtle rotational effects on planets!




















I’ve also been going back over systems and changing lighting, placements of planets and spawning bubbles to help traffic flow better, or make the lighting from stars less intense.






These redoes will be a thing constantly being done during development as places seem to flow or don’t look quite right. It’s one of those ongoing processes.


Another massive milestone this month was that every single point of interest had its first draft finished! Some are missing textures or the mechanics aren’t quite where they need to be, but you can now see and view every single one in game.

For example, this time traveling spaceship. Loot its innards for bigtime loot, but don’t get caught in the various warps!






Or the famed Curshian Death Cube. What secrets lie beyond its deadly six sides? We can only wonder.



But we can’t forget about those naturally occurring vignettes too. Hidden coral forests, lost groves of space amber, huge snaking rock spires, and mushroom forests. Who doesn’t like space mushrooms really?









And much much more!



So, rejoice starchasers. This is a major milestone for the game, and just an example of how much closer we’ve finally gotten to releasing the game.

For this month’s campaign work, I blocked out and added a lot of content to the non-unique, non-campaign systems. Those moments, areas, and setpieces that involve them, you know? Be warned, there’s spoilers ahead here!





Quests got a lot of mechanical work done to them. I adjusted how shields work for certain quests, allowed text to parse itself and display data about stats and global variables, and moved around a few old demo quests to new locations, rewriting them appropriately.



Expect to see more work done on quests in the coming months!


Of course, lots of other things are happening as well. You can now customize your character and buy clothes for them, for example. Just be wary, because NPCs and other station interactables can now have restrictions set on them!



Combat lines have been improved, you won’t see chatter as frequently anymore, and it’s been separated out into defensive and offensive lines respectively.


And finally, I’ve made sure to fix up and improve the effects of legendary ships found in stormed areas. For example, this overloaded fighter, whose ship becomes a ticking time bomb that will rip open a rift if not destroyed fast enough (and offers excellent loot to those who manage to do so).





Not too much to say about assets this month. Mostly it was about finishing up the models for various vignettes, or wrecking pre-existing assets for areas where pre-existing assets needed wrecked variants. But we also have a space train! A TRUE space train, in fact.





That’s all for this month folks, Happy Holidays, and check back next month for our yearly overview.

Welcome to November, starchasers! Normally I’d preface this with lots of words about turkey and people freaking out because there’s a friday where you can buy overpriced TVs for a dollar less, but I’d rather get straight to the big announcements!



If you missed it, demo 1.9 is now out! It’s our first demo in quite some time, and has a lot of new features, particularly relating to piracy and world interactions. Furthermore, it begins to scale back the file size and scope bloat that was plaguing our demos, taking things down to a much more reasonable size.



While our official demo releases are still going to be fairly spaced out, as we’re now getting closer to release, we’ll be offering more immediate releases for testers. The basic summary is this: we’ll be soon accepting applicants on our official Discord (and sending out instructions to our higher tier backers). Accepted applicants will receive more frequent builds (about once every month) of the full game for testing and feedback.

And that’s the long and short of it! For now, onto progress! As always, this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.


Star systems are more than just quests, stations, and vignettes. They have lots of little details in them to really bring the entire sector to life. This month was spent doing just that: detailing systems all the more. To start, we’ve added shipwrecks to every star system. Not those huge derelict capitalships mind you, but the smaller freighters and fighters.



They all have placement, names, and descriptions now, and can be scanned and looted for all sorts of treasures.

We also reworked startrawlers, those mobile garbage collectors you might have seen around the demo systems. They’re now much more efficient, there’s a lot more of them, and they have new effects and textures. With them now in a finalized state, I’ve placed them around the galaxy.





Ships can also be found in shipyards, where you’d expect to find ships.



I’ve reworked advertising billboards a bunch too. They read much better out in space, and can have requirements attached to them. Think wanted posters of your character, or a mad AI taking over all advertising and tracking you down.





This is just the first bits of system detailing, and things like more asteroid miners, more billboards, and more Things are soon to follow in the months to come.

There’s lot of work done on a variety of things this month, but none big enough to be in their own category. To start, UIs on things like stations and star system name readouts can be overridden completely, allowing for custom names and a greater degree of uniqueness in individual areas.




The navmap UI’s been reworked to be a bit more optimized and efficient too. In general we’ll be reworking things to be more efficient in the UI to prevent slowdowns.



Party members are getting more dialogue, and properly will fight your hated enemies for you too.



Finally, in terms of new content we’ve added instant-travel, instant-damage, high energy mining lasers. They’re fairly rare, and perfect for many situations. Provided you can find them, of course.



Shields have also been redone! They’re shader based now, and have special animations, and are far more performant across the board.



And here’s this months new assets being made. I’ve mostly been working on bosses, both hidden ambient ones, backer-based bosses, and ones you’ll encounter out in the storm.



That’s all for this month, as always, check back next time for more progress, more system detailing, and so on. You can always check out our Twitter and Discord for more moment-to-moment progress, and updates on closed alpha and beta tests!

It’s October! That month where the Spirit Halloweens finally finish their years long gestation and pulsate into proper and temporary storefronts. But you know what’s REALLY scary?
Prions?
Yeah I suppose they’re pretty terrifying. But I meant space. Space is so terrifying, who knows what you’re going to find out in space. Like giant space squids, ancient cosmic lodestones, the ghosts of all those balloons you let drift out of the atmosphere as a child.

Luckily, we’ve made lots of progress on space, so even if it’s horrific, it’s at least a little closer to release. Check it out! And as always this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here. And as always, check out our demo and our Discord!


The biggest news this month? The first draft of the main campaign’s script is complete! It’s 4 acts with 16 missions, full of twists, turns, and thrilling moments.


Dialogue in the draft is subject to change, but those moments and setpieces aren’t, which means I’m able to fully start building everything out. Here’s a little preview of what’s to come.


You’ll find out when the game releases just what the heck’s actually going on there.


Lots of work on quests and quest technology (fun stuff for modders) is now up and working. Scanned items can activate script code, line connectors can be dragged around and tethered by the player, and activators can warp the player wherever. All useful for a variety of situations.





I also redid a lot of background technology to let the player be cloned as an NPC. After all, you never know when you’ll be fighting your evil twin.



I also went back over some vignettes and optimized them a bit more.



And finally, because sometimes these things can only be looted or encountered once, I expanded the game’s persistence system to be able to be used on pretty much anything.



A lot of UI stuff got overhauled this month, as a lot of UI stuff wasn’t in the best shape it could be.


For example, you could equip vanity items, but actually buying them was another matter. I refactored a bunch of merchant and item code, allowing you to visit clothiers and outfitters and buy all sorts of things for yourself.



I’ve also dived back into multiplayer UIs, they’re still a work in progress on a lot of aspects now, but you can once again group, trade, whisper, and do all that multiplayer stuff you like to do with other players. I’m working on additional functionality as well, like being able to host public groups that you can join, or additional server settings.



There’ll be more on this as time goes on of course.

Finally, we’ve got lots of assets to show. We’ve got some SQUID. Official squid. Very fresh.


And I’ve also learned to rig and use substance painter to help with the nonorganic assets. Some of which have even been made. For example, there’s a few campaign models here, as well as the Ballden eyes, which have be rigged to animate and deform like proper glowing eyeballs.








That’s all for this month, a lot of my focus over the next few weeks is going to be a deep dive in fixing some problems in the game (while also prepping it for mods), check back next to see how that spectacularly fails!

Welcome starchasers! I’ve got good news, bad news, and news! So the bad news is that this month’s progress was… less than it could have been. I had a lot of pressing and wonderfully warm obligations to fulfill, which doesn’t mean progress wasn’t done, just like I said, less than it could have been.

The good news? The end is in sight. The bad news (again?). The end is still pretty far off. Effectively, we know every remaining task that has to be done now, but that task list is still pretty gargantuan. Could we release the game now in its current state and have a pretty swell space game? For sure. Are we going to go the extra ten miles instead? You know it bro.

And finally, another sad tidbit, but our next demo (demo 1.9) will have to be delayed. The game’s gotten large enough now that uploading has become a problem and Unity (which can’t support resource files bigger than 4gb when packed, for some reason) is introducing texture errors into current builds. Fixing this will take a few days, though it doesn’t stop other bits of
progress.

Phew! That’s a lot to take in, so let’s move on to everything that was done this month, eh? As always, this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here. Be sure to check out our demo and join our Discord for more moment-to-moment updates!

I’ve been writing up many of the game’s sidequests, and we’re close to about 50% done for their first draft. There’s still more to go, and many of course simply aren’t implemented, but have a preview of what you can expect.


Quests require bits of tech and can always be improved of course. I noticed a lot of them revolved arounding activating objects in your inventory, so I added a quickslot to let you quickly activate objects that are able to be activated.


I also redid events a bit, and added assassins that get sent after you, should you manage to make the wrong kinds of people mad.


I also added proximity script triggers. Which are overengineered to heck and back. But these objects, when you go near them, can charge up, play effects, and when finished, execute scripts. There’s situations where these are really fun (for example a quest where you use them to download data into a computer-virus-shooting-gun to take some computers offline).


Storms are beginning to get in a final state. Hazards for them are still a WIP, but each region now has its own unique storm type, with lots of pretty weathery colors.




I’ve also created some more exterior effects for storms. Any nebula that has a storm going on will flash and spark from the outside. Good for realizing where you should be going at a glance!


You’ll recall that the galaxy is littered with enormous derelicts and starship corpses. It’s been my vision since this game was in its infancy that these derelicts are filled with all manner of traps and hazards. This month, I started off by giving all of them names and backstories.


I also recoded their many mimics to be able to attack in packs, and if one wakes up, be careful! They can wake up their nearby friends as well.



Battleship wrecks might accidentally dump out their unexploded missiles and mines. Be careful, unexploded doesn’t mean inactive!


And everyone knows some errant laser and power conduits might create hazardous beams that the player will very much want to avoid. I’ve refactored these to work much better and be more accurate.


And what dead cruiser would be complete without lovely pockets of deadly radiation? Hope your ship is lead-lined (it isn’t).


All these hazards and more can be detected with scanner upgrades, which now point out various traps and secrets, with stronger ones even able to detect hateful intent in cargo containers.




Placement of these hazards is still ongoing, but they’re very versatile and can be used in a lot of situations. Particularly those proximity explosives. Modders should have a lot of fun with them.

Last month I promised a space mountain. And I keep my promises. Mostly.




I’ve also added a space mirror. It’s said to show your true desires, but model trains are still overpriced when I look at it, so that’s probably just a myth.


I had to code up some custom shader tech to get the parallax effects working on it, so if you’re a Unity developer, you’re free to try it out!

We also modeled out a few bosses. Ever wanted to get trapped in a televised ancient alien arena gameshow and have to be forced to fight your way out? Wow, me too!


And finally this thing. What is it? Well you’ll find out, eventually.


And that’s all for this month! I’m hoping next month to get you some concrete stuff involving the main campaign, along with sidequests, of course.

Happy continued summer Starchasers! Heat stroke is no laughing matter, so make sure you stay cool this morning. It’s very cold in the loveless vacuum of space I hear, so that may be an option.
Fun fact, while working on all this a tornado tried to destroy everything. It seems rather appropriate, or perhaps eerily prophetic, that a game about space storms would have a storm come to prevent its inevitable release and success. Or maybe it’s just nature and stuff, who knows. Either way, god hasn’t been able to kill me in the thousands of years I’ve been alive, he’s not gonna succeed now! Onto progress!
As always this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here. You can also check out our demo and join our Discord for more moment to moment updates!


Piracy was the major focus of this month’s progress. But, it’s hard to roleplay a highwayman if there are no NPCs spawning on highways. We fixed that, and improved piracy so that you can disrupt and threaten NPCs for loot and money.



Making piracy work meant going back over dialogue mechanics. NPC ships can get really mad if you decide to screw around with them, and NPCs will give full directions if you’re friendly with them. NPCs also construct backstories as to why they’re doing the job they’re doing.




But piracy carries consequences. Commit enough bad… law… things, and the military might send a battleship after you if one is available.



And of course, what’s a good pirate without proper destruction states and animations on larger starships?




We also spent the month reworking a few implemented, but lacking, bosses. The Hellmouth Prince for example, got his attacks reworked.


Meanwhile, the Haywire Hulk had fully implemented animations, attacks, and summons. He’s a lot of fun, probably my favorite boss so far.


A few boss weapons were neglected in the past, but have been fully implemented now. From beacons that call in bosses to do fly-by attacks, to a void that grapples and tethers nearby enemies.



A few other bosses got minor scripting implementation, but we’re not QUITE ready to reveal them just yet.


A lot of the game’s various sidequests are written up now, but implementation lags behind a bit. The major one implemented this month was a small early game questline where you’re able to get drinks with your lawyer (and only friend), Karbelle.



The game now has a fast travel system in the form of ride-sharing, where you can hitch rides on trains and transports at certain stations, for a fee.



Guns also have restricted firing angles now. Lining up your targets is much more important than before.


And there can now be restrictions when trying to undock from a station.


I also added a few UI improvements too. Storms now recolor (if the option is enabled) your UI when you enter them, while the station UI gained a few new little animations to help it pop some more.




With all those new scrap models available, we went back over some scrap-related vignettes and redid them to have those aforementioned models, upping their fidelity by quite a bit.



That’s all for this month! It’ll mostly be writing and questwork for next month’s progress, but I’ll see if I can’t give you a space mountain or two as well.

Happy summer starchasers! Enjoy the insane humidity, the endless bugs, and the blistering heat, because in two weeks it’ll go back to snowing. At least, if you’re in Wisconsin it will.
Anyway, this month was spent mostly on vignettes, which, good news, turns out are a LOT further along than I thought they were.



Considering that’s a huge slice of the game’s content right there, that also means the entire game is a lot further along than I thought it was. Does that mean a release date is in sight?
Well… no. Vignettes are merely one portion of the game’s content, which includes quests and bosses. And those are in a much… less complete state.

Anyway, onto progress! As always this is a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here. And also as always, you can join our Discord to keep up with more moment-to-moment updates, and check out our demo to get an idea of what’s in store.


As mentioned, we found that a great number of points of interest were already implemented, and this month was spent writing up and implementing many of the few that were STILL remaining. Great fields of rainbow crystals, ancient graveyards of mining rigs and windmills long past, even a field of legally distinct plastic building bricks. The size of moons.





Not only that, every point of interest that can be scanned can now, in fact, be scanned, and we’ve written up the lore and flavor text for all of them. You can see this flavor text by selling you scanned data to any data center, which has had some UI improvements, with new animations and graphics.



These aren’t all the points of interest of course, bosses and wrecks and still to come. But they’re a HUGE chunk of it. Exploration is finally a viable source of income!


Good games run at good framerates. Therefore, being a good game, we’ve got to run at a good framerate. I went back over main regional systems, which usually have the highest concentration of *stuff* and optimized all those structures, asteroid bits, windmills, etc. In some places, particularly heavy traffic areas, we saw around almost a 20 FPS increase. Not bad, honestly.




More optimization work will be on the way of course, this is more a preparation for the eventual release.


And there’s the host of bugfixes and little tweaks that represent my sleepless sense of perfectionism. Most of that stuff was related to UI stuff. Components and equipment misreporting, or not reporting, stats, and map icons needing a visibility rework.




And of course the usual level of bugfixes and such. A lot of these were, as always, reported by users and testers in our community, so a big thanks there.



As for assets, we’ve lots of things coming. Do you like giant space squid? No? Too bad. Do you like alien ruins that are REDONE alien ruins? Yes? Well that’s good then. We’ve also got new bottles and new materials and textures for various places and… things.





That’s all for this month! If you check back next time, we’ll have more to do with lots of new mechanics, piracy, maybe even a new demo release!

Happy summer Starchasers! I know someone’s gonna be like “NO trainwiz it’s not summer yet summer is specifically three days in June when the cicada armada forms into the shape of Jimmy Carter’s left nipple bluh bluh” or something but I don’t care. It’s summer, the sun is warm against my pasty dying skin, and that means I feel energized and ready for TONS of progress.
In other news, our next release is Demo 1.9, which will have more of a piractical focus. As in piracy. For pirates. But that’s a bit of a ways out.


For now, onto progress! Be sure to check out our demo and official Discord. As always this just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you read here.


In the five main regions of the galaxy you can find five main regional bosses. While they vary in strength, each one tests an aspect of gameplay and your skills in it. You can find the first regional boss, Sparkplatform, in the demo already. This past month we made the other four, for a total of 7 current hidden ambient bosses in the game (out of 18).


In the Ijunic regions, you can face down a dangerous stormcloud monster with a crown made of lasers. Which frankly is just pretty dang cool.




The Macrovari tell tales of a mad naval captain, who welds his victims’ ships to his own to help it from breaking into pieces as he runs it out of control.




Deep within the Union capital, there’s legends of the ManyShip, a powerful stormwight that tests worthy starchasers by shifting forms and abilities at a whim.



And finally the Ballden are doing their hardest to suppress news of Cahgurine, a former brilliant sculptor now turned insane hivemind, wielding far too many lightning field generators.



There’s a lot of underlying systems that were added to make these boys work, but the good news is that such work only has to be done once, and like most trailblazing bosswork only gets faster and faster from here on out.



We’ve also done more with quests, mostly focusing on non-demo quests, which can start to get fairly in-depth, with many colorful characters and often unique mechanics and endings.

A few of these new quests are still being worked on, but a few are in the finished stages. If you ever wanted to participate in a murderhobo death tournament, have we got news for you!






The campaign isn’t safe from our questing fingers either, demo feedback often asked for a way to track where to go for the next campaign mission, so we’ve added simple quests to help track that.


And, for even more help, if you try to leave the initial starting area without going through the tutorial, it will warn you of that. You can still leave, it’s just that if you smack into a planet, it’s no longer our fault.




Storms also had more done to them this month. First, unstable jumpholes, which shoot the player to completely random systems, were placed all throughout the galaxy and had special graphics created and tweaked.



Speaking of graphics, Distant Horrible Objects (yes that is their full and proper name) had full models added, along with better, more color appropriate effects in matching storms.


The final storm thing we added were ghost ships! These minibosses guard various storm rifts, and can be the reanimated wreckage of ships you’ve previously killed. Just be careful: They’re not happy that you killed them.





We’ve been doing some small QoL improvements here and there after the big demo release, mostly based on user feedback. Freeflight has a few changes to its controls, and docking is smart about where it tries to aim you initially.



We’re also working on yet another flippin’ refactor of spawning code, this time to allow forced overrides of where NPCs can spawn.


Also we worked on some new gun sounds, based on user feedback.


Also, the entire galaxy has cargoboxes around big wrecks now. Watch out for mimics though!






And not too much in terms of assets this time around. We’ve got some plates and dishware, and also I’ve been wrecking a few fixtures here and there for the sake of vignettes. Also I’m working on particle effects for flak cannons, and new background effects for the Shipstar system.







That’s all for this month, our next month’s progress bits will probably be less impressive than this, but still, check back for more!

Hello starchasers! It’s a sunny springy May this month, so I’ll keep the intro short as we get into the REAL meat and spring potatoes of this month’s progress! There’s not much, but it is significant!

As always, this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.

The biggest news, in case you’ve missed it, is that demo 1.8 is now available on all platforms (that is, PC, Linux, and Macronash)!


1.8 is one of the largest updates we’ve done overall, bringing forth a LOT of new content. It includes the first two (out of the demo’s eventual four) missions of the main campaign, several redone quests, the tentative addition of squadmates, stormchasing and the rewards for such, and much much much more! You can check it out on https://pastaspace.itch.io/underspace and indieDB, along with the changelogs for such.



In addition: we’ve finally launched an official Underspace discord! Get real time updates, talk to the devs, provide feedback and get help with problems. You can join up here!

One of the things we needed in the new demo was to improve or polish the various bosses and minibosses found within. Giving them new attacks, redoing some of their behavior, you know the deal. We also added simpler, single-purpose mimics hiding amongst the ruins of old battleships. We DID warn you those were coming!






Polishing up the campaign meant hooking up or improving elements. Opening cutscenes in missions now have full holograms that play alongside them, new character models are being made for various unique characters, and the in-game codex now works and updates fully (with different entries based on whether or not you’re playing multiplayer or singleplayer).





From fixing up UI elements that didn’t work, adding in new storm hazards for lower level storms, writing up a new tutorial that plays during the initial campaign missions, and doing things like fully adding in the basics of the game’s cockbits, or bugfixing soooo many pre-demo bugs. There’s a lot to cover there, so just have some screenshots.






And as always, there’s the usual host of assets. We’ve got big communal plates and dishware for the religious Ballden, along with an illusion generating eyeball boss.


That’s all for this month, check back next month where things will move away from demowork and more towards… nondemo work.

April Fools! For our April Fools joke we’re rolling out said April Fools joke a week after April Fools and instead of a joke it’s completely serious amounts of serious progress. Seriously.

The good news is Demo 1.8 is now in the testing stage. Admittedly a large amount of stuff has to be tested to begin with, so there’s still no ETA for the next release. Of course, that next release will bring TONS of content, so I’d say it’s worth the wait.

Anyway, onto progress! As always this is just a paraphrasing of the main article, which you can read here.

The biggest progress bit this month was capitalship wreckage. Making wrecked variants of these huge ships is difficult, as they don’t break apart as easily as say, a fighter or a transport, and need lots of little wreck pieces as well.


Thankfully, all the models are made and implemented in game where they should be. You’ll find huge abandoned derelicts out in space, their cargo spewed everywhere. But be wary, hazards abound, to say nothing of the cargo containers that are mimics.

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You can also scan derelicts and turn their data in at data centers for rewards.


Finally, a little unrelated to battleships but not entirely, was the need for capships that have a more rudimentary AI than your typical battleships.


These basic battleships, as I call them, don’t actively hunt down enemies, but will open fire on enemies if they’re within range.

Smart players will remember that the Macrovari regions had both power lines AND pretentious art sculptures, but said sculptures were on a back-order as we worked out the legal snafus because some other pretentious artist owned the copyright to the pigments or something. You know how they are. They’re in the game now though!


We’ve also been writing up a lot of quests and storylines. Nothing too concrete we’re willing to show here JUST yet, but we have added some stuff like headlights being able to activate objects, or damage certain enemies.


As we edge ever and ever closer to release, I’ve been going over game systems and either making sure they’re fully hooked up, or adding a few last minute QoL improvements to them.

For example, the ambient explosion system that happens when you fight in larger battles now works.


I’ve been redoing the in-game navmap for readability and utility, among other things.


On the subject of navigation, entering an asteroid belt or nebula now displays its name in the system readout, much like when you enter a station or a star system.


Finally, last month we showed off a few harvester ships belonging to the Tickers, those robotic drones that defend comm relays. Comm relays themselves got better damage effects, and the more you steal from them, the greater the response against you will be.




There’s not too much this month in the way of new assets. We’re mostly working on really simple models: dishware, furniture, things to populate the eventual interior of the game world. They’re not TOTALLY low effort though: each race has its own stylings and design philosophy behind their… plates. Plate design theory’s an often overlooked aspect of art you know!


That’s all for this month. Hopefully by next month we’ll have the demo ready to go, alongside more quests, content, and space stuff. This is a space game after all.