Patch 0.2.1.8 is now available for testing on the public test version.

• You can no longer remove blocks of your spaceship, but you can still build inside and remove the blocks you have placed.

• Added a halo around the sun, making it look more realistic
  
• Stars now scale with the resolution instead of always being single pixels
  
• Fixed shadows cast by transparent blocks (e.g. leaves) and semi-transparent blocks (e.g. glass)
  
• Added matter manipulator particle effect and sound

• Added error message when trying to cast while moving

• Added liquid physics for player-placed blocks (not yet used)

• The launcher should now start in the user's language if supported, otherwise it starts in English. It will launch the game in the same language (that worked before, but the language in the launcher was wrong).

Version Alpha 0.2.1.7 is now available.

• NPCs now won't respawn within 15 meters of a player
  
• You can now bind mouse buttons to actions and change the controls for using or placing an item from the action bar and for removing blocks and objects
  
• The tutorial tips now mention how to find the flashlight recipe in the crafting window
  
• The first tutorial quest now has a text about swords

• Improved tooltips for matter manipulator and flashlight
  
• Grayscale for icons is now darker, making things like the cooldown on some abilities easier to see

• Fixed keybinding settings not loaded properly

Hi! I have some updates about the game's development.

First, the good news: I have found some people willing to work on the game, including graphics designers, sound designers, and another programmer. Together, we will make the game great again. Yes, we can! More catchphrases!

Now the bad news: As you may have noticed, recently the "More like this" section on Steam changed and now seems to show random popular games. I can't tell if that is a bug or intentional, but this may have some effect on small indie developers, including us. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share any details about that publicly, let's just say that it is obvious that the games get less visibility if they are less often displayed in that section.

Anyway, that finally convinced me that it won't work this way. I can't just work full-time on the game and improve it and hope that it will magically attract enough players to fund the development. That's not how things work in this world.

That doesn't mean that the game won't get updates, there are still other people working on the game and I will do the business stuff and work on the programming whenever there is time.

But, for some limited amount of time, I will have to do freelancing, meaning I'll write code for other people and companies. Fortunately, I live in Germany, where I can actually earn quite much doing freelancing (about €100/hr), so I will do that and make some money to pay for game-related stuff (and for my cost of living), until the game gets better and more popular and this won't be necessary anymore. Or maybe I will continue this as a side gig, but my main goal is to make a great game for you to enjoy.

I know, many of you are waiting for more updates and I'm sorry to say they will probably slow down a little bit (depending on how much paid work I have to do) over the next months, but over a longer period of time this will make the game better than would be possible by just working on it and not earning enough money to pay for everything. Ideally, you guys would just buy the game often enough and I would focus on it, but for that I would need to do marketing, which I can't really do because there are unfinished 3D models and no animations and I only recently found someone who can and will create them.

Version Alpha 0.2.1.6 is now available.

• Changed space ship layout and added a shuttle bay (but no shuttles yet)
  
• NPCs now won't attack for 15 seconds after they respawned
  
• NPCs now won't attack a player for 15 seconds after the player respawned or finished loading
  
• Reduced the distance the NPCs are allowed to walk away from their original spawnpoint while not in combat
  
• Fire Staff: Flaming explosion radius reduced to 10 meters
  
• Sword: Added ability "Sword spin"
  
• Flashlights can now be equipped and the equipped flashlight now determines the brightness of the flashlight's light source

• Added HDR lighting
  
• Fixed some (literal) edges cases of smooth ambient lighting
  
• Added option for multiple semi transparent render passes, reducing the cases where the lighting looked too far off (especially if particles were in front of water)

• Fixed removing plants

After a lot of testing and development, we are happy to announce that patch Alpha 0.2.1.5 is finally ready to be set live. The following patch notes include all changes made since the last live version.

• New weapon type: Sword
  
• Tutorial quests
  
• Hang gliders
  
• Equipment
  
• Performance improvements & more graphics options

• You can now place and remove multiple blocks at once: Press [Q] to change the matter manipulator mode (selection size) and hold [Left Menu] to quickly switch to single block mode
  
• (Newly generated) NPCs are now hostile and will attack nearby players
  
• NPCs will not attack for 15 seconds after they have respawned
  
• Players now respawn with 50% health instead of 10%
  
• Increased NPC health by 50% and decreased NPC damage by 20%
  
• Decreased NPC damage even more on lower levels when you do not have all of the armor you can wear
  
• Changed NPC evade behavior: They now evade when too far away from their original spawn point (and will also not attack there)
  
• Eating is now channeled and will be interrupted when abilities are used
  
• Gravity is now the same on all planets again - having lower gravity on some planets sounded nice, but was not that good in practice
  
• Added improved tutorial tips
  
• Added hang gliders (put them in your action bar and use them with right mouse button while the slot is selected to glide over the world)
  
• Tailoring: Added recipes for cloth armor, hang glider, and bags
  
• Blacksmithing: Added recipes for copper armor
  
• Engineering: Added recipe for a flashlight
  
• Added equipment with stats like stamina and intellect, increasing your health and damage done. Secondary stats (critical hit, haste, dexterity, and willpower) do not work yet.
  
• Added tutorial quests that involve visiting planet(s) and crafting
  
• All enemies now can drop random equipment
  
• Items received from quests, crafting and world drops can be enhanced, up to +5
  
• Equipment will be bound to the character when equipped, with some items being bound on pickup
  
• NPCs should now despawn and respawn after being defeated
  
• Mana now regenerates slowly when hunger is 0
  
• Items that are bound to the character can now be destroyed (in the future, all other items can be dropped or traded with other players, but that is not yet implemented)
  
• New weapon type: Sword
  
• New abilities
  
  • [Sword] Strike: Strikes the target, the player gains a stack of Furious, stacking up to 3
    
  • [Sword] Smash: Smashes the target, once for every stack of Furious, consuming all stacks
    
  • [Fire Staff] Flaming explosion: AoE, dealing 100% of the remaining damage of the target's burning effect + some additional damage to all enemies within 20 meters
• You now automatically gain weapon experience for the weapon type currently equipped whenever you gain experience
  
• Some quests now reward items

• Changed raptor model and texture
  
• Added particle effect and light source for camp fire
  
• Quest giver NPCs now have a cube floating above them that indicates they have a new quest (blue), a quest in progress (grey), or you can turn in a completed quest (green)
  
• Added shadow quality settings
  
• Universe now rendered in the background of the loading screen
  
• Added option to render post processing effects in a lower resolution, resulting in about 25% and 50% more FPS for 0.5x and 0.25x, respectively
  
• Fixed some self-shadowing issues
  
• Particle effects
  
  • Changed wind elemental effect
    
  • New effect for Flaming explosion
• Potential performance improvements

• Added message on quest progress
  
• Added a lot of icons
  
• Added automatic positioning of UI windows
  
• Added abilities window (default key: J)
  
• Added inventory window with character equipment and multiple bags (default key: I)
  
• Added some filter options for crafting recipes
  
• Improved ability tooltips
  
• Added error messages when too far away, no target, not enough mana etc.

• Fixed potential deadlock in server
  
• Fixed servers running on local computer randomly getting deselected in server list
  
• Added a way to connect to servers as admin
  
• Fixed diffuse lighting when shadows are turned off
  
• Added support for projected textures (currently unused)
  
• Fixed post processing scaling
  
• Fixed some edge cases of smooth ambient lighting
  
• Added support for multiple ambient light colors
  
• Improved light update delay
  
• Shader performance optimizations
  
• Fixed particle timing issue
  
• Fixed damage amount displayed not being accurate in some cases
  
• Fixed aborting casts not working properly
  
• Fixed NPCs not turning towards the player when in melee range
  
• Fixed NPC melee range not correct in some cases

Patch 0.2.1.4 is now available for testing on the public test version.

• You can now place and remove multiple blocks at once: Press [Q] to change the matter manipulator mode (selection size) and hold [Left Menu] to quickly switch to single block mode
  
• (Newly generated) NPCs are now hostile and will attack nearby players
  
• Players now respawn with 50% health instead of 10%
  
• Increased NPC health by 50% and decreased NPC damage by 20%
  
• Decreased NPC damage even more on lower levels when you do not have all of the armor you can wear
  
• Changed NPC evade behavior: They now evade when too far away from their original spawn point (and will also not attack there)
  
• Added new armor items, both world drops and crafting recipes
  
• Eating is now channeled and will be interrupted when abilities are used
  
• Gravity is now the same on all planets again - having lower gravity on some planets sounded nice, but was not that good in practice
  
• Added improved tutorial tips

• Changed raptor model and texture
  
• Added particle effect and light source for camp fire
  
• Quest giver NPCs now have a cube floating above them that indicates they have a new quest (blue), a quest in progress (grey), or you can turn in a completed quest (green)

• Added message on quest progress
  
• Added some icons

• Fixed potential deadlock in server

Patch 0.2.1.3 is now available for testing on the public test version.

• Some crafting recipes now require tools like a workbench, furnace, or campfire to be near the player
  
• Changed hang glider physics
  
• Improved tutorial quests
  
• Hang glider can now be cancelled by just using it again while active
  
• Added campfire (with placeholder model)

• Added some icons

• Fixed servers running on local computer randomly getting deselected in server list
  
• Added a way to connect to servers as admin

Patch 0.2.1.1 is now available for testing on the public test version.

• Hang gliders
  
• Equipment
  
• More tutorial quests
  
• Performance improvements & more graphics options

• Added hang gliders (put them in your action bar and use them with right mouse button while the slot is selected to glide over the world)
  
• Tailoring: Added recipes for cloth armor and for hang glider
  
• Added equipment with stats like stamina and intellect, increasing your health and damage done. Secondary stats (critical hit, haste, dexterity, and willpower) do not work yet.
  
• Added more tutorial quests that involve visiting planet(s) and crafting
  
• All enemies now can drop random equipment
  
• Items received from quests, crafting and world drops can be enhanced, up to +5
  
• Equipment will be bound to the character when equipped, with some items being bound on pickup
  
• NPCs should now despawn and respawn after being defeated
  
• Mana now regenerates slowly when hunger is 0
  
• Items that are bound to the character can now be destroyed (in the future, all other items can be dropped or traded with other players, but that is not yet implemented)

• Added shadow quality settings
  
• Potential performance improvements

• Fixed bags in inventory window not displayed correctly when bags were in non-consecutive slots
  
• Fixed diffuse lighting when shadows are turned off
  
• Added support for projected textures (currently unused)
  
• Fixed post processing scaling

Patch 0.2.1 is now available for testing on the public test version.

• New weapon type: Sword
  
• Tutorial quests
  
• Performance improvements

• New weapon type: Sword
  
• New abilities
  
  • [Sword] Strike: Strikes the target, the player gains a stack of Furious, stacking up to 3
    
  • [Sword] Smash: Smashes the target, once for every stack of Furious, consuming all stacks
    
  • [Fire Staff] Flaming explosion: AoE, dealing 100% of the remaining damage of the target's burning effect + some additional damage to all enemies within 20 meters
• You now automatically gain weapon experience for the weapon type currently equipped whenever you gain experience
  
• Some quests now reward items
  
• Added tutorial quests (partly)
  
• New items and crafting recipes, especially bags for more inventory storage

• Universe now rendered in the background of the loading screen
  
• Added option to render post processing effects in a lower resolution, resulting in about 25% and 50% more FPS for 0.5x and 0.25x, respectively
  
• Fixed some self-shadowing issues
  
• Particle effects
  
  • Changed wind elemental effect
    
  • New effect for Flaming explosion

• Added automatic positioning of UI windows
  
• Added abilities window (default key: J)
  
• Added inventory window with character equipment and multiple bags
  
• Added some filter options for crafting recipes
  
• Improved ability tooltips
  
• Added error messages when too far away, no target, not enough mana etc.

• Fixed some edge cases of smooth ambient lighting
  
• Added support for multiple ambient light colors
  
• Improved light update delay
  
• Shader performance optimizations
  
• Fixed particle timing issue
  
• Fixed damage amount displayed not being accurate in some cases
  
• Fixed aborting casts not working properly
  
• Fixed NPCs not turning towards the player when in melee range
  
• Fixed NPC melee range not correct in some cases

Hello everyone! Today I'd like to talk about some decisions we had to make concerning pricing of the game.

We had to find a way to increase sales to speed up the development because the current sales (and wishlist additions) were not high enough to meet our goal of a December 2019 release that we promised. We therefore considered some options:

First of all, we could lower the price to increase the number of sold units. However, there are a lot of other cheap games on Steam and given that I alone invested something north of $250,000 (*1) worth of work into making this game already, I simply could not give it away for less than the current price of $8.99 (with the exception of discounts of course).

So the second option was to increase the price. We requested Valve to set it to $24.99, hoping this will make the game stand out a little bit more from all the other voxel games since we use a custom-made engine with very sophisticated optimizations to support orders of magnitude more blocks visible at the same time compared to other games. To be exact, it is something between 32x and 128x as many, depending on how exactly you compare it (*2). This is one thing that you will most likely not find in any other game because there are not that many people who could do these optimizations (mainly people who write graphics engines) and of those, probably no one will invest thousands of hours to make a game like this because they got a job that likely comes with a six-figure salary.

We know that the price increase is quite high, and as much as we would love to sell it to you for less than that, our top priority is developing the game so you enjoy it for many, many hours and we hope that this step helps us achieving that goal.

We also got feedback from friends who told us that they ignore games under $10, simply because there are a lot of bad or small games in that price range. We want people to know that this is not a small game and we will not rest until all the features mentioned in the description are implemented. In fact, we want to develop this game to a point where we can raise the price to $45 or more because you will spend hundreds of hours filled with fun and excitement in the game.

Footnotes:

1. Based upon the number of hours it took to develop the game and a reasonable salary in Germany.
   
2. 512m render distance with 250m sea level compared to Minecraft with 256m render distance and 64m sea level gives 4x the number of blocks in X- and Z-direction and about 8x the number of blocks in Y-direction, for a total of 4*4*8 = 128x the number of blocks.