in version 1.2, you now have leaderboards and new palettes!

LEADERBOARDS

The leaderboards are available across steam AND itch, thanks to Gdevelop's leaderboard hosting! The leaderboards are separated by gamemode, and I hope that the competition heats up in there!

PALETTES

A new unlockable appeared! Palettes! Tired of the standard colors? Want a change of scenery? Palettes are there for you! By spending a very small amount of 800 000 points, you can get ONE palette! It's very pretty!

Use Custom Game # 16617 to jumpstart your F.A.R.M adventure on Calidor!!

It’s time again to gather hard-working Astroneers and band together for EXO Dynamics in the Fuel Acquisition, Renewal & Maintenance event! Sturdysquash are in season and can be farmed in bulk to be processed in Cauldrangea plants. Ship off the products to EXO Dynamics for points and rewards!

To get started, print the EXO Request Platform. You can unlock this blueprint on the third page of your Research Catalog and print it with the Medium Printer using 2 pieces of Resin and 1 piece of Ceramic, which is refined from smelting raw Clay. You can find both of these raw resources on the surface of any planet or extract them using the Soil Centrifuge.

• Find Wild Sturdysquash that can be harvested for their seeds on Sylva, Calidor, or Atrox; use these seeds to grow offspring that yield Sturdysquash Samples

• Each of the featured planets has a unique variety of Wild Sturdysquash which yield different quantities of seeds
  
• Sturdysquash Samples can be placed in Medium and Large Resource Canisters to keep your farms tidy
  
• Locate Cauldrangea plants on Sylva, Calidor, or Atrox – but beware of the hazards that tend to grow nearby! Use the Cauldrangeas to produce one of three types of biofuel.

• Compass navpoints appear to indicate nearby Cauldrangea.
  
• Cauldrangea can be interacted with to cycle through their current biofuel recipe for production.
  
• Each featured planet has a unique variety of Cauldrangea with different production speeds.
  
• Different biofuels can be produced using other ingredients; the rarer the ingredients, the more the produced biofuel is worth:

◦ Squasholine: 15 Points Sturdysquash Samples ◦ Attapetrol: 35 Points Sturdysquash Samples + Mutant Spiny Attactus Seeds ◦ Noxothane: 50 Points Sturdysquash Samples + Mutant Elegant Spewflower Seeds

• 800 Points – Biofuel Throwback Bundle
  Contains cosmetics rewarded from previous years:
  ◦ Emote: “Leaf Leap”
  ◦ Visor: “Pollen Count”
  ◦ Hat: “Galastro Cap”
  ◦ Cosmetic T4 Shelter: “PUM-KN Shelter”
  
• 2400 Points – Hat: “First Impact”
  
• 8000 Points – Suit: “Hard Suit”

Useful incremental rewards are included along the way to bolster your harvesting capabilities. Randomized recurring rewards are available after completing the event – including QT-RTGs, Portable Smelters, & EXO Chips! – for those who want to continue to produce biofuels.

Hello! It has come to attention that some sounds I licensed from one company may have been stolen from another company. As such, sales of Fantasy Mercenary Wars has been discontinued until this has been resolved or sounds replaced. Thank you for your support!

Lots of other fixes and new features, here is a summary:

• Darkness no longer hides the map
  
• No more digging up bridges
  
• Campfires and tents are only usable on grass, earth and sand
  
• Campfires and tents can no longer be placed on ships
  
• Bandages, medicines and oil will check if they are actually needed before wasting a unit
  
• Campfire light no longer leaks into lower levels
  
• Selling an active torch should no longer cause weapon to turn dark
  
• Players current stat points are now shown when training
  
• Strafe keys will now work as right/left in menus
  
• Keybinding has been updated - allows assigning arrow keys and more
  
• Cut trees and dug holes are now preserved on save game (for current level only)
  
• Some tiles were not allowing player to dig

The rest of the variety packs added to the Variety Bundle.

If you have already purchased the bundle you can complete the set at a discounted price.

Bundle gives an extra +40% off


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630720
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630721
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1952647
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630723
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1952640
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1630730

ːUltimatePieceː

• Fixed an issue where speed power-ups would not properly scale

• Spawn points are now closer to the start line on some tracks.
  
• The countdown times on Copperwood reverse routes are no longer extremely short.
  
• Modded AI drivers now correctly load their kart livery colors and numbers.
  
• AI driver behaviour has been tuned on all tracks.
  
• Drafting has been enabled in Kartcade.
  
• Post-race cameras have been added to Hidden Lake.
  
• Grass on Hidden Lake now has the correct grip values.
  
• The "unknown" column has been removed from the Time Trial pause menu leaderboard.
  
• Ghosts in time trials now fade out when near the player.
  
• Ghost visuals once again work when ghosting occurs due to lapping with "Prevent Lapping Collisions" enabled.
  
• Qualifier duration and mode settings now become unavailable in Kartcore and Custom Lobbies when qualifiers are disabled.
  
• Helmet stickers are now neutrally colored.

This one is the NG+ patch. You can now jump back to the start of the game once you get the good ending! You keep all your equipment, levels, and skills, and can mop the floor with all opposition.

Unless someone encounters a serious bug that needs an immediate fix, this will be the last patch for a little while. Hard Mode, a higher difficulty game mode with new enemy abilities, new player abilities, and an overhauled combat balance, is in the works but will be a little bit. I also have other projects to tend to. Rest assured it will come out, and you'll have an excuse to play the game again when it does.

Changelog:
-Added New Game +. You'll need to get the best ending and reach the developer island. You can then restart the game but keep your equipment, levels, and skills.
-Added 'Grandma's Defeat Mixture', which can be found in a chest in Heronstadt. Deals a lot of damage to your party, for free, making losing battles a breeze!
-Added Tourist Mode to the options menu. This mode triples your damage dealt and makes attacks always hit. It's provided as an accessibility option for people who aren't good at RPGs, or just want to see the game.
Think of it like an optional easy-mode.
-Caelyn's Inspire's prediction box now indicates it cannot miss.
-Using an essence on a party member can no longer make them an enemy in the game's final area.
-Picking up an equipment item from a chest, such as the Fencing Mask, when you already have a lot of them will instead give you a cash bonus. No more cluttered inventory!
-You can now see the best ending in the Hall of Memories after reaching the developer island.
-Added a keyboard key to toggle autosaves on the load save menu.
-Fixed being able to push the run key in the journal to toggle portraits off, oops.
-Pressing the emergency reset button (F8) will no longer kick you back to the title immediately. You now need to press it 5 times within 2 seconds.
-Added tabs to the options menu so players will know there are audio and control options.
-Fixed an entrance in Bowmill which caused enemies to always attack the player upon entering.
-Getting the item for Sage's crafting quests will reset the topic flag so you know how to turn it in.
-Callouts for turned party members should now disappear correctly.
-Fixed Insect and Skeleton turned party members not displaying their callouts.
-Added a note for censoring options. They cannot be edited on the title menu.
-You can now hold down Run (LShift by default) when changing audio volumes to adjust them by 1 instead of 5.
-Fixed a pink line on one of Caelyn's portraits.
-Fixed powershades using the wrong enemy callouts.
-Sped up loading times by optimizing inventory storage of crafting materials.
-Losing a battle in the final area has an additional prompt, asking to go back in time. Useful if you need to make some more items for the finale.
-Typos (of course).

Hey, everybody! Kuba from My Next Games here.

Ufffff…. It took me longer than I anticipated but I finally got our new game out into the world! It’s called Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder and it’s an experimental murder mystery roguelite in which the killer changes every time you play. You can now get it for free via Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2541360/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Starship_Murder/

or if you prefer web browser visit Newgrounds:



With this little announcement out of the way, let’s move on to this month’s update. Today I thought I would tell you the story of Starship Murder’s development. I decided to do so not only to show you the process behind a curtain but also as a record of how this thing came to be.

As I mentioned in a previous update, it all started with Hank: Straightjacket - a tiny little adventure game we made at the end of last year. We came out of that side project with high spirit. It was a lot of fun to quickly create something small that everyone can enjoy. As soon as Hank: Straightjacket was released, in our spare time, we started brainstorming ideas for another little game we could make. After a month we took a vote to decide which one we’re gonna pursue.



The vote landed on the picture above. The concept was simple: you click different points of the space station to repair it. After a few more discussions we added in the murder mystery angle. Expecting the people to follow a real time dialog while they keep an eye on the station sounded risky. It could have ended up overwhelming a player. We decided to go with it anyway :P. After all, we were making a tiny free indie game. The goal was to create something unique and learn from the experience.

With all that out of the way it was time for a dummy screenshot. It’s a method I use to better visualize the game to everyone on the team. As my art skills are pretty limited (I’m a programmer) what I usually do is mash tougher whatever I can find on the internet until it resembles what I’m trying to convey :D This is also where we moved away from the idea of the space station in favor of a starship. The journey that is implied with a spacecraft was a natural way of telling the player when the game would end and at the same time it maintained the atmosphere of isolation we were trying to invoke.


Then, finally came the day when we started the development. Initially we set ourselves a two week deadline for finishing the project. We started working and… we failed :(. This is how the game looked at that point.


There were two main problems that we were facing. First, was that the game didn’t feel like you were playing as an AI (It was more like: you're just a human looking at a couple of panels) Second, was that the location window which was de facto the main view of the game was too small and cramped up. Even though we passed the deadline we decided to continue with the development.

With every day passing I started to become more and more angry with myself and the project. It was supposed to be done quickly and now who knows how much time it will take us to solve the problems we encounter. It also didn't help that at this point all of our personal lives suddenly became much less stable (housing situation, costs of living you know the staff). We needed to finish this thing ASAP!


The soundtrack came through on the last day. Witek(Artis) introduced me to his brother - Rafał. He has been making music for years and besides the tracks he released on the internet he also had hundreds of unpublished ones. He sent me this album - Vintage Dust - that's been sitting in his drawer for a while. I unzipped the package, added the tracks to my playlist and launched the game to see if what I’ve received fits the mood. A few moments later I knew we had hit the jackpot.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2573120/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Starship_Murder_Soundtrack/

The game was almost finished. There were still issues of balance and dialogues though. Unfortunately we needed to stop - our lives became too erratic to continue… I hated everything about Starship Murder at that point…


Two months later things started to stabilize again. I don’t like to leave things unfinished so I reached out to Matthew(Writer) to resume our efforts on the game. We sat down and spent another week working on it. He was writing and I was tweaking the overall pacing. As I was going through the game I realized that the break we took refreshed my perspective. This thing wasn’t even close to being that bad as I remembered it to be…

Fast forward to today, I’m actually quite happy with how Starship Murder came out at the end.

Cya Around,

Kuba

P.S Overall, if you sum up all the time we spend on development it would be around 6 weeks.

Hello heroes, 🤗

1. Updated storage capacity meter by stand 🚚
   
2. Created the UI for the prices screen 🏷️
   
3. Implemented info sections ℹ️ of prices view
   
4. Added UI elements for target burgers 🍔 and sufficient inventory 📦
   
5. Implemented ingredient 🍅🥬 expiry functionality in Inventory view 🛒
   
6. Overstocked item now shows in inventory view.
   
7. Implemented recipe view 📖 functionality.
   
8. Added colour differentiation 🎨 for ingredients to storage capacity 📦 meter.

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