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You used to have to do a long action to scavenge for food every loop. Which didn't really make sense. Now you do a long persistent action once to find the food. On later loops you just have the short, non persistent action to collect the food you've already found.

That is an unrelated bug, but also fixed for vNext. Thanks!

Yep, that bug has been fixed for vNext. Thanks for the report though, and glad you're enjoying the game!

For a year, perhaps. But you also have to consider that I'd have to buy a Mac which raises the cost considerably, and the time/effort cost of me learning how the process, then repeating that process for every update.

I don't have any current plans for a dedicated android build, but that may change in future.

That's because I wont pay Apple $100/year for a dev license. You can either run a console command to disable the check, or run the game via the Itch launcher.

If you're referring to the fact that the Steam version doesn't have a dedicated Mac build, I've stated in a few places that I intend to upload a Mac build to Steam soon. If you're referring to the fact that the Itch Mac build doesn't run on Mac, that's because of Apples security declaring that any software that doesn't pay an annual fee is "damaged" and can't be run. You have to either run it through the Itch launcher, or use a console command to disable the security check.

They don't use more power for the distance you travel. 50% more speed for 50% extra power per second, so you're still spending 1.5 power for 1.5 progress. Whereas the mining motors cost 2.5 power for 2.0 progress (25% more power).

I have tweaked some of the wording to make this more apparent, but it may need some more work once more of the bugs are out of the way.

Are you playing the free (v0.4.5 in the bottom left of the main menu) or paid (v0.5.0) version? The paid version should have this fixed. The free version will catch up with content in about a month, though if I get time I may look into a "mid-step" version which has all the bug fixes and UI improvements.

Very much this. My testers go to great lengths not only finding bugs, but debating balance changes, suggesting tweaks/improvements and even doing entire runs in deliberately "odd" orders to try and find variations of logs I've forgotten or don't work.

But I'm really glad you've enjoyed the game and the update!

As explained on the Dev Log, since Itch doesn't support browser content being paid-only, the paid version is currently only available as a download, and since I've not yet made a dedicated mobile build, this means it's sadly unavailable for mobile for now.

Oh, my apologies. Which other creators have I forgotten to credit?

The only part which is planned to significantly change at some point is the obelisk at Laurion. That's planned to be made considerably harder/take longer, but have more items/upgrades you can get from other facilities to make the process easier. So that it becomes more of a balanced choice between grinding to get it as soon as you get there, or exploring elsewhere to find all the shortcuts.

Other than that, any changes are likely to be minor. Even Astrape in this version - I called it a rework because it affected balance quite heavily. But realistically very little actual content changed beyond a few small-medium bits. That being said, if inspiration strikes and I think of a really cool way to rewrite a facility, I'll do it if I think the game overall will benefit from the change. But it is unlikely.

Apologies for that - the issue appeared for one person during beta testing, but after clearing that folder we were unable to ever reproduce it. Someone on the Discord has now provided a save which they claim will cause the issue if you put it in an otherwise empty save folder, so hopefully I'll be able to fix the issue soon!

I initially did that to try and figure out where the money was going, and I still got less from Itch than I did from Ko-Fi, and the breakdown doesn't tell me where it's going. It just says "User paid X, you get Y". I've since set the Itch portion back to 10% because I want to support the platform with those who buy the game, but if someone's specifically donating to me, Ko-Fi seems to be the better route.

At the end of the day, I'm not that bothered either way. I only added that sentance because people kept occasionally asking.

I do plan to put the Mac version on Steam, I just find their admin UI very unintuitive, so I didn't want to complicate the initial launch by trying to release both simultaneously. I'll look into putting the Steam Mac version up as soon as the post-update rush dies down!

Steam take 30%, while Itch takes ~5-10% (and most of that is payment processor fees etc). So Itch is more beneficial to me, but Steam has cloud saves and achievements, and I can't (yet) guarantee whether I'll be able to give Steam keys to people who buy on Itch. That's next on the list to figure out.

So I completely understand if you'd rather buy it on Steam for now :D

Yeah, I wrote that months ago, and will update it when the game enters early access. the early access release will coincide with the next facility for those who have bought the game. The free version will lag behind.

Yes, at least for now, but the free version will lag behind the paid version. So if you buy it on Itch, it'll be v0.5 from the same time as it's released on Steam. The free web version won't update untill later.

Apologies, I thought I had replied to this when it was posted. At the time, I had no Mac available to test on, and had no clue why it would've stopped working as I hadn't changed anything. So I didn't even know what version did work.

Turns out - it's nothing I did. Apple just altered their old "this file doesn't have a certificate and may be dangerous, do you want to run it anyway" message to "this file is damaged, do you want us to delete it?" The only way anyone has found to resolve this is to:

• Have me buy a Mac and a dev license for $100/year, which isn't going to happen.
• Manually run a script to disable the certificate check before running the game.
• Possibly running the Steam version might let it use Steam's certificate.

When the next version is out, the Mac download will include instructions on how to disable the certificate check for those who want to.

As stated on the dev log here and the announcements channel on Discord: The next update will be the Steam release in January. The update will also be available here, but initially only the download version and paid-only.

While I'm not entirely against the idea of a simple notepad in the game, it's very low priority, and honestly unlikely to actually happen. In particular, if I did add it, it likely wouldn't be enabled on the browser version, since browsers have very strict size limits on how much data you're allowed to store in them.

There are 4 fuel capsules in the service bays at the Santorini quarry.

Thanks, fixed for vNext!

This is deliberate. Originally, the timer for the dam closing was removed as soon as you got the codes to close it whenever you want (since there's no longer a need to time your arrival at the dam). However, it was pointed out that since you don't get the time limit for Santorini exploding until you've seen it explode twice, it'd be nice to keep the dam timer until you get the Santorini timer. Once you have the Santorini timer, there's no use for the dam closing timer anymore. The dam opening timer remains, since that can still affect you (if you're part way across the dam when it reopens).

In principle, yes, until you consider that the log for witnessing the explosion is already one of the top 3 most complex logs in the entire game (alongside the rover out of power and drinking the first water bottle logs). There are I think ~16 different variants for witnessing it from different locations/distances, while travelling in different ways, and if/how many times you've witnessed/died to it before.

The actual of adding a new log for witnessing it from one side or the other, and tracking that with a flag would be incredibly simple. Making sure that none of the existing logs get shown when one of the new ones does, and that neither of the new ones overlaps with any of the old ones will be a significant task.

You're right, but it's not going to be an easy fix. The game tracks if you've witnessed the explosion (without being caught in it), but not where you were when you saw it. I'll see what I can do for the Strabo update though.

That save string is 6169 characters long. All Base64-encoded strings have to be a multiple of 4 characters long, so the closest it should be is either 6168 or 6172 characters. I tried writing a quick test which runs through the entire string, removing each character and testing if that makes it valid, but no luck there. So either you accidentally deleted/didn't copy 3 or more characters, or at least 5 characters were accidentally added.

FWIW, the discord link is set to never expire, and still works for me. I have had people have issues with it before though. I believe if you open discord, click the + button at the bottom of the server list, then "Join a Server" at the bottom and paste the link it, then it should work. Among other things, the discord has a save bank. It doesn't cover everything, but if you don't have any other saves backed up, it should get you close to where you were.

Odd, I've not heard of anyone having that issue before. If you post the save on the Discord server then I can take a look at it.

Yes, the steam version will have achievements and cloud saves.

Interactions which refer to the PDA have different text for if you don't have it. There are also minor gameplay differences, such as being unable to perform certain actions, or see certain information if you don't have the PDA. It's nothing major (for now) but not taking the PDA is basically planned to be a form of optional challenge run.

Correct - all travel actions reset if you travel. There is a UI bug where combined actions containing travel actions don't show that reset until you start progressing then though. I'll be aiming to fix it in v0.5, since I need to do other work on combined actions.

Nope, download and web are identical for now. Glad you enjoyed the game so far :)

Really glad you enjoyed the game!

While I have played (and loved) Outer Wilds, the similar timing is very much a coincidence. In fact, when Santorini was first added, I believe it was closer to 25 minutes, but it got brought forward for balance reasons.

The contrast of the red test was brought up before, and I did adjust it. Though it has just occurred to me that there are at least two bits of text which can be coloured red, and only one of them may have been adjusted. So I'll check on the other one.

If you follow the game on Itch, I always post an announcement with major content patches, so you should get notified of those.

The quick filter not being installable in Astrape is intended. It specifies that you have to be able to "get at the internals of the recycler" to install the quick filter. This means you can only install it on mobile recyclers (the ones found at Laurion or Santorini which can be loaded on the rover), and not on recyclers which are built into a facility.

The coordinates you go to near the tunnel are a one -time visit to check out what was there. You learned some info which will be useful in future content, which you can review in the Notes section of your PDA. Once you've been there, the only reason to return to the tunnel is to get the power cells from the rover.

The expected price for the steam version will be £5.

Yes, you are correct - there are two bugs here. One which stops the disabled effect from resetting when you loop, and another which stops it from being kept when you reload. Both have been fixed for vNext. Thanks for the report! 😃

I might look into it at some point, but it won't be a priority. And if I do make an android version, it'll likely only be available from Itch still, as I don't want to have to pay more fees to put it on the app store.

I do plan to, yes. I only didn't include it in the initial demo because it was a lot more complex than I expected to set everything up for steam. Limiting it to 1 platform simplified things, but now that I know roughly what I'm doing, I should be able to add the Linux version relatively easily.

The difficulty is that every site uses different formatting, and it takes a long time to manually convert large patch notes from one site to another.

For now though, I've also been posting the full notes on the Steam forums, since I can't seem to send out Steam announcements for the demo. Once the early access version releases in January, I'll swap to use announcements.

Steam Patch Notes

It specifically says "I could bring tools from Laurion, but it'd take far too long to dig through". The point being that you can't dig through with what's currently available to you.