Red Tether
Red Tether Version 1.310 (Harpoon Hunt)
-Fixed situations in which getting too much improvised armor at once would leave some unconverted (?)
-Fixed training area coolant container never spawning (requires reaching ice belt again).
-Fixed destroying objects with Hull Ripper Hook effect not resetting some pull states correctly.
-Fixed V-Fisch being able to spawn during credits.
-Fixed a few incorrect texts on unlock icons.
-Fixed some scrap asteroid variants never appearing.
-Fixed some typos.
Steam Trading Cards And Other Community Items Now Available
Turns out Red Tether now qualifies for Steam community items, so I designed 9 trading cards for you to collect. The cards spotlight various A version of the Red Tether Protocol pilots you can unlock ingame. 8 emotes and 3 profile backgrounds are also available.
Cheers!
Stefan – Sleeper Games
Red Tether Version 1.309
-Fixed mass multiplier issues on general class.
-Fixed a problem with dreamer intercept B datasheet portrait.
-Fixed A and B ship variant mix up on datasheet unlock condition for Hull-Ripper Hooks.
-Fixed wave that end with V-Fish spawn no canceling incoming reinforcements.
-Fixed End-Tech Refit Kit not actually leaving heart containers.
-Fixed player being at 0 max health still displaying one heart container.
-Fixed engine burn sfx loop not being affected correctly by volume option.
Hyperspace Deck Command Demo Released!
Hi there Sleeper Games crowd. To be a part of Steam’s ongoing Deckbuilder Fest I put together an early experimental demo for Hyperspace Deck Command, my upcoming sci-fi deckbuilding roguelite that will also be the third entry in the Hyperspace Anthology. You can try it right now here on Steam.
The game has only been in development for 5 months now, so this is still just a small part of what is yet to come. In the demo you can fight your way through 5 different simulation encounters using a randomized starter deck, culminating in an super long final battle hat requires a powerful fleet and proper mastery of the game’s fresh dual-use status effect system. A lot of main features (starting deck selection, card upgrades, stores) are still missing though, but I hope you get a few hours of fun out of it regardless.
I'm sure it makes up for the lack of content with an abundant supply of bugs, so feel free to contact me on discord with reports (link in the pause menu). I'm looking forward to your general feedback too! Please wishlist the game on Steam if you want to support its development.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2711190/Hyperspace_Deck_Command/
Cheers!
Stefan – Sleeper Games
Abandoned Prototypes + Hyperspace Anthology Vol 3 Announcement Soon
In the process of getting there I produced yet another (probably to be abandoned) prototype that didn’t make the cut. I also revised a lot of older prototypes and small experiments that didn’t go anywhere either. Looking over all this stuff was weird but also fun and I now I really just want to dump all those gifs on you too. So join me on a journey through roughly 3 years of my life that went into making game content that will likely never be released. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It’s hard for me to not see this as wasted time, but then again many things you’ll see here made it into other games in some way or form, so it's not all lost.
Hyperspace Admirals was planned to be a tactical captain sim, basically FTL with fleets that I worked on with a small team for about 18 months. A lot of foundational conceptualization for the Hyperspace Universe was done as a part of this game. I also made a ton of ship designs in those days that I’m continuously reusing and redesigning till this day. Hyperspace Anthology Vol 3 is turning out to be somewhat similar to this game, so we kind of came full circle here.
The whole thing didn’t even make it to a fully playable combat encounter after a year, but in retrospect I’m not sure the whole design would have worked out anyways.
Apparently we got semi-dynamic ship destruction working just before we axed it.
We made a lot of fancy promo art for it. As you can see here, the Contempter armada was basically fully formed already when I started Red Tether much later. The soundtrack that was commissioned for HA was used for HDog instead, hence why it is weirdly chill for an action game.
I also wrote thousands of lines for never to be seen multiple choice events. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We stopped development on this cause the team drifted apart (one member started uni, one had a kid) and my programming skills where not sufficient to continue this on my own.
After releasing HDog I briefly experimented with a 2d tile based lighting system for a hypothetical station exploration roguelite, including multiple vision modes.
Advanced Hyperspace Wars mockup.
Hyperspace Watch was a space rescue roguelite I worked on for about half a year. It was based around randomly generated vessels in peril.
You would then control a group of rescue workers tasked with evacuating any survivors aboard these vessels. This is the point when I really go into putting parallax objects everywhere for when using top down perspectives.
Your emergency personnel was able to maneuver in zero g but when entering ships they’d just walk with mag boots. There where various time based interactions you would need to perform to progress through the ship and you’d have to manage your crews stress levels as well. Atmosphere and depressurizing aboard the ships was already fully modeled. Later in the game you’d have to work around other ship systems too, with reactor meltdowns adding time pressure or breaches needing to be sealed to preserve atmosphere etc.
This I canceled cause no fun core gameplay was forming and I wasn’t sure if anyone would even want to play this. Also the subject matter was kinda dark and got me down after some time and I didn’t really like the artstyle either. Missed my chance to do 2d Shipbreaker 3 years before that game released. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hyperspace Harvest was a otherworldly farming sim I worked on for about 16 months. It even got a Steam page.
The game had you grow bio-engineered crops on the skin of a massive lifeform that had its own weather system and season-like life cycle.
There was a probably overly complicated gear design system where everything (crop seeds, tools, character upgrades, weapons) are made from combining and augmenting whale bio code. I especially liked the aspect of allowing you to design your own crops for farming.
This extended to complex crop interactions where you could mod some crops to buff others on the same hex-tile.
There was a nice mall to get genetic code to engineer new plants and bio-organic weapons for your character.
And minegames. So many minigames.
Of course there was fishing too and many of the creature designs for that mysteriously resurfaced in Swirl Watch and Red Tether (V-Fish). One of the many other things you could spend your ingame day on was venturing into the whales body to basically fight corrupted cells and gradually cure the whales disease. The lighting system I made earlier was used for some areas.
Combat required you to go into melee from time to time to get energy for recharging ammo and shields.
Different levels would take place in specific parts of the whale’s body, featuring enemy types specific to that organ or tissue. Didn’t get further than doing bloodstream and vegi-lungs.
There where some fully developed boss fights though and you could mod your melee to extend cross the entire arena of course.
This was canceled cause it looked like it would even be finished if I’d spent yet another 16 month on. The whole thing started to feel way to ambitious and I seemingly was unable to create much interest for the game. I started to worried that sales would never come close to justify this long of a development cycle so I got out while I still could. This experience led me to releasing Red Tether 1.0 in 7 months and I think that worked out way better. Nowadays I get pretty anxious if development of a new thing exceeds even just a single year. Making more focused, smaller games (I mean in terms of development time, not content) ultimately worked out better for me and Swirl Watch is yet another reminder that I should probably stick with making leaner games. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Untitled Space Forklift Game was cargo management space-life sim I worked on for 3 months in late 2023. One core system was delivering incoming and outgoing cargo in an open hangar bay, with you deciding how to store, sort and manage your ever changing inventory.
There where hundreds of cargo types planned, with individual handling requirements and hazard ratings, which would also define your pay. Eventually you’d get tasked with towing ships in and out of moorings too. I planned to add ship-breaking and block-based zero-g farming as separate work-shifts you could spend your ingame days on. And during your shifts you would explore various story lines of other people aboard the mega-structure. The art got a major rework about one month in.
This is yet another thing I stopped working on because no clear core gameplay loop was forming and there didn’t seem to be that much interest in the concept, which was hard to sell anyways. Also it looked like it would get way bigger than I thought one months in already. Once I prototyped the farming portions I started having Hyperspace Harvest flashbacks and I knew I had to get out. After that I spent 3 months now on what is locked in to become Hyperspace Anthology Vol 3. So stay tuned for the official announcement later this week!
Bonus:
Game Jam stuff I made over the years. Red Tether and Swirl Watch started like this, but these are jam games that I didn’t develop into full titles.
Hyperspace Blast Wave – A surf shooter where your speed is your health and you need to catch waves to survive. The first thing I made as a solo dev.
Rogue Signal Unicorn – A pretty simple rhythm game where you have to sync your inputs with the beat to hack your way through network nodes and defense programms.
Mech Revenant: Input One – A endless runner where you control a mech using only a single input.
Dual Feder – A game about a badminton variant that I play IRL, featuring 2 player teams and 2 shuttles. You only score if both shuttles count against a team simultaneously and you can pick up and re-enter shuttles into the match at any point.
Dice Loader – A tense management game about delivering the right combination of dice to cargo ships.
Opponent 1 – A boss battler where you deploy swarms of drones against a single evolving “player” craft.
Red Tether Version 1.308
-Databases now start to unlock earlier (20 upgrades acquired) and successively unlock on steps of 20 upgrades acquired.
-Heavy Duty: Reduced range penalty (-20% --> -10%) and top speed penalty (-20% --> -15%).
-Technophage Sample: Now also affects attachment stress hp, but has reduced effect (-10% --> -8%).
-Destroyer Chassis is now considered uncrewed.
-Fixed hazard squad endless unlocks not taking effect.
-Fixed a problem with parallax object fading during transit.
-Fixed some potential irregularity with health ui when having 0 max health.
-Fixed some uninteded behaviors in waves that start with reinforcements.
Red Tether Version 1.304 (Harpoon Hunt)
-Shield Purger overcharge nerfed (100%-->50%).
-Final boss in endless mode now has mass multiplier 0.
-A certain attack of the final boss in endless mode is more predictable now.
-Fixed a problem preventing Cybernetik H-Bait from forcing fish spawns (?)
-Fixed a UI issue when reducing max health bellow zero.
-Fixed an issue with how improvised armor conversion is handled.
-Fixed a problem where touching an upgrade the moment it is recycled would grant both recycle charge and the upgrade (?)
-Fixed bad spawns in some waves.
-Fixed a performance issue due to excessive solar flare creation on zones that are near the system sun.
Red Tether Version 1.303 (Harpoon Hunt)
-Condition overload now also sends out lightening bolts to nearby ships which inherit the condition overload explosion damage.
-Frost Stalker Skin coolant venting now works on a 40s cooldown.
-Shock Spire attack delay nerfed (2-->10)
-EMP Torpedo Tube and Electric Wave Gun are no longer electrified.
-Ultra Autocannon damage vs hostile nerfed (8-->4)
-Ultra Infrared Laser damage vs hostile increased.
-Fixed an out-of-spawn-are spawn object on wave 25 d-route.
-Fixed bad spawns in some waves.
-Fixed wrong fish portrait on a datasheet.
-Fixed a tether state problem related to multishot and ship changes.
-Fixed instant retreat on wave 1d (?).
-Fixed constant "Breaking!" text if pulling a fish too long.
-Fixed an unintended fish player avoidance behavior if player has temporary stealth.
Red Tether 1.3 Harpoon Hunt Is Here!
Attention all RTP members.
It appears another branch of GC's unofficial clandestine service has infiltrated Con space alongside the Red Tether Protocol. So far their activities have gone unnoticed by both us and the Contempter, but now the program has entered its main phase: Millions of “Void-Fabricated Interstellar Subversion Helpers”, or V-FISH have hatched all across the Contempter’s systems. These bio-mechanical agents are now attempting to cause chaos and hinder fleet movements.
It is unclear whether the V-FISH will have any noticeable impact on our mission, we'll need to study them to learn what they can even do. The fish creatures are technically on our side, but they are not particularly smart agents and will attempt to evade capture by us. You’ll need to hit them with a harpoon, reel them in and tire them out before you can catch them. Let them slip away and they’ll escape into hyperspace. You can probably guess from that fact alone that their tech is way more advanced than what we can rip from the Contempter. Catching V-FISH can yield some powerful upgrades for our ships.
In an attempt to deal with the V-FISH complication, the Contempter have altered some of their deployment patterns. You will encounter a whole bunch of new wave configurations when visiting certain regions during your fleet interceptions runs.
Lets hope this fishy business can turn the tide in our favors. Good hunting and stay tethered!
(Full Changelog)
Red Tether Version 1.300 (Harpoon Hunt)
-Added 3 new variants per wave (135 total). This new d-route waves are unique to the Scrapyard, Chemical Spill, Charged Nebula and EM Industrial Zone.
-Some waves now spawn with reinforcement markers that add additional enemies to the wave after a considerable delay. Smaller ships arrive faster.
-On rare occasions, you can now encounter one of 14 V-FISH after a wave.
-Stick V-FISH with your harpoon and reel them in to catch them. But beware, you need to tire them out first by dragging them down, until then they can easily outrun you.
-Catching V-FISH yields one of 14 powerful bio-mechanical upgrades.
-Added unlockable squid companion that chills on the title area and likes to play catch with you.
-Added an additional upgrade that helps with getting more fish encounters.
-Added new black boxes with V-FISH lore, as well as data sheets for each V-FISH
-Added V-FISH item database (all north of your main dock).
-Added compacted scrap asteroid variant that mostly appear in the Scrapyard and EM Industrial Zone (lower collision damage, but creates debris on destruction).
Balancing
-Tesseract Heatsink now also grants +10% engine heat capacity.
-When engine overheat is enabled, boost ignition now causes minor engine heat.
-Bomber damage VS hostile reduced (16-->8).
-Brawler Class HP reduced (105-->40) and armor increased (2-->8).
-Added rip resistance to laser attachments (0-->10).
-Adapting Fender shield gain now triggers on less damage taken (100-->50).
-Jump Markers fade in faster now.
-Several other minor balance changes.
Fixes
-Fixed a problem with zone 5 playlist overtaking soundtrack for zone 4.
-Fixed Collector Sockets unable to accept magnetic generators.
-Fixed a problem with how Gravit Lasso pull movement.
-Fixed dying on title screen deleting your current saved run.
-Fixed erroneous float text when exiting a certain boss fight.
-Fixed some problems related to ship swapping on title with multi-shot enabled.
-Fixed acid never wearing off on enemy attachments.
-Fixed sawblade sounds not stopping in certain situations.
-Fixed Thermal Threading triggering on single hull tethers.
-Various other fixes.