Relic Space
Steam Next Fest: Watch the Developer Play, Part 2
The Stream will be today, 18 June @ 6pm EST/10pm GMT.
Steam Next Fest: Watch the Developer Play
As part of the festival I'll be streaming the new 'Random Mission' mode in the latest Demo version on Thursday 16th June @ 6pm EST/10pm GMT! Watch me battle the RNG in 'tactical mode' as I strive to reach the victory point threshold...or die trying.
DreamHack Beyond: 'Developer Plays' Stream
As part of the festival I'll be streaming the new 'Random Mission' mode in the latest Demo version each day at 6pm EST/10pm GMT! Watch me battle the RNG in 'tactical mode' as I strive to reach the victory point threshold...or die trying.
'Hall of Fame' Demo Update
'Random Mission' mode
Though it's just a simple checkbox on the game mode selection screen, skipping straight to random missions brings a massive boost to replayability (though only recommended of course once you've played through the tutorial at least once). And since you're now focused on earning victory points with complete freedom to choose your missions, you can now begin to experience that roguelike, open-world feel that's always been part of the game's promise.
Hall of Fame
A great complement to 'Random Mission' mode, the new 'Hall of Fame' provides a detailed highscore board, in which you can read off your past achievements in the game with pride. Among other things, the Hall of Fame tells you which difficulty level you were playing, which is of course very relevant when assessing the extent of your achievement in a given game!
Improved Trading Mechanics
There's also a significant update to trading, whereby your ship now has a cargo capacity that limits how many trade goods you can carry. Since this limit can be increased with the right utilities, this adds a new level of strategic choice for the player (whether to upgrade your ship for trading), while simultaneously fixing the imbalance that previously allowed big trading profits to be made a little too easily.
Improved Ship Damage Mechanics
Another pretty fundamental area of change is ship damage, and specifically on-board fires that are usually caused by overheating. While previously a fire was considered just one more debuff in need of 'repair', it is now a unique damage status requiring use of the brand new 'extinguish' skill. As well as being more realistic, this brings some additional tactical choices to the core combat experience.
Bugfixes, balance changes and more
As usual there are plenty of bugfixes, and balance tweaks, including further refinements to fuel capacity and 'running out of fuel' mechanics, as well as removing the lag when opening the save/load menu. And the system map now has a useful new feature, showing the key station modules to be found in each sector.
Change log
Full details of the changes can be viewed on the (see Demo 152) website.
Still to come..
The focus on randomized missions in this update will also form the basis of the Early Access release later in the year, which will bring a much more extensive path towards military and economic victories by means of random missions, exploring sectors and upgrading your ship along the way.
And as the next step on the path towards this milestone, I'm planning a big increase to variety and complexity of random missions - watch this space!
Join the community
To discuss the game with fellow fans and get free early access to bleeding-edge builds, join the Discord. Alternatively sign-up to the low-volume newsletter to be notified of key updates and new releases.
'Going Rogue' Demo Update
While it may not be obvious from the screenshots, 'under the hood' Relic Space is many ways a traditional roguelike: it's turn-based and grid-based, with procedurally generated levels and missions, and like many classic roguelikes it's a non-party-based RPG where you focus on controlling a single character. And the full version will also feature a Permadeath game mode. So it's super-exciting to be participating in Steam's Going Rogue festival!
As there may be quite a few new players trying out the Demo, we wanted to make sure it's as polished as it can be - meaning there's a whole host of bugfixes in this update! But there's also a few significant new additions gameplaywise as well:
Difficulty Levels
This update introduces difficulty levels to the game for the first time. 'Adventure' difficulty offers a gentler introduction to the game for those who prefer to focus on uncovering storylines, or who find the more demanding 'Tactical' difficulty too challenging. (The full game will also feature a third, harder difficulty for veterans who need even more of a challenge)
16 new sector environmental effects
The new environmental effects are features that affect an entire sector, like quantum storms, asteroid showers or radioactive residue. Some of these have a potentially game-changing impact on combat, for example by making shields unusable, or reducing the effectiveness of specific weapon types. This will help each sector feel more distinct, as well as offering interesting new challenges.
New Gas Cloud Types
While all gas cloud types offer a useful bit of extra cover, the new explosive and corrosive gas clouds come with an additional risk as well. Being fired at wil hiding in an explosive gas cloud could cause the whole cloud to go up in flames, and your ship along with it!
Bugfixes and balance change
As mentioned there are plenty of bugfixes, particularly as relates to the new weapon display that was introduced in the last updated. In terms of balance tweaks, the biggest change is around fuel, where the fuel capacity of all ships have been decreased, so that fuel has more of an impact on progress.
Change log
Full details of the changes can be viewed on the (see Demo 152) website.
Join the community
To discuss the game with fellow fans and get free early access to bleeding-edge builds, join the Discord. Alternatively sign-up to the low-volume newsletter to be notified of key updates and new releases.
Major Demo Update
The core of this update are a few big changes that should improve the experience of the core gameplay loop in subtle but significant ways, as well as providing new content.
14 new utility items
14 new utility items can now be obtained by researching relics, enabling completely new combat tactics such as use of cloaking fields, and jump drives (pictured below). As a result the relic research screen now has a lot more fully functional research goals - though there are still a lot more to come!
Equipment Skills
The new game mechanic of 'equipment skills' whereby weapons and utility items now grant special abilities, which work in much the same way as pilot skills. In addition to new skills for the utility items mentioned above, there are also 6 new 'weapon' skills associated with different weapon types, such as the 'bullet sweep' skill pictured here:
New 'Manual Mode'
There is a major overhaul of 'manual' mode, with a new UI section that allows full control of weapons so that you can now fire different weapons at different targets, and move and fire in any order.
Bugfixes and balance change
As usual there are also plenty of bugfixes, and some balance changes, for example reducing profitability of trading, and increasing availability of starter weapons at station stores.
Change log
Full details of the changes can be viewed on the (see Demo 143 and 146) website.
Join the community
To discuss the game with fellow fans and get free early access to bleeding-edge builds, join the Discord. Alternatively sign-up to the low-volume newsletter to be notified of key updates and new releases.
Steam Demo Available
The last three months have seen another big development push fixing bugs (with over 100 bugs fixed!) and adding quality of life features as well as new gameplay features, including:
Custom keybindings and alternate movement controls
You can now change almost all keyboard controls to custom keybindings. There's also a whole new alternative keyboard control scheme (namely, 'tank-style' WASD movement that is relative to your ship's current direction) that can be toggled on or off in the settings - and also remapped.
New ships, equipment, and status effects
There are 2 new enemy ship types, each with brand new equipment, to improve early-game tactical variety. And there are also two new status effects: you generator can now become 'unstable' with potentially explosive effects, and utility items can become 'severely damaged' in a way that is very hard to repair.
Improved trading mechanics
Amounts and prices of trade goods are less random, and instead based on the local economy, with some goods being in surplus or shortage in each sector (plus handy icons so you can see at a glance which goods might be best for trading)
New themed soundtracks
There are now also 3 new adaptive soundtracks by talented composer Peter Gagliardi, so each of the main factions now has its own themed soundtrack, which plays when exploring a sector controlled by that faction.
Plans for 2022
2021 was a game-changing year for Relic Space, in which we went from early Alpha - little more than a tech Demo, with not much content - to a much more polished, fully playable and actually-fun-to-play Demo version.
But 2022 promises to be even bigger. We'll be adding new content and features each month as we head toward Steam Early Access later this year - and where applicable the Demo will be updated to include the new content as well.
The Early Access version will include
- access to 90% of the full procedurally generated solar system map
- a wider range of procedurally generated missions
- more NPC factions
- more ships, equipment, research and status effects
- a balanced way of winning the game via economic/military victory points (as opposed to via the main storyline)
In essence the EA release should be a game that can be described as a fun and fully playable game due to its various procedurally generated elements, despite still missing a major planned element, namely the main scripted storyline. And I'm really excited to see how these extra ingredients subtly transform and improve the gameplay experience!
Change log
Full details of the changes since Alpha 8 can be viewed on the website.
Join the community
To discuss the game with fellow fans and get free early access to bleeding-edge builds, join the Discord. Alternatively sign-up to the low-volume newsletter to be notified of key updates and new releases.
Alpha 8 available
This is a pretty big milestone, as with the wide range of new features added, Relic Space is now more or less feature-complete, though plenty of incremental improvements are still expected. More importantly, the new content and other improvements take the game past am important complexity threshold, making it properly fun to play - though of course still in a limited way, as there's still masses more content to add.
As described in more detail in the last interim update the major new features include:
- Saving and Loading
- Shipyard module for buying new ships
- Overhauled tech tree
- Faction event timeline
- Resource Trading overhaul
- New main faction: the Circle
But that's not all - here's the new content added since that update was posted:
A new multi-part story/tutorial mission
The tutorial has been extended with an all-new multi-part mission to include interactions with other factions. In the course of this mission you'll come face to face with one of two brand new minor factions, the Naveen, who use neural interfaces to pilot living ships called the Kreen.
In addition the NPC reputation mechanics have been improved so that randomised missions now help you progress with the main storyline too, resulting in a highly replayable mixture of missions.
New ships for each faction
All factions, including the new ones, now have new distinctive ship types, with a massive 14 new ship types added in total (though there's still a lot more to come!) This goes along with a major rebalancing of all ship stats to make for a challenging mix of combat situations.
Faction territory mechanics
Faction territories are a whole new game mechanic where factions claim ownership of particular parts of the map, based on the proximity and development levels of space stations. Since you are more likely to ambushed outside friendly territories, and enemy ships tend not to follow you inside your territory, this adds a welcome variety to the layout of each sector, as well as creating new tactical considerations.
New equipment and quality levels
While the new tech tree allows 7 new utility types to be unlocked through researching relics, there are also 3 new core (engine and generator) equipment types. Not to mention the fact that each equipment type now comes in 3 different 'quality' levels, all of which can be found in station equipment stores among other places.
New Trailer
..and there's also a brand new gameplay trailer that shows many of the new features in action, in case you prefer to learn more about the current state of the game in that way:
[previewyoutube="XJbK32rh54A;full"]
As usual, the full list of changes can be viewed on the website.
Join the community
To help test the new Alpha and be among the first to play Relic Space, join the Discord for access instructions, or sign-up to the newsletter for access to future releases.
Dev Update: Saving, Shipyard and More
New features since Alpha 7 include:
SAVING AND LOADING
This is of course quite a big deal from a technical point of view, and also really significant from a gameplay perspective, allowing more lengthy and in depth runs.
SHIPYARD MODULE
A big new area in terms of both game mechanics and content is the new shipyard module, which allows you to unlock and board completely new ship classes (which have also been added). The UI also clearly displays the key stats differentiating each ship so you can assess their strengths and weaknesses.
TECH TREE
The tech tree was due for an overhaul, and is now both more visually appealing and contains a lot more actual techs. In Relic Space you first need to acquire relics which unlocks research options, and the layout reflects that.
EVENT TIMELINE
Faction events now have a whole new UI panel to themselves, to allow the player to keep track of, and check information about, events that have occurred. You can now look back to see which sector a faction contructed a station module in, and then travel there to see it for yourself.
RESOURCE TRADING
Resource trading has been overhauled. While the underlying economics model is not yet complete, random variation in prices has been added meaning trading is now a viable way of earning some much-needed extra credits. Along with this the interface has been improved to more easily allow selection of the amount of goods you wish to buy or sell.
NEW FACTION: CIRCLE
There's a whole new faction in the game: the Circle consists of posthumans whose enhancements are primarily mental, including implants that allow forms of telepathy and telekinesis. It's a neutral faction and work is in progress to allow interesting player interactions with them, including new missions.
