We wanted to provide a quick update on the upcoming space simulation game, Starmancer. Ominux have been hard at work on developing the game, and Alpha backers have been receiving regular Steam updates throughout the year and providing the team with valuable feedback to make Starmancer the best it can possibly be!
The Steam Demo event in June this year was the first chance for non-backers to get their hands on a slice of the action. The demo gave players 60 minutes to create and manage a ship with most of the game’s systems open to explore (as deeply as you can within an hour). Having a rush of first time players meant the team got lots of fresh voices coming in, and after reviewing player feedback, the team have decided to make some pretty big and exciting changes!
You can follow all the latest information from the latest DevBlog from the team -- here’s some highlights they’ve shared recently:
New Cosmetics and objects!
Players can now build beautiful green-spaces for their colonists to enjoy when they have some time off from their duties keeping the ship running smoothly! Build a spaceship garden to offer your colonists a peaceful retreat, or create a more natural environment to grow crops in!
In addition to new cosmetics and functional machines, there’s also a fun new method of generating power early in the game - treadmills! Colonists can use these to store electricity inside an attached battery which can then be distributed to the rest of the station. This allows colonists to get a little more directly involved in collecting power as a resource (but don’t worry, you can still build those powerful power generators later game).
Ship Upgrades
Sending your colonists on missions just became a whole lot more interesting! In addition to some exciting map upgrades, players can now upgrade their ships with improvements such as increased capacity and a mining drill to get the most out of their missions!
This allows ships to have a lot more options and character - the appearance of your ship will also change with each new upgrade so you can see it develop!
Ego level & upgrades
Colonists now have an attribute called Ego Level. Every colonist starts a level 1—drone. A drone doesn’t care about anything. If it eats Biowaste and sleeps on the floor forever—it doesn’t care.
As colonists level to higher ego levels, they desire increasingly better station conditions. If a high level colonist sees a dead body, they’ll have a much more severe reaction than a low level colonist.
To unlock each level colonists must meet unique requirements, like “Sleep in a bed”. The intent is to force the player to become familiar with game mechanics more gradually before survival becomes more complicated. The game would direct you to first establish that you can place a bed, and then you can start to focus about growing crops. (You can still grow crops before placing a bed, but you won’t be morale penalized for it).
At every level, you can select 1 permanent upgrade for your colonist, like: reduced hunger, increased sell prices, and decreased fight chance. They’ll also gain random attributes as they level up which could change how they like to work or interact socially.
Galaxy and Starmap updates
Players can now travel between Star Systems, using Star Fuel. Each Star System is randomly generated, but it permanently has whatever is inside it in game. Some systems are better than others. If you’re looking for a good seed, just travel around until you find one.
New pop-up window for traveling to distant stars and objects
There are a few different types of star systems, each with a unique spawn pool. Infested Star Systems have a way higher count of Infested Stations, for example.
Inside each star on the galaxy map is the system’s starmap. This shows all the local objects and planets that a station ship can travel to. Once a station has moved into a system colonists can collect resources using ship missions.
The background color in both the Starmap and the skybox is based on the system star’s color.
A blue star solar system
The team is next planning to move into a beta for early backers, and after that will be the public release! It’s being very actively worked on, and approaching readiness - we can’t wait to share more in 2021!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062000/Starmancer/
To keep up to date with the latest news for Starmancer you can check out the team on twitter, the game’s devblog, or the official discord channel!