I would like to introduce you to Case Yellow Labs, who are creating Out of Orbit, another solo-dev project. We have teamed up to bring you a bundle featuring both SpaceSlog and Out of Orbit over on Steam.
Get 10% off the bundle, or 10% off the game you do not already own.
Design, build, or pirate spaceships. Build bases on planets. Explore endless randomly generated universes, travel through black holes, command your crew, survive cosmic events, collect and trade materials, battle epic bosses, and much more. The sky is the limit, literally!
SpaceSlog
A hardcore spaceship building colony survival sim. Build and expand your ship whilst exploring an events-driven, procedurally generated universe. Scavenge or trade for supplies, or research and build the tech required to thrive. Do whatever it takes to keep your crew alive and keep insanity at bay.
Hey everyone, Today I’m releasing Alpha 15. I was going to release this as an update to Alpha 14 but bumped it due to the amount of balance and refactoring changes. Meaning, this update may play quite a bit different to previous builds. Don’t forget you can still play any previous builds on Steam by going to properties > game versions.
As usual, it’s extremely helpful reporting your issues either on the discussions on Steam, our forums or our discord. This helps me to help you in the best and quickest way possible and also ensures your suggestions, balance issues, bugs or anything else you have to say actually gets correctly addressed.
New Items
Add depleted uranium resource.
Add depleted uranium refining recipe.
Improvements
Add filthy ship thought.
Major refactoring done to buildings and blueprints.
Add new incident – Crew rescue.
Rename the powered Airlock door to Automatic Airlock door.
Update zone highlight.
Ensure other blueprints can be placed over cable and ducting.
Change fuel type to Deuterium.
Carbonaceous asteroids need to be mined to gain materials which can be refined inside a refinery to create liquid Deuterium fuel cells.
Ensure main setup menus on game start reset if going back to the main menu.
Add scattered items to scenario json files.
Balance
Increase the amount of heat removed by heat extractors.
Slightly adjust research and split out the Electric Cooker.
An injury does not always have to be tended before it will stop bleeding. Though someone can still bleed out before that happens.
Wounds can become old without needing to be tended.
Increase heal rate of all beds.
Wounds will also heal when not resting, just much slower.
Increase time of day by almost 25%.
Adjusted days per month and year to account for the new length of days.
Fixes
Fixed: Memory leak with zone textures.
Fixed: Issues with captain appearance selection.
Fixed: Various text issues.
Fixed: Widget hotkeys could fail to work.
Fixed: Recipe crafting amounts were not always counting correctly.
Fixed: Healing did not use the healing skill correctly.
Fixed: Custom pawns could still sometimes show up more than once.
Fixed: Would not always make it clear if a pawn was in a mental break or not.
Today we have released Alpha 14 of SpaceSlog onto all platforms. You can read more about this update below.
Research
I’ve heard you, and we now have research in the game. This is just the first section of research and much more will be added over time. We have plans for dissection and analysis stations too, in order to add more variations and new ways to research.
Captain Creation
You can now change the appearance of your captain when starting a new game.
Hotkeys
It seems like quite a small thing, but hotkeys have been another one of those QoL features a lot of people have asked for. So I have worked on adding more of these for this update too. Please let me know if there are more missing you would like to see.
New Items
Added research (Only those with Science skill can perform research).
Added research menu.
Added various types of research (More will continue to be added).
Manual airlock door.
Research station.
A new menu to choose the appearance of your captain.
Improvements
Ensure the captain always starts selected.
Update ship export text.
Add warnings to show dev mode and mods disable achievements.
Various performance improvements.
Add a lesson explaining the transponders battery backup.
Improvements to various buttons/menus.
Add lesson for when the thrusters first start.
Improve arrow UI icons.
Various improvements to the tutorial.
Improved some text for the captain creation to explain how they relate to the game more.
Update engine version.
Localise various missing texts.
Improve building menu icon display.
Improve performance of pawn history by limiting the amount of history text saved/shown.
Today marks the first major update for SpaceSlog since it’s Steam early access release, in which I have tried to focus on QoL, balance and reported issues. You can see the full changelog below.
I hope you have all been enjoying yourselves out there in the Slog! And for those that have not, I hope this update makes it a little easier for you.
As usual please continue to report any issues or suggestions you may have. I will continue to try and release an update every 3(ish) months depending on the amount and complexity of the content being worked on.
We are also part of best indie games summer showcase for the next week over on Steam, where we are currently running a 10% discount.
New items
Added an animal sleeping spot.
Added a refinery.
Turn Uranium into Fuel Cells.
Added an electric cooker.
Cook various packaged meals.
Turn raw meat into cooked meat.
Added tasty packaged meals.
Add Uranium asteroids. These will start to show after travelling a certain distance.
Improvements
Improved orders UI.
Added ‘forever‘ and ‘until you have‘ options.
Added the ability to set priorities.
Change the amount directly on the orders ticket.
Changed the ore colours for ice asteroids.
Pressing ESC on the start menus will now take you to the previous menu rather than close them all.
The game will now detect if you are using a controller or mouse and keyboard and react accordingly.
Added a hint alert that will show if your ships temperature is too high.
Added a hint alert for when your ship has no oxygen.
Notifications for points of interest when travelling will now make a sound to alert the player.
Doubled the time all notifications will show within the menu.
Add ate raw food negative thought.
Add ate tasty meal thought.
Make the rats a little larger visually so they are easier to spot.
Ship mass is now affected by resources again.
Updates to various texts.
Update/improve trade price display text.
Localised more text.
Add support for multiple recipe outputs.
Alloys are now used for various equipment.
Updated textures of alloys.
Update all dyes where used as a secondary material.
Add a crew bar at the bottom of the screen to show all crew.
Add a toggle in the options menu to show/hide the crew bar.
Noted in the pawn randomise popup that you cannot randomise your captain.
Switched around adulthood options when creating a captain so loner is no longer the default.
Expose more data to JSON.
Implement pawn carry capacity.
Various optimisations/improvements to pawn behaviours.
They will be less likely to get stuck on walls or box themselves in.
They will now gather as many materials as they can carry and supply multiple prefabs.
They will also do the same when hauling and sowing.
If your pawn is commanded, you can now override certain situations, like not being able to go where they cannot breath.
Adjust the sound of the speed buttons to be less obnoxious.
Transfer ventilators can now work externally (venting to space).
Improvements to atmosphere (gas and temperature) equalisations between rooms and to space.
Gasses will now correctly leak through closed internal doors depending on the materials they are made out of.
Add any new custom pawns.
Fires no longer cast shadows (optimisation).
Adjust/improve how lighting works.
Update various menus to display other language text better.
Removed error spam when using an unfinished language.
Show more information about each item on the items information menu.
Split nutrition into hydration and nutrition to make it clearer what the item replenishes. (Shown on the info menu)
Added options to change the temperature display to Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvins.
Improve camera centering onto planets from the planet menu.
Balance
Increased the amount of starting med kits when choosing Resourcefulness option.
Added some starting med kits when choosing Wastefulness option.
Slaughtering now increases animal skill.
Brewing speed is now affected by cooking skill.
Slightly reduced hours to sleep for humans.
Added a minimum amount to bribes so it can never be 0.
Failed bribe attempts will reduce your relations with that faction. (Note: Diplomacy will be revamped in a future update)
Bruises no longer cause bleeding.
Rats now also drop leather.
Increased the amount of leather that drops overall.
Increased leather requirements for some buildings.
Rebalanced mass for various resources.
Adjusted mass of various other items.
Adjust weapon cooldown calculations to account for the extra mass.
Various equipment updates.
All pawns will now suffocate much more quickly.
Split up passing star incidents so you are less likely to pass extremely hot stars near the start of the game.
Reduce Debris Titanium drop by 1.
Mods
The workshop uploader will now check a mod folder with the same name as the mod named in mod_info, if it doesn’t find it, it will find any folder containing the correct mod_id.
Update module descriptions to use BBCode.
Mods version code has been updated to show orange if within the same alpha – for caution.
Community Localisation
Add Brazilian Portuguese language – Thanks Lucas559-noob
Updated French translation – Thanks Daneel53
Fixes
Fixed: Saving then reloading would reset some incident timers.
Fixed: Saved games were not showing local times. (Note: This fix will take effect after resaving)
Fixed: Issue with pawn age when reloading a saved game.
Fixed: Planets and stars could change positions after loading a game.
Fixed: Some sounds could incorrectly carry on playing when loading into a new game.
Fixed: Pawns would not always stay aggrod after loading a game.
Fixed: A rare race condition could cause the game to crash when loading a save.
Fixed: Materials would not preserve colour when loading a game.
Fixed: Pressing ESC at the crew selection menu would cause crew to stack up/not reset.
Fixed: Could not force a pawn to sleep in a bed if they already own that room.
Fixed: Various issues when assigning your crew to rooms.
Fixed: Various issues with temperature logic.
Fixed: Text input on the trade menu did not work.
Fixed: You could not trade if your only crew member had 0 skill in social.
Fixed: The trade menu would show even if you have no crew with the required skill.
Fixed: You could still bribe even if you had no crew with the required skill.
Fixed: An error could show when demolishing something that doesn’t contain component classes.
Fixed: Incorrect species information.
Fixed: You could force your crew to eat/drink consumables that are not part of their diet.
Fixed: Pawn inventory weight would keep drastically rising.
Fixed: Encumbrance on the pawn equipment menu would not update correctly.
Fixed: Incorrect colour for orange dye.
Fixed: Pawns could construct buildings even if they do not have the correct skill requirements.
Fixed: Pawns could sometimes finish off a creature without it being collapsed.
Fixed: A characters hair would not update on the character panel when selected and removing their helmet.
Fixed: Issues with rotating prefabs of a certain size.
Fixed: Transfer vents could transfer into walls.
Fixed: Error when loading a language with no tips translated.
Fixed: Gas display was incorrect on the ship systems menu.
Fixed: Showing two forced options for drink and eat for items that satisfy both.
Fixed: Text would not start at the bottom of the screen on the credits menu.
Fixed: Regression with power circuits where disconnected items would not always turn off correctly.
Fixed: Would not correctly show the no power indicator if the building was not connected to the grid.
Fixed: Some sounds would incorrectly play when the game is paused.
Fixed: A pawn on rare occasions could teleport to a bed.
Fixed: Facing issues when sitting at chairs.
Fixed: Equipment menu would not update carried item amount when open.
Fixed: Spawned custom pawns would not persist through saves.
Fixed: Custom pawns could sometimes get random facial hair.
Fixed: Not all Pawn GUI visuals would update when a pawns equipment had changed.
Fixed: Various issues with resolution when starting the game.
Fixed: Commanded button state would not always update if the pawn was selected and the command option had changed externally.
Its been a little over a week since we launched into early access here, so I want to share a few numbers and some information regarding our next update. We sold roughly 800 copies with a refund rate of around 11%. Whilst we have sold much less than I had hoped, I’m confident with more updates, more people will decide to jump in and play. Our refund rate is around average for an early access title and actually much lower than average for this particular genre. This tells me those that have purchased the game are relatively happy with it, or understanding of its current release state. source
I’ve seen the reviews stating there is nothing in the game, or this seems more of a tech demo. I do feel that’s a bit of an unfair representation and may be due to a lack of onboarding, which I will continue to work on and improve in order to show what content we do have.
Of course, we did only release into early access here Friday, meaning there will be much less content than other similar titles in the same genre. So please do keep this in mind when deciding to buy this game or not.
Our next update
I have already released a couple of smaller updates and I’m now working on the next larger update. I will try and prioritise the things asked for the most, which currently includes cooking, fuel production and crafting.
Lots of people have also been posting various bugs and issues which I am also working on fixing. This is the first time a large amount of people have played the game, so naturally there will be lots of extra issues that I or the other testers have not found leading up to this point. So please be patient whilst I try and get through them all. I am only one person and there is only so much I can do at a time.
I will be opening the experimental branch here within the next couple of days for people to play on and test if they wish to do so. Though keep in mind, there may be bugs and issues which could ruin saves etc. You can find more info about this over on our Discord.
Community Updates
Amazingly we already have a few mods in the Steam workshop!
User Kolcio138 has created a Healwort mod:
Grow and harvest the Healwort plant which can be used to heal your crew’s injuries
