A lot has happened since our last update in July. Tomi has been hard at work expanding Project Enceladus, creating new things and reworking some old ones, and today we'd love to share some of the progress that's been made across level design, puzzle systems, and gameplay flow.
The modular level-building workflow has evolved significantly. New rooms now feature more verticality and layered layouts, enabling more interesting movement-based logic puzzles and platformer-like challenges to be created.
One of the biggest additions that's been implemented is a dual-character mechanic: the player can now switch out of the protagonist's first-person perspective to control a small, autonomous drone.
The drone can fly, access unreachable areas, activate hidden switches, and uncover secrets. This system opens up fresh puzzle designs and narrative moments, and to be honest, developing and testing this feature was really fun.
A new temperature system has also been introduced to shape puzzle logic and exploration.
These dynamic hot and cold zones affect both character performance and environmental interaction. Players can deploy mobile control units to normalize extreme conditions and even fuse them with static emitters to expand their coverage. It's not just a visual gimmick, as frost, fogging, and visor feedback all add depth and immersion to the simulation.
This is actually the second design pass on the mechanic. The goal was to make it interesting and novel without adding unnecessary complexity. The result now feels intuitive and rewarding.
Looking back to this year's spring and thinking about the rush to finish a demo for Megagrant, it always felt like with more time, things could really be better. So Tomi revisited those parts of development, hunted down bugs that have haunted the project since then, performed some serious optimizations, and gave the Prologue levels a more polished look. Look!
Changes have also been made to how players access hidden story content. Earlier versions of the game locked off lore-rich areas behind quick-time event doors, but after some playtesting revealed mixed feedback, these were completely redesigned. Level segments now have hidden keys tucked away in puzzles and off-path areas. This encourages exploration and adds a satisfying reward loop for players who take the time to investigate every corner.
Thanks again for following the development of Project Enceladus. If you haven't already, wishlist the game on Steam to get notified about updates and the release!
Thanks for reading, and for being part of this journey!
– The Team