- Playable Demo player builds now compile with a dedicated Demo-content symbol. The Planet Rescue Centre exposes only the Stratosphere Junk Zapper, Ozone Fabricator, and Surface Water Purifier plus their operating-budget projects; the other healing item acquisition and placement paths are unavailable, and the Dust-powered Space Engine Kit's research, fabrication, inventory, installation, and return-home implementation are absent from the Demo compile while Full Game builds remain unchanged.
- The Playable Demo development notice now includes a clickable Steam Community discussion link that opens in the player's default browser.
- Starting a new Full Game save now opens a family-character carousel before launch. Choose Tovan, Mira, Luma, or Niko, give the selected member a custom name, and begin with their matching uninstalled starter package: Tovan receives a Pull Field, Mira a Push Field, Luma a Grab Field, and Niko both a Dust Dronie and the Pull Field needed to reposition placeables before buying a Tractor Beam. Each choice also grants one lightweight run-wide ability: Tovan improves ship tractor range and speed, Mira doubles cargo-pod base capacity, Luma increases meteor/comet destruction dust, and Niko speeds up Dust Dronies. The selection is saved with the slot and updates that member's family dialogue where it appears; its dedicated screen pauses title-scene activity, opens ready for name typing, keeps an emptied name field available for retyping, resets the draft when switching family members, and adds animated neon framing, glimmers, synchronized carousel-position accents, focus glow, and purple arrival smoke. The complete selection screen, including its biographies and ability summaries, is localized across all 30 supported languages while safely inserting the player's chosen name into each localized biography.
- The scrolling section headings inside the title-screen Game Credits, including Game Design & Development, Art & Visuals, Music & Audio, Writing & Localization, and Special Thanks, are now localized across all 30 supported languages and refresh immediately when the active language changes.
- Cycling the family-character carousel now plays a dedicated swoosh, dragging in its name field no longer raises a missing text-viewport error, and localized titles and ability details remain fully visible with taller CJK fonts.
- Longer localized Story Event dialogue now grows its speech bubble only when needed, while short lines keep their compact presentation. News Flash articles similarly gain content-driven height and a readable minimum font, and the localized NEWS masthead now resizes cleanly for longer languages.
- Debt readouts, Alien Trader ship controls, and Trading Outpost headers and filters now reserve enough space for long localized text, taller CJK and Thai font metrics, and large numeric values.
- Ship Bridge lifetime statistics now reserve enough horizontal space for long localized labels, multi-part played-time values, and large totals without reducing their normal text size.
- Area 2 build, research, Finance, Marketing, and Planet Rescue interfaces now reserve readable space for long localized descriptions, project categories, levels, statuses, funding details, and output values while keeping compact content compact.
- The SuperDust Buying Office and Processing Plant, normal and Dust Rush Pause menus, and the Dust Rush leaderboard now reserve enough space for long localized costs, boost summaries, headings, and rank labels across taller CJK, Thai, and Greek font metrics. The repeatable localized UI Play Mode audit now covers these surfaces with representative large values and leaderboard entries, locks itself to 1920x1080, and verifies nineteen production scenarios across eleven pressure-test languages.
- The Space Port Trader's first shuttle gift no longer includes a Tractor Beam and omits every Push, Pull, or Grab Field already supplied in the selected starter package. Every profile must therefore buy its first beam; Niko starts strongly with both his Dronie and Pull Field, then receives only the miner kit, Push Field, and Grab Field from the welcome shuttle.
- The Config screen's shortcut list now supports an optional controller button alongside every standard keyboard binding. Config rows show both active assignments as `keyboard / controller`, while the in-game slide-out shortcut HUD combines the keyboard label with the matching colored Xbox button glyph. Keyboard controls remain intact, occupied core cursor/click/pan/zoom controls are protected from accidental double actions, and assigning a controller button already used by another shortcut transfers it to the newly selected shortcut. New profiles use the accepted controller defaults of Y for Cancel/Pause, LT for Inventory, and LB for the Space Trader.
- Selecting a Pull, Push, Grab, or Merge Field from inventory now guides the mouse or controller cursor directly to the ship's force-field antenna even when no field is installed yet. These fixed ship installations are the deliberate exception to the rule that freely positioned placeables do not move the cursor automatically.
- Dialogue and window prompts now follow the active pointer source. Story events and the opening narrative replace their Space prompt with the currently mapped Xbox Primary Click glyph, while shared Esc close tabs show the currently mapped Cancel/Pause glyph; moving the physical mouse restores the original keyboard prompt. The reusable Xbox glyph vocabulary covers every remappable digital controller control, refreshes immediately after remapping, and uses compact context-specific sizing so both dialogue and close-tab glyphs fit cleanly.
- News Flash articles now honour Escape or the mapped controller Cancel/Pause button as the lowest-priority close action: another open window or interface closes first, while an unobstructed press dismisses only the newest active article.
- Controller scrolling in ordinary in-game windows is now one-thirtieth of the Config screen's direct scroll rate while still following the same Menu Scroll Speed setting, half of its previous in-game rate. uGUI pointer ownership is exclusive in both directions: controller mode admits only the virtual mouse and keyboard, while physical-mouse mode admits only the native mouse and keyboard. This prevents Pause buttons from ghost-highlighting under controller input and stops the hidden virtual mouse from retaining menu authority after physical takeover; each switch also clears uGUI's cached pointer state. The Pause menu clears its keyboard-style default selection in controller mode and lets the exact button under the controller cursor win over an overlapping pause/close shortcut.
- The controller Primary Click world dispatcher now persists through the title-to-game scene reload, allowing A to reach placed equipment, Space Pirates, the ship Control Room, and other world objects throughout gameplay. Holding A and moving the cursor retains normal placed-equipment reposition and exclusion-zone guidance; authored windows and real UI controls still take pointer priority, decorative HUD graphics do not consume world input, and dialogue A presses remain isolated from the world.
- Disconnecting the actively used controller during gameplay now pauses the game with a clear recovery notice. Reconnecting updates the notice without resuming automatically, while Continue deliberately returns to play with either the restored controller or mouse and keyboard.
- Controller-opened family-name and trading-station search fields now use Steam's controller-friendly on-screen text entry: Big Picture receives its callback dialog, while floating-keyboard-capable Steam environments such as Steam Deck receive the field-positioned keyboard. Ordinary keyboard and mouse editing remains unchanged.
- The Space Taxi launch sound now stops immediately when advancing beyond or skipping the Taxi Departure scene in the opening cutscene.
- Full Game runs can now build a fleet of up to six Friendly Alien Miners. Buying the visiting Alien Trader Ship keeps that ship under independent player control and allows a differently coloured trader to visit later under the same event and shop rules; each repeat purchase costs five times the previous ship, and visits stop once all six are owned. Dust Rush keeps its existing single-ship purchase rule.
- The Automated Space Dust Stringer's Tractor Beam upgrade now lets it latch tier 1, 2, and 3 dust directly into its carried strings.
- Clean-dust sales now stop adding Planet Health at 75% until every available Planetary Healing item is installed, preventing dust-only completion; skipped health is not recovered when sales later resume.
- Once a Space Pirate wave takes damage, clicking its hostile Pirates now fires the ship's installed force-field antenna beam instead of opening trade; each new undamaged wave keeps normal Pirate interaction. Successful force-field shots against Pirates, meteors, and comets also create a half-second combat-focus window that hides equipment stats and prevents accidental placeable configuration, repositioning, or selection without interrupting rapid fire.