v0.3.5: Final playtest update - moving to the demo
Substrate: Emergence Alpha Playtest · published · build 23722707
Hey everyone! First of all, thank you all for playtesting. Your feedback and suggestions have been great, and I am so grateful that so many people have been participating. This is going to be the last update for the playtest, as it will be closing on June 15th and moving to the demo. If you want to continue playing, you'll just have to switch over to the demo. It's the same build, just under a different name, but it will be available perpetually and I will continue to update it regularly until I start working on the full early access release. Unlike traditional demos, this one will not be artificially feature limited, and instead it just won't receive major updates after a certain point. You can download the demo from the store page. I hope that this update will address some of the biggest points of frustration, such as maintenance costs being too punishing, and bacteria being very annoying. Here is the full changelog:
v0.3.5:
* Bacteria rebalanced to reduce the amount of active attention they require. Bacterial blooms are more rare
* Reduced maintenance cost burden so labs can comfortably afford significantly higher cell counts
* Biomarket, contracts, Cryobank, and glossary panels all merged into one "Manage" screen with tabs
* Scaled down culture sizes significantly for improved population dynamics
* Improved plasmodia lifecycle to be more dynamic
* Adjusted mutation rates for improved variety
* Tuned strain classifier to hopefully improve strain coherence. Watching results
* Added substrate brush. Allows for direct modification of the environment
* Substrate nutrient composition is no longer static
* Various Amoeba fixes aimed at making them viable. Previously, Amoeba almost never would appear and wouldn't survive due to various issues
* Increased bacteria base size for visibility
* Increased digestive enzyme mutation rate and reduced enzyme costs
* Reduced hexagon size for New Culture preview. Each hexagon now can only carry one cell at a time
* Testing out different style of contract objectives where they ask for gene combos instead of specific gene stats
* Visual tweaks Thanks again for playtesting and following along with development, and I will see you at Steam Next Fest this Monday!