Peace is the short moment before my ship arrives. Hey everyone,
Thanks to everyone who joined Despot's glorious revenge mission during Steam Next Fest! If you haven't enlisted yet, you're in luck. We're keeping the demo live for now, so there's still time to board the warship and tell us what you think.
So far, 25,389 of puny humans answered the call, with an average flight time of 2 hours and 33 minutes. That's a lot of you willingly joining the war on AI… on the AI’s side. Curious.
It's been really fun watching your reactions over the past week. The demo is currently sitting at 93% positive reviews, and reading through your comments has been one of the highlights of Next Fest for us. It's great to see so many of you enjoying the little details, from the pixel art and animations to Despot's terrible winning personality. And, of course, seeing your "just one more run turning into an all-nighter" stories.
We've also been reading every piece of feedback we could get our hands on, from both the playtest and the demo. A lot of it has already shaped our plans for the full game, so here's a small update on what we're working on!
A better design is always worth a little puny human suffering.
Right now, when you expand your ship, you have to choose from a few preset layouts. We're changing that. In the full game, you'll be able to build space for new modules almost anywhere you want, giving you much more freedom to design your ship and create builds that fit your playstyle.
You'll also be able to move any module or turret you've already built. Of course, it won't be free, and it may take some time for the puny humans to move everything around. This is a roguelike, after all.
If reality disagrees with my calculations, the reality should be updated.
The demo was made to test the core gameplay and see how you responded to the game's main ideas. Since then, we've been working on many changes that will make the full release feel quite different. The changes covered in this article will also have a big impact on the game's overall balance.
For example, on higher difficulty levels, some stars you visit will trigger combat encounters, throwing extra waves of enemies at you while your puny humans struggle to keep the ship's economy running.
Another big change is coming to artifacts and modifiers. In the current demo, most of them focus on resource management and production. In the full game, we'll add many more that affect combat directly, especially those that improve your turrets.
Ruining the Galactic Union’s day, one ship at a time.
As we've already mentioned, the full game will feature 3 different starships, each suited to a different playstyle. There will also be 6 game modes. Two of them are already available in the demo: Classic and Trade. If you've been following our previous devlogs, you may also remember the combat-focused mode is in the works.
Each game mode puts a different spin on the core gameplay. Take Cursed Mode, for example: everything you buy must be paid for with humans instead of tokens. A perfectly reasonable exchange, according to Despot.
Our goal is to give players more variety and fresh challenges that push them to adapt their strategies and approach each run differently.
Even luck should know its place.
Yes, sometimes the RNG gods are particularly cruel, but restarting twelve runs because that one particular module didn't show up isn’t the gameplay loop we want players to have.
One of the bigger changes we're experimenting with is a complete shop rework. Instead of buying individual modules and turrets, you'll purchase themed crates focused on categories like Defense, Humans, or Rare. Think of them as loot boxes, except you don't pay for them with real money. We're not monsters.
Each crate contains multiple recipes from the same category, making it a more cost-effective way to expand your ship than buying them one by one. This should make it easier to work toward a specific strategy while reducing the number of decisions you have to make after every battle, all without making each run feel predictable.
I like my numbers growing and my humans replaceable.
Right now, it isn't always easy to see how your artifacts, modifiers, and modules affect your production. We're improving that by showing all your active bonuses and exactly how much they increase your production speed and resource output.
Because if your economy is collapsing, it should at least be obvious why.
Automation frees puny humans for more important work. Such as dying.
Bioreactor and all other resource converters will have an automation feature, so you won't have to manually assign every puny human to meet their fate. You have better things to do, like conquering the galaxy.
There are plenty of other improvements in the works, but these are some of the biggest changes we wanted to share with you today.
Thanks again for playing, and we'll talk to you soon! Until then, try to keep your crew functional.