Hey everyone, I hope you had an amazing week!
We have many cool updates to talk about today.
-The Early Access launch date will be April 16! We're almost there, after 2 1/2 years of development!
-You will be able to explore depths of more than 2500 meters (8200 feet) on day 1 of the Early Access.
-There will be a lot to do, tons of biomes to explore, a lot of underwater equipment to craft/gather, a lot more shelter upgrades than what you can see in the trailer, etc.
-I also plan to add new content weekly after the Early Access launch, in the same style as the weekly updates I've been doing since making the demo public 4 months ago.
As we are in the final phase of pre–Early Access development, it's time to have a more robust game version system! haha
-0.8.x: The final phase of pre–Early Access updates ( --> We're here now <-- . So this week's update will be 0.8.0 and next week's update will be 0.8.1, and so on)
-0.9.x: Early Access updates (starting on April 16, 2026)
-1.0.x: Full Release
-1.1.x: Important Full Release milestones
-Etc.
-Made the crafting station texture darker
-Turned off shadows for buildings while they are being moved around
-Improved the starting area level design
-Prevented the player from jumping as they step on land while holding the jump key after getting out of the water
-Blocked volumetric clouds from appearing for 1–2 frames when closing the pause menu
-Removed the save menu access from the campfire, as it was an older feature, and saving/loading is now handled through the pause menu
-Removed the in-game FAQ to make sure the latest information is always on the Steam page
-Hard-coded a rule so that schools of fish can't go out of the water, because they really tried to haha
-Fixed a lighting flickering issue
-Fixed a lighting intensity issue after coming back from the pause menu
-Fixed a lighting issue in the future era
-I finalised the level design upgrades for all the Early Access biomes. This is a huge development milestone.
-I upgraded the game trailer a bit again, with a better gathering sequence, more biome variety, etc.
For the next few weeks, I plan to work on upgrading the sea creatures. More on that soon!