First things first - we shipped a rather buggy build yesterday. I apologize to everyone who was affected.
Lighthouse, DLC, and some other nodes that care about adjacency were all bugged. Transition to the 2nd Depth was also broken.
It's fixed now, and we'll make some adjustments to our update approach. Once again, I apologize to anyone who had to listen to Lighthouse procs every 2 seconds.
Speaking of a better release process - there are some new Cores now available in the _dev branch, plus a few new aspects and nodes. They might be buggy and they are certainly unbalanced, but someone has to play them anyway. That's what love is. If you have some extra of it to share, you can join us in the _dev branch by going to Steam Library -> NET.CRAWL (right click) -> Properties -> Betas -> _dev.
By the way, even if you're a regular player and have thoughts about the game literally anything you have to say might be helpful. We are currently making many decisions regarding the game's structure and difficulty, and it's better to hear feedback before the results of these decisions have solidified.
I'm obsolete_one on Discord, our group invite is https://discord.gg/ttvM95seuk, and you can always post on Steam forums or reddit.
Regarding the road to 1.0, I've tried to gather some very high-level thoughts in the public Trello board. It's very basic and there are no dates. It's scary enough even without the dates.
My personal goal currently is to find the right Cores to finalize the game's structure. We currently have 3 Depth-1 bosses (Barry, <9> and Blanche) and a single Depth-2 boss (SPLT). They are fine for the most part, but a good player can clear them all in less than 10 hours and that's concerning.
I think we should strive for 5 or 6 Depth-1 bosses, 2 or 3 Depth-2 bosses, and one final fat Depth-3 boss. That should create a structure where "beating" the game will take at least 15 hours.
It's not that I care about play hours too much personally. But it's a relevant metric, and the game would benefit a lot from having more late-game stuff. Perhaps focusing on late-game stuff is the only way to figure out the final game structure for 1.0.
Overall, the game is in a solid spot. We had a very humble EA release and somehow people keep calling it a "small puzzle game" in the reviews, but there are some signs of life, and it's relatively clear how to make the game better from here. I've got to go do just that.
Thanks for reading.
- 18.03.2026 - HOTFIX (PC+Mac)
Fixed
- most of adjacency related nodes (lighthouse, dlc etc);
- start of the 2nd Depth run;
- 17.03.2026 - RELEASE + DEV
Changed
- Multijack(aspect): renamed to Multicharger, added "Nodes with Charged get +1 to their Charged value.";
- Citadel(system node): Multiuse replaced with Charged that triggers on EOT, Solid added;
- Citadel+: Express removed;
- Pay to win(system node): Limited added to base;
- Doppler Shift(aspect) disabled (too OP);
Fixed
- goals missing;
- Chip(core): Missing trigger in the description;
- Gravitum(wip core) in the deep run;
- several minor things;
(DEV)
Added
- Max difficulty in the most basic form;
- some wip cores and aspects;