Relentless Expanse · published · build 23745722
Before I start talking about anything else, I first wanted to say that we’re hosting an event on our community discord server to celebrate the 1-Year Anniversary for Cowmera Games! Do you have a map idea that you’ve always wanted in the game? Now’s your chance to add it! Check #announcements for more details: https://discord.com/invite/ZjaBnbDVcU
Now, I’ll have a long and hopefully interesting studio update below, but let’s first talk about the update! For this one, we REALLY wanted to finally fix multiplayer. We know that this has been a long-standing issue for quite a while now, and frankly, despite our best attempts, we really haven’t had the capability to properly address it until recently. That being said, we’ve hunted down dozens of multiplayer-specific bugs, fixed the long-standing lag/desync issues, and overall hopefully made multiplayer perform almost as well as singleplayer! I’m sure that there are some things we missed, but at the bare minimum the multiplayer should be actually enjoyable rather than a broken mess that some people basically couldn’t even play. While we were at it, we also fixed several random singleplayer bugs that we found or were reported! I genuinely hope that all of you enjoy playing the new update with your friends, and we’ll make sure that the next one has some content to go along with it as well!
Since this is the 1-Year Anniversary of our studio, I also thought it’d be fun to bring up some numbers for those that are interested! Since its release, Relentless Expanse has had more than 5,400 people play the game! Of those, we currently have 118 in the discord server, and our largest concurrent player count was 45 players in August of 2025 whenever a streamer tried the game out! …And then trashed on it for breaking instantly whenever he brought 30+ people into a lobby LOL.
Seriously though, as fun and exciting as it’s been to see Relentless Expanse become something that so many people enjoy, we still want to make it better, while also working on other games that can actually help us turn this hobby into a real job. I’ll get into more specific numbers closer to, or maybe after, our next game release, but currently I’m spending just under an average of $1,500/month on our next game. I’m very grateful to be in a position where I’m capable of doing this… but it’s very straining on my finances, so I hope that puts into perspective why I’ve had to slow the updates for Relentless Expanse recently.
But on that note, when am I going to be releasing, or at least teasing, the next game? To be blunt, I have a vague idea, but I’m not entirely sure. Our team can only work VERY part-time due to the limited budget, so progress is steady but slow, and game development in general is a bit unpredictable. For that reason, I’d rather not promise anything or give myself any specific deadlines, but I CAN say that I’m very confident that I’ll at least be able to start teasing the game within the next year, hopefully even by the end of this year! It’s honestly quite an ambitious project for the genre it’s in, so I’m very excited to show it off whenever we feel that it’s ready :D
WAIT, TOO MANY WORDS, I CAN TELL YOU’RE LOSING FOCUS, QUICK DANCE BREAK ♪┏(・o･)┛♪
Anyways, I can also say that the gameplay itself is actually coming along really well! Most of the core mechanics are either already finished or nearly finished, and a lot of the art is progressing smoothly too. The story (yes, it has a story!) is also getting fleshed out very well, and I’m excited to show off the art for some of the characters whenever we get to that stage of development :)
With the first year of Cowmera Games reaching its end, I’m extremely excited for what’s to come! I’ll be teasing the next content update for Relentless Expanse as soon as we know for sure what that will look like and when it’ll happen, and of course I’ll be keeping everyone updated with the next game as soon as we have news on that too! I’ll see you all again next month with another Studio Update, thanks for going on this journey with us!