Dev Log: Every Drop Tells a Story
Hey everyone, This one covers roughly two weeks of work. A lot landed, so I will keep each section tight. The headline: weapons now roll with proper rarity tiers, and that one change made every pickup feel different.
What's Been Happening
Weapons roll with rarity now. Every weapon drop in the game is individually rolled with a quality level: Common, Rare, Epic, or Legendary. This is the biggest system change in weeks and it transforms how pickups feel. A Common weapon lands in the lower half of its stat ranges. A Rare pushes into the upper quarter on damage or fire rate. An Epic is guaranteed top-tier stats. A Legendary maxes everything out: damage, fire rate, number of targets, and it always rolls with two affixes. You can see the rarity at a glance because item names, icons, and badges are all color-coded (silver for Common, blue for Rare, purple for Epic, gold for Legendary). The same weapon type can show up five times in a run and feel different every time depending on what rolled. Boss kills guarantee at least Rare quality, so big fights always feel rewarding. Weapons split into two roles. Alongside the rarity system, every weapon now has a defined role: Rapid or Power. Rapid weapons are your primary shooters (bound to right trigger), Power weapons are your heavy hitters (bound to left trigger). You cannot put a slow cannon in your primary fire slot anymore. The pickup screen now shows you the stats that actually matter for each role, and every weapon got a new icon with proper shading so the loadout and shop screens read clearly. Declining a drop is now a real decision. The old SKIP button on item pickups is gone. In its place: Convert to Energy. When you pass on a drop, you get energy scaled by what you turned down. A Common weapon gives 50, a Legendary gives 1000. Non-weapon items scale by tier instead. Press B to fast-convert without navigating the menu. The energy banks when you dock and wipes on death. It means every unwanted drop is still worth something, and higher rarity items you cannot use become a meaningful resource choice rather than dead air. The intro is a cinematic arrival. When you enter an area, the screen fills with warp streaks in that zone's color palette instead of asteroids drifting past. At the end, the streaks slow down and morph one-to-one into the parallax background asteroids, so it looks like you are dropping out of warp rather than the effect cutting off. The camera eases in and out now instead of moving at constant speed, the HUD stays hidden until the moment Luna brings your shield online, and the sun reveals itself above you as you take control. The whole thing feels like a proper scene transition instead of a loading gap. Every area has its own combat identity. The Junkyard now has Shrouds mixed into its gauntlet encounters, and the Warden boss fight opens with a three-Shroud honor guard you deal with before the real fight begins. The Ice Fields got Fighters showing up in tight formation at the finale. The Belt has Heavy Mites on return visits: bigger, slower, much harder to kill, and they drop significantly better loot. Each zone is starting to surprise you with something the others do not have. Enemies hit with appropriate weight. Every enemy in the game used to deal exactly one point of damage. That is no longer the case. Tougher enemies hit harder, lighter ones hit lighter. The Warden's tractor grab does the two hull points it was always supposed to. Heavy Mites deal two on contact. This makes threat assessment meaningful instead of cosmetic. The hub got a rework. The Cradle (your home base) now has its portals spread across a wide arc above the dock instead of clustered around you. You fly to your chosen destination deliberately, guided by radar markers. There is a fixed arrival point, a respawn pad for when your ship goes down, and Luna has things to say the first time you visit each landmark. The upgrade shop is now called The Bazaar. A deep performance pass shipped. Saves now happen in the background without freezing the game. The post-intro hitch on Steam Deck (640+ milliseconds) is gone. Item pickups no longer cause frame drops. A memory leak that stacked old shield visuals on the player over a session was cleaned up. Asteroids, ice chunks, and enemies all share materials properly now, so GPU batching works the way it should. Dense encounters in the Belt and Ice Fields run noticeably smoother, especially on integrated graphics and Steam Deck.
A Note on Where We Are
EverDarkly: Beloved is in very active early development. I rebuild systems after playtests, rebalance encounters when the data says something is off, and sometimes replace entire mechanics when I find something that works better. That is what solo development looks like on an ambitious game. What you are seeing right now is the foundation getting strong enough to build on confidently. The core systems are in a solid place. The content and narrative still have a long road ahead, and what exists today will keep changing as I push the game toward what it needs to be. I would rather take the time than rush it.
What's Next
The Belt and Ice Fields still need proper boss encounters on par with what the Warden has become. I am also preparing to get the game into the hands of the first external testers, which means a polish pass on the early flow and making sure the experience holds up when someone other than me is flying the ship. Thanks for sticking with me. Jobe / Studio Serotina