Hello Cosmorists!
It's been almost a full year since I last talked about what I was working on. That's on me.
Side tangents
Lack of action
I worked on the game so infrequently lately that in some ways, I feel out of touch. Working on the same game for multiple years (since at least 2022), and having no clue what the game should be like aside from being a survival-crafting game and updating based on vibes, was not a sustainable game development loop. I focused on other things unrelated to game development most of the time lately, even though there's a smolder within me telling me to keep going because it's still in Early Access and not done yet. Progress was still ongoing, but it was very slow. It's as if I've "moved on" to something else.
That's why the game has felt rather neglected for the past year. It's also why the Discord server doesn't work sometimes because I gotta admit, I'm not familiar with using Discord all that well let alone how to run and maintain a server, hence, broken links. That neglect is the same reason for why the Wiki is outdated and most of it was last updated in 2023-24, or why the YouTube channel hasn't had a new video in over a year.
Even though it's been nearly a year since I last updated the game, I still worked on update 0.2 in the background, but at a roughly 10x slower rate than before.
Uncertainty over the direction
Honestly, even I had no clue what the game's direction should be aside from a vague end goal in space with a tech theme and that this will "come later". A lot of what I added was based on vibes in the moment, not a design document. I jumped right into developing the game without even considering a design document. Something I've never done prior.
I pretty much create a vague list of what I want to add, add a few of them from the list there, then never bother to touch it again. It lacks any sense of structure. The game feels wide, but sparse, and stretched thin at times.
Progress teasers
Even with that uncertainty, the one thing I did promise over a year ago, which is a space realm, has finally been done. Here's a screenshot I took 4 months ago:
At the moment, you can now place any tile there except for cave entrances (intentional design), and those spacecraft are so far the only enemies. There's one space realm at the moment. The beginning asteroids. The physics is also different, as the space realm has no friction. Once you move, you move at the same speed until you bounce off the edge.
And here's one screenshot from this month, August 2026:
Here, asteroids and drops from these spacecraft enemies are the foundational progression for the space realm instead of tiles with resources. There are no tiles so far except the ones the player places down.
Items
Each ore type will have a scrap equivalent. Smelting 15 of them gives 1 / 4 of an ingot. It will soon be possible to recycle your leftover copper or tin or other ore-based tools into hundreds of units of scrap, with less scrap being returned the lower the durability. That's what is in the screenshot.
Aside from that, a few new machines, toolsets, and other resources have been added since.
One small change is that "Iron-Steel" will be renamed to simply "Steel", as the former is already iron-based.
Removing planetary content
After such a long lull as to what I've been doing in development since September 2025 (11 months now), I feel that the game is too bloated and directionless, and stretched too thin. Now I'm deciding that Luna and Aquatica are going to be removed from the game, and the planned migration of Aquatica content to Tierra won't happen. Achievements relating to world exploration beyond Tierra will also be removed. Since these worlds were part of the game since 2023, it's a little sad for me to see planetary exploration go after 3 years.
I'm doing this because I don't want Cosmorists to be in a liminal Early Access state, not knowing when to stop adding content based on vibes in the moment. I'd be in this scope creep loop for years and years with no 1.0 in sight. Removing it is my brake petal to that, and from now on, the space realm will be where I'll focus my space-themed efforts.
I'd much rather have a finished game that's around 5-10 hours long and is fun and meaningful to play with the game throwing occasional surprises and unexpected angles throughout the gameplay loop, than a 30 hour long one that's fun at first, then feels stale after a repetitive gameplay loop of explore → mine new resources → unlock items in the tech tree → upgrade gear → conquer threats in the area → explore, over and over for those 30 hours until the end goal.
It's a drastic change in direction after nearly a year of silence, but one that I think is necessary to avoid excess scope creep, and cut off the repetitive gameplay elements.
As always, for backwards compatibility reasons, existing saves from 0.1.5.1 and older will still be able to explore Luna and Aquatica, but new saves from 0.2 onwards wouldn't be able to explore them. Technically removed for new saves, but in a retired state for existing saves.
Where new content will go from now on
Since I'm deciding to remove Tierra and Aquatica, a lot of the new content that'll be added will go towards smoothing out all the rough parts and making the game denser instead of wider, going all in on concentrating content to Tierra and the newly added space realm, and making the gameplay loop shorter but more satisfying. Instead of adding new major biomes, I add smaller sub-biomes for existing ones and give them a purpose (i.e. a handful of useful resources and unique dangers compared to the main biome) or enriching existing ones. Instead of adding new enemies, I polish out the behavior or add new abilities to existing enemies before I add new ones. Instead of loads of new resources with only one or two uses, I add new uses and incentives for existing resources (i.e. A new gadget with special abilities crafted from those existing resources) and theme many of them on one or a few abilities before adding new ones.
Instead of a linear tool upgrade from Stone → Copper/Tin → Iron → Magtise, I add tool sidegrades with their own advantages and disadvantages to the main upgrade branch to make their incentives situational and have the progression more web-like instead of simply adding more tools beyond Magtise. (i.e. a tool themed on the wilting caves will have poison abilities and higher damage, but be slower to use and be more complicated to craft compared to magtise and be a different branch on the tech tree)
Since Cobalt and Titanium are Aquatica-exclusive resources and are already water-themed, especially Cobalt, with its removal, they're likely gonna go to the space realm asteroids instead and have some kind of ability regarding water on Tierra or maybe a water themed-space realm (i.e. faster water walking speeds and water-themed abilities relating to tiles) instead of removing them altogether.
I did add the space realm for the upcoming update, but this is the only time I'd justify expansion from this point forward. Maybe 3 new realms, each with a clear increase in difficulty and new strategies before the last one is where the end goal might go.
Aside from that, I'm also going with identifying the game's underlying design infrastructure before building on top of it. That infrastructure would be the "design document", where I'll use that to come up with a concrete ruleset for which content should be added, which should be modified, and which should be cut, and having a concrete finish line.
That density over expansion, web-like progression, and shorter duration from early game to end game is my starting infrastructure.
Possible update pace
I'm probably gonna update the game more slowly given the speed deficit, but I'd go with making the updates more deliberate.
Would I do Latest in Cosmorists every month? Likely not given the pace of development has been around 10x slower in this period, but I can see myself doing it much more often than that year of silence, potentially once every month at times, or around once every two or three months.
0.2 release range
Since this update has been in development for over a year now, I'm now considering releasing 0.2 sometime in Fall 2026, likely October or November, maybe late September if progress was made faster than even I expected. I still want to release it before the end of the year, even if the scope is smaller than I hoped a year ago.
I'm still working on the game, and 0.2 is around two-ish months away, but I just wanted to break the year's long silence and give an update as to what progress I made, even though it's slow lately, and the new direction the game is going.