Hey everyone! It's been a little quiet here lately because I've been working on a demo update ahead of Zenith Expanse's Early Access launch. The update is now available and addresses many of the issues you raised after Steam Next Fest. I won't pretend the demo's reception was easy to take. Your reviews, Discord messages, and a video covering the game helped me understand what was getting in the way of your experience. I rolled up my sleeves and got to work on the fixes. Thank you to everyone who took the time to share their experiences. Here are the biggest changes in this update:
Clearer UI and easier order assignment. I've changed the heading font and fixed overlapping panels and clipped text at larger UI scales. The game also remembers your most recently selected crew members when assigning orders during the current session.
Improved expeditions and crew recovery. I've reworked route planning and expedition time estimates, improved supply preparation and return journeys, and fixed Day Off recovery rates and errors in calorie calculations.
Save and load fixes. I've addressed bugs that caused loot left on the ground to disappear, character status effects to be lost, ship order queues to stop, and settlement construction progress to reset after loading.
Zenith Expanse launches in Early Access on September 30. The regular price will be $19.99 USD, with a launch price of $15.99 USD for the first week. If you played during Next Fest, I'd love for you to give the demo another try. Let me know whether the changes improve your experience and what still needs work. If you're new to Zenith Expanse, the demo is a chance to try the game before launch. You'll find the detailed changelog below.
Interface and Navigation
Replaced the previous heading font with Rajdhani SemiBold to improve readability across menus and panels.
Improved Inventory, Trading, and bottom menu layouts at larger text sizes and UI scales. Buttons no longer overlap the Crew & ships controls, and longer menus can be scrolled horizontally.
Fixed clipping of the clock, HUD indicators, and text and buttons on terrain cards.
Improved planet labels: ships now have a separate row, and settlement icons stay together with their counts. Fixed missing service, war, and mission target icons.
Improved access to the crew from the terrain view and navigation to locations referenced by missions and journal entries.
Fixed an old Inventory window remaining over the ship profile and the crew sidebar appearing unexpectedly when returning to the planet view.
Improved Escape handling in the character creator, Missions panel, and selection windows. Time controls no longer activate when a shortcut key is pressed alongside Escape while closing an active text field.
Fixed map switching with the M key and cases where following a ship moved the camera while viewing the galaxy or another system.
Crew selection for orders is remembered during the current session. If only one eligible crew member is available, they are selected automatically. The selection window also shows skills relevant to the action.
Needs, efficiency, character effects, colony supplies, and recurring order counters now update without reopening their panels. Fixed switching recurring orders between active and disabled states.
Fixed stale item details after transfers and trades, incorrect carried weight displays, and incorrect hydration units.
Expeditions and Orders
Reworked surface route planning, including travel between regions. Outbound and return routes are calculated separately using each participant's starting location and home.
Brought travel and work time estimates into line with order execution. Forecasts account for earlier queued tasks, rest, crew needs, carried weight, mounts, and environmental conditions.
Improved food and water preparation at the actual time of departure. Expeditions waiting for supplies keep their place in the queue, and replenishing resources allows preparation to be retried.
Fixed excessive simulation slowdowns caused by repeatedly recalculating expeditions waiting for missing supplies.
Improved planning of subsequent tasks after cancelling an active order. Recurring expeditions also retain the correct return destination and mount when renewed.
Fixed hunting and animal capture expeditions getting stuck instead of returning when their target no longer existed. Improved completion of fishing, gathering, and mining orders when targets disappear or resources run out.
Improved loot distribution and transport during group expeditions, preservation of gathered item quality, and battle outcomes when an expedition member dies or a mount wins the fight.
Fixed hunting at the current location being blocked by deep-water path checks even though no travel was required.
Improved healing and rescue orders, with separate treatment progress for each order and preservation of that progress after loading. Rescue patients are escorted to the recorded return destination.
Crew Needs and Health
Fixed the recovery rate during a Day Off. Rest now correctly reduces stress and fatigue and improves morale.
Timed effects now expire correctly, and penalties are removed when their conditions no longer apply, including the stress penalty after stress drops below its threshold.
Fixed old and new encumbrance penalties stacking after reducing carried weight.
Fixed daily calorie calculations to use the total food actually consumed, including meals during expeditions, and the correct energy cost of work. Removed inflated exertion costs that caused unwarranted weight loss.
Fixed how partial food and water servings are handled for crew members, animals, and unconscious patients receiving care.
Fixed unconsciousness detection and updates to that status following health changes.
Prevented characters from being assigned to intervene with themselves.
Resources, Crafting, and Trade
Fixed missing food drops from an edible plant and tutorial progress not counting food picked up from the ground.
Fixed extraction from nearly depleted deposits so mining cannot produce more material than is available.
Crafting checks all required ingredients and the availability of the appropriate module or building. Improved handling of ingredients split across stacks and repeated recipe requirements.
Automatic purchases account for the actual weight of goods and the ship's remaining cargo capacity.
Fixed handling of simultaneous illegal deals, removal of goods from partial stacks, and duplicate payments for the same transaction.
Missions and Events
Updated tutorial instructions for cooking and accessing the crew to use the actual panel names. The tutorial ending also accounts for completing the opening through the trading route.
Added a shared cooldown of 3–5 Sols for eligible random story decisions. Urgent crises and direct consequences of earlier choices can still occur sooner.
Fixed the "Breaking Point" event potentially blocking progress when only one character remained alive. Available responses now account for the actual crew present.
Corrected participants and locations in events including "Strange Dream" and "Ghost Frequency." Conversations require active participants who are physically present, and settlement encounters no longer trigger during flight through space.
Corrected the effects of crises on character relationships, consequence descriptions, and journal records of the chosen response.
Patrol progress is displayed in hours, and contract deadlines update while the details window is open. Improved safeguards against awarding the same reward more than once.
DarkNet delivery contracts check the required goods, assigned package, and location of the correct ship. Fixed progress tracking, reward grouping, and offer availability conditions.
Accepting an offer preserves previously generated details, such as a passenger's identity. Passenger contracts check for available space, and boarding passengers immediately update the crew count.
Fixed DarkNet contacts being assigned to the wrong systems and corrected the rate at which attention from the authorities decreases after illegal activity.
Corrected participant, location, and faction names, along with quest descriptions in translations. Fixed event calculation errors on systems using a comma as the decimal separator.
Saving and Loading
Loot left on the surface is preserved after loading, including after a partial pickup. Fixed colony storage contents duplicating across repeated loads.
Saves preserve character status effects, rest, and ongoing expedition state. Fixed restoration of active orders and ship queues, including after loading several times in the same session.
Settlement construction progress no longer resets after loading.
Fixed preservation of ship, settlement, and character locations, combat state, and defeated pirate fleets. Defeated pirates are no longer respawned during loading.
Fixed loading alone changing stock levels, prices, and trade history. NPCs, their relationships, and faction leadership state are also preserved.
The journal restores the history belonging to the loaded save. System names, planet labels, and available actions refresh when switching between saved worlds.
Loaded games remain paused. Manual saves no longer resume time behind the confirmation window, and closing the menu restores the previous game speed.
Autosave no longer runs before a game session is ready or when NPC ships land. Success notifications appear only after a successful save, and a failed attempt no longer postpones the next attempt as though it had succeeded.
Fixed recovery from backup saves when the primary file is corrupted.
World Simulation, Performance, and Audio
Synchronized planetary rotation, climate readings, and time of day with simulation time. Temperature and other data for the hovered tile update as time passes without needing to move the cursor.
Fixed the calendar advancing to the next day too early and time accounting errors affecting orders and ship movement during larger simulation steps.
Improved coordination between ship movement, escorts, and planetary orbits. Fixed brief position and heading jumps when ship icons first appear.
Reduced the processing cost of updating orbits, ship movement, and market prices.
Moved save data encoding and compression to the background. Preparing the save data can still interrupt gameplay, particularly in larger worlds.
Lowered the volume of the routine landing announcement and improved volume control at low settings. Fixed preservation of precise volume settings.
Also in the Full Early Access Version
Adjusted the sizes of newly generated galaxies: Small has 20 stars, Medium has 40, and Large has 60. This reduces the simulation workload. Existing saves retain their original sizes, and the demo's separate galaxy configuration is unchanged.