Azimuth · published
It's been a busy few months for us here! This update brings together everything that's changed from 0.9.18, the last-released demo update, through to 0.9.27, and there's quite a lot to cover. We've added new systems, reworked some of the game's biggest mechanics, given the UI and audio a substantial overhaul, and spent plenty of time polishing things behind the scenes.
**A note for returning players:** saves from versions before 0.9.24 are no longer supported due to the Causality rework. As a result, your old demo save will be automatically deleted upon starting up the game in order to play this version.
Let's get into it!
The biggest changes are to the game's progression systems. The old Helix prestige system has been replaced with the Causality system, bringing the prestige mechanics in line with Azimuth's evolving lore and direction.
The module system has also had a complete overhaul. Unlocked through the Dyson Sphere, you now have more space to place down modules. We have also introduced the Panel Points system for the module grid, as well as added new Efficiency modules that reduce building consumption. We've also added Pentagon Boosters that strengthen surrounding modules, which will replace the old amplifier modules.
The Ringworld now supports a population system, where you must balance Food, Production, and Luxury. Through this, you will gain the ability to make earnings while you are offline.
Beyond that, the third star system has been added which opens up another layer of progression, with new buildings and upgrades to discover.
There's also a new Flux control system, which has been implemented as an improvement to the existing Planetary Cycles system, alongside a rebalanced economy across all star systems. Upgrades and building production/costs have been adjusted to create a smoother progression curve, with resources spent more evenly and megastructure costs better suited to the scale of your industry.
Several major additions have arrived throughout these updates, including new buildings, megastructure sprites, upgrades, achievements, and lore, as well as a new cutscenes system.
Achievements have been added, each includes an unlockable lore entry for you to read through. The demo only has 14 achievements to unlock, but the full game will have almost 300. Something to look forward to!
The Research Archive now groups purchased upgrades into labelled subcategories depending on the upgrade's effects, making it easier to keep track of your purchases.
The Dyson Sphere itself has also evolved visually, with higher-fidelity sprites and updated rendering.
One of the most visible improvements is the interface itself. The UI now scales responsively to your monitor, supporting resolutions from 1280x720 up to 3840x2160. Panels, tooltips, modals, and the planet viewport have all been reworked to fit different window sizes more cleanly.
The settings menu has been reorganized, with new options for reducing motion, disabling screen flashes, adjusting effect intensity, changing interface accent colours, enabling performance mode, toggling the CRT effect, and controlling autosave and audio. You can also manage your music playlist more directly, and choose your audio output device. There is now also a custom cursor icon, as well as animated keyboard icon sprites which supplement the extra hotkeys we have added into the game.
More recently, the economy management screens have been transformed into command decks that slide up from the bottom of the screen, each with its own resource readout. All of these menus have been redesigned to make use of the extra space they have now. All economy modals that directly affect resource production rates will now show you previews of what will happen to those rates, giving you more control over your economy before you decide to push a potentially disastrous button.
Azimuth should feel much more alive now. Sound effects have been added across gathering, critical hits, building purchases and sales, prestige resets, paradigm shifts, interstellar travel, and plenty more UI interactions. Gathering, critical clicks, building interactions, and prestige resets have all received additional visual effects.
Music transitions are smoother, and planetary ambience varies more naturally.
Speaking of music, we've also added some new tracks for you to enjoy!
- Last Rites for a Dying Star
- Ether and Dawn
- Ginnungagap
From resource motes streaming between counters and buildings, to the gather button heating up from rapid clicks, to the improved spaceship behaviour in the solar map, these little touches help make every interaction feel more substantial.
Alongside the visible changes, a lot of work has gone into making Azimuth run more smoothly. We've reduced idle CPU and GPU usage, improved frame rates and CPU performance in larger late-game saves, and made system travel smoother through smarter sprite loading and memory-aware resource management.
The backend has also been migrated from Tauri v1 to Tauri v2, while a substantial code-quality pass has improved the structure of the engine, rendering, UI, and audio systems.
There are plenty of smaller improvements and fixes too: clearer notifications, better number formatting, improved colourblindness support, more reliable tutorials, corrected resource and achievement tracking, and fixes for various visual glitches, crashes, and audio issues. We've also closed an exploit involving building refunds.
That's the big picture for 0.9.18 through 0.9.27! This has been a substantial leap forward for the demo both in terms of the systems you interact with and the foundations that support them.
Thank you to everyone who's been playing, reporting bugs, sharing feedback, and wishlisting Azimuth. Every bit of support helps shape where this project goes next, and there's still plenty more to build.
See you among the stars!