Lots of big changes in the latest version of the demo! Some UI polish, game design and balance tweaks as well as quality of life improvements.

0.12.0 Changelog

Difficulty Reworked

The end result should be the game is significantly easier at first but about the same difficulty near the end. I want players to be able to experience more of the game before they hit a difficulty wall.

* Enemy spawning reworked. Harder enemy ships will not spawn until far later in the game. Enemy waves are no longer preset but will pull from the available pool of enemies.
* No more civilian decay
* Slightly reduced resource cost to power up shields
* Carriers will launch more planetary attackers
* Lots of small adjustments to enemy stats

General Enhancements

* Full controller support.
* Several selection UI’s have been completely reworked and improved
* Added a handful of Steam achievements for the demo
* In game UI has much more transparent progress indicator when you are holding down a button.

Weapons, upgrades and other item changes

Added a few game design elements here to help players feel like they have more autonomy over the their fate when it comes to loot.

* You can now reroll Gear Containers for a chance at a better loot.
* Gear containers can now drop a “choice” item which lets you pick what kind of loot you want from a few options.
* Four new weapons with some explosive effects
* One new limited use item
* Several “on kill” items reworked into something that’s more effective in non-combat parts of the gam

This will likely be the last large update I do for the demo as I'm moving into production on the Early Access version.