Interesting game. My first run failed in year 21 due to agricultural collapse. That feels super early; when it takes multiple years just to get out of the solar system, I’d expect food to be covered for longer. That kinda takes me out of the setting. OTOH, I DID spend food on research at the beginning…sort of my own fault…

I forgot about the emergency interventions. I’ll try those in my next run.

I also had the text cutoff problem that tomiant pointed out. It depends on which tab I have selected in the left hand pane.

I’m not sure about balance. This is one of those agonizing-decisions games, so it fits. But-still. Food ran out!

Awesome stuff. Have incorporated feedback here:

Bug Reports & Feedback — 3.19.2026 DR-01 | Bug | High {character} placeholder text is still rendering in the latest build. Template variables aren’t being substituted before display. DR-02 | Bug | Medium When arriving at a new system with two planets, you can only probe one — and once you do, the other is locked out permanently. You either land on the probed planet or skip the system entirely. The second planet is effectively invisible to the player with no explanation given. DR-03 | Bug | High The “merge with second ship” event outcome isn’t reflected on the landing screen. If the player chose to colonize together, the arrival stats should account for the combined population and resources — currently they don’t. DR-04 | UX | Low Event log entries like “22 deaths — critical, must be investigated” imply the player can take action, but there’s nothing to interact with. If these are flavor/log entries, the wording should make that clear so players don’t feel stuck.

Community Feedback (elephantium via Lemmy) Agricultural collapse at year 21 felt too early given the multi-year journey out of the solar system — food security feels like it should hold longer at the start. Player noted they did spend food on early research, so it may be partly self-inflicted. Also confirmed the text cutoff bug reported by tomiant (tab-dependent in the left pane).

I’m also seeing a text cutoff in the top bar – where it says SHIPNAME | YEAR: # etc. The top of each letter is masked.

Another text bug:

{character} has been keeping a catalogue

I’ve seen the placeholder a few times now.

A third one - for the first choice of planets on my second run, there was no scrollbar. I was forced to launch a probe to check the first choice because that was the only thing I could click. I’ll take a screengrab if I see it again.

My second run ended with “DESPERATE LANDING” on an ice planet in Year 51. Pop 634. Power was low, so I didn’t think I had headroom to try for the next planet encounter.

Third run was even better: PARTIAL SUCCESS on an arid planet in Year 24. Pop 978. No research but still plenty of headroom on resources.

Ugh I thought I got the character one.

Thank you for the feedback! Was it fun, though? Stressful? Any thoughts on gameplay?

The bar at the top I will take care of ASAP

Fun and stressful both! I love the tropes informing the setting. Playing through to try to get a colony going is cool.

But the limited resources and hard decisions are stressful, too. I want my colonists to succeed! It’s hard to make that work.

I do really want more in the gameplay. More things to do, more tweaks I can make. Some of the decisions might be nice as like policies you could tweak anytime, not just as events?

I’m still a little unclear on the research. I’m not sure if there needs to be more help text in-game or if I just need a few more playthroughs.

Oh, I should add - I’m playing on an older monitor, 4:3 resolution. I really appreciate when games either support that aspect ratio or have UI scaling so I’m not missing controls off the edge of the screen (yes, I know I should really replace that monitor - but it still works, and I’m loathe to just pitch it. We have too much e-waste in my country!)

Awesome stuff. Agree on the e-waste. Game should work on all screens.

I agree on the gameplay. I’m also frustrated with the placeholder writing now. I did have two writers reach ojt, so I’m hoping at the very least I can give them some cards and start working on expanding logic.

Unit tests went in today too, so hopefully no more surprises! Let me know if you had any ideas on what you’d like to see! I agree it needs a bit more to make it a good game. I’ll keep brainstorming.

Thanks again for all your feedback! As this gets stale it might get lost but follow on itch and make sure to send me a message if your username is different.

Oh, I just noticed one more thing. I just got a CRYO POD FAILURE event that ends with

The pod has been decomcallinged. The manifest has been updated.

Is this a typo in the text file or a side effect of AI being at 84% in this run?

I will have to check. The AI ones were some of the first cards I wrote so I might’ve made a typo, but the UI is supposed to degrade as the game goes on. Reported and on it.

Oh, I should add that everything I’ve said so far is in 1.13. I downloaded 1.26 this morning!

Well 1.26 is iterating live. Might be unstable today, but I think it’s back to working order. Busy over the weekend but next Monday I’m going to hit the ground running. People have asked for it to be on steam because of steam deck (hadn’t thought of that), so I applied today. Once there, DM me your Discord name and I’ll send you a license key.

From playing through again today (this time on 1.26):

Text is still cut off at the tops, and the ship condition view hides the “Advance Year”, etc. buttons along the bottom of the screen. The other tabs still look OK. The colonist status screen is hilariously unreadable now, partway through this journey. The ship is in pretty bad shape, highlighted by the display corruption!

I do have text size set to 12 px in system settings, down from 14. I haven’t noticed any difference either way.

I can’t figure out what the SHOW ALL button does on the ending screen.

I just saw the text placeholder again

“{they} did not make it back…”

I’d really like a way to speed up the text rendering.

First ship-born adult event comes suspiciously late. Year 43 in my current run.