Good news! The fiddly bits are all done! By which I mean, I don’t just have a skin now, I also have a completely overworked layout to get the most out of it. I had planned to be at this point mid-July, which means I’m early, which is always a great thing in software development. I have decided not to advance the schedule and release now, though. Next release will still be coming in the middle of July. The reason for that is that I’ve decided to use the time remaining for some extra goodies before throwing myself at the more serious features that I’ll need to tackle after this stage.

However, there’s no reason not to show off! (I recommend right-clicking the image and opening it in a new tab - Itch’s lack of lightboxes is really a bit disconcerting…)

You can see that the layout has changed quite a bit. That’s because I’ve rearranged it somewhat to better stick to the “ui looks a bit like a spacecraft cockpit”-theme that I decided on. So the entire main UI is now at the bottom of the screen, a bit like a dashboard, while the available challenges start filling in from the top, creating a faint impression of an overhead panel. The player status is now much more prominently featured in the bottom left to better hammer home how much trouble you are in. The slide-in menus to the right still work pretty much the same but have other dimensions to fit into the whole thing. Oh, and the skip time button has been moved to the clock, which is undoubtedly a much more logical place for it to be. And the current location description has moved to the screen in the bottom center, so it’s actually visible at all times.

The layout of focused challenges has also had an overhaul to fit into the whole thing, using the space somewhat more efficiently than before and creating some idea of an impression of having a large, complex instrument panel in front of your face. Mechanically nothing has changed though, things haven’t actually gotten more complicated. In fact, I think some information is presented more intuitively and noticeably now:

My wife helped again in taking a look at the whole thing and pointing out details that tend to blow completely past me. Needs a margin here, that padding there should be the same as this one here, oh, these two boxes should have the same size, but this one is 1 pixel smaller (Seriously, how do you even see that, much less notice?). As I said, fiddly bits. Without her assistance this would probably look very similar, but provide a lot more eyesores for people with an eye for details (which, compared to me, I’m being told is basically everybody).

Someone mentioned goodies?

Ah yes, additional goodies… I’m not entirely clear on what they are going to be exactly, it’s difficult to estimate how much time these smaller features are going to take. There’s also the kid’s summer vacation coming up, which will cut a bit into the budget, but hey, I already reached the actual goals I set for myself, so I’m not complaining.

I did the whole UI thing this early in development really mostly to see if it can create more interest in the project, so I’ll be (trying to) spread the next release around to a bit of a wider audience than I have currently, so the things I’ll be adding will mostly aim at giving a better impression of what I want the game to become.

In any case, a keen observer may already have spotted the first bonus feature. The locations in the screenshot above are… different. This is because I’ve eliminated the pure placeholders I had in the game so far and added some of the first results from my ongoing worldbuilding efforts. There’s not much more to these locations yet than there was to the old ones, except for flavor. The station descriptions offer a small glimpse into the workings of the world and mention a few actors. Not much admittedly, there’s no codex or anything yet to get an in-depth idea of what’s going on and who is who. My hope is that the new descriptions are intriguing and create appetite for more. I’ve also added a little blurb in the second tutorial message that gives a succinct 3-paragraph rundown of the setting. For that matter, since you’re already following the game as evidenced by you reading this (which is appreciated, btw), why not just show that to you now?

Another thing that I would like to add very much is a small character creation screen. Not that there will be any actual character progress system just yet, but at least the possibility to assign the characters attributes, which are currently still fixed. It’s not like all attributes are of equal use currently, but the possibility of experimenting around a bit can’t hurt.

On the other hand, I’d really also like to embed those new locations a bit better and give them some mechanical impacts, or extend the current list of mishaps and uncomfortable situations to give the whole thing a bit more variety, or do a couple of other small things that might enhance the game, and I’m sure I won’t have time for all of these. So right now I don’t know yet what will make it in and what won’t. But the new day is a great big fish, and I’m sure I’ll get some pieces of it.

Until then, thank you for your interest, and I’ll check in here again with that update next month!