Major Update v1.1: Blessings of the Five (Plus a Sale!)

Today marks the first major content update for Astronaut: The Best! Besides the usual bug fixes and polish, we've got some significant improvements tailored to address player feedback. Since much of our early criticism has centered around the game's difficulty, we asked each of the High Priests of Flaustria to help by giving our players a blessing.

In short, this update adds:

• Time Travel

• New Challenges

• Friendlier Metagame Progression

• Bug Fixes

• Our First Sale - 25% off, this week only!

• ICYMI, we're Steam Deck Verified!

Accolades Trailer

Before we get into the details, here's a new trailer to share what games media thinks of AtB so far:

Now let's dive further into the update! To explain more, here are the High Priests of Flaustria.

Time Travel

Even though we tried to make failure fun and rewarding, it's still human nature to want to succeed, and understandable to tilt when plans go awry. That's why we're adding a Restart Day option to the System Menu. When your run turns to ruin due to wheel of fortune or human flaw, you can now make a choice whether to ride it out or turn back time to give it a fresh try.

Details:

• The Restart Day button is unlocked when you have completed two or more runs. The Lion will tell you about it in the Void.

• To access the button, open the in-game System Menu (the gear at the right of the top HUD bar). Restart Day will appear on the left side if you've met the conditions above.

• The button will reset to the start of the current day, undoing everything that has happened since (including any unlocks or other metagame changes). Be aware that the space launch, parade, and final judgment all count as one day, so restarting anytime during that sequence will return to the morning before the launch.

This is basically institutionalized save scumming, because we the devs don't have any problem with save scumming. We encourage you to explore and find the game's many weird avenues for failing forward, but at the same time, if you're invested in a certain outcome we don't want you to feel like you've wasted an hour or more. (That true final mission can be pretty tough, after all.)

New Challenges

Five new Challenges are now available in the postgame store! We felt that there wasn't quite enough variety in challenges originally, so players too often felt obligated to pick ones that were repetitive or upsetting. This new batch offers a pleasant assortment ranging from silly changes to straightforward difficulty spikes to real hardcore sicko stuff.

New Challenge Descriptions

• Blind Date: Astronauts start with none of their traits revealed

• Nabobs of Negativity: Televised judges have a higher difficulty.

• AdjustedSame Name GameAll astronauts have the same name, which cannot be changed

• Super Accountant Mode: The HUD does not track your resources; you must do so manually.

• Alternative Schooling: You cannot train astronauts.

Friendlier Metagame Progression

Every mission in AtB is built to be replayable, but we don't ever want players to feel like they're "grinding" to unlock new options or progress the metagame story. To that end, this patch makes it significantly easier to reach new missions, Challenges, and other metagame unlocks.

• A successful space launch is no longer required to unlock the next mission or earn a Nice Bird stamp. Instead, you just need to complete your mission. In other