HomeGamesUpdatesMethodology
Steam News18 June 20266d ago

v0.2.90 — Interface, Crew, and Fixes

A roll-up of five builds (v0.2.86–v0.2.90). Major additions: a top-to-bottom interface overhaul, a searchable crew manifest, ship-born colonists who live real lives, and a run of fixes spanning Steam achievements to lan

Full notes

Full Dead Reckoning: The Long Drift update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

2 fixes1 addition3 changes4 removals
  • UI and audio
  • Fixes
  • Gameplay
changedA roll-up of five builds (v0.2.86–v0.2.90). Major additions: a top-to-bottom interface overhaul, a searchable crew manifest, ship-born colonists who live real lives, and a run of fixes spanning Steam achievements to landing.
changedInterface — Readability & Layout OverhaulHelp consolidated in one place. Mission framing, system advisories, and controls are now a single CAPTAIN'S BRIEFING (? button or Settings), laid out as STANDING ORDERS → SYSTEM ADVISORIES → CONTROLS. First-run tips became one-line pointers into it, each with a DON'T SHOW TIPS opt-out.
removedInterface — Readability & Layout OverhaulOne typeface, and text-size scaling applies everywhere — tabs, buttons, menus, and the skip hint, not just body text. Unified on JetBrains Mono; the old font-style toggle is retired.
removedInterface — Readability & Layout OverhaulThe layout holds at any window shape. Ultrawide, tall, and small windows no longer clip or shrink panels. Settings, the briefing, the changelog, credits, the custom roster, the decision log, and the restart confirm all lay out responsively. 1920×1080 is unchanged.
changedInterface — Readability & Layout OverhaulQuitting always asks first — ESC, title screen, and Settings all route through one confirm dialog with consistent button order and the safe choice focused.
removedInterface — Readability & Layout OverhaulShip Condition tooltips fire across the whole card. Hover anywhere on the FOOD, POWER, or HULL panel for its detail. The ship-systems list no longer shows a misleading clickable cursor on rows that are readouts only.

A roll-up of five builds (v0.2.86–v0.2.90). Major additions: a top-to-bottom interface overhaul, a searchable crew manifest, ship-born colonists who live real lives, and a run of fixes spanning Steam achievements to landing.

Interface — Readability & Layout Overhaul

  • Help consolidated in one place. Mission framing, system advisories, and controls are now a single CAPTAIN'S BRIEFING (? button or Settings), laid out as STANDING ORDERS → SYSTEM ADVISORIES → CONTROLS. First-run tips became one-line pointers into it, each with a DON'T SHOW TIPS opt-out.

  • One typeface, and text-size scaling applies everywhere — tabs, buttons, menus, and the skip hint, not just body text. Unified on JetBrains Mono; the old font-style toggle is retired.

  • The layout holds at any window shape. Ultrawide, tall, and small windows no longer clip or shrink panels. Settings, the briefing, the changelog, credits, the custom roster, the decision log, and the restart confirm all lay out responsively. 1920×1080 is unchanged.

  • Quitting always asks first — ESC, title screen, and Settings all route through one confirm dialog with consistent button order and the safe choice focused.

  • Ship Condition tooltips fire across the whole card. Hover anywhere on the FOOD, POWER, or HULL panel for its detail. The ship-systems list no longer shows a misleading clickable cursor on rows that are readouts only.

Crew & Roster — Navigable Manifest

  • You can find anyone. The manifest has a search box; sort by role, name, status, or notability. Colonists who joined post-launch carry a +, long-serving crew a *.

  • Two ages when they differ. Dossiers now show both physical age and years since launch — e.g. "29 phys · 109 chrono" for someone who spent most of the voyage frozen. Translated into German, French, Italian, and Spanish.

  • A post-landfall roster lists the colony's dead alongside cause of death.

Lives Aboard — Ship-Born Colonists & Quieter Years

  • Children born aboard are part of the living crew — raised awake, coming of age at sixteen (correcting a contradiction with the ship's prose, which always used that age). The first child born on the voyage gets a one-time milestone.

  • Quiet years feel quieter. Optional APPROVE/DENY decisions in the Captain's Brief now appear rarely, as genuine moments, rather than filling every uneventful year.

  • Planet-matched colony deaths. Colonists who die after settlement now die of causes that fit the world you landed on.

Navigation & Landing

  • Landing reliably opens the colony phase. A timing bug could advance the mission clock during the founding sequence — most easily on WATCH or auto-advance — and drop you back into ship decisions and a premature ending. Fixed.

  • Navigation reflects the outbound voyage. No habitable worlds exist within ~10 light-years of the Solar System. Turning back now costs real transit time, power, hull integrity, and crew confidence.

  • Settled endings read correctly — fixed text describing the wrong world type, a contradictory "crew was uploaded" ending, and a single-survivor grammar error.

Steam Achievements

  • Achievements unlock again. The Steam connection was being called with arguments in the wrong order, silently failing every unlock. Endings, survival milestones, drift thresholds, faction and research achievements all fire correctly now.

  • The in-game unlock banner now shows pixel artwork and lingers slightly longer.

Other Fixes

  • The cryo pod grid is clickable again — on some window shapes it had collapsed to zero width, leaving pods unresponsive.

  • Switching crew-rotation watch policy no longer stacks extra cultural drift on each toggle.

  • The research net-rate readout is legible again.

  • The drive-ignition signal delay reads correctly in seconds across all four translated languages.

Localization

All new interface text is translated into German, French, Italian, and Spanish. Crew morale now recolors the prose of certain voyage events (same facts, steadier or more strained voice) — English only for now; other languages read the fully-translated neutral version. Some text remains English-only due to localization budget constraints.

Source

Steam News / 18 June 2026

Open original post

Changelog.gg summarizes and formats this update. How we read updates.