The Re-Release is Here

It's time. Destination Ares is re-releasing imminently and will be available for purchase soon.

The game is also being permanently reduced in price! $19.99 / £19.99 / €19.99 -> $9.99 / £7.99 / €8.99 I will also be doing fewer sales these days, so I hope the reduced price makes up for that. Note that it might take a bit of time for the reduced price to propagate, but it should be there soon!

If you already own the game, you can get access to v1.1.0 now.

The New Destination Ares

This update, v1.1.0, is significant in some fundamental parts of the code. It will break any in-progress runs.

Difficulty Options, for the less masochistic

(Note: you still qualify for achievements while using these)

Resource Drain

• High (default), Low

Crew Skill

• Untrained (default), Skilled, Expert

Luck

• Even (default), Improved

Minigame Toggle

(hotly demanded!)

System Construction & Salvage

Build makeshift systems in-flight

when everything goes wrong! (Uses Science skill)

Break down old systems

for a few materials and parts! (Uses Mechanical skill)

New Events - what could go wrong?

Free a crewmember

from the jaws of the toilet's suction piece

Flood the atmos with vaporized fuel

when the air pressure is low

Turn an old corpse

into something useful

Use solar arrays

as a shield from micrometeoroids

Push a faulty fabricator to consume everything onboard

or die trying

Receive a definitely innocent memo from GuideBot

Fixes, Improvements, and Wildly Incoherent Changes

• Started up minigame tutorial sooner

• Sped up minigame tutorial

• Made GuideBot harass you more often with snarky tips

• "Broken" tooltip text now red

• Overhauled event data structure internally

• Updated dev tools

• Unlocked all crew personalities from the beginning of the game; I apologize in advance if you roll a Chatty crewmember

• Fixed - Crew sometimes abandoned ship secretly when they were supposed to die, were listed as "Survived"

• "Pause" now slows the game to 1/500 speed, rather than perfect 0

• Added a second way to enter the path to the secret ending

• Some hard to press buttons are now, you know, easier to press

• Your hidden AI core more consistently consumes energy (every 10 seconds)

• Command skill is now more effective at preventing that passive energy drain, with the same diminishing returns

• Base crew resilience to stress is lowered, but more consistent

• Command skill increases stress resilience for all crew - so long as the crewmember(s) with the skill are capable of doing work

• (No changes to bonus minigame time from Command skill)

• Crew need to eat slightly more food and sleep slightly longer

• Special crew with increased resilience to needs (i.e., the "skilled engineer" and "famous scientist") eat a little less and sleep faster, in addition to less often

• The "wealthy doctor" gets a bonus point in Command

• Choosing "high quality system retrofits" does more, including handing out keywords

• Achievements should no longer unlock early

Known Bug

• Rarely dead crew continue moving for awhile, drifting about the ship and/or swinging arms (definitely won't fix)

Let me know if you run into any new bugs, I might fix them again in another 4 or 5 years.