0.5.1 Update

Hello all

Today I’m releasing another update for SOS: Forgotten Planet. The 0.5.1 update is mainly focused on smoothing over pain-points in progression, fixing bugs and updating the UI. So while there aren't any big fancy new things there’s still quite a few nice changes that should make the game play better.

UI Changes

I’ve moved around several things in the UI as they were a bit clunky and generally didn’t flow well.

The first one you’ll see is changing how the save/load game screen works. It’s generally got a different look but will also now warn you if loading a save from that was done in an incompatible save version. Since most of my updates currently do weird things to previous saves and I don’t really recommend playing them in newer versions, this should atleast give you some heads up on that fact. I did also add in a load game option from the pause menu in non-single save games to make loading previous saves a bit easier.

The next most notable UI change is the HUD. The compass is now where it rightfully belongs on the top center of the screen. The compass was also previously moving in a weird inverted fashion which is now fixed and now moves as one would expect. To accommodate this change I had to move some of the health and sanity bars around, which I standardized to be the same across all screens.

On the map screen you can now write down notes about each individual level. So if you need to keep track of where you left an item you couldn’t carry or where certain portals are you can now do that in game.

Game Balance

I’ve made it so that being knocked out by the monster no longer has a recovery penalty that puts the player at 25 health and sanity plus nourishment. I was noticing people sort of get locked into a death spiral and this was a major part of it. You will still drop all your items and have a day pass as usual and for now I think that is enough. I have some plans to further modify difficulty dynamically but haven't got to that yet.

I’ve tweaked the map generation to favor placing rooms in a way that their doors are more inward facing. This means that there should be less(note I didn’t say none) incredibly long hallways that just lead to one room. It should generally make rooms easier to navigate too.

The colors of the walls and doors have been tweaked to be a bit lighter overall. This sounds like a pretty minor change but does make the map a bit brighter and thus easier to see and also makes seeing the door letters much easier overall.

I moved the first end zone portal into the safe room. This just makes it easier to get to as I was noticing a few people did not really understand initially where it was and got lost on the first level.

Removed Lost tech from the first zone. I’ve changed up when you can get lost tech so the first one you can find is in zone 2. The flow in getting lost tech I found confused alot for people as they were just getting thrown a lot of things quickly and so I wanted to slow things down a bit before giving them a choice between gadgets they may not yet know the use for.

Tweaked Stamina usage so that will recharge faster than it was before but has a bit of a delay before recharging after sprinting. This is to encourage use of long sprints rather than many small quick sprints forward.

Random Fun Stuff

Added a new gadget called the Shipment Drone that will deliver all your held items straight to your storage bin. Very useful exploring large areas and you don’t want to make the trek all the way back to the safe zone.

Added a small crouching tutorial in the intro level. Since crouching is a newer thing and it helps alot in sneaking around the monster. I added a small obstacle in the intro area to just make sure people know the mechanic exists.

What's Next

Up next I'll be working on a new feature I'm called fabricators. In short they'll work as additional Morse Code Mini games that give the player more resources in order to progress deeper into the lab. They'll hopefully provide a good mix of challenge and variety too so it's no longer just chests and doors that you'll be using morse code for.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the update!