Chef Update: It's Looking Sunny Side Up!

Hello, amazing Space Chefs!

We’re back with a fresh batch of updates, improvements, and sneak peeks to share with you. Your feedback and support have been fantastic and are helping shape the final version of Space Chef.

What’s next: Polish, polish, polish!

We’re thrilled to announce that Space Chef has officially entered a proper Alpha stage, meaning that all main features and content are complete. There are still a lot of bugs to squash, and even more polish to be made.

We're also doing tweaks to the UI and feedback, to increase the satisfaction when you've worked like crazy to get a unique and mythical recipe to another happy customer.

The delicious Shimmerspores on Caveron can only be harvested by walking nearby and triggering an explosion. But watch out, the Splittler isn't too happy to see you in the caves!

Right now we’re focusing on making the first 30 minutes of the game as exciting and engaging as possible, and giving a taste of the rest of the game. We want every player to experience an adventure packed with exploration, cooking, and a few surprises along the way.

Gameplay improvements & challenges

We’ve been paying close attention to feedback on our death and inventory mechanics. Many of you suggested adding a "Keep Inventory" setting, which we added, but we're still discussing it - should it be left in the game, or should we replace it with a "drop stuff where you die, so you can go back and pick it up" feature?

We want a perfect balance of challenge and fun and make it feel rewarding for risk-takers without making it too easy for the faint of heart. Balance, balance, balance…

Another feature we recently added is the "I'm about to die" UI effect that covers the edges of the screen. A similar effect is shown when you're about to freeze to death or get cooked by the Cyclonian heat. And don't forget about dying of lack of oxygen or getting poisoned. There are so many ways to die, and we can't wait to see you try them all out!

Notice the red outlines of the screen? You will if you keep fighting wildlife with that Dull Knife!

Ultra wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide update

One of our goals is making sure Space Chef looks great no matter where you’re playing - from a small Steam Deck screen to the widest of ultrawide monitors. We’ve refined our UI to make everything look crisp and fitting seamlessly across different resolutions.

See more on the sides on a wider screen, as we're supporting up to 21:9 monitors. Even wider monitors work of course, but will have black bars on the sides, to avoid spoiling too much...

New delivery UI and special orders

To make it more worthwhile to discover and deliver new dishes, and always keeping your menu fresh, we're currently working on a new system that keeps track of what you serve.

This has the effect that if you just keep serving those Beefle Skewers, after a while, you will get less and less reputation for each order, until your customer won't order anything from you. Guess what, it's time to refresh your menu!

To visualize this and to make it clear when you're doing something great, we've added this new bouncy delivery report that shows the quality and the popularity of what you just served, among other things.

We're also planning on adding stats to Gastropedia, so you can easily keep track of