Deep Space Cache news & patch notes

Changes include:

• 6 new power-ups that can be earned through a new asteroid
  • Movement Bonus
  • 2x Damage
  • 2x Attack Speed
  • 2x Ability Reloads
  • Max Crit Chance
  • 2x Magnet Range
• Can no longer see the entire talent tree. It removed that sense of mystery when I made it all visible.
• Moved around ability upgrades to be earned earlier. This is because I want to add 2 more upgrades to the next content update.
• Added in reloads for spiral bullets in the attack speed tree.

I was thinking about adding in one more achievement as well as enemies to the game but I think that's out of scope for it. There will be one more content update to add two more ability upgrades though.

Changes include:

• Talent tree is now entirely visible from the start.
• Added critical strikes.
• Shortened early game bullet lifetime significantly.
• Asteroid hitboxes are fixed.

Sorry about the small amount of changes. I tried cooking some ability upgrades such as a laser beam, 3 different bullet variations, and a giant circle that falls down the screen from the top but nothing really landed. So I decided to upload this small patch for now.

Changes include:

• Increased homing bullet count from 6 -> 12
• Increased spiral bullet count from 6 -> 12
• Increased rotating bullet count from 24 -> 48
• Significant performance improvements. High and low end devices will now clock-in about 60 FPS consistently while harvesting. The total number of asteroids spawned on the screen at once also now adapts to the FPS of the game on your device. This means higher end devices and possibly some lower end devices will be able to spawn more asteroids on screen at once and will adapt according to your system. This should help performance as well as improve gameplay for those who can handle more asteroids at once.
• Slightly decreased the gradual rise of power loss to make runs a little longer.

Hey again. I mentioned to someone that I would most likely stop updating the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45209175/0cffa8326072ab56eebdc8855ddb7f5bf1a5b920.png Well, I guess I lied because I kind of just want to keep adding to it since it could have a few more upgrades to help out the rough edges. Mostly due to the fact that I published the game prematurely due to a deadline I had set for myself. Some reasons why I'm planning to update this game is because one, I like working on the games I make and want to keep making them better if I can (I just can't help myself from not updating it lol), and two, I can keep working on my other game alongside updating this one since I have some time due to the holiday season so it all works out. Anyways, my goal is to update the talent tree to feature more upgrades and reduce the amount of percent upgrades overall. These upgrades will mostly include stuff that "pop" on the screen. I didn't want any flashing lights in my game which is why the upgrades are tame but I now feel like abilities that somewhat flash all over the place are just generally more fun (probably why casinos are designed like that). So you can expect some upgrades like that in the next update. I'll slowly post updates throughout the next couple of days until the talent tree feels more polished without too many percent-focused upgrades. Some examples of some other upcoming updates besides abilities will include some fun occurrences while harvesting such as some asteroids dropping fun power ups to increase damage, make the spaceship faster, and other fun interactions. This should help evolve gameplay as you unlock certain upgrades to make the harvesting feel unpredictable and reduce any staleness it may cause. I feel like the power and asteroid path feel weaker than other paths which I want to improve as well as re-ordering of some upgrades in the damage and attack speed paths. These are just some ideas I have for the next couple of updates. I feel like once these updates are out it should help make the upgrades in the talent tree more satisfying to unlock as well as make the harvesting runs somewhat more engaging and fun. In the end, this update is a small one to help out with making the current upgrades feel a little more significant as well as help out any performance issues. Take care!

Changes include:

• Initial Damage Increase: 17 -> 19
• Change to generator purchase prices:
  • Duo Mine: 100 -> 30
  • Quad Mine: 80 -> 25
  • Octo Mine: 45 -> 20
  • HD Mine: 30 -> 15
  • Tria Mine: 15 -> 10
  • Tetra Mine: 5 -> 5
• Decreased bit prices by cutting their values by 1/2 for every augment.

Hi. It's been a while since the last update but I've noticed that the game is a bit repetitive. The repetitive feeling is core to the game which can't be changed. However, I feel like these changes can help improve the quality of the experience. These changes should cut the playtime by at least 1/2 if not more. A full playthrough typically takes between 3-4 hours for most players so these changes should help players beat the game within 1-2 hours. This should help with the feeling of repetitive gameplay since the game ends fast. I was considering doing this change earlier but wasn't sure since a lot of people found the progression to be fine. From the recent reviews, I've noticed that my assumption of the progression still being too long was true. That's why I decided to make this patch to help out with that repetitive feeling. I know the game is simple and due to the design it does cause the game to be repetitive but with these changes it should help reduce that feeling especially since most players can speedrun the game in a hour. The early damage increase is to help make the early upgrades feel more satisfying due to wanting to reach 25 damage in order to two shot green asteroids instead of three shot them. Also this should help with speeding up progression due to the percent upgrades increasing mid-late game damage values. I've cut the cost of every augment in half to help cut the overall playtime in half. This is mainly to reduce that repetitive feeling. Because I cut the augment time, I decreased the price of the next generator purchase to help speed up the progression again. This should cut the slow early game out completely that was still present in the game to get to the fun stuff fast. That pretty much wraps up this update. These changes also make the game no longer a semi-idler which I've removed from all descriptions from the store page about it. Feel free to make any posts on the "Community Hub" under "Discussions" if you want to leave any feedback or y'know... discuss about the game. Thank you all who decided to play the game <3

Changes include:

• Lowered end game "The Last Bits" skills substantially as well as subsequent skills before it.
  • Power and spawn rate: reduced the values from 10000 bits to 2000 bits.
  • Damage and attack speed: reduced the values from 10000 bits to 3000 bits.

I noticed that the end game felt like a slog. Since most players who have reached this point have seen most of the content with the end game skills and have all mines unlocked. I felt like completely removing a substantial amount of the end game grind will overall help players.

Changes include:

• A small change to the asteroid pointer which now points to the nearest asteroid then locks it in until the asteroid is destroyed or despawns due to distance from asteroid being too great. This should help out the early game spazzing out with the asteroid pointer reducing frustration. I didn't know if I wanted to change it but I feel like players spend a decent time in the early game to warrant this.

Changes include:

• Enabled v-sync to help limit fps from going to numbers like 1200 fps which was unnecessarily using up the GPU.

A quick patch to revert the game back to 64 bits from 32 bits. I feel like most devices now can handle 64 bit games and since I swapped to 32 bits. It has been causing bugs due to floating point errors.

Changes include:

• Almost doubled FPS while harvesting asteroids.
• Changed game from 64 bit to 32 bit.
• A slight reduction in loading times between scenes.

I've noticed some devices have a very rare bug where the textures don't show up and the game loads the scene again after pressing on the harvest button. If anyone has this in their game please let me know if this update fixed that for you. Thanks for the patience!

Changes include:

• Can now use arrow keys to move spaceship.
• Early game asteroids de-spawn after a greater distance from spaceship compared to before.
• Main Menu asteroids have a chance to change asteroid type based on mine unlocks on game launch.

Changes include:

• QoL change to the harvest button to highlight every so often.
• QoL change to the generator upgrades which now highlight white if resource amount is enough, highlights grey if otherwise.
• Changed Asteroid Types to unlock through mine purchases instead of skill tree, replaced old slots with magnetic range upgrade.
• Added a resource multiplier that increases based on how much time you last in a run. This should help speed up everything within the game especially once you reach late game it becomes easier to upgrade faster and reach the end.
• Raised starting power from 20 to 30. This affects new save files.
• Buffed asteroid health overall making harvesting asteroids more involved.
• Increased asteroids of rarer type to spawn more frequently the longer you last in a run. This also should help with the late game to help reduce the grind for the final skill tree unlocks.

Changes include:

• Auto-shoot is now enabled by default, still has an option to toggle it off.
• Went through another pass of the skill tree, notable changes include:
  • Swapping of an early game homing upgrade to be pushed back to match the symmetrical nature of the damage and attack speed skill trees.
  • Rearrangement of both damage and attack speed trees to make unlocks mandatory to reach the end goal.
    • This change included a decreased value of bits towards the end goal within the path.
    • Helps players be required to unlock most, if not all upgrades to help reach the late game with all skills unlocked rather than cutting it off short early due to players unlocking the end goal sooner and causing the rest of the skill tree to feel obsolete.
  • Note: Any older players might experience a skill auto-unlock, this is because I've made sure to not remove it and remake you purchase the skill. It's just not shown (but it is still active) until reaching a point the tree connects to. New players don't need to worry about this.

Some thoughts: I got some feedback about the auto-shoot and was wondering whether to just keep the toggle on. I've decided to go with it since it will make playing the game easier and cause less strain which fits with my "casual" vision for the game. I've gotten feedback about bugs in the game. As of right now all bugs seem to have been fixed. There should be no major bugs besides minor ones that I have not been aware of. I've also gotten feedback that the game was very unbalanced so I took a look at all the features starting with the gameplay. Is the damage set too high? Not really, it feels just fine when traversing. Are asteroid health set too high? Again, not really, it feels fine. How about the attack speed? Nope, it felt reasonable after all it's generally more fun when you can shoot fast. What about the spawn rate? I was considering increasing the spawn of rarer asteroids but after a couple rounds of playtesting this wasn't an issue especially due to my previous update lowering the generator upgrade costs. Since those four factors within the gameplay felt tuned decently, I turned to the generator mines which were set much easier and smoother for players to reach the more interesting and fun mid-late game. I am completely fine if players choose to upgrade generators however they want, even "breaking it" and unlocking the skill tree as fast as they want. My biggest goal was to make the generators feel good to use in the early game since that is where their real problem lies which was fixed by setting the base value to 4. I looked into the skill tree to see if there was a balancing problem here and yes, there was. Which is changed above. I’ve received feedback that the game isn’t fun, which I understand is subjective. However, if you enjoy incremental games, I believe the recent updates have polished it into a more refined experience that you might enjoy. Hopefully this fixes any issues the game might have with balancing. Feel free to let me know if you find anything else that you feel is off. Thanks for playing.

Changes include: - Complete overhaul of the skill tree progression numbers effectively fixing the slow early game and making it easier to reach the end game with consecutive unlocks being lower. The final unlocks cost almost half as much as before. It still requires quite a few amount of bits but due to the easier access to the late game unlocks, it should effectively make reaching that point easier. - Reduced the cost of the bit mine purchases by a significant margin. - Reduced the frequency of smaller asteroids which should remove most asteroids that are difficult to shoot and aim at. - Added WASD movement. - Added an auto-shoot toggle button. This update and the last update should fix any balancing issues players might experience.

Changes include: - Decreased early value of bit mines upgrade purchases - Decreased overall health to asteroids

Changes include: - A fix for invisible asteroids (should no longer spawn) - Adjusted size of the mouse cursor to be a bit smaller - Improved performance again which should help lower end devices more, this does not affect higher end devices that much - Adjusted the way asteroids spawn, you can no longer move straight in a diagonal direction and collect resources easily, now it's more dynamic but I also made it so that sometimes there will be a lucky patch of asteroids all clumped up together which should help make it more satisfying

Changes include: - Added in a custom mouse cursor which can be toggled in the options menu - Fixed the audio, especially at initial launch of the game which was set a bit too high

Changes include: - Added in an option to set indicator arrow to point towards asteroids, ore, or turn it off entirely - Fixed a minor bug with the options menu while harvesting

Changes include: - Changed the power decrease to now scale exponentially into the game - Fixed a bug with autoclicker causing resources to be added on more than once when spammed - Fixed a bug with the main menu where the new game tab doesn't close when opening options - Changed late game numbers to make it much easier to beat the game effectively reducing the late game grind by a significant margin, this takes effect for newer late game skill nodes after unlock/any new game file

Changes include: - Fixed purchasing mines when having the required resources - Tweaked the slow early game to be a bit faster with lower resource costs, this takes affect for new players/new game files - Lowered total threshold of asteroids to improve performance on lower end devices. This shouldn't affect players on higher end devices especially through spawn rate upgrades.

Hey. Hope you are enjoying the game. This update is pretty small but features one big numbers change to the bit mine purchases. Changes include: - Reducing cost of consecutive mines since unlocking later mines become incredible difficult and time consuming - Fixed some typos - Added bit counts to the Asteroid Skill Tree unlocks to make it clearer what you are purchasing

Hi, I got some great feedback recently that are mostly focused on improving QoL and general accessibility. Changes include: - Added a close button to the menu which removes the use of requiring the to close it. - Changed the pointer from detecting the closest resource/ore to start detecting the closest asteroid.

There was a strange bug with the skills auto-filling out. It's been fixed. I would highly recommend starting over considering that the upgrades are safe-locked behind actually clicking and purchasing them. Even if it looks like it is unlocked, they are not. Thanks for the patience! I'll make sure to keep updating the game to improve quality of life. Please feel free to reply with any suggestions!