Gentoo Rescue news & patch notes

• Add destructible wall to G to force the more interesting solution.
• Tweak G.Blocked to make one export path different from the solve path.
• Rename G.Blocked to Diplopia to emphasize some of its unique properties.
• Change Foreboding to make its secret not required to reach endgame puzzle.
• Remove hammer from Crowdsurf.Buffer to not make it about timing differences.
• Remake Herrings.Konigsberg to remove the sliding component. It now has 7 bridges!

• Fix crash when loading puzzle containing custom biome with invalid fields.
• Fix localization for multi-line entries in credits.

• Add bind prompt for slow time to Hook, Linger, and Timing. Remove it from Buffer.
• Fix some typos and other errors in hints. Thanks to Cloudy who is flagging these while translating to Simplified Chinese!

• Explore some more crazy, emergent ideas that the game was lacking.
• Clean up the design of the endgame, which was previously kind of a random mix of special showcase levels and very challenging levels.
• Remove some of the difficulty in the early and middle stages of the game.
• The bottom line is to make the game better and more dense with interesting ideas, and not to just make the game bigger and longer. The game is already huge and very long!

• Attraction
  • Rearrange puzzles.
  • Remove Tether.
  • Add Linger.
  • Repulsion: Remove wall.
• Crowdsurf
  • Move Skid.
• Exchange
  • Move one tile down.
• Flare
  • Add several bombs.
  • Swap Clear and Dud.
  • Clear: Remove bonus.
  • Precision: Remove teleporter.
  • Punctual: Remove wall and cracked tile.
• Foreboding
  • Remove (old) NAG.
  • Add GroundRules.I and rename to NAG.
  • Add Mjolnir.Wipeout.
  • Remake Barrage.
• Exfiltration
  • Remove (old) G and Locked.
  • Reword bonus.
  • Make space for secret and endgame puzzle.
  • Add Synchronize and G (with subpuzzle Blocked).
  • Use Space biome for Sideload.Archive.
• Gentoo Rescue (hub)
  • Add tiles for secret.
  • Add ____ ____.
• Ground Rules
  • Add bonus.
  • Add Transition.PathOfPlain and Distant.
  • Rename Separation to I.
• Herrings
  • Replace cracked wall with regular wall.
  • Remove Assembly.
  • Add Hook and Line, and rearrange puzzles.
  • Gorge: Tweak fish placement and starting position.
• Lemniscate
  • Remove Leap.
  • Add extra tile and cracked wall for secret, rearrange puzzles, and remove side columns.
  • Remake While and Ricochet.
  • Add Cycle and bonus.
  • EYO: Remove one bonus.
  • Wormhole: Remove top corners.
  • Quake: Remove fog and add wall.
• Liftoff
  • Remove Deflection, Halt, and (old) Intercept.
  • Remove tile and add extra column for secret.
  • Rename Countdown to Chicken and Final to Respect.
  • Add Across, Countdown, Final, Intercept.
  • Ejection: Remove a fog, replace hammer with cane, and move green walrus left.
  • Ejection: Replace old bonus with much better one.
  • UU: Remove fog tile.
• Moonwalk
  • Remove Rebound and (old) Reciprocity.
  • Remove tiles for secret.
  • Add Reciprocity.
• Mjolnir
  • Remove cracked wall and fog, and rearrange some puzzles.
  • Remove Smash.
  • Add GroundRules.Cradle.
  • Remake Brake.
  • Trail: Add nest for green.
• Pass
  • Remove Pinch.
  • Add tiles, cracked tiles, and rearrange items for secret.
  • Add Blink.
• Path of Plain
  • Remove NN.
  • Rename Alignment to NN.
• Pickpocket
  • Remove two columns and a tile. Add a few tiles bottom center and on the top row.
  • Remove (old) Relay, (old) Protection, Storage, Forbidden, Burden, and MASK And Some Koi.
  • Add Relay, Protection, Donation, Solicit, and MASK And Single Koi.
  • Quasar: Add mask.
• Restriction
  • Add extra cane, tile, and fog for secret.
  • Add Exfiltration.Rush and rename to T.
  • Add Pullback.
  • Rename (old) T to Pushout.
• Transition
  • Add Blue Steel.
• Transplant
  • Add extra tiles and rearrange puzzles to improve Cleanse and support secret.
  • Add CANE At New Entry.
• Trapped
  • Add tile for secret.
  • Swap Reach and Toggle.
• Vault
  • Move wall for secret.
  • Remove Fuse.
• Walk
  • Octave: Removed cracked tile.

• Add Amethyst, Hive, Rainbow, and a secret biome.
• Add 2 music tracks.
• Add 2 achievements.
• Unhide achievements that are unlikely to be earned during normal play.

• Add secret puzzles and support for them in the puzzle editor.
• Add localization support, with Simplified Chinese as the second language supported. All menu text is done (outside puzzle editor), but translation for puzzle names and hints is still on-going and will be updated in follow-up patches.
• Add biome creator to the puzzle editor.
• Add toggle to disable the "new journal entry" popup notification, and reword description to Journal to mention 'Show journal popups'.
• Puzzle files and directories can be deleted from the create menu.

• Do not lower locks after they have been raised. Remove warp icon decal from locks for visited levels.
• Raised locks will become transparent when the tile contains an unselected animal or an item.
• Locks no longer disappear/reappear upon zooming in/out. The chains for the current level will fade out/in from the top.
• Small lock icons in the level list (top left) will now glow for levels that contain a colored pinwheel.

• Items flinging to the same tile near the same time could cause items to disappear or get stuck.
• Launching animals check for other animals before diving.
• Don't rainbow color any ?? in journal menu.
• Don't remove "Exit current puzzle" option from pause menu in Lemniscate under particular circumstances.
• The solver is now aware of some crazy stuff that players found in custom levels.
• Attempting to reorder "Redo" binds by re-adding an existing bind will no longer close the settings menu.
• It's now possible to rename a puzzle to change capitalization in the puzzle editor.
• The puzzle editor permute function will now properly convert the color_item_animal keywords in hints.
• The record journal entry feature will no longer crash when using the warp menu to enter a puzzle that was not reached while recording.
• Selecting tiles in the puzzle editor will be canceled upon leaving the editor.
• Sliding penguins transitioning to the spin win animation should now transition more smoothly.
• Ghost animals will no longer appear when a puzzle is exited during the export animation, under certain conditions.
• Fast particle effect of an occupied fog tile is now correctly removed after a bomb explosion.
• The penguin on a sublevel tile will not stop celebrating the win after exiting the sublevel.

• Add new page in credits to thank the following people for their custom levels and ideas.
  • Awesome Phoenix: Inspiration for G.
  • Cloudy: Creation of MASK And Single Koi, plus inspiration for Blink, Dribble, Final.
  • Garygoh884: Inspiration for Distant and Synchronize from their levels "Get Far" and "Teleports to Void".
  • JoWovrin: Creation of Donation and inspiration for Protection from their levelpack "Breakout".
  • Mountebank: Inspiration for Pogo from their levelpack "Levels that shouldn't exist".
  • Noelle: Basically the creation of Intercept and Pullback, plus inspiration for Across, Dribble, Relay, and Hook.
  • Tonite: Inspiration for Solicit from their level "Yoink".
  • TNT Dragon: Inspiration for Blue Steel from their levelpack "The Dragon".
  • Many of the above, plus Cookie, enzopuzzlesolver, xplodous, and YoshiRoshi for playtesting and feedback.
• Add sound and visual effect for telefrag.
• Add sound effects for launching.
• Add bind prompts for quick exit to Hopeless, Shuttle, and Resilience.
• Add bind prompt for slow time to Lemniscate, Trapeze, and Buffer.
• Add LEFT, UP, DOWN, RIGHT keywords for rainbow arrows in hints.
• Fix journal entries "Required for current level" for Replication.
• Move 2 journal entries about on-hit items to bomb, swap, and mask menus.
• Add 3 new journal entries and remove 8 unimportant or confusing ones.
• Update journal entry video for recursive entry.
• After resetting, the undo bind prompt will be visible until the player makes an action.

Game awards

Localization into Simplified Chinese

Other languages?

200 reviews soon?!

Steam Spring Sale

• New level Buffer replaces Hurdle in Crowdsurf.

• Add wall to Inception below the blue nest to make it easier for players to find the correct first export. I hope this will make premature discovery of importing less accidental.
• Remove some purposeless walls from Inception.
• Swap the positions of some post-Replication levels:
  • Jettison with Barrage in Mjolnir and Foreboding
  • Halt with Counter in Liftoff.
  • Duct with Unit in Trapped.

• Add 20 degree deadzone on each of the four diagonals for gamepad left stick input. This should prevent accidental moves where inputting near the NW diagonal might produce both up and left inputs.
• Add gameplay settings radial deadzone (usually just called deadzone) and angular deadzone (above).
• Add support for animal+item combination keywords to be used in hints! Many hints were modified to use these.
• Overhaul menu UI (backgrounds, text/image buttons, and optional HUD elements like move icons and color wheel). Changes are relatively small as not to disrupt existing players.

• Fix rare bug causing items to disappear after reset. This involved both a race condition between an item sinking off the puzzle and another item being removed by other means such as export or mask, as well as a subsequent undo and reset.
• Fix visual bug where an item would not be destroyed when it should. This could occur when a chain of several mask steals were performed in succession.
• Fix visual bug where an item would not be destroyed when it should. This could occur on custom levels that went crazy with item flinging.
• Don't automatically zoom out of all instances of a recursive level when exporting.
• Blocking rainbow pinwheel shrink/grow animation won't begin until it has already animated down to its tile location.
• Solver heuristic now considers rocket+magnet combo with a non-plain wall in between them can allow for bouncing off a cracked tile without simultaneous movement.
• Don't show bind prompts in test mode for puzzles sharing names with those in the main game.
• Escape quotes in workshop title, author, and description JSON fields.

• Make animating colored pinwheel bigger on hub.
• Disable framerate throttling when game is not focused.
• Disable lightbulb journal button for levels that do not have any required journal entries.
• Keep lightbulb yellow in "Required for current level" submenu for levels that require an undiscovered entry.
• Change "Save and quit" text in pause menu to "Return to menu".
• Fix "Required for current level" journal entries for a few metapuzzles.
• Remove loop artifact in hell biome music.
• Credit Prosephia for Simplified Chinese translation of the Steam page.

Thinky Awards

• Game of the Year
• Best Challenging Game
• Best Puzzle Design

Puzzle Depot

Soundtrack

Winter Steam Sale

Patches

• Made Transplant.Inductive easier by giving no option but to use the cane to change the parity of the traps.
• Moved Transplant.Base so that it must be played before Inductive.

• Locks for levels that contain a colored pinwheel will now have a rainbow glow. This fixes a design issue with some metapuzzles, and I regret that it took so long for me to realize such a simple fix!
• Updated block icon in puzzle editor. Also added keyword BLOCK for it.

• Journal entry for importing to multiple animals now correctly unlocks if the import removes multiple items.

• A new puzzle called Boomerang in Crowdsurf.
• A new (post Replication) bonus solution for Exfiltration.

• Changed animal colors in Tango, NAG, and Mutual.
• Removed extra tile from Thrusters.
• Removed useless column from Exfiltration.
• Changed Crowdsurf to make room for new puzzle.

• Support ultrawide aspect ratios.
• Show saved (post Inception) exports in export popup even when an export is disallowed.
• Don't show (post Replication) bonus solutions and percentages until Replication has been beaten, for real.
• Don't show (final ending) the game end animation and message when loading the solved state on initial load or on undo.
• Open "end popup" when beating any instance of the hub puzzle. Only relevant for custom levelpacks.
• Set better defaults for puzzle editor hotkeys.
• Puzzle editor hotkeys can now be customized.
• You can now record journal entries for your custom puzzles that require importing.
• Animal colors (including grey) can now be fully customized by hue/saturation/value sliders.
• Added new "Colors" settings submenu.
• Support usage of " in puzzle names and hints for custom levels.
• Added 180 degree rotation function to puzzle editor.
• Special puzzle editor testing bind ctrl+shift+A to complete a puzzle with all exports will now also unlock all imports.

• Settings entry labels are now responsive to mouse hover.
• Don't show the "journal entry count" at the bottom of the journal/hint menu when the hint submenu is open.
• Fix animal from being deselected when 5+ moves were queued. This mainly affects players on low end machines with a 30 fps cap.
• Fix rare bug where entering a new world while a lock is exploding could cause a different lock to be glowing.
• Fix rare bug where spamming redos of (post Inception) exports could cause animals to become very tiny.
• Fix rare bug where animations for an item that was just (post Pickpocket) stolen by a mask (in the same move) would not play properly.
• Handle scroll clipping in the custom levelpack menu.
• Fix bug where exiting the solver would sometimes change the puzzle that was being solved.
• Fix bug in puzzle editor where an item discarded during testing would be gone from the puzzle upon returning to edit mode.
• Fix bug in puzzle editor where it was possible to surpass the 12 row, 20 column limit on puzzles using the rotation functions.
• Fix bug in puzzle editor UI that let players combine incompatible tile elements like trap and cracked tile or sublevel and export.
• A removed item can no longer be added to custom levels by editing the JSON file. Steam Workshop levelpack "hmmmmm" (or something like that) will now be unplayable.
• It is no longer possible to redo past the win state of a puzzle. Steam Workshop levelpack "jank" will now be impossible.
• Fix journal entry for (post Crowdsurf) spring launch bounce not unlocking if the animal just picked up the spring from the block it is bouncing off of.
• Fix rare bug where (post Transplant/Contraband) importing into puzzle with multiple animal instances could sometimes not apply the import for every instance.
• Catch and show error message for infinite loop caused by bug found in custom levelpack Combine.
• Fix typo in (post game) end message.

• Credit Michelle Caldeira for Portuguese translation of the Steam page.
• Sort animals in (post Transplant/Contraband) import/export menu by item based on when (roughly) the item is encountered.
• Time text in end screen will now be gold if everything else is.
• Added "" tag to "Allow skipping" gameplay toggle.
• Hints were improved for SO MANY LEVELS. Thanks for the feedback!

Before getting into everything else, please note that Gentoo Rescue will be 20% off November 3 - November 17 to celebrate all of the below. This will be the biggest and longest sale yet, so don't let your friends miss this opportunity! Also, remember that you can get even deeper discounts by purchasing (or completing) either of the bundles:

• Gentoo's Demon Wormholes: With 2023 and 2024 Thinky Award winners Can of Wormholes and Maxwell's puzzling demon.

• Gentookeeper: With 2025's Glowkeeper, which is another underrated title that I highly recommend!

Why? Because so much is happening all at once!

• Aliensrock, a popular puzzle YouTuber, has uploaded an (in progress) playlist of Gentoo Rescue on their channel! Their videos are always entertaining, so it has been a pleasure to watch him play. I want to welcome all of the new players to our Discord server, and encourage everyone to try out some of our amazing community levelpacks on the Steam Workshop once they've completed the main game. Go check out their videos, and share some love with likes and comments, especially to the Gentoo Rescue videos.

• We're now at 81 reviews, with a quick burst of 15+ from the last few weeks! This is undoubtedly due to the new attention from Aliensrock, so I'm incredibly grateful to him and everyone that has taken the time to leave a review. I think getting to 100 (and beyond) is a real possibility. Hopefully this barrage of events will get us there soon!

• The talks and schedule for Thinky Con 2025 have been released. I will be speaking on the opening day of the conference (Wednesday, November 5) about the puzzle solver I built for Gentoo Rescue. There are many other amazing talks on the schedule, so don't miss it! Okay, it's actually not big deal if you miss it because they'll have all the talks available on YouTube afterwards.

• Gentoo Rescue will be part of 3 separate Steam events in the next two weeks!

  • DevGAMM Awards Celebration runs November 3 - November 9. I don't know if Gentoo Rescue actually won anything, but I'm so proud to see it accepted into this event.

  • Metroidvania Fusion Festival runs November 3 - November 9. Metroidvania enthusiasts are (rightfully) very skeptical about games claiming to be metroidvanias. I designed parts of Gentoo Rescue through a metroidvania (and partially metroidbrainia) lens, so I'm excited to participate alongside more traditional examples in the genre.

  • Animal Fest runs November 10 - November 17. Save the penguins!

Anything else?

• There are so many custom levelpacks on Steam Workshop now that I've decided to start curating my favorites. Check out this collection of Dev picks!

• I started streaming more regularly, and will continue to do so for a few days per week. Give me a follow and come say hi! I've played some puzzle games (including Gentoo Rescue custom levels), some competitive games, and other variety (including talk prep and some game dev). I'll actually be competing in a chill Silksong any% race with a few friends on Saturday, November 8 at (I think) 11am PST, so that should be fun!

• I played around with Godot and made a silly October themed game Witch Cauldron. It's a free puzzly platformer on Itch.

• Due to all of this renewed interest in Gentoo Rescue, I am excited to say that I'll be returning to post-launch development in November. I have a long list of small fixes to make, so expect at least one more patch this year. Maybe more?

• The Discord server has grown from all of this renewed interest, so I've started making it more organized. This has involved a few special roles, one of which is for those that have "solved something in-game without any reward". Players can earn this reward by messaging me the secret message. I'd like to give our small community a comfortable home to hang out, so all suggestions are welcome!

I've taken a small break from Gentoo Rescue development, but I'm back with a relatively large "small update". Most new features and bugfixes are for custom levelpacks, but there's also a new puzzle being added to the main game. Before going into details, I want to officially announce that Gentoo Rescue is now part of two Steam bundles! Definitely check them out if you're already a fan of Gentoo Rescue. Also, be sure to recommend Gentoo Rescue to anyone that has enjoyed these other puzzle games!

• Gentoo's Demon Wormholes with Thinky Award winners Can of Wormholes and Maxwell's puzzling demon.

• Gentookeeper with another great 2025 puzzle game Glowkeeper.

Puzzle changes

• Adding an endgame optional puzzle called Pogo based off of the interaction from the puzzle Bypass in workshop levelpack Levels that shouldn't exist by Mountebank. It also has a bit of a Hollow Knight (and Silksong) inspiration, which may be evident from the name.

Bigger features

• The game will now autoload your solution to the hub puzzle, if it exists and if your saved inputs are empty. There was previously no way to recover your solution to a hub puzzle. This is more relevant for custom levelpacks, which might just be a single standalone level.

• A teleporter that goes to itself is now officially supported. How do you think it will work? Try it out in the puzzle editor, or in some of the custom levelpacks. \

Smaller features

• Moved "Undo or Reset" bind prompts from the center of the screen to the top.

• Added A/B/C/D/E/F letter icons to button, gate, and trap icons used in hints.

• End game popup for custom levels no longer shows the message intended for the main game.

• The ending lock break animation can now be canceled with redo. It was already cancelable with undo.

Bugfixes

• Fixed journal entry record button in the puzzle editor.

• Removed item particle effects that would linger past an undo or reset.

• Fixed a bug where the import/export prompt would not show for levels with no imports while an animal is moving.

• Fixed (I think) an inconsistent bug that made it possible to import with grey animal. If this ever happened to you, then this bugfix should retroactively remove them.

• Bind prompts at the top of the screen (which were in the early levels of the game) will no longer be shown in custom levelpacks.

• Improved the beginning of the launch animation for animals that will bounce.

• Lessened the desynchronization between game logic and animations that can occur for very long moves involving many teleporters. This is still technically an issue at very fast movement speeds, but for normal speeds it should match very well now even for the longest Rube Goldberg machines that you can create in the editor.

• Fixed the speed of (Lemniscate.Rift spoiler) animals that are bouncing off of teleporting animals to match that of a normal bounce.

• Fixed a visual bug where loading a puzzle while animals are in motion could cause them to show up in the loaded puzzle.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes a puzzle under a grey animal could be mistakenly marked as visited after an export.
• Fixed a bug where the hub and sublevels under selectable animals would not initially be marked as visited.
• Fixed a bug where creating a puzzle that is solvable in 0 moves could softlock in the puzzle tester.

• There are already several levelpacks on the workshop now, and I look forward for more to come!
• There is a new main menu button "Custom". The first time you select this, you'll directed to the Steam workshop page for Gentoo Rescue. There you can subscribe to custom levelpacks, which can can be played through the "Custom" menu.
• One can also bypass Steam workshop by manually installing a custom levelpack into the directory: `/GentooRescue/Custom/`. Note that custom levelpacks installed this way will use the name of their hub level as the name of the levelpack, and that this name should not clash with any other manually installed custom levelpacks. Steam workshop levelpacks have a unique ID independent of its title.
• Your time played and progress on each levelpack is stored by profile, and the levelpack saves are separate from the main save (and each other). They are also tracked by Steam Cloud, so your progress will stay when switching devices. You can find these saves in the Custom subdirectory of your player directory.
• Solutions are now saved in the same file as the rest of your progress instead of a separate file. This affects the main save (`progress.sav`), but it was mostly done for custom levelpack support.
• Added button in the puzzle editor to upload to Steam workshop. You can (and should) specify a title/description through this interface, not Steam's.
• Steam workshop uploads will automatically generate a preview image based on your currently loaded puzzle, but you can manually specify an image by placing it at: /GentooRescue/Images/.png I recommend a resolution of 800x800.
• Subscribed Steam workshop levels will be copied to `/GentooRescue/Workshop` upon entering the "Custom" menu. This allows for offline support.
• The guide should cover all of the essentials.

• I'm excited that more people can now play Gentoo Rescue!
• Any serious MacOS specific bugs will get the highest priority for the next small patch. Please report any to the discord!

• I've refined some hints in various levels. I've been doing this every patch without noting details, and will continue to do so. Keep the feedback coming!
• Removed unintended solution from Quasar in Pickpocket. Maybe the first cheese found? Not sure it qualifies a cheese because it was more difficult than the intended solution.
• Swapped the positions of Vantage and Jailbreak in Path of Plain.
• Changed Transpositions (in Exfiltration.Temporary) to make all swap imports clearly impossible, which allowed for the removal of the blue colored wall from Temporary.
• Removed the blue colored wall from Foreboding.Flutter because it wasn't important. Same for Liftoff.Balance.
• Added fog to a tile in Sustain to make an aspect of the meta puzzle of reaching the bottom left puzzle easier. More specifically, a bomb import is now clearly useless.
• Renamed Sustain to Herrings, Implant to Transplant, and swapped the names of Y and V. Bonus points to anyone that can figure out why these changes were done!

• Added a button to record journal entries to the puzzle editor. Click "Journal" in the editor, then confirm "Record". This will load the current puzzle in test mode. Upon exiting test mode, all journal entries that you performed during testing will be written to the current puzzle's list of 'Required for current level' journal entries. This replaces the old method of entering the IDs by hand.
• Added icon for normal/plain walls with the keyword PWALL. This can be used in your hints.
• Fixed puzzle test bug where exiting the puzzle under test in the puzzle editor could cause the puzzle to be modified.

• The goal was just to reduce loading times for custom levelpacks. However these optimizations will also benefit the main game, particularly for those on lower-end machines.
• Optimized walls and tile objects.
• Animals and items are now pooled instead of being allocated/destroyed on the fly.
• Moved some important work from scripting to C++: tile generation/arrangement, animal organization, and loading static puzzle state.

• Gridlines are enabled by default at the smallest nonzero thickness.
• Added more ticks to the low end of the "Base speed" Gameplay slider.

• Reworded some journal entries to remove slight spoilers. This comes at the cost of making a few entries less descriptive, but I think the tradeoff is worth it.
• End popup on the hub puzzle now includes the total time played.
• Mouse autohide is now disabled while in the Create submenu.
• Increased size of some small text in various places. This was mainly done to help visibility on Steam Deck.
• The music track will not be restarted upon changing biomes if the old and new biome use the same track.
• Increased teleport animation speed to better match internal logic. This may be relevant for some cursed custom levels.

• General bugfixes.
• Continued minor improvements to hints/puzzles, as needed. Watching your gameplay videos/streams really helps me spot tweaks that I can make, so keep sending those my way!
• Puzzle editor improvements and polish.
• I'll be streaming playthroughs of workshop levelpacks soon at https://www.twitch.tv/jagriff/.
• I may also start making YouTube videos with some puzzle design examples / challenges, or other general dev commentary. Please let me know if there's any interest for this.

• Localization support. This would have limited use on its own. Maybe community language packs?
• Official support for Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and maybe other languages?
• A DLC secret area with new or expanded mechanics? I intentionally left a place for this in the hub.
• Mobile port? Switch port?
• Challenge mode. Maybe this would have to be a separate game? I originally planned to ship with a score-based "roguelike" mode with leaderboards, but it was over-scoped and there were some design challenges that I couldn't address in time for launch.
• Multiplayer. This would certainly have to be an entirely separate game. If you've played Ricochet Robots, then you might have an idea for how this would work.

It's been over a month since the last patch, so I wanted to make a quick post to keep everyone updated on what's happened and what's coming.

Very Positive on Steam

The game received its 50th review a few weeks ago, and currently sits at 55 reviews with 100% positive ratings. I'm very excited about this milestone because reviews are really the best way for the game to grow and reach more people. Thank you for the support! The next milestone is "Overwhelmingly Positive " at 500 reviews, so there's quite a bit of work to do...

Playable for Steam Deck

Several players have reported a smooth experience on Steam Deck, so I've been eagerly waiting for Valve's compatibility review. It finally happened, and now Gentoo Rescue sits at Playable. Valve highlighted that some text might be too small, so that's something I will be addressing in the next patch.

Thinky Games Article

Thinky Games published an article by well-known Steam puzzle curator Anokturnus. There are some spoilers, but overall I think it is a glowing recommendation that I'm proud to receive.

Gentoosday, or is it Gentuesday?

If you've been following me on BlueSky, then you would have noticed me posting about Gentoosday for the past several weeks. It just so happens that every Tuesday there have been simultaneous Twitch streams of Gentoo Rescue by sigma144 and fydaTECH. They're both very entertaining streamers and it has been a joy to watch content for Gentoo Rescue so regularly. Don't miss Gentoosday next week!

Are there any other streamers or content creators playing Gentoo Rescue? If so, please let me know because I'd love to watch!

Steam Workshop update is coming

There is a major update on the way, and it is very close! This update is mainly targeted at adding better custom level support, including integration of Steam Workshop. This has involved a lot of moving pieces, such as:

• Reworking the save/loading system to work for any levelpack instead of just the one for the main game.

• Integrating Steam APIs to upload and download from Steam Workshop.

• Many performance improvements, particularly for loading. This was motivated by custom level support due to the structure of the new Custom menu, but it should improve the experience for the main game for those on low end devices.

Of course, the update will include lots of small changes as well. As for Steam Workshop support, I've been grateful to have many community members eager to test. There are actually several levelpacks already uploaded:

• The Dragon by TNTDragon. A long and very meta levelpack.

• Levels that shouldn't exit by Mountebank. A smaller pack containing some very cursed things, some of which are actually impossible to create with the in-game level editor alone!

• Some standalone levels by Hakushō.

• A cursed impossible level by me, which showcases an edge-case that I couldn't explore in the main game.

• The levelpack from the demo.

So far I've merely taken a peek at the levels and tried to remain mostly unspoiled. Along with the release of this major update, I will schedule some Twitch streams on my channel, where I'll play through community levelpacks, starting with these above. If that sounds like fun, give it a follow! If you just cannot wait for this update, please join the Discord and reach out. Testing is the biggest piece of the puzzle remaining before I can push this out to everyone, so anyone willing to test is free to get it early.

Demo Retirement

The demo is already many patches behind the main game, and it's only going to get worse with the next update. I cannot afford the time to maintain it alongside the full game, and I fear that the current state of the demo could be giving a poor impression of the full game. The demo is also overly generous in how much it showcases, which could spoil some of the many big reveals in the game. I would like to go back and do a demo update sometime in the future, but until then, I'll be taking it offline alongside this major update. The demo will remain public on Itch, and I'll have the Steam Workshop upload for the demo levelpack for anyone wanting to revisit.

One more round of bugfixes before I transition to new features. Unless something higher priority comes up, the next patch will focus on improving the custom levelpack experience with a dedicated menu and custom level progress saving. On a separate note, Gentoo Rescue is currently part of the Steam Summer Sale for 10% off. If you are enjoying the game, please recommend it to others while it's a bit cheaper. Input

• Repeated undo/redo that occur from holding the bind will no longer perform the undo/redo of a reset. This makes it easier to undo/redo back to the start/end of a solution without accidentally going past a reset. Non-repeated undos/redos can still undo/redo a reset, of course.

• Changed default keyboard bind of advanced bind "Slow" from Shift to Alt. Shift clashes with WASD, which means you could not move with WASD while slowing unless you specifically added binds "Shift+W" for move up, "Shift+A" for move left, and so on. This won't change anything for current players.

Bugfixes

• Beam effect for special thing in Replication was broken.

• It was possible to activate the special thing in Replication multiple times.

• There was a rare situation that would cause the rocket particle and sound effect to play even though the item wasn't used.

• Double-clicking "Return to game" in the pause menu will no longer cause the pause menu to reopen.

• Made Moonwalk much easier to solve by moving the red goal. Players were too easily reaching the optional hard levels before realizing that they could just complete and leave the world, so having an easy solution to this early world puzzle will better teach how the meta structure of the game works.
• Moonwalk.Reciprocity now has the walrus start with the spring. Also added an extra tile in the bottom left to make the main deduction a bit easier to spot.
• Added 2 fog columns to Liftoff.Countdown to make one of the early deductions easier.

• Mouse users can now perform moves using LMB click-drag-release. This is not tutorialized anywhere, but there is feedback in the form of a stretching arrow in the direction of the drag. Some people will like this much more than LMB to select and RMB to move.
• Gameplay setting 'Selection ring' will now also control whether the two different mouse arrows (one for RMB movement and one for LMB drag movement) are displayed.

• Added hints for remaining levels. I am done! Feedback for improvements is still welcome, of course.
• Moved the yellow goal location on Lemniscate. The old version was straight-forward from the starting position, but it was very easy for players to accidentally fall into an impossible state without realizing it. This is one of the biggest sins in puzzle design, and it should not occur unless the "realizing it" step is part of the main idea of the puzzle. In this case it wasn't.
• Added 2 fog tiles to Pivots. This increases the uniqueness of the puzzle, making it more deducible.

• (Post-Inception) Unused exit spirals now animate by being pulled to the center instead of flashing.
• Increased the size of grid lines because the lowest nonzero setting was unusable with FXAA, and barely usable with TAA/TSR.
• Changed the look of the grid lines to be more "natural". You can still increase "Grid darkness" if you like the artificial look. I like the lowest nonzero thickness with darkness turned all the way down. I'm considering making this the default in a future patch. Thoughts?
• Hint menu in puzzle editor now has a scrollbar so there is no longer a soft limit to the number of hints that can be added to a puzzle.
• Don't show the journal entry tag icons in the "Required for current level" menu for undiscovered journal entries.
• Added mention of font under assets in credits.

• Prevent animation of exit spirals when first loading a puzzle in the puzzle editor.

• Replaced Trapeze (level in post-Accumlation world Crowdsurf) with a completely new puzzle. The old version wasn't an amazing puzzle, and its idea also had already appeared in a similar form in another level. So I made a completely new level that explores a novel idea. I'm granting anyone that beat the old puzzle progress on this one because I don't want to spoil 100%-ers, but there is no relation between the old Trapeze and this new Trapeze. Give it a try!
• Added blue wall to hub puzzle. This prevents another scarlet herring (see 1.0.3 notes), and should better hint at how to reach one of the endgame areas.
• Hints for a couple of levels added.

• Flashing export spirals are now much bigger. I noticed players were having issues finding out what to do immediately after completing Inception. Hopefully this helps!
• Fade "undo or reset" message when pause or warp menus are opened.
• Tweaked tile shader to not show grid lines (when enabled) on the sides of tiles.

• Fixed flashing "water" in the black background of the space biome when using "Medium" graphics settings preset.
• Using the "quick exit" bind while the end popup and journal are both up will no longer close the end popup.

• Removed a block on the left side of the hub puzzle because it created a possible scarlet herring; i.e., a red herring that is especially attractive. As much as the penguins like herrings, I do not.
• Renamed puzzle `tmp` to `Temporary` to make it fit the naming style of the rest of the game.
• Added hints for all puzzles in Replication.
• Tweaked hints for a few other levels based on feedback. Please keep sending feedback my way!

• Keep Warp bind prompt hidden until a sublevel has been seen. This is only relevant for a single level in the very late-game.

• Scroll wheel binds are given a special exception to not trigger "menu back" because of collisions with normal scrolling. However scroll wheel down could mistakenly trigger "menu back" from menus like warp, journal, pause, and settings if the end popup was visible. Now it cannot.

• Added hints for all initially reachable puzzles in Attraction and Contraband. This came with a few very very minor puzzle tweaks that I'm confident objectively improve the design.
  • Removed unnecessary fog from Attraction.Hurl.
  • Removed unnecessary tile from Attraction.Tractor.
  • Changed the starting state of Attraction.Wrecker. This was done because the new version will do a slightly better job at encouraging the player to try an idea that would work if there were no magnet: move green down onto blue's target, and then hit it with a blue move right. This isn't just a bait, but it shows off why this puzzle is interesting while hinting at the main idea for how to solve it. The old version, where blue started in the far left of the middle row, was further from revealing the key idea despite being technically closer to the solution.
  • Added colored wall to Contraband.Deeper to fix cheese that let players skip ~2/7 of the puzzle.
• Refined journal entry unlock conditions for a few fog related entries to not include grey animals in fog. This affected the "Required for current level" entries for Ground_Rules.I and Liftoff.Extinction.
• The following levels had some errors in their "Required for current level" entries, unrelated to the above change: Attraction.Fledging, Exchange.Displacement, Exchange.Stwap, Exchange.Timing, Exfiltration.G, Foreboding.Jackhammer, and Sustain.Chumming.
• Added new (post-Replication) bonus solution and reworded existing one for Lemniscate.EYO. Thanks to Mikan for discovering the new one!
• Reworded (post-Replication) bonus solution for Ground_Rules.Blockers.
• Moved the position of Walk.Threading.

• Added "LMB double click" bind prompt to sublevel button on hover. On unhover it goes back to the keyboard bind. Mouse-only is an option that the game doesn't teach very well, so hopefully this helps.
• Removed "Awards" and "Challenge" sections from buttons corresponding to backup saves.
• Achievements all marked as secret to avoid spoilers. I don't think anything there is super spoilery but just staying on the safe side since players can reveal hidden achievements on Steam. This was done through Steam, so it is not part of the build and actually went in Sunday night (PDT).

• It was possible to use the quick exit bind to exit from a puzzle while the journal menu was opened if the end popup was also opened.

• Added (post-Replication) bonus solution for Ground_Rules.Movement. This will take away 100% from the couple of people that have earned it so quickly. :( There aren't any Steam achievements for 100% completion and it is just there for your own satisfaction, so I don't mind doing this very sparingly. This one in particular will take 30s to complete, so definitely no worries here. I'm open to adding more (post-Replication) bonus solutions if anyone happens to discover something that is both interesting and not purely a subset of an existing puzzle. I'm certain there are some wild end-game things still remaining for the community to discover.

• Lightbulb submenu icon now turns yellow when the current level requires a journal entry that isn't unlocked. This gives an easy check that something new is needed without risking a spoiler that could happen if you actually read through the journal entries needed for the current level.
• If the journal/hint menu is opened while the journal popup message is on screen, then it will open to the most recently unlocked journal entry.
• The journal entry popup message is now a button which opens the journal.
• The journal/hint menu can now be opened while the end popup is visible.
• If a new journal entry is unlocked while the message for the previous entry is showing, then the previous message is hidden and a new message is shown immediately. The old behavior would not show anything for the 2nd unlock.
• Slightly reworded journal entry descriptions involving (Implant/Contraband) imports to use the word "import" instead of "level variation".

• Allow exiting the puzzle select screen using undo/redo binds.
• Added warning to puzzle select screen that a mouse is needed.
• Added gameplay settings toggle "Enable solver", which defaults to off. The solver function in the puzzle editor is very resource intensive and may cause crashes.

• Added hints for all initially reachable puzzles of Liftoff.
• Unbound mouse bind prompts will no longer show the mouse button icon unless the 'Mouse buttons' option is enabled in gameplay settings. If 'Mouse buttons' is disabled, then it will show a keyboard bind.
• (Post-Replication) Bonus solutions now more clearly indicate when they have not been completed with text that is more faded.

• Under very rare cases it was possible to (Implant/Contraband) import without landing on the puzzle using the warp menu.
• The level name for a loaded level would not display if (Implant/Contraband) the only known variation seen was not NONE.
• If you were at the start of the hub puzzle and had not completed Ground_Rules (possible with 'Allow skipping' toggle), then reloading your save would mistakenly autoload you into Ground_Rules.
• The second journal entry in the "Advanced" section was mistakenly being unlocked on any (post-Inception) export from menu.
• Redo bind in warp menu while end popup is up will now correctly close the warp menu.
• Reset bind in warp menu now correctly does nothing.

• A special menu option for playing custom levels packs. You shouldn't have to go through the puzzle editor, and you should have basic QoL like the ability to save your progress - which the editor's "Test" function doesn't provide.
• Level sharing through Steam Workshop. I don't expect many players will want to manually transfer files around. Plus this is very important for custom level pack discoverability!
• Puzzle editor polish. I'll be making improvements based on feedback. I will be happy to write-up some detailed documentation on Discord if anyone is interested.

• Support for MacOS.
• Localization. Outside of menus and the journal/hints (which are optional), the game is fairly text-free. Nevertheless, players with very limited English skills will struggle. If the game does well enough and it makes financial sense, then I would like to slowly add more languages as it makes sense. I've received a lot of feedback for Simplified Chinese, but am curious, what other languages should I prioritize?