Nova Drift News & Patch Notes

Hey, all! I've got a few updates for you.

Games For Waves

First, the WDC's World Ocean Day Steam Sale just hit and runs for a week from today. There are a lot of games, including Nova Drift, running deep sales, and a % of the profits from each title goes to whale and dolphin conservation! You can view the Steam Sale here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41670686-Whale-and-Dolphin-Conservation/ Buy a great game, tell your friends, help a cetacean. Everyone wins! If you'd like to read more about WDC, and the good work they do, you can do so here: https://uk.whales.org/

Utopia Must Fall ESCALATION Update

Nova Drift's cousin-in-law Utopia Must Fall (originally designed by ND's musician Miles Tilmann) just got its biggest update ever, titled the Escalation Update. They just added a new meta-progression, new enemies & bosses, and a lot of other new's that we don't need to get into here. It's also in a bundle with ND, so check it out? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/56d9cb5738ca4909fa7baf2552dbab882edeabb6.gif

Nova Drift on consoles

We're working on it! Really, it's going well. We have dev kits and everything. We're hoping this launches around Q4 this year, around the time our first DLC comes out.

Nova Drift: Weapon Mutations DLC

If you haven't heard, Nova Drift's first DLC is underway, and it's coming along very well! Currently there is at least a rough-draft of an alternate version of each Nova Drift weapon and about half of them are in an alpha state. Some of them are crazier than anything we did in vanilla Nova Drift, and a few are based on concepts you may have seen shared on the blog or Discord as early as 7 years ago. When the time comes to start beta testing the update, I'll make some noise. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/507eb006938e2c4e9347c8aee464369cf8029d82.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/2ab6f3fd1694f59beaf45a4081537dbe1cc93fe2.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/88a81ca8b25c26dc68d3b6b29dd1db2cccfa80ba.png That's all for now. Have fun, Drifters -Jeffrey

Hey, all! I've got a few updates for you.

Games For Waves

Utopia Must Fall ESCALATION Update

Nova Drift on consoles

We're working on it! Really, it's going well. We have dev kits and everything. We're hoping this launches around Q4 this year, around the time our first DLC comes out.

Nova Drift: Weapon Mutations DLC

Hello all,

Today we are launching not one but TWO major versions that have been brewing in the beta branches for months: 1.2.37 : Save and Quit Feature + minor fixes 1.2.35 : A huge amount of fixes, tweaks, and a balance pass

But of course this is all rolled into 1.2.37, which you should now have access to in the default branch. Read the entire patch notes here.

Here are the highlights:

- Added a Save and Quit feature: Resume your game-in-progress anytime!

Note that when using Resume, your score will not be submitted to online leaderboards.
Added settings for the Save and Quit / Resume run feature which allows you to toggle when your run should be auto-saved. Note: In resumed runs, your final score won't be shared to online leaderboards

- A slew of bug fixes

- Major balance changes touching but not limited to:

Saturation Fire
Bastion Shield
Constructs

Also a reminder that these changes are reflected in the newly launched Mobile Versions as well:

iOS App Store
Google Play
Itch.io (Android APK with no Googly features)

There is more on the horizon, Nova Drift continues to evolve across space and time it seems...

Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello all,

It's been a while since we dropped any news, and as usual there is a lot going on:

Nova Drift Mobile - Now Available

The mobile version features a highly customizable touch-control scheme, mobile gamepad support, optimized performance, and all features from the PC version.

You can buy the Premium version or try out the free, but limited Lite version. The Premium version is the full game, and the Lite version is a free demo that lets you play until wave 60 and limits unlocks.

Neither have any ads or IAP. There's even itch.io build for Android if you don't use the Play store.

🔹iOS Premium: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nova-drift/id6744329971

🔹iOS Lite: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nova-drift-lite/id6746450915

🔹Android Premium: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chimeric.novadrift

🔹Android Lite: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chimeric.novadriftdemo

🔹Android (Itch) https://pixeljam.itch.io/nova-drift-android

Transferring Your Save Data From PC to Mobile

In case you need to do this, here's how:

There's a feature in the mobile version's settings that lets you PASTE your save data from your phone's clipboard. The Nova Drift save file is just plain text. So to get it on your clipboard you could do one of two things-

1) Email the contents of save.ini to yourself and then copy it on your mobile. Here is where the save file is located:

PC: C:\\Users\\USER\\AppData\\Local\\NovaDrift\\

MAC: ~/Library/Application Support/com.pixeljam.stardriftmac

For the PC path, just change "USER" to your username.

2) Alternatively, you could use a USB / charging cable to connect your phone to your computer and transfer the file that way, then copy the contents of the file.

Finally, go to Settings -> Account -> Paste Settings From Clipboard.

What's Coming Up?

Save & Quit Feature

Better late than never right??

We're already testing this feature on the Steam beta, and it works great. You can freely leave your game and pick it up whenever. The enemy wave you're facing will restart, but almost everything about the state of the player will be retained, including conveniences like unclaimed experience orbs.

The only limitation is– since restarting the wave is naturally going to be exploitable– games where you've used this feature won't submit your score to online leader boards. So if you're competing, you should still finish your run in one sitting, but otherwise, you can freely put games on hold.

We'll deploy this as soon as possible for both PC and mobile.

Consoles!

Polycrunch Games (just one awesome guy, btw) has made us an amazing mobile port, and has been very forward-thinking while engineering it. We're ready to hit the ground running with all major console ports, targeting a 2026 release. Of course, you never know with these things. Working with huge corporations is never fast, each platform has their own highly specific requirements, and actual game development is only one part of the process. I expect piles of digital paperwork, waiting on submission approvals, and unexpected troubles. But that is the job and we are equal to it. We will get it done!

Optimization

With consoles on the way, I've continued working on projectile optimization. Projectile calculations are by far the most demanding aspect of Nova Drift. I'm currently testing a new settings feature that lets you tell the game how aggressively you want the game to optimize projectiles by squarshing them together. If that setting is on, it does this by combining excessive player projectiles into fewer projectiles that have the combined damage and effectiveness. This optimization happens when a lot of projectiles are created at once, or when new projectiles are created when a whole lot already exist. This is designed to have as little impact on performance as possible. For example, powers like "Corrosion" that care about how many times your projectiles hit won't be adversely affected... if two projectiles were clumped together, it will simply deal twice the damage and apply twice the stacks of corrosion.

Downloadable Content?

I'm not ready to talk about this or to promise anything (I've learned I work best under these conditions) but I would like you to know that I have been working on, and experimenting with, many fun things!

Also, in case you haven't been keeping up on the Discord, we've been bug fixing and adding QoL regularly, since the game released. We've just been quiet about it.

That's all for now, enjoy the mobile version, and I'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading, Drifters.

-Jeffrey

Dear Drifters,

I know I've been pretty quiet lately, but there's been a lot going on behind the scenes. I'll catch you up, and then I'd like to tell you about the next Pixeljam game, Dino Run 2, which I was a big part of way back before Nova Drift!

Chimeric News:

If you're not already aware, Nova Drift was built in GameMaker. This often surprises people. I think this is partially because of how far we've pushed its capabilities, but also because people don't realize how far GameMaker has come since its early days when it was known as more of a hobbyist's tool. It's powerful now! Still, as we work on porting for mobile and consoles, we're starting to see its limitations, and as my next project approaches, I'm thinking it's time for a change. I continue to believe it is the best tool for rapid prototyping, and perhaps the easiest engine to pick up, especially for people with a more creative than technical background, and so it will always hold a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, unless they improve its compatibility, UI support, and the porting experience, I feel like it's something that most serious game developers will eventually "grow out of".

So, I've weighed all of my options carefully, and Unity eventually came out on top for building my future games. I can already hear people groaning. Listen, it's like this: All game engines are bad; The question is, which one is the right kind of bad for you...

It's been a crazy adjustment for me as I've been practicing with it, since I'm learning not just a new environment, but also a new programming language, AND at the same time brushing up on my 3D art and vfx. It definitely feels like a power tool compared to GM, but also feels complex and bloated compared to Gamemaker's light-weight simplicity. Anyway, I'm certain that once I'm comfortable with it, I'm going to love having the wealth of tools, support, and visual tech that it offers.

In other news, the mobile port for Nova Drift is nearing its final phases, and after that we'll start right on console ports. Also, I'm still considering creating DLC for Nova Drift, likely involving Gear Mutations, and offering it on all of the platforms we'll be supporting.

Prototyping my next game?! (Not to be confused with Dino Run)

I'm very excited to say that I may have finally found an "official" development partner?? We've been carefully reviewing options for the next game to build, selected one, and have begun prototyping it. This game must remain a secret for now, since we aren't sure if it'll be something we'll commit to yet, but I wanted you to know that things are happening.

In the meantime, while he's laying down the architecture for that game, I've been working on a cute little app in order to accelerate my learning C# and Unity. I can best describe the side-project as a Virtual Pet crossed with a light-weight fitness app. It's something that I've wanted to make for myself for a long time, but the full pedometer/GPS integration I wanted for it looked like it just wasn't going to happen with Gamemaker. It's been fun, and I'll show the Discord when it's further along. Who knows, might finish it.

Once I'm comfortable with the new tools, I'll join him on the prototype and we'll see whether it's worth pursuing or if we need to revisit our other top choices. Once we have any confidence on what we'll move forward with, I can reveal some teasers.

Dino Run 2!

For a little background on the connection between Nova Drift and Dino Run, Nova Drift was published by Pixeljam which was co-founded by my friends, Miles Tilmann and Rich Grillotti. Miles Tilmann is also Nova Drift's musician! I don't think many Nova Drift players know this, but I actually got my start in indie Games by being a fan of the flash game Dino Run, a 2008 hit browser game created by Pixeljam. I loved it so much that I sent them some fanart, and surprisingly, this led to me working for them as a pixel art contractor, and eventually allowed me to quit my corporate games job! Over the years, we worked on many retro games together, and this eventually led to the creation of Nova Drift with Pixeljam acting as its publisher. Along this journey, I'd laid down Dino Run 2's early concept art, animations, environments, and mechanical design, but eventually got pulled away as Nova Drift became my full-time job. Dino Run 2 chugged on from then until today, and it is finally ready for the last PUSH, via a Kickstarter campaign, into Early Access.

Here's some of my early artwork on the game from many moons ago:

And here's what it's looking like today:

I'm very excited to finally get to play the sequel to the game I imagined when I was but a small Jeff. It's changed in some radical ways since I worked on it, and now includes a super robust Multiplayer Sandbox mode that lets you build while you hang with friends. Actually insane.

Please check out the Kickstarter, below, if for no other reason than to witness the adorable animations and the brilliantly creative work the team has been cooking. Or just drop it a wishlist!

Wishlist the game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2590330/Dino_Run_2/

Join the Dino Run 2 Discord: https://discord.com/invite/pixeljam

Back the Campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pixeljam/the-dino-run-2-early-access-campaign?ref=b7d2o9

Thanks for reading,

Jeffrey/Chimeric

Nova Drift's new game mode, Daily Challenge is now included as a free update!

But before I get into the details, I'd like to remind everyone that the World Ocean Day Steam Sale is live now. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/f06c2d5fd9425bd87d5cbd72b784fe4124de7607.png 100+ other games are participating, and any of your purchases will support vital conservation work to create safer seas for whales and dolphins, as well as fund a brand-new project to retrieve lost ocean fishing gear. Also, there are some amazing titles in the mix! See what's for sale: World Ocean Day Steam Sale 2025

One week left to claim your Nova Drift OST on Vinyl!

Also, our Campaign to bring the Nova Original Soundtrack to Vinyl is more than halfway over but only just barely halfway to it's funding goal. Even if you don't want a record, there are a lot of digital-only rewards for those that just want to support the project, including steam keys for the game (that one could give to friends) at almost half price ($10). {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/62c4a4b4c0a8c635c7b1e27759f4e26321336a7c.png The campaign ends June 12th: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/milestilmann/nova-drift-soundtrack-on-vinyl-and-cd Without further ado,

New Game Mode: Daily Challenge

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/90dba02c7a51d555e3d6a59a319977b6b0ca2e92.png Take on a new seeded challenge each day, competing with players globally. All together, there are 10 main Daily Challenges, and 23 modifiers that can be applied to them to in different combinations. This results in an enormous number of unique challenges that cycle daily.

Here are the main Challenge Modes:

Super Nova Brothers

Begin your journey alongside a unique and powerful Ally construct. You and the Ally share a portion of damage taken. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0174d5f7384414c1a3ed86a36ea2177365fb9957.jpg

20-Point Draft / 45-Point Draft

Begin your journey in Draft Mode with a different number of upgrade points. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0fc216be1f186a31772b521424c1d755774840ec.jpg

Serpentine Drift

Begin your journey as a Leviathan and munch orbs to increase your size. Protect your head, and don't chomp your own tail! Your only threats are cosmic hazards and yourself. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e6e5e3ab4ff8fb109a0f4b7e5f91596226f46848.jpg

Turbo // Turbo Endless

Experience a condensed and intense journey. Leveling and wave progression happen much faster. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/12e68e454f470d797063336f21331a299e25648b.jpg

Boss Rush

Face a gauntlet of every boss. Bosses are faster and much tougher. You earn massively increased score and experience. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0efa0cc7abbadc444ff077d83197aa3fd93e3b38.jpg

Way Of The Sword

Begin your journey wielding a powerful variant of the Swords weapon. It can't be damaged by enemies or create spark projectiles. Only you may wield the Sword. You are faster and can use mobility powers more frequently, but you take more damage. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e54df514bf90fc935f7b0079b0bfd94aaaa2834c.jpg

Purity

Begin your journey with a powered-up Ataraxia Super Mod. Once you have 7 Mods, you can't upgrade anymore. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/149a769f13cfff0a6ae6fb5cd389fe465faa0342.png

Cosmic Egg

Begin your journey with a COSMIC EGG, which enemies want to destroy. You're tougher, but if it breaks, you lose. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/aec357ccebc1b2c1e39112e68e8f51f9188ef25e.jpg

And here are the modifiers to those Challenge Modes:

Long Shot - The battlefield size is greatly increased.
Grace - Power-ups last longer. Enemies and constructs drop more power-ups and orbs, and Cargo Trains are longer.
Unbreakable - Your Body Gear is stronger, and body powers are improved.
Unstoppable - Your Weapon Gear is stronger.
Immovable - Your Shield Gear is stronger and shield effects are improved.
Heist - Cargo Trains are much more common but spawn with dangerous escorts!
Hyperactive - You have improved recovery and faster shield cooldown.
Compact - You are much smaller.
Hurt Me Plenty - Everything takes more damage.
Ultra Violence - Everything takes much more damage.
I'm The Boss, Now - You are much larger, and have massively increased hull and shields, but they never recover.
Chosen One - Gear is predetermined, but stronger.
Wilder Metamorphosis - Wild Metamorphosis is enabled and Wild Mods are much more common.
Pandemonium - Wild Metamorphosis is enabled, and every other upgrade only Wild Mods are offered.
Cage Match - Screen wrapping is impossible, but your gear is stronger.
Sterner Stuff - Enemies are much tougher.
Rogue Harder - Rerolls do not exist.
Vengeance - Bosses are much stronger and provide greater rewards.
Slippery Fish - Friction is halved.
Frenzy - Enemies are much faster.
Celestial Shower - Comets are more frequent and numerous.
Cosmic Ballet - Special wave encounters happen much more frequently.
Wilderness - Wild Metamorphosis is enabled.

A few other highlights from 1.2:

Buffs for Blade and Self Destruction
QoL settings added for asteroid visibility
Difficulty adjustments for Scion, Dweller, Seraph, Spitfire, Station Omega, and Star Eater, making them more in line with the power curve of other bosses, especially for Boss Rush mode
Dozens of bug fixes, including some fatal crashes and memory leaks

Here's the full change log. Thanks for reading. I hope you love the update! -Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

On BlueSky (My preferred platform), or Twitter {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/ffa25cd40a5f98c5111437d4c1cf380019ad18c8.png We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a difference.

I have a confession to make. I have been living a lie for far too long, and the guilt weighs on my conscience like a great, barnacled, blubbery mass. Lately, it's taken all my energy to keep my head above water, so I'm just going to spout it out:

It exists. There is a Space Whale.

Whew... That's a relief. I feel like I can breathe again. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/4fb97419a1d842da5112aca8d78bca55ceedfb2b.jpg So... context. If you're not already a member of our Discord community, this statement makes no sense. You see, I have been denying its existence for more than 7 years. It does exist, though it hasn't always, and it is very, very rare. What started as a running in-joke got carried away, and today I will tell you that story, but first... My inky-black deception shall not go unanswered. I must begin the long journey of my penance! To begin, I pledge this to you: When Nova Drift's 1.2 update launches, for the period of June 5th-12th, I will donate 20% of the game's profits to the WDC Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity. And over a hundred other games will do the same! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/f06c2d5fd9425bd87d5cbd72b784fe4124de7607.png Read more about their contributions here: https://games.whales.org/world-ocean-day-festival-2025 Please, mark your calendars, grab some amazing games at low prices, and let's do some good together.

A deep dive into Nova Drift's cetacean server lore.

Ever since Nova Drift's 2017 Kickstarter campaign concluded and people started migrating into the game's Discord server, players have been asking for a Space Whale. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/c67ad6c7057a18522fd3cbf81476573541ff1f94.jpg They've been asking... a lot. The game's reception was more than I expected. I tried to respond to everyone but I was eventually overwhelmed by the torrent of feedback and requests. I got some help from players and also implemented some systems like a feature voting website and bots. Those helped, but even after I found a community manager, it was still a leviathan task. After a while, I noticed that the more players requested Space Whales, the more other people piled on. This only became more true as it went unanswered. Interesting. Years later into development the meme was still going strong, and people were enjoying it, so I leaned into it, pretending to forbid people from discussing Space Whales. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/93cf386d954584ea426d95e9a93ea0c03ff059d2.jpg Naturally, this resulted in community members warning new players that they could get banned for even mentioning a whale, further stoking the fires. By the time the game started to go viral, I was refusing to engage with discussions about whales in any form, and the meme self-perpetuated for years after. It was funny to me for a while, and it seemed to be a good thing for the community, but I felt compelled to take it to the next level. April Fool's was coming up soon, so that was perfect. I usually made fake patch notes or released a mini-game, but this time I did this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/ae1eb0ea1b3719d1db2d854ee48df77bc59362c4.png Kuva?? In this economy?! Even with all the in app purchases and pay-to-win-dark-patterns-bullshit I was surprised that some people thought this was real, but I shouldn't have been. Every developer knows you can't make gamers read. I'm a gamer. I don't read. Doing this made me realize that that the funniest thing I could do would be to secretly, finally, add the whale to the game. I'd already made the art. I had to do it. I started work on this shortly after, but it got sidetracked, so the assets were in the game for a while before I actually made it possible for the whale to spawn in game. I realized that this could be fun misdirection. Knowing that my players love to data mine, I gave the files confusing names as an attempt at plausible deniability, but it was not enough. Players used the Undertale mod tools to rip the sprites and then assemble them into something approximating a whale, but I expected this. I claimed that putting them in the engine was the easiest way for me to spoof that April Fool's day shot. But mostly I tried to stay out of the conversation. I'd muddied the waters enough that, with the help of the other community members, people weren't sure what was true anymore. Perfect. At long last, I put it in the game as a rare spawn. Riiiight before the game fully released. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e0352ac672c81a8380e7737afd22c57ba22d639f.jpg A really, really rare spawn. If you're interested in the way it works under the hood, it's like this: Every few minutes the game is likely to have a chance to spawn a Cargo Train. Whenever that chance occurs, there is a 1/7777 chance that it instead the Space Whale appears. I didn't want players to try to kill it, so I made it almost indestructible. Also, as long as it swims around, it unleashes a stream of orbs which grant experience. Early game, this translates to a whole lot of free levels, but its not so much that it breaks the game balance. So, if anyone did manage to kill it, it would be to their own detriment. One of our top players did actually manage to bring it down, and I doubled its health as punishment for his sin. Whales are our friends. I wanted the encounter to be infrequent enough that seeing it was actually insane, but not so uncommon that long time veterans never saw it. Estimating play time, my friend and I tried to make it so that you'd be likely to see it once every few hundred hours. My plan was that it'd be just rare enough that players couldn't be sure whether evidence was doctored. After all, the art had existed in the game files quite a while before anyone captured it in a screen shot. This was of course unsustainable as video evidence did eventually appear, but by the time it did, we were way past the truth mattering. I'd just claim the video wasn't playing or that Discord was busted. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/2a783a35c44a012dfe59d5cbf98dd271a4d2a240.gif Or I'd deflect. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/622e3afca05c64ebb762a80ac3645ddf297b8006.png Or I'd just act really impressed at their forgery skill...

But All of That Ends Today

No longer shall I deceive you. Instead, let us revel in the existence of the Space Whale together. Nay, let us celebrate all whales! For we are all connected! In honor of World Ocean Day and WDC, I have snuck a Space Whale calf into the game. See if you can figure out how to encounter it during the 1.2 update! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/aec357ccebc1b2c1e39112e68e8f51f9188ef25e.jpg Oh?! It's hatching!

In Conclusion

Listen, maybe a 7-year-running gag is taking things a bit too far. Maybe I shouldn't have lied, obfuscated, and denied the evidence against my claims. I owe it to my players to apologize for that deception. So, I'm sorry. Moving forward, what I can promise you is this (and I mean this from the bottom of my icy, black, abyssal heart):

I Won't Ever Lie To You Again

(Unless its funny.) Cosmic love, Jeffrey (Chimeric) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/5e77adb8e8a18f242434cb653a78de0d8c9e5e19.png Oh, right, I should probably talk about the update: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/90dba02c7a51d555e3d6a59a319977b6b0ca2e92.png June 5th's 1.2 update introduces a new mode of play, "Daily Challenge", where you can take on a new seeded challenge each day, competing with players globally. Here are a few of the new modes of play you can take on: SUPER NOVA BROTHERS – Begin your journey alongside a unique and powerful Ally construct. You and the Ally share a portion of damage taken. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0174d5f7384414c1a3ed86a36ea2177365fb9957.jpg SERPENTINE DRIFT – Begin your journey as a Leviathan and munch orbs to increase your size. Protect your head, and don't chomp your own tail! Your only threats are cosmic hazards and yourself. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e6e5e3ab4ff8fb109a0f4b7e5f91596226f46848.jpg BOSS RUSH – Face a gauntlet of every boss. Bosses are faster and much tougher. You earn massively increased score and experience. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/ebdbc58662df62bb485365cea58c5dd979b3e6ab.jpg All together, there are 10 main Daily Challenges, and 23 modifiers that can be applied to them to in different combinations. This results in an enormous number of unique challenges that cycle daily. Other Daily Challenge modes include: Cosmic Egg, 20-Point Draft, 45-Point Draft, Purity, Turbo, Turbo Endless, and Way Of The Sword. Daily Challenge launches June 5th, along with the World Ocean Day Steam Sale, as a free update. I hope you love it. Thanks for reading!

Want to help me make more games like this?

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

Hello all, If you didn't already know, the Daily Challenge Update will launch on June 5th. It's stable and ready for you to preview in the BETA branch if you want to check it out early. Thanks to everyone that helped us shape it up over the last few months. Also, Pixeljam is going to start streaming again to support the Kickstarter Campaign to get the Nova Drift soundtrack on vinyl and CD. The campaign is 40% funded with only 2 weeks left, so we really need your support to make it happen! Even if you don't want vinyl or CDs, there are plenty of digital-only rewards for those that pledge. Click here to visit the campaign. I'm going to start streaming again as well, please subscribe to Pixeljam's Twitch Channel to get notified when we go live. Here is the planned schedule. All streams start at 3 PM EST:

Friday May 30
Tuesday June 3
Friday June 6
Tues June 10
Thursday June 12 (last day of the Kickstarter!)

This Friday (May 30), I'll be examining the track Chronos and deconstructing it live, and probably starting a remix for it as well. If you have ever wondered how the music for Nova Drift gets made, this is a good opportunity for it. You'll even see my face for the first time! Hope to see you there, - Miles @ Pixeljam

The Kickstarter Campaign to bring the Nova Drift Soundtrack to Vinyl and Compact Disc has launched! Check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/milestilmann/nova-drift-soundtrack-on-vinyl-and-cd {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/587eeee0b9683b5a1776b0b61f8aa69ddbc3435b.png

Printed on BioVinyl, no toxic dino-sludge involved.
Compact disc options for those that could give 2 craps about vinyl.
Digital-only rewards for those that could give 3 craps about physical rewards. Grab some extra discounted Steam keys for your buddies!
No-reward option for those that like to put money into creative projects and receive nothing in return (wow!)
Shipping to 6 different countries supported now, but if we get enough requests for certain countries I will add them to the campaign. Drop a comment here if you want to buy Vinyl but your country is not supported.

Please spread the word as well to all Nova Drift fans! We’ll need a lot of support on this if we’re going to meet our goal. Talk to us in the #soundtrack channel on our Discord if you have questions or feedback. - Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello Drifters, After much blood, sweat, and a few minor electrocutions, the Daily Challenge Update is ready for beta testing! Switch to the BETA branch on Steam to check it out. Here are the details: Take on a new seeded challenge each day. Here are 3 examples: Boss Rush: Face a gauntlet of every boss. Bosses are faster and much tougher. You earn massively increased score and experience. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/392487bf39b673374c3378093945b141d5fb60f1.jpg Serpentine Drift: Begin your journey as a Leviathan and munch orbs to increase your size. Protect your head, and don't chomp your own tail! Your only threats are cosmic hazards and yourself. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/b85cc618cc4ac169ddc67d3b96f3e84f554dbb6b.jpg Super Nova Brothers: Begin your journey alongside a unique and powerful Ally construct. You and the Ally share a portion of damage taken. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/7686cc9864c3713cca92c1d63133b6610ea733fd.jpg Other modes include: 20-Point Draft, 45-Point Draft, Cosmic Egg, Purity, Turbo, Turbo Endless, and Way Of The Sword. Also, we have more information on the Soundtrack Kickstarter Campaign: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/587eeee0b9683b5a1776b0b61f8aa69ddbc3435b.png

We are making CDs as well as Vinyl.
We are pressing on BioVinyl, which is fossil-fuel-free.
It launches on May 20th.
Please sign up to be notified here when it starts!
Tell your drifting buddies who also might be interested! We'll need a few hundred people to pledge in order to make our goal.

Thanks for testing, and potentially supporting the soundtrack campaign as well. Take care, -Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello all, I'm considering pressing up vinyl for the Nova Drift Soundtrack, but I only want to move forward on it if there is enough interest. It would not be the entire soundtrack (since it's almost 3 hours long), but probably 2 discs (4 sides, about 15-20 mins each side) of select tracks from the OST, with some player input about what's included as well. So... drop any comment here (doesn't matter what the comment says, "+1" is good enough) if you would actually be interested in purchasing it on release. Price would probably be around 30 dollars for a double disc set or 20 dollars for a single disc, depending on how many we made and the production cost of each. Thanks! - Miles @ Pixeljam

Made a few changes to comply with Steam Deck verification requirements:

Fixed non-value settings items getting greyed out incorrectly on Steam Deck
Fixed Window Size setting being selectable on Steam Deck
Fixed loading and saving settings that are disabled on Steam Deck
Fixed Custom Skin sprite overlapping the score on the End Score screen
Upgrade screen descriptions now use the standard-scaling small font to comply with Steam Deck text size requirements
We now hide key indicators in construct UI when using gamepad controls
We now don't grey out the Online Leaderboard setting item on Steam Deck
Fixed line wrapping length in end game unlock messages

Announcing our latest Steam Bundle: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/52ed2fd2748cdcb3a46f8845b28b5a2be993fe80.png Genome Guardian is a criminally underexposed game and I aim to do something about it. It's a perfect fit alongside Nova Drift, so we are bundling UP. Genome Guardian is a turret roguelite survival game. There's a lot I like about it. It's well presented, creative, funny, and inventive. There is also a huge amount of content to unlock. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/866686d1c624a11dca3a08fd72cfa92e2b22f965.gif I particularly like the weapon combination system which is a blast to experiment with. Any combination of Pistol, Shotgun, SMG, or Bomb results in a unique weapon type, for a total of 70 weapons. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/fc3b7aef92ed00c4c66622a125b92796d6661a16.gif Just as you starting to master it, it'll surprise you with entirely new game modes, like one that transforms the game from a central turret config to a vertical shooter. Complete the bundle by clicking here, as HARD as you can.

Cell Command!

Alpherior's next game, Cell Command, is also shaping up to be very interesting. I'm pretty interested to see where this is going, so I'll be following for sure. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/95f695bb74e09d7560fce0f17c5009b66dca1a6c.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/109615e43886c7e35d9bcdf6865c10390b923e36.png Check it out, maybe drop a wish list?

Hello Drifters, This update focuses on achieving two main goals: Offering an even smoother experience on Steam Deck than we already do, and preparing the game for porting. While there are many optimization challenges associated with porting (the focus of the next update), I'm particularly excited to share the game experience with mobile and Switch players. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1a0e5e0faa2b5d5db36c52e535a41210cfe12c9e.jpg A few highlights from 1.1:

Reworked the Settings menus: Each category section is now a tabbed page
Fonts are crisper & more readable, especially at non-native / small resolutions
Ensured all controller glyphs, tutorials, and messages are accurate, large, and clear for Steam Deck and future consoles and mobile devices
Reworked unlock progression, improving the pacing for players of varying skill levels
Support for virtual keyboard high score entry on Steam Deck
Many bug fixes

Here's the full change log.

New Content For Nova Drift?

Now that I've had a fair bit of time to recover from launch and play with a few other projects, I'm feeling ready to start thinking about new content for Nova Drift again. Last month, we previewed a few ideas for Nova Drift Weapon Mutations. I've continued iterating on what Weapon Mutations could be, and have arrived at a experimental concept for each existing weapon. The challenge is balancing unique weapon identity with the difficulty of tuning effectively twice as many weapons as the base game has. It still sounds insane to me, but... I'll figure something out? Here are a few more experimental concepts:

Blaster Mutation: Kinetic Blast
- Kinetic Blast is an innately-charging, hard-hitting, close-range weapon that fires a pair of focused blasts ahead of you. These blasts can launch enemies
- Kinetic Blast automatically charges up while you move, gaining charge from your speed. While equipped, mobility reductions don't affect you
- Kinetic Blast fires either manually or triggers when you collide head-on. In the latter case, its damage is also scaled by your crash damage modifiers
- Targets launched by Kinetic Blast can collide with other targets, dealing additional blast damage to each-other on impact, based on their respective hull strength and velocities

Grenade Mutation: Sticky Bomb
- Instead of exploding on impact or proximity, Sticky Bombs attach to enemies and explode after a short fuse, triggering all other nearby Sticky Bombs
- Stacking additional Sticky Bombs on a target that already has some increases the fuses of the other attached Sticky Bombs
- Sticky Bombs triggered by other Sticky Bombs increase their damage and blast radius for each reaction in the chain
- Compared to Grenades, Sticky Bombs have a greater rate of fire, and deal more damage, but produce no cluster explosives

Dart Mutation: Harpoon
- Instead of dealing splash damage or burn damage to targets they're lodged in, Harpoons deal burn damage via a searing hot tether strung between them and their shooter
- Compared to Darts, Harpoons deal much more impact damage, last longer, and have a much slower rate of fire

Swords Mutation: Greatsword
- Instead of deploying a pair of Swords, you deploy a massive Greatsword
- Compared to Swords, Greatsword is slower, larger, much more powerful, and indestructible, but cannot create Spark Projectiles
- Greatsword deals more damage the more missing hull you have
- Wielding a Greatsword provides a small amount of armor and damage reduction

I'm sure these ideas will change and evolve as I experiment with them. My current estimation is that Weapon Mutations will appear in Nova Drift's first DLC, which may ship alongside all new Gear.

New Gear? Fan Inspiration!

A few years ago, I received this amazing piece of fan art, and I never got it out of my head: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/7046562b4919f69d338023b1781f564fc80b539c.png Shield Gear: Chakram, by Arch_Imedes If there's time, I'd love to introduce something like this to the game. Since there is considerably more Weapon and Body Gear options in the game than there are Shield Gear, maybe this DLC could include a small Shield Pack to even it out.

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

On BlueSky (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Thank You

To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos! Jeffrey (Chimeric)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/2d39a0d021a2a6542f5aa030e553263f072d0160.png

Nova Drift's Free Demo Is Now Available!

If you're one of the many people who have wishlisted Nova Drift, but haven't pulled the trigger, the demo is HERE. Tell your friends. They must know the exaltation of biomechanical wings cutting graceful arcs through luminiferous aether. You can show them. The Demo Version allows you to reach wave 60, and rank your account up to 15. We even snuck in some Super Mods so players can learn how they work earlier than you'd normally access them. Check it, here.

Porting Prep

Even though we've been pretty quiet, we've been busy:

Steam Deck Verification

Nova Drift is already perfectly playable on Steam Deck, but it isn't listed as "Verified" for a few trivial reasons, which we're solving. Getting verified means players can easily find it while shopping on their Steam Deck.

Switch & Mobile Needs: GUI Improvements

We've started working on the many obstacles in the way of smooth console and mobile porting. Devices with small screens or low resolutions would benefit from larger and crisper text. The first order of business has been using tabs on menus so we have the screen real estate to increase text size, or to add any new features we want. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/58dc20fc610e9798802ad1a8744ef561a38400c9.png For readability on small screens, we've improved text rendering, which will benefit all versions of the game. No more jaggy pixels! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/43955f8c78acf97d270ec85ac707af24679d6712.png

Optimizations

The hardest part of porting is getting the game to run smoothly on low-end devices. Namely, Nintendo Switch and phones. Computers are beasts compared to those. For better and for worse, Nova Drift is a game that won't try to stop you from filling the screen with projectiles if that's how you want to play, so we have a lot of work to do on optimizations for projectiles and collision detection. To stress test, I asked players to create the most degenerate builds they could in terms of performance, they said "challenge accepted", and it was so much worse than I ever could have imagined. 50,000 Torrent projectiles on screen at once, easily. The two worst offenders were builds aptly named "Lag Mines" and "Lag Ceptors", which maximize Torrent projectiles using mines or interceptors. And they only take around 22 mods to assemble. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/3992f37cf4988012f71b94610e8098c2223d359f.jpg "Lag Mines is unrivaled in fps krangling powers if you save up all 18 mines, but Lag Ceptors provides a constant stream of lag instead of a single burst. Though, the funny thing is you could totally build both of these at once." Obviously, we can't solve this only through optimization, but I doubt that from a gameplay perspective, 50,000 projectiles is truly more meaningful than a thousand, assuming the damage expected is being done. We'll look into dynamically controlling the number of objects on screen, trading quantity for power when needed, among other things.

New Content For Nova Drift?

Most players and our team seem to agree that the most valuable addition to the game would be a Daily Challenge mode, which we discussed in our previous post. Today I will talk about by far the most popular feature request, Gear Mutations, which are also on the table for a potential future update.

Gear Mutations

So the idea is that around the level 20 mark, you're offered a chance to "mutate" a weapon, body, or shield gear in a way that changes its fundamental behavior. While they can be very strong, they're more side-grades than direct upgrades to existing gear behaviors. We'd probably start with 1 mutation for each weapon for the first update. I can see a few ways it could be handled... Gear Mutations could completely replace weapons:

Vortex Mutation: Orb

Create and release a massive orb. The orb is slow-moving, decelerates, and deals burn damage to enemies it passes through.
Only one orb can exist at a time. While an orb exists, firing creates a torrent of twisting, damaging submunition projectiles that erratically home in on the orb.
Submunitions that make contact with the orb are consumed by it, increasing its size. The orb also consumes any targets it destroys.
The orb detonates after a short time after it stops consuming, dealing blast damage in a radius proportional to its size.
Modifiers to projectile count instead apply to submunitions.

Or it could instead modify existing weapon behaviors:

Pulse Mutation: Pulsewave

Pulsewave fires a single, intangible projectile instead of a cone of projectiles.
Your pulses now originate from the projectile instead of from you, with 50% reduced damage and size.
During the projectile's lifetime, it creates 7-10 pulses in random positions around it, each with randomized size and damage.
Modifiers to projectile size affect the number of pulses.

Years ago, when Thermal Lance was added to the game, Weapon Mutations were pitched like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/dea1a33cd665684cfb2010a0e5d6cb093068c03e.png I'd also interested in creating a particularly special mutation for the Blaster weapon, rewarding players for never swapping off of it. You know, kind of a Magikarp situation. We'll see where we're at after porting is well underway!

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

On BlueSky (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/ffa25cd40a5f98c5111437d4c1cf380019ad18c8.png We've got quite an active Discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Thank You

DRIFT AND DRAFT Bundle

I'm excited to announce the Nova Drift + Slay The Spire bundle is now available on Steam! You can get both, or you can complete the set, with a 10% Discount. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/920ce5f9628501862314483188b3327ac8d66956.png Slay the Spire is one of those games that left a permanent mark on the game industry, and I think I speak for a lot of devs when I say that playing it changed the way that I design forever. There's a reason it's still going strong 7 years after release, and why it's so hard to exceed despite countless iterations on the formula. It gets a huge endorsement from me. More importantly, Snecko says BUY NOW @_@ https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45418/Nova_Drift__Slay_The_Spire/

NOVA DRIFT + BROTATO Bundle

We're also bundled up with Brotato like somekinda incandescent potato wrap. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1342bf9eed0e029c044cd4336a663fb89eab28d0.png "Brotato is a top-down arena shooter roguelite where you play a potato wielding up to 6 weapons at a time to fight off hordes of aliens." I feel like I can't sell this game better than that tag line already does. Like Nova Drift, Brotato has a crazy amount of variety in its toolkit, including hundreds of items, upgrades, weapons, and characters to experiment with. If you love Nova Drift, I think you'll love this, too: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45524/Nova_Drift__Brotato/ Thanks for reading. We've got some interesting things brewing, and I can't wait to share what's next for our team! Farewell for now, Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Hello everyone, thanks so much for what has been an amazing launch. I really appreciate all the positive energy sent our way, and we're excited for what comes next. Today we've got information for you in two parts. I'd like to talk about Pixeljam's next game, as well as go over how to create your own custom skins for Nova Drift, and share some awesome community creations. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/65827b59b7d80426088924c6441a39577aa87980.png First, allow me to introduce:

+UTOPIA MUST FALL+

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1683a982588cdc2b6f2a0a987bfac4f9c397164a.gif A base-defending arcade game, created by Datassette and our very own Miles Tilmann (the musician and publisher behind Nova Drift), Utopia Must Fall is releasing Monday the 9th. It's the first internally developed game by Pixeljam in six years (they've spent most of their time on Dino Run 2 and Nova Drift), and I believe it is something special. I've never experienced anything quite like the audio-visual combo this game has. It's also quite funny and tough as nails. While it's not a roguelike, it has elements of them in procedural generation, permadeath, and interesting upgrades. Give it a try, or at least drop them a Wishlist. What is good for Pixeljam is also good for the future of Nova Drift! Check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2849680/Utopia_Must_Fall/

Nova Drift Custom Skins

The game comes with 3 custom skins by default, and in this guide I'll break down how to add your own. Additionally, since some players expressed interest, I'll demonstrate how to match the Nova Drift art style exactly. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0e62d1c71ee417a07cb62e005862f382decfa722.png fourpointedstar's "Orphnim, The Chariot" Skin. (A fusion between Seraph and Glaucus)

Using & Creating Custom Nova Drift Skins

To select and use Custom Skins, just go to the Settings menu and choose your favorite. Any that are set up correctly will appear in the "Custom Skins" option. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/5b8d0c0fe38e9f1c9e8b3f3906fe69c684e5b23f.jpg I've tried to make adding custom skins as accessible as possible, requiring you only to drop artwork the game's custom_skins folder and edit one line of text for each skin. A skin must have the text data, body artwork, and force armor artwork. Optionally, drone artwork and jet position data may also be included.

Setting Up Custom Skin Artwork Data

Data for custom skins is found in the custom_skins folder, which is in this filepath by default: PC: Nova Drift\datafiles\custom_skins OSX: NovaDrift/Contents/Resources/custom_skins If you're using Steam, that file path might look more like: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Nova Drift\custom_skins Every skin needs two elements: Artwork, and the data inside of the custom_skins.csv file. The .csv file tells the game which artwork goes with which skin. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e839c6988471190121e0cbdd68e69a10e7b35c49.png To add your own custom skin, follow the examples of the included custom skins provided. The .csv file can be edited with most text editors, including Notepad. The file looks like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9ccc273d27ef016ef864e2eb413eb353191fdde0.png Here, we can see the data for the three default custom skins: Saris, Orbiter, and Ultra C. Please note:

The first line of the .csv is an example that the code ignores.
Every custom skin should be on its own line in the document.
The data values for each custom skin should be separated by commas, with no spaces.
Each skin must follow the format of: name,artwork,force_armor_artwork,drone_artwork,jet_angle,jet_distance

I'll explain the values that can be defined, from the left to right:

Name: This is a string of text that will be shown in the settings menu, labeling the custom skin.

Body Artwork: This is the file name of the sprite that will replace whatever the default body artwork is. More info below.

Body Force Armor Artwork (required): This is the file name of the sprite that will be layered below the body if the player has the "Force Armor" upgrade. More info below.

Drone Artwork (optional): This works just like the body artwork, but it applies to drones instead of the body. If this is left blank, no change to the drone artwork will occur.

Jet Angle (optional): Jet angle and Jet Distance define where the body's two jet trails originate from relative to the origin (the center) of the body artwork. Jet Angle defines the angle, in degrees, from where the jet originates (where zero is the front-facing of the body), while Jet Distance defines the distance (in pixels) from the origin of the ship. Then, these values are mirrored for the other jet. For instance, if you have a body whose wings are straight out to the sides you would use 90 for the jet angle, and the number of pixels from the center of the artwork for jet distance. This is an optional value; leaving it blank would result in both jets coming from the central origin of the ship.

Jet Distance (optional): See above.

Artwork Recommendations

I recommend providing a .png file for artwork, as they are lossless, but .gif and .jpg/.jpeg files should also work. For best results, the artwork should be somewhere around 200-320 pixels in width and length. Note that the game will do its best to make the custom body a similar size to the body gear it is representing. It does this by comparing the largest dimension of the original artwork to the largest dimension of the custom artwork and adjusting the artwork size by the difference. So, if you provide an oversized piece of artwork, it won't result in a larger body. If the provided artwork is too small, it may appear blurry if the game scales it up, which it may do either to fit the body size or accommodate retina displays. Also, it's best to avoid empty space around the artwork, as it will be included in the size calculation and will result in a smaller looking body. For reference, most bodies are visualized in-game at around 40% of their original artwork size.

Sprite Color

I recommend that your sprites are pure white. Player color is defined by their shield color. This coloration is applied multiplicatively, so if the custom artwork is pure white, it will look consistent with the art style of the game when shield color is applied.

Hit Boxes

The collision box for custom skins is created automatically from the image sprite. Portions of the image that have very high opacity, or 100% opacity, will have collision. In terms of the Gamemaker engine, this is a "precise collision" set to tolerance of 200.

Sprite Offsets

The offset for the sprite will automatically be set by finding the center of the image provided. It is important that both the body artwork and the force armor artwork share the same origin position relative to each other if they are to align in-game.

Notes

Custom skins don't make a visual Viper body barrier indicator. This has no effect on gameplay.
Leviathan body segments are all assigned the same sprite as the custom skin.

Please consider that while we encourage you to create, play with, and share custom skins, we must disable submitting global scores while they are in use, since players can easily use this feature to make the game more or less difficult.

How to Match the Nova Drift Art Style

If you'd like to, here's a guide to help you make your skins consistent with the Nova Drift art direction. I personally used Photoshop, but you can use anything that will let you draw with vectors and apply glows. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9203730b4824a84b06a5610036a27b85d0d83893.png It's all about minimalist geometry, hard angles, and subtle glows.

Step 1: The body vector shape

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/973eaff2cb55f5b167aab54e05fb78f8bb7dbc07.jpg Draw the body using white vector shapes. In Photoshop, this is accomplished using the Pen tool.

Step 2: The "tight" body glow (On the same layer as above)

Nova Drift usually layers several glows on top of each other for its signature style. One of them is very small and traces the object shape, making it look neon. The second is the same but much larger, appearing to radiate light outward. And the third is a diffuse, circular glow. This one doesn't trace the shape of the object, it's just a circular gradient. If you don't want to deal with all of this, feel free to just be lazy and make a single glow that averages the values between first two that I demonstrate. It won't make a huge difference. I'll demonstrate the "tight" glow first: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e5781fd4d4efb9828b7b7bc7e304a41712a823d6.jpg In Photoshop, this is accomplished by double-clicking a layer to get to the "Layer Styles" menu, checking "Outer Glow" and entering some numbers. Everything we make in this tutorial will use the same color as the body artwork, true white. For the glow I use a opacity of 25%, a size of 10px, and a range of 50%. The rest of the values are the defaults.

Step 3: The "wide" body glow (On a duplicate layer)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/df07a317e7f90111a0ebce05445faac9024ed7d1.jpg To make the wide glow, duplicate the previous layer so that you have a copy of your body artwork with a glow on it. Edit the Outer Glow in Layer Style to be wider and less opaque. I use 15% opacity and 100px size. Finally, just so that the body artwork's alpha doesn't overlap, reduce the Fill of this layer to 0%. This makes the body art invisible, but doesn't hide the glow.

Step 4: The "diffuse" glow (On a new layer)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/04091701e139ec8f6a00233e1230d77910c3c388.jpg The diffuse glow doesn't use the body artwork. It's just a white blob. On a new layer, just draw a white radial gradient with 100% white as the starting color and 0% white as the ending color. To make it subtle, you can either draw it at 20% opacity in the gradient settings like I am showing above, or reduce the opacity of the layer itself to 20%. The shape should span the width of your document's size. Turning all three layers on, you should see something like this: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/49b2d2b75d2d69733f8d253e82020c83dc046a3c.jpg I should have just used shaders for all of this, but at the time I figured using purely sprites would simplify things. Nova Drift doesn't use any shaders at all, actually. We old school. Now, the Force Armor effect is the last thing to create.

Step 5: The Force Armor stroke (On a new layer)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/55bbc72aadf57a564d50620de184e4d4ac6df838.jpg Using a vector line tool (in Photoshop this is called the Pen tool, turn off Fill and turn on Stroke), draw a shape around the whole body. It should be 10px in width and 100% opaque, and it looks good if there's around a 15 pixel buffer between the body and the inside of the effect. In-game it actually draws more like 30% opaque, but that is handled through code.

Step 6: Export your artwork

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/3821796a2341f46376a17c628effe20b9b8aa631.jpg Finally, save two copies of the artwork: One version with just the Force Armor stroke visible, and one version with everything except the Force Armor stroke visible. The background should be totally empty. To make the drone skins, the process is identical, except there's no need for Force Armor artwork. Make sure your file names match the file names that the .csv file is indicating.

Share Your Skins!

If you create any, please share your custom skins on the official Nova Drift Discord! We have a special channel ready for them, and we've already seen many amazing ones. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/3cc84edb3a23f1d101df92541c79d6d57ab96425.png Avtraxi's Custom Skin {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/951b7d12eeb8c695e9741d9a5d88e9905ec53c4c.png tempest153's Star Eater Cosplay Skin on a Leviathan I can't wait to see what you all come up with!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and reviews encourage players and content creators to give the game a chance. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

Don't want to miss my next game? Follow me!

On Twitter, BlueSky, and TikTok Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Hello all, The final bug fixes from 1.0 launch are live, including the one that causes cursor drift. Other changes include Star Eater boss tweaks and updates to the way the window repositions. Full changelog here as usual: https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

Hello all, We just updated to version 1.09, with some small hotfixes addressing some rare crashes and bugs. We're currently testing a balance pass for the final boss, as well as a fix for the cursor drift some players are experiencing in Windowed Mode. I expect these changes will be live within a week. If you'd like to experience them sooner, feel free to switch over to the beta branch. Changelog for 1.09: https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1056f41472147a3c556535d18ea4bbc4b8283b0b.jpg Early Access has finally ended... Nova Drift Version 1.0 is now available!

New Features:

Added a final boss(!)
Added the game ending sequence, which you will encounter if the Endless challenge mode is disabled
Endless Mode can now be turned off, and unlocks when you first beat the game's final boss for the first time
Added new sound effects and 4 new background music tracks, completing the OST
Added the ability to override body and drone artwork with custom skins. Added 3 sets of custom skins. Players may also create and play with their own!
Added German localization
Added new settings including Assist Mode, and High-Visibility mode
Implemented texture compression, significantly improving performance!
Implemented several hundred balance changes, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9e4f03dc21a52f08cb2b33e8b4fee9ebb330f742.jpg

Notable Changes Include:

Improvements/buffs to several Gear upgrades, including Research, Pulse, Blades, and Siphon
Improvements/buffs to many Mods, including Rapid Reconstruction, Deadly Wake, Homing Strike, Mines, Allies, Firing Array, Charged Shot, Flash Shielding, Construct Specialist Wild Mods, and Transmogrification
Improvements/buffs to several Super Mods, including Celestial Surge, Singular Strike, Sanctuary, Antimatter Rounds, and Ataraxia
Improved boss, enemy and hazard behavior, including asteroids, comets, Scion, Glaucus, Warbringer, Bolt-Throwers, Juggernauts, and Hives
Improved GUI, controls, menus, stats, text clarity, and the save system

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/cbfe79ec2c0c8985dc9d29a393d72cd58ef9547f.jpg

Complete List of Changes

https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

Nova Drift Retrospective

I'll be writing a proper Postmortem later, but I find I want to reflect on the game's development now, both to express my gratitude to everyone involved, and because I think it's been unorthodox enough that it may be interesting to players and useful to other game developers. I'm also writing to gain some closure and catharsis; It's been a long road. This will be quite long and personal, so if you're here for it, great, otherwise you could skip to the end if you just want to find out what's next for Chimeric and Nova Drift.

The Initial Nova Drift Pitch

Nova Drift was originally pitched more than a decade ago, in 2013, for a client who ran a web portal called Dojo. The request was to create an HTML5 game that would take 3 months(!) to make. I came up with a few simple pitches, Nova Drift being one of them. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9509cead3276f1080836ec83d2afafb01ce28ebd.jpg This is the original concept art from 2013. At the time, it was "Asteroid Assault", later to be renamed "Star Drift", and finally "Nova Drift. At the time, I was playing a ton of Path of Exile, which was by far Nova Drift's strongest influence. I wanted to explore ways to distill the experience of that game's hundred-hour character building into quick game sessions. Remember, this was more than a decade ago, we didn't have the scores of fast paced rogue-likes exploring that design space like we do today. At this point in my life, I'd just quit corporate game development in favor of working in a more official capacity with Pixeljam, a tiny indie company who I had a ton of admiration for, and who had already become like mentors to me. This appealed to me greatly because I'd become fed up with corporate game culture and I was determined to solve this by working as small and as honestly as possible. For Nova Drift, I knew this meant reducing scope as much as I could while still retaining the mechanical complexity that defined it. In exploring this, I became so excited about building the game that I decided I would make it whether or not our client accepted it. They passed on the pitch (thank goodness!) in favor of another one of my designs, Last Horizon, which Pixeljam and I developed as partners. Coming from an entirely art-focused background, Last Horizon served as my crash-course in coding. For the first time ever, I didn't make artwork on a project I was working on. Seeing its potential on mobile devices, it was expanded from a 3 month web-jam into a 1 year project. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/00524ead19fe1031abde4543d34992874dc2ba9e.jpg Last Horizon was a minimal space exploration and survival game about mastering gravity mechanics. "Pilot the last vessel of a fallen civilization into the vast unknown, in search of a new world to call home." While Last Horizon was being developed, I planned to chip away at the prototype for Nova Drift just to maintain the momentum I'd had on it. In reality, I didn't have much time for it, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I finally managed to get Last Horizon to a presentable state, but as my first commercial programming project, it was a nightmare. With no formal training in programming or computer science, and using an engine that none of my coworkers were familiar with, I was on my own for every technical challenge. While it was rough, in retrospect, making this game allowed me an alternative to going back to college for programming. I also learned the importance of work life balance, and the game ended up doing very well on mobile, funding all of Nova Drift's early development.

Chimeric & Pixeljam

With Last Horizon shipped, I was finally free to jam on Nova Drift. Unlike the previous games I'd worked on, this wouldn't be a Pixeljam title, it would be self-directed. I formed my company and called it "Chimeric". By this point, Pixeljam had become what you might call a "micro-publisher". With micro-publishers you might trade the clout, up-front cash, and marketing power that bigger organizations can offer for a small team that acts more like a personal, experienced advocate and cheerleader. I'd heard the horror stories about all the constraints and pitfalls that could come with large publishers, and I didn't want to owe any money, so this suited me just fine. Besides, Pixeljam's Miles and Rich had been my friends and partners for years. Publishing would be Miles' area, and I knew that he would always have my back, and that he would always put my well being, and the quality of the game, before profit or deadlines (And he has). I signed on with them, and with Pixeljam in my corner, I was ecstatic to begin.

The Nova Drift First Playable

The first stages of a game project are always the best this was especially true with Nova Drift. I wanted to do nothing else, and would work late into the night simply because I enjoyed it. The prototype was immediately fun. I now realize that this is very rare, and it's never been true for any of the other several dozen games I've worked on, professionally or otherwise. I think this was due to the combination of a tried-and-true super-minimal core loop that could be implemented in a day along with the fact that new features were so modular that they were a breeze to stack on top of each other. In other projects, I've had to work hard and keep faith that I would eventually "find the fun". In a lot of prototypes, you never do, and that's just part of the process. I took my awesome morale as a sign that I had something really worthwhile, and that pushed me through the anxiety that comes with forming your own enterprise. At first, I focused solely on making the basic shooting and movement as fun as I possibly could. I knew that if it could feel fantastic with only the most basic gear, every enemy and upgrade I stacked on top of it would be more of a good thing. This seemed to work, so I committed to the strategy. The game didn't need levels or a campaign, those would be distractions to the singular goal of making the best possible super-concentrated character building arcade game. To this end, I settled on simple arena combat with procedurally generated encounters. The first playable versions of the game contained placeholder artwork. While it was refined and stylized over time, its roots of flat-colored geometric shapes remained. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/62921738590a8582c5a07c0dd026520112e59df3.jpg Nova Drift as a first playable in 2013.

Nova Drift Alpha: Iteration and Exploration

Alpha lasted about four years. In that time I mostly piled on enemies and player upgrades until building felt diverse enough, while incrementally experimenting with the presentation. The first attempt at an art overhaul retained the bold color treatment but introduced more complex forms and negative-space line art, and the menus also followed suit. I felt like this was a step in the right direction, but something about it still appeared immature to me. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/947320581ef7921e7086b25f65a2705a52c6db59.jpg The upgrade interface changed often. At first, the mod pool didn't contain any progression. This quickly revealed itself as problematic: In order to have the depth I wanted, the game needed a lot of mods. However, the game also had to remain accessible, unlike its Action-RPG influences. Too many mods meant too much info dumped on a player all at once. It also meant that the player's build would be mostly left to chance. I didn't want that, especially because The Binding of Isaac (the most popular Rogue-like at the time) had already thoroughly explored that. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/c09cb706a8686b6827463b92b2ecb3045450b3f7.png The answer ended up being the mini-trees and Super Mod combos that are present in the game, now. While not a perfect solution, they provided a middle-ground between deterministic building and rogue-like randomness. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/c5d6058b51972070a7ed589734d3ac0144e04c16.png The version of Nova Drift that was playable during the 2017 Kickstarter campaign had placeholder monochrome upgrades. With the third re-imagining of the art treatment, I discovered that portraying the entities in neon resulted in a more modern look that at the same time represented its retro arcade roots. This also provided greater contrast which granted the freedom to paint detailed celestial backgrounds. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/41e59d92f72e403ea4ccf5d7f3f75e79cf219e25.jpg Nova Drift's splash artwork circa 2017, during the launch of its Kickstarter campaign. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/b6701bb326ce5e1e295cd379cfa35b2772fc5fd2.jpg Nova Drift's 1.0 artwork. Fun fact: Nova Drift uses zero shaders or modern vfx. Everything is either just a sprite or a drawn polygonal shape, just like in the olden days. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9adb1d94190be54b09bcbca642b3a1766f119ef4.jpg Nova Drift's finished iconography.

The Kickstarter

In 2017 it was almost time to make the game public. By then, that early momentum was starting to wear off. The game was becoming more complex and the introduction of the first real deadline made it harder to retain the super positive mental state I'd previously had. It wasn't just me messing around and finding out what I could do anymore– I'd gone all in– there were about to be financial stakes and other people to make happy. I'd also been developing alone for quite some time. Without player feedback coming in, development became an act of faith. I was adding things every day, but was the game really any good? How could I be sure? I learned that three years is a long time to work in a vacuum. It was time to get the game into the hands of players. Since I had savings from my previous game development work and Last Horizon, Pixeljam and I created the Kickstarter with the modest goal of raising enough money for Miles to create the game's soundtrack (one of his many talents) and to gauge the amount of interest in the game. It performed about as well as we expected, not impressive, but not a failure, either. However, its never been easy to make it big on Kickstarter, and it turned out that the tangential benefits of running the campaign vastly outweighed the monetary value. The backers that put their faith in the game became the seed community that would become an indispensable part of development.

Nova Drift Beta: Early Access Begins

The positive feedback from the Kickstarter backers quickly galvanized me, inspiring a level of energy I hadn't felt since prototyping. I wasn't in the dark anymore. As game updates became Kickstarter newsletters, I continuously invited players to join the Discord I'd created for the game. I updated the game very frequently for two years. People started to become regulars, and I fell into a routine of involving them in balance and content discussions. Miles and I started putting effort into getting eyes on the game for the upcoming early access debut on Steam and we were both surprised by our success! I wrote a blog post that detailed Path of Exile's influence on my game and posted it on their subreddit. The post garnered praise from the game's co-founder and lead programmer, and got the attention of a decent chunk of the game's audience. The post would later lead to the streamer ZiggyD covering the game, which lead to other Path streamers playing, and awareness spread further from there. Super entertaining content creators Celerity and Wanderbots started covering the game regularly, and many others followed suit. It was becoming abundantly clear that content creators had become the modern way to advertise a game. Later, UltraC would create videos consistently all throughout development, eventually resulting in a collection of almost 600 by the time the game was finished! But I'm getting ahead of myself. When the game came to Steam early access in 2019, people started to flow into the community more steadily and we continued to collaborate. At first, my regular player interaction was mostly a marketing effort, but it quickly proved itself incredibly useful, and was soon completely integrated with my design process. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/e61bc5470f78fd77521230d9ad59934de87bfdfe.jpg We also started to amass a really impressive fan art gallery. These works are by Advent Zen. All of our efforts resulted in a gradual but very long slow burn. The game never reached the explosive viral growth you see in mega-hits like Slay the Spire, but it steadily grew throughout early access. This eventually got the attention of the Steam algorithms, which showed the game to more people and created a feedback loop. Our numbers would have been no big deal for most games, but for a company this small, it was. The game had begun to fund its own development. Since each update resulted in more growth, I started to feel less inclination to finish the game and instead a desire to make it as good as I thought it could be. And it seemed to be working. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/a3575a51be7998b18e522884e5ed562f94ef5d5f.jpg I liked updating the game, and I felt like I had little reason to stop doing so in the lower-pressure-environment that is early access. So I grew it for years, adding modes like Wild Metamorphosis and other major features.

Climbing Content Mountain

Of course, the honey moon period of early development couldn't last forever, especially as the complexity started to mount, time dragged on, and I felt the pressure of player opinions weighing on me. I was still a relatively new programmer. As the game continued to expand, the technical problems were becoming too big to solve alone. Moreover, there were now so many upgrades that a large portion of my time became balance work. Since Nova Drift was initially so easy to support, I spent a long time thinking about where things had taken a turn. I narrowed it down to a few main reasons:

An "everything works with everything" upgrade system meant that whenever I added an upgrade to the game, it compounded the challenge of balancing every upgrade that came before it. When we exceeded about 150 upgrades, things started to get problematic.
Games with an endless mode are massively harder to balance than games with endings. For instance, in Hades, builds are considered viable if they can defeat the final boss. In Nova Drift, a build tends to be judged by how far it can push in waves. The higher the wave, the fewer builds are considered viable for it. This isn't great for build variety. Thankfully, this changed with 1.0, as Nova Drift now has an ending, with Endless Mode being optional.
Architecture. While I did a good job of keeping the overall structure of the game simple and untangled, the code I wrote was sometimes error prone, hard to work with, and repetitious. It didn't help that Gamemaker's capabilities and features changed every few years. What can I say, I was self-taught.

It's hard to express how difficult solo game development is. Game development is already demanding, and doing it alone means you're performing a multitude of jobs at once, with a fraction of the resources. While I couldn't imagine doing anything else, I am very hesitant to ever recommend it, much in the same way someone might be hesitant to recommend boxing. You have to really want it because it is risky and it is punishing. Very few indie games even break even, let alone with tiny teams. Despite all of this, I never doubted that it was right for me. While I admit that it working out involved a great deal of privilege and luck, I think what made it possible was certainty and obsession more than anything else. After I'd seen a video game, there was never a point when I didn't know I wanted to make one. I was always thinking about mechanics. I never stopped practicing the skill set, even before I was old enough to understand that what I was doing was practicing. Most game developer aspirants or professionals that I'd met didn't consider the risk of going solo to be worth it. If there are secret ingredients that make solo development work, I don't think its talent or intelligence, I think it's obsession, conviction, and tenacity. Its interesting to think back on all of this now. Its been a decade since the start, and I realize that the project has now spanned a quarter of my life! It's grown much larger than my aspirations, and I attempted to do more alone than is reasonable or healthy. Over its course, I'd dragged myself back from the brink of burnout several times, and I can say with certainty that pushing through until the end was the hardest thing I have ever done. Still, it was consistently rewarding and always fascinating. Practicing so many skills at once kept me challenged, and as a result, exploded my potential as a person. I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything else.

The Discord Arc

It was very fortunate that I started speaking more frequently with a member of the community who had been there since the start, Ken "Ultraken" Miller. Ken is a veteran coder who has worked on many beloved AAA titles, but is most well known for his integral support on the Battlezone series. Ken began to help me over the years, patiently teaching me best practices, better scripting methods, good use of source control, tidy architecture, and helping out with particularly insidious bugs. Before long, he was optimizing the code base and submitting his own features and improvements. By the end of the project, Ken was responsible for many of the more elegant behaviors in the game, such as the construct swarm and Leviathan physics. Thinking back, he kept everything running smoothly whenever the pressure was on and anticipated problems before they manifested, several of which I wouldn't have known existed until it was too late. I don't know what I would have done without him. Before I realized it, I wasn't really a solo developer anymore, and soon, many more helpers from the community become involved organically. In particular, a secretive person known only as "Lurk" began logging, organizing, and troubleshooting bugs with impressive precision and detail. He still does today. By the end, we'd found fantastic help with moderation, quality assurance, technical writing, and translators for 11 different languages. Amazing. A huge shout out to all of them, you are wonderful. Every once in a while I meet a game developer who works mostly in a vacuum and I have to wonder why (or even how) they do it. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/f8e05a770204cb20a697edeee2d410af4604b57d.jpg Above works by Hexacryonic If I was technically unprepared, I was even less prepared to receive the level of criticism and attention the game was starting to generate. While I never doubted that I wanted to make Nova Drift, I didn't expect other people to actually care about it as much as they did. I thought it was just a cute little diversion that would be a stepping stone on my path to becoming a decent game designer. I made it for me... but other people had very strong opinions! I knew that this was inevitable with any game release, and on a good day I could handle it, but at times it felt like a torrent. A trend I've noticed in creators, or maybe just in people, is that we tend to disregard praise and obsess over the negative. I think its difficult to maintain distance between ourselves and our projects. Creating is inherently very personal. After all, it's that we care deeply that allows our works to mean something. Without a community manager, I had to learn to not take criticism personally, control my exposure to social media, and delegate volunteers when I needed to step away. It took about 5 years to become decent at it, but I got there. I am deeply grateful to those on my team that helped me manage. Most of the feedback was still super positive, though. Sometimes alarmingly so (note their hours on record): {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/f7f48887afe5aabbc6f81e517d2880f4587f418e.jpg Dear Pony Slaystation, I am truly sorry. I didn't know this would happen. I hope you are ok. By 2020, our slow and steady iteration had resulted in a polished game long before I felt that it was ready to be released. We started getting big-name streamers playing, and Steam featured it in many Daily Deal events. Players were frequently surprised to find out that the game was not, in fact, "out yet". I started getting questioned about why the hell I hadn't released it yet. I always told people it was because the game didn't have an ending or a final boss yet, and there were still a few big improvements I wanted to make, anyway. But I also think it was because I was comfortable and a little afraid. I didn't know how to put it to rest.

The Rogue-Like Explosion of 2021

By 2021, I had planned one more major update to the game before I would begin wrapping it up, and we called it "Enemies 2.0". It was a total overhaul to enemy waves and behaviors. It also introduced more enemies and several alternate bosses. I wasn't sure if I should have done it. Players found it divisive, it took ages to develop, and it released in several parts. Each part ended up being the largest update we had ever made. If I hadn't done it, the game may have come out several years sooner, but I don't think it would have had a fraction of the replayability that it has now. In any case, during its development something interesting happened... Rogue-likes, and then "Survivors-likes", suddenly exploded in popularity. After Vampire Survivors went viral, everybody started making them. You'd think that this would have buried Nova Drift, but the opposite started happening. You see, Steam is really good at showing players games that they might like, and it was of the distinct opinion that if you liked this funny vampire game, you might also like the silly spaceship game. And the same was true of many different fast-paced rogue-like games, all having each other recommended to each other by players and the Steam algorithms alike. The game exploded in popularity again, filling us with excitement and uncertainty. How long would this last? Were we waiting too long to release the game, should we rush to strike while the iron was hot? Was the market going to be oversaturated by the genre or was Nova Drift a unique enough take on it? It was a little unsettling to see so many games begin and end their development before Nova Drift was finished, several of which had taken distinct inspiration from our systems. We ended up sticking to the original plan, and I think that no matter what happens with launch, I'm glad that we did. I believe it was the right thing for the game.

Finishing, Finishing, Finishing

By now, Nova Drift was also exceeding 200 upgrades, almost all of which were compatible with each other. The complexity creep was real. Additionally, the metagame had become so mature that veterans players understood it far better than I did, and they were surviving farther in waves than I'd ever imagined. I started to accept that it had grown beyond my capacity to balance it. Our lead moderator, Soren Lily, saw me struggling with this and offered his help. Soren is a math enthusiast in the extreme, and has a deep understanding of Nova Drift along with a strong sense of game design. As the project neared its end, I came to lean on Soren more and more to help me untangle the ever-growing web of balance problems. We complimented each other's abilities fantastically, and ended up collaborating on most of the game's finishing touches. Soren was responsible for revitalizing several previously underwhelming mods near the end of the project, including Ataraxia, Sanctuary, Research, Void Slice, and Celestial Surge. At the same time, I was becoming aware of how much less fluid the project had become. Far from the energetic pace of its alpha, the game became resistant to the smallest change. I expect this can be seen in any software old enough. Porting and localization multiply the scope of things for obvious reasons, but what isn't as clear is that a complex enough web of interlaced mechanics can mean that pulling a single thread cascades disastrously. Layering on more and more of an audience also increases the consequences of getting anything wrong. Not just because mistakes become costly, but because each one becomes a debate. It can all be disheartening, because experimentation is valuable, and making mistakes is an inexorable part of that process. This brings me back to earlier, when I mentioned how enjoyable a nascent game project is. For me, Nova Drift's inelasticity was a sign that it just needed to be completed. So, I allowed myself one more update to change a few more fun things, and then I would focus on the game's ending. Turns out its really hard to finish a game. If you haven't done it before, you can think you're nearly done and still have years ahead of you, let alone how much work comes with then releasing the game. Hell, even veterans make the mistake. I thought I was "finishing" the game as early as the start of Enemies 2.0, and that ended up taking years. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/70e5ff124f707063717ed68d5ceb8879af12318e.jpg Image is by Matt Hackett, the author of "How To Make A Video Game All By Yourself". I believe I am one of the people responsible for this image being updated with more "finishing" cells.

Nova Drift's Final Early Access Days

2024 has been a blur, but somehow we managed to get the final boss and the game's ending completed, slay 170 bugs, shine the game up, and slip in some really cool features at the 11th hour. While we were wrapping it up, the rogue-like hype explosion did die down, and the ever-fickle gaze of the Steam Algorithms roamed onward. Nova Drift had officially existed in early access long enough to witness the resurgence and fall of its own genre. What I'm very curious to learn is whether a game in this position can get a second chance to go viral upon release. We've lined up as much hype as we could, and there's nothing to do now but wait and see what happens. Now that it's complete, it doesn't even seem "real" to say that the game is done. I've been doing this for so long that I feel like I am a different person now than when I started, and I haven't dared to imagine a version of myself that wasn't entrenched in the project. I'm deeply appreciative that it all happened, and I am quite proud of it, but I am so, so ready to take a break and do something else. It was just all-consuming. I'm anxious, but I'm also quite excited. I have entire notebooks full of concepts, and it's clear to me now just how much harder I was working than I had to (but I'll save that for the postmortem). With more experience, better planning, clean architecture, and skillful allies, building something new should make me feel like I'd been running with weights on my ankles the whole time. But don't worry, if you're hoping for more, I'm sure I'll come back to Nova Drift in good time.

So... What's Next?

I'm still exploring options for Nova Drift, but there are a few things I would like to happen if launch goes well:

Mobile ports for iOS and Android
Major console ports
A major DLC and/or update

Most players and our team seem agreed that the most valuable addition to the game would be a Daily Challenge mode, though we also receive a huge amount of requests for new Gear and Mod upgrades. Personally, I think that introducing new, versatile enemy types could be just as good for the longevity of the game.

Daily Challenge Mode?

Daily Challenge is a Challenge Mode that I hope to release in the future. It would allow players to compete against each other on a global leader board with specific game modifiers that change daily. Modifiers could include rule changes, buffs to specific player or enemy abilities, or feature all new mini-games. Everyone would play with the same game seed. Here are three example Daily Challenges that could appear:

High Stakes: Players gain much more experience, take more damage from enemies, and cannot reroll upgrades.
Cosmic Egg: Enemies target a Cosmic Egg, instead of you, which is always present, and can be pushed. If the egg dies, the game is over. The player has improved recovery.
Purity: You begin with Ataraxia and the Gear of your choice, but you are limited to purchasing 7 mods. Ataraxia is much stronger than usual.
Boss Rush: Compete for the best time as you face every boss in the game in succession, gaining several levels between each.
Serpentine Drift: Play a version of the classic "Snake" game as an ever-growing Leviathan gobbling up points and tanking asteroids and comets.

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Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Thank You

To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. Good luck out there, in the cosmos! -Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Hello Drifters, It's been an incredible 10 year journey from a simple asteroids-like prototype in 2014 to the behemoth we have today, and we are excited to announce that on AUGUST 12, Nova Drift will reach version 1.0! If you'd like to preview version 1.0, you can do so on the BETA branch. Keep in mind it does not have the final sequence after defeating the last boss... that will make its way in there by the end of July. Not much else to say really - looking forward to a smooth launch next month, and thanks for all the support :) -Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello All, Starting this week and lasting until March 23rd, Nova Drift is discounted at an all-time-low of 65% off. Also, full release is coming up in later 2024, so the price won't be this low again for a very long time. Now is a great time to buy a copy for your friend, mom, or very talented parrot. The Soundtrack is also 70% off: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1156340/Nova_Drift_OST/ Work on the game's FINAL BOSS is well on its way. It's kind of crazy for me, actually. I've been thinking about the inevitability of this work, and project's conclusion, for so long that facing it kind of feels like the final boss of my mid-life. I don't want to reveal anything about the game's finale, but I'm pretty excited about it. If you haven't been following the announcements, 1.0 will contain nice improvements including:

"ENDFULL" mode (Endless mode turned off), for those who wish to savor victory (and not the void).
Custom Skins! Including 3 new skins, and the ability to create & add your body own skins.
Kickstarter backer deliverables.
Enhanced visibility mode.
Several other new quality of life settings.
The usual round of balance changes to spice up the metagame.

With 1.0 coming up, we're ramping up marketing efforts. I will be real with you, I'm trying, but I am not great at it, can you help? I will be posting on a new TikTok page & my Twitter all throughout the sale. Follows, likes, and retweets can help Nova Drift catch fire again. If we can do that, I can keep putting quality first and foremost, no matter what, and keep making games you love. I really appreciate it: My new TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@chimericgames My Twitter: https://twitter.com/NovaDriftGame People keep asking me about the future of Nova Drift post-launch. It's hard to say, a lot of it rides on how well launch goes, but there are a few things I'm pretty confident about:

I really want to bring the game to major consoles.
I really want to do mobile ports (it already runs!)
I'm pretty confident that we'll add Daily Challenge Mode.
Potentially some DLC with new gear?
We will keep fixing bugs, adjusting balance, and adding QoL.
I will continue to prototype games, and share the results with you, as I figure out what my next major project will be. And that includes experiments with other potential Nova Drift games.

Thanks for listening and I hope you'll love what I've been cooking. ~ Jeffrey / Chimeric

This update aims to balance and refine Nova Drift's rough edges before we shift focus to the game's release, which features a final confrontation, ending, and full release.

Complete List of Changes

https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/ Important note: Menu control bindings have been separated from ship controls. If you have been using custom bindings, you may want to rebind the menu controls after updating.

Major Overhaul: Burns and Ignites

A rework designed to clarify and simplify text and mechanics related to burn damage and ignites. Many burn and ignite powers have been buffed.

All burn damage now implicitly ignites, and ignites now deal 120 damage /s for 3 seconds unless otherwise stated
Adjusted the text for every upgrade that uses burn mechanics: All upgrade text referring to ignites have been removed unless they're special cases, cutting down on a lot of reading!
The terminology for "burning", referring to an ignited target, is now "ignited"
Ignite duration modifiers are no more. They have been replaced by ignite damage modifiers
Dying Star's ignite damage has been doubled(!)
Many burn powers have been buffed and/or adjusted, including: Deadly Wake, Corrosion, Incendiary Strike, Purification, Purge, and most "lightning bolt" powers. See the patch notes for the full changes.

Gear Rework: Viper Body

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/8567cd0134652e982e42bf30003e518bf4eb232f.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/b9f6670860ee2a9eef64de4b2081f0974b7fbd7c.png Previously, Viper's kit was wordy, convoluted, and the body wasn't very strong when compared to popular Body Gear. Now, it has been reworked to be simpler, stronger, and more cohesive. Caustic Barrier's offense has been merged with its Venom Strike ability, and its defense has been moved into its base stats.

When you take a hull hit, you disgorge Venom Strike projectiles toward the offender
Venom Strike projectiles deal 90 burn damage /s
When you crash head-on, you release up to 24 additional Venom Strike projectiles, increased by 2% per your level. This effect strengthens the longer you have not crashed head-on, up to 10 seconds, and has a 2-second cooldown
+50% head-on crash damage resistance
+50% total ignite damage
Hull: 110
Thrust: 110

Super Mod Rework: Sanctuary

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/39cb2eb2eaa38b3c69ed9887eda03e041b4ce944.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/741e6769956d98530d648b6f5969aa383a2cf1f8.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/70c60efa655a42d8249c0a196834fec657940df0.png Sanctuary's former design was neither very powerful, nor was it particularly deserving of Super Mod status. The rework makes it truly transform your build. It is now the ultimate tank / point defense mod.

While your shield protects you, create a large Sanctuary on the battlefield that slowly follows you. Your shield still protects you from damage, but shield effects originate from the Sanctuary instead of from you
While you are inside the Sanctuary, you gain 10% shield damage resistance, +15% global damage, and recover 6 shields /s
+40% crash knockback resistance
-20% thrust
Your shield effect radius becomes equal to the Sanctuary's radius, but it cannot be increased or decreased by other modifiers. Instead, your modifiers to shield effect radius apply at 40% effectiveness to your shield effect power
While you are outside the Sanctuary, your shield effects are disabled, and your shield cooldown is doubled

Some other notable changes include:

Added new background music to all modes: "Spectra" and "Fukura"
Most text-heavy menus have received an aesthetic pass
Added a lot more options for input binding
Auto Firing can now be selected from the settings menu, allowing the "fire" input to turn it on and off during gameplay
The maximum account rank is now 64, up from 60, and the Unlock order has been revised slightly
Added support for moving the mouse with the gamepad right joystick

What's Next?

The full release of the game! We've been treating this game as if it were released for so long that it feels strange to recall it isn't technically "released" yet. No pressure, right? This update will finally introduce the game's final boss and an ending to the game. The game will end provided that you have the "Endless" Challenge Mode turned off, which will finally become possible with this update. That's right, should you choose, you shall no longer inexorably succumb to THE VOID.

Discord Upgraded! Come Hang

We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. We recently opened up some new channels like #weekly-discussion, #ask-the-devs, and #feedback. The latter allows you to submit feedback to a bot that lets players upvote or downvote the suggestion. I'm also quite proud of the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Don't want to miss my next game? Follow me!

On Twitter, BlueSky, and TikTok Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Jeffrey (Chimeric)

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/82417c998e40b5542827c49fb1c626af7b8a10a1.png I'm proud to announce a collaboration with Quantum Protocol, another crafty indie game by a fellow solo developer, jkong. We teamed up to bring you a unique 16-card Quantum Protocol deck that features Nova Drift pixel art created by me. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/4cde52c61b24830b7ba14dd12e012db04a283fa2.jpg The Nova Drift collab introduces the new nova archetype to Quantum Protocol! Familiar ships and mods take on a new form, reimagined as Quantum Protocol cards. Deploy ships to the board and play mod cards on them to create your own unique combination of effects. Stack damage mods for powerful offense, or load up on defensive mods to protect your other cards. Or maybe focus on setting up the almighty Leviathan! The Nova Drift cards are full of unique mechanics that make the archetype feel completely unique. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/c3332133c010ca4ff73f79a311e44c873c97fb0f.jpg If you're not familiar with it, Quantum Protocol is a fascinating game, blending roguelike, card drafting, and puzzle mechanics into something new, all wrapped in an anime visual novel. I've never played anything quite like it, and that's not something I get to say often! Quantum Protocol has had amazing crossovers in the past with amazing indie titles like One Step From Eden, Cross Code, and Vault of the Void, all of which also have a playable deck. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/931ee7f849e346ad8247d5a00ae06fefff13b083.jpg Eventually, in the end-game, the Nova Drift pack can be mixed and matched with all of the other decks, exploding the deck building possibilities. The pack comes free with the base game, and has just been released. Quantum Protocol is a true labor of love, but it's also very challenging. If that sounds like your bag, I urge you to give it a try! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1532b859c75db7e703cddbc1bb54e00d58d50459.png

What's Next for Nova Drift?

The only real obstacle to full-releasing the game is creating the final boss, and the game's ending, so that we can finally allow "Endless" mode to be (optionally) disabled. However, there's still polish that we'd like to add before we call the game complete. We'd like to make at least one more update before we tackle the ending. Here are some of the things we're considering addressing next:

Body Gear: Viper redesign
Ignite and Burn overhaul / simplification
Flak love
Additional polish for underperforming and overperforming Mods and combos
Additional ease-of-access settings, such as press-to-toggle firing
Something secret...

Discord Upgraded! Come Hang

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and reviews encourage the Steam algorithms to show the game to more people. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference. Thanks for reading. Best wishes, -Chimeric

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/a16b931098e7b79f7812052d0acad64fe967df29.png

Complete List of Changes

https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

New Weapon: Swords

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/d808490e6c3ed38a2b2b336158f6f3279a116fb8.jpg Courser, Shockwave Shield, and Shielded Constructs {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/b2e25100c737e9fbeb4f1c5ec526e40847eec0c7.jpg Swords, Architect, Loaded Mines {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/93d2db113cc0c99c4c18b193ef281347e9033f61.jpg Wield a pair of monomolecular double-edged swords that can slice through targets and cleave through enemy projectiles. Sword's unique scaling interacts in unusual ways with a variety of Body Gear. Bodies that grant additional advanced constructs, or grant additional cannons, add another pair of swords. Bodies that have increased crash damage or achieve high speeds can convert those stats into damage for Swords. Projectile modifiers affect the sparks that are created when Swords destroy enemy munitions. Additionally, Swords are Advanced Constructs, which means they can wear your shields when modded with Shielded Constructs. Their unique property of only taking damage while attacking, as well as coming in pairs, makes them an ideal conveyor of any shield effects you have. Finally, they have unique interactions when used with Loaded Mines and Death Blossom. Give it a try.

Super Mod Rework: Void Slice

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/3a566d0cbac873c8e26914ca5477b095970f0eee.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/40db6f421ce0ad1feba440931cd24d9e2e3c69b5.jpg Void Slice makes you Blink to your Strafe destination, cutting through targets in your path. Void slice deals damage based on a flat amount added to a percentage of the enemy's remaining hull.

Super Mod Rework: Antimatter Rounds

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/2c1347c63aaae0e7f39a0f22fbca775ddb344cc1.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/9d88b7b5eedc935b76404a47266320c78cc61566.jpg Antimatter Rounds has been reworked. It now causes projectiles to degenerate or destroy each other on impact. Antimatter Rounds now gives weapons uniquely colored VFX. Additionally, the stat bonuses now benefit constructs at a lesser percentage.

Buffs and Balance

Ally Changes

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/6c67c0566ee5246756626bd270487307a34b57b6.jpg Ally and its mod tree have been updated. Ally now fires "explosive rounds" as its base weapon, which have a cone-shaped blast radius. Additionally:

Evasion has been removed. Half of the passive attack avoidance from Evasion was moved to Ally base stats and half was moved to Outmaneuver
Echo Strike has returned to the game and replaces Evasion, adding an additional, larger circular blast radius to Ally explosive rounds
Outmaneuver has gained a new buff: After dodging, your interceptor's explosive rounds gain +700% rate of fire for .25 seconds

Blast Changes

The Blast Radius tree has been reworked:

Blast Radius, High Explosive, and Concentrated Blast now affect all player blasts
Preexisting blast radius modifiers have been divided into new categories: Weapon blast radius, weapon projectile blast radius, and (global) blast radius
Many mods now scale with the tree's global blast modifiers. This includes: Discord, Force Armor, Last Stand, Mines (base explosion and clusters), Rebuke, Force Armor, Blink, Void Slice, Purge, War Machine (missiles), Bastion (blast wave), Counterpulse, Shockwave (shield reset shockwave), Reflexive Shields,
Warp (warp blasts), Volatile Shields, Self Destruction, Ally (explosive rounds and Echo Strike).
Many of these blast powers, new and old, have received balance adjustments

Some other notable changes include:

Allowed separate key bindings for Strafe and Blink. The default binding for Blink is now "F". Strafe is still "Shift"
Strafe has been adjusted to feel more fluid: It now spreads its acceleration over a short interval while strongly redirecting your motion in the direction you strafed
Strafe now has a cooldown of 1.5 seconds, which is the same as Blink. (We realized that strafe was becoming near-mandatory for any hyperscoring build, and that Blink had trouble competing with its power level. To compensate for this, enemy speed scaling has been significantly reduced, which benefits all builds)
Lots of buffs for Body Gear: Carrier
Crash damage adjustments for many bodies
Armor Stack buffs
Weapon Construct changes
A few new enemy encounter surprises
Steam Deck improvements
Myriad text improvements

What's Next?

The only real obstacle to full-releasing the game is creating the final boss, and the game's ending, so that we can finally allow "Endless" mode to be disabled. However, there's still polish that we'd like to add before we call the game complete. We'd like to make at least one more update before we tackle the ending. Here are some of the things we're considering addressing next:

Body Gear: Viper redesign
Ignite and Burn overhaul / simplification
Flak love
Additional polish for underperforming and overperforming Mods and combos
Additional ease-of-access settings, such as press-to-toggle firing
Something secret...

Discord Upgraded! Come Hang

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

This update introduces new alternate bosses, updates old bosses, adds 21 new Steam achievements, a glossary, several mod overhauls, and many balance changes and fixes.

Complete List of Changes:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/

New Nemesis Bosses

Now, each boss encountered at waves 20, 40, 60, 80, and 100 has an alternate version that may be encountered if the Challenge Mode: Nemesis is enabled. Additionally, these bosses can all be encountered "in the wild" at high enough waves.

Dweller

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/5ea0074be9c904ca8ccb83299c31aeb6bf2bee1f.png Dweller is immensely tough, but shares its vitality with its minions. Pare them down and know victory.

Dreadnought

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/5963c54a9fa7d4a1cf10b6190c708c2ea00c57c5.png Dreadnought will challenge your reflexes and positioning as you find a safe angle of attack and choose your moment. Each of its guns that you destroy limits its attacks and strips its defenses. Additionally, we've given some of the older bosses (Spitfire, Scion, and Warbringer) a fresh coat of paint. Spitfire even learned some new attacks.

Guardian Overhaul

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/039fd13debbaf651f95bd5ecc1af8a3598cae0b5.png We recieved a lot of feedback that the Guardian should better compete with its Interceptor alternative, so it has risen to the challenge. In addition to being more capable in combat, the Guardian has received upgrades to its mods. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0dd67e5c87e428f69fe9bb488e2b38d6be6284fe.png Echo Strike has been replaced by Nanotech Dissemination, providing a means for it to redirect the damage you and your constructs receive to itself. Then, based on the amount of damage redirected, it creates a shower of power-ups when destroyed. Also, Echo Strike is now less needed since the Ally basic attack now deals innate splash damage. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/fcc28db1949974c15da70134146bac6a9bfd258f.png Medi-Charge has been updated with a new power that allows the Guardian to also redirect self-damage from you or your advanced constructs. Fire at will!

Saturation Fire Upgrade

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/a3441d8308621eedea9982d07185f13b1f69d1e5.png Sustained-firing builds needed a little something to compete with alpha-striking builds. Saturation Fire can now reward you for keeping those bullets flying.

New Achievements

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/d8834b0a754e07c10047f90d827491d3313cfdf1.png

What's Next?

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/0b749150727f77ffc0cb9484ccc002de6eedb473.png The only real obstacle to full-releasing the game is creating the final boss, and the game's ending, so that we can finally allow "Endless" mode to be disabled. However, there's still polish that we'd like to add before we call the game complete. We'd like to make at least one more update before we tackle the ending. Here are some of the things we're considering addressing:

New Weapon Gear: Swords
New Weapon Gear: Flail
Gear adjustments: Specter
Mod Adjustments: Ally Interceptor mod tree
More mods compatible with Ally Interceptors
Mod Rework: Antimatter Rounds
Mod Rework: Displacement
Enemy spawn improvements
Visual effects iterations

Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Chimeric / Jeffrey Nielson

Hello Drifters, If you can believe it, Nova Drift launched into Early Access almost 4 years ago! We always knew the price would increase a few times as we approached full release, but for some reason we never got around to it, until now... and the time for the first increase is coming soon: January 16th to be exact. After that the game will go from $14.99 to $17.99 USD, and all other currencies will increase as well in a similar proportion. If you are reading this before January 5th, 2023, then you still have time to get the game at 50% off, which will be about as cheap as the game will be for quite a while. If you own it and have a friend with it on their wishlist, it might be a good time to let them know! Thanks again for the support. -Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello Drifters! It's been awesome watching everyone's reaction to the new update! We've been reviewing all of the feedback you've given us, especially as it relates to the challenge of the last two updates, and decided that another difficulty balance patch could go a long way to improving new player experiences and veteran grievances both. Here's what we did: Enemy Balance Changes

The Crucible boss now has a longer wind-up for its single burning hoop attack
The Crucible boss's single burning hoop attack now ramps up its targeting over a second instead of immediately having good targeting, but also lasts a little bit longer before degenerating
* The Crucible boss's burning hoop attacks have a more clear indicator of the trajectory at which they will be fired
Tracer spawn quantity, at the mean and especially the high-end, has been reduced
Tracer orbs, when combo'd, now release 4 sub-projectiles instead of 5
Tracers will no longer "exert" themselves to combo their projectiles until a certain amount of time has passed and they no longer have shields ("exert" means gain bonus cooldown when they detect a combo they could make)
Reduced the cooldown bonus that Tracers gain by "exerting" to make a combo +200% -> +150%
Tracer bullet damage 25 -> 12
Tracer bullet "burning wake" damage -7.4%
Tracers now wait an additional 0-.5 seconds before acting
Hammerheads now only deal blast damage on collision while they are charging
Hammerhead death clusters damage -12.5%
Hammerhead initial death explosion, preceding the clusters, now deals zero damage but still knocks you away from the epicenter
Champion Juggernaut shot and missile rate of fire -15%
Prevented any one dynamic spawn event from creating two or more Juggernauts of the Champion variety. If it happens, one will be demoted to Elite
Myrmidon bomb cluster damage -12.5%
When the shooter of a Myrmidon bomb dies, the bomb's targeting decays over time
Myrmidon and Cherub healing auras no longer heal themselves, just other units
Champion Shredder Mine sub-spike damage reduced 14 -> 11

Thanks for playing!

Updated localization for Brazilian Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, French, Japanese, Korean, and Polish

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/3329813350eb3f7ab0a8c63e945efbc6aae60e99.png Hello Drifters, We've just launched another major update aimed at increasing build diversity and run variety. Encounter new huge bosses on your journey or jump right into late game with the new Draft Mode, pre-constructing a 35 upgrade build. We've also continued to refine the difficulty curve based on your feedback. The Breakdown:

New Challenge Mode: DRAFT
Three new alternate bosses can be encountered with Challenge Mode: NEMESIS enabled
Mine overhauls and a comprehensive Drone rework
Ultra-Rare Wild Mods: Ricochet and Challenger have been added to the game
Super Mods: Charged Shields, Infuse, and Strafing Strikes have been added to the game
A huge amount of game balance changes
New power ups
New background music
Spanish localization
Steam Deck is now fully supported!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1eaa2ee39800dba2f92f74e586353a2a7b040b14.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/1bedaa1ceb4b5e1530415f523ea042a9a94f06cd.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/4058fd82b45b555b44be4b3651e9f4cb0e98db9f.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33285787/d9cfc725e409eadce3ec19c05f7331b25bb847af.png The complete changelog: https://steamcommunity.com/app/858210/discussions/0/3658515990056189069/ Read about new content in detail: Blog: https://blog.novadrift.io/nova-drift-2022-upcoming-content/ Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/858210/view/3345626689187069638 Next Up: Enemies 2.0, Part 3 Including more alternate bosses and Challenge Mode: Boss Rush! Join Our Discord We've got quite an active discord with a very chill and inclusive community. This is our main hub of player communication, and our devs are also pretty active there. We've got channels like #ask-the-devs, #weekly-discussion, #frequently-asked-questions, and #feedback. I'm also quite proud of the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us! Want to help Nova Drift grow? Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and reviews also encourage the Steam algorithms to show the game to more people. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference. Thanks for reading. Best wishes, Chimeric / Jeffrey Nielson

Hello Drifters, The next major update is upon us, and if all goes as planned, it will be launching in a couple weeks. In the meantime, if you want to give it a go, head on over to the BETA branch on Steam, which should give you version 0.33.22 at minimum. Here are the patch notes: https://blog.novadrift.io/patch-notes/ The major bits:

Challenge Mode: Draft has been added to the game! Jump into end-game (wave 120) with 35 upgrade points to spend. If Draft mode is enabled, it will use separate leaderboards for "Draft" and "Wild Metamorphosis Draft"
Added three of the five alternate bosses that may be encountered instead of standard bosses if the NEMESIS Challenge Mode is enabled:
A new alternate boss: Ceratotitan (wave 20)
A new alternate boss: Crucible (wave 80)
A new alternate boss: Glaucus (wave 100)
Added new BGM & SFX for all new boss fights
Ultra-Rare Wild Mod: Ricochet has been added to the game
Ultra-Rare Wild Mod: Challenger has been added to the game
New Super Mod: Charged Shields has been added to the game
New Super Mod: Infuse has been added to the game
New Super Mod: Strafing Strikes has been added to the game
Added a new power-up to the game: Armor Fragment
Steam Deck is now fully supported
You can now enable "Large Text" from the settings menu. This also compacts the upgrade layout, which is also useful for very low resolutions or window sizes. With Steam Deck, this will be enabled by default
Spanish localization has been added
Drone Reworks
Mine Rework & Balance
Construct Quality of Life
Balance tweaks, bug fixes and more...

As usual, leave us feedback and bug reports on the Steam forums or on Discord: https://discord.gg/Zp2MkPJ -Miles @ Pixeljam

Nova Drift news & patch notes

Games For Waves

Utopia Must Fall ESCALATION Update

Nova Drift on consoles

Nova Drift: Weapon Mutations DLC

Nova Drift news & patch notes

Games For Waves

Utopia Must Fall ESCALATION Update

Nova Drift on consoles

Nova Drift: Weapon Mutations DLC

Nova Drift Mobile - Now Available

Transferring Your Save Data From PC to Mobile

What's Coming Up?

Save & Quit Feature

Consoles!

Optimization

Downloadable Content?

Chimeric News:

Prototyping my next game?! (Not to be confused with Dino Run)

Dino Run 2!

Nova Drift's new game mode, Daily Challenge is now included as a free update!

One week left to claim your Nova Drift OST on Vinyl!

New Game Mode: Daily Challenge

Here are the main Challenge Modes:

Super Nova Brothers

20-Point Draft / 45-Point Draft

Serpentine Drift

Turbo // Turbo Endless

Boss Rush

Way Of The Sword

Purity

Cosmic Egg

And here are the modifiers to those Challenge Modes:

A few other highlights from 1.2:

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

It exists. There is a Space Whale.

A deep dive into Nova Drift's cetacean server lore.

But All of That Ends Today

In Conclusion

I Won't Ever Lie To You Again

Want to help me make more games like this?

Cell Command!

New Content For Nova Drift?

New Gear? Fan Inspiration!

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Thank You

Nova Drift's Free Demo Is Now Available!

Porting Prep

Steam Deck Verification

Switch & Mobile Needs: GUI Improvements

Optimizations

New Content For Nova Drift?

Gear Mutations

Vortex Mutation: Orb

Pulse Mutation: Pulsewave

Don't want to miss my next project? Follow me!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?

Thank You

DRIFT AND DRAFT Bundle

NOVA DRIFT + BROTATO Bundle

+UTOPIA MUST FALL+

Nova Drift Custom Skins

Using & Creating Custom Nova Drift Skins

Setting Up Custom Skin Artwork Data

Artwork Recommendations

Sprite Color

Hit Boxes

Sprite Offsets

Notes

How to Match the Nova Drift Art Style

Step 1: The body vector shape

Step 2: The "tight" body glow (On the same layer as above)

Step 3: The "wide" body glow (On a duplicate layer)

Step 4: The "diffuse" glow (On a new layer)

Step 5: The Force Armor stroke (On a new layer)

Step 6: Export your artwork

Share Your Skins!

Want to help Nova Drift grow?