Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure news & patch notes

We are thrilled to announce that Oddsparks - An Automation Adventure has been officially nominated for the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis (German Developer Award) in the category of Best Graphics! To be recognized among the best German, Austrian, and Swiss games of the year is a huge honor, and receiving a nomination for Best Graphics is a fantastic acknowledgment of the hard work our team has put into creating the charming world of Oddsparks. The awards ceremony for the Deutscher Entwicklerpreis 2025 will take place on December 2nd, 2025 in Cologne. Wish us luck! We know that a game's look and feel are a huge part of its identity, and we're so glad that our vision for Oddsparks has resonated with the jury and, most importantly, with you, our players. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/39374cb73f5f5e622b3c56a37077830eb96012ad.png

Thank You!

This achievement would not be possible without the incredible support from our community. From every wishlist addition and purchase to every piece of feedback and fan art, you have all been a huge part of the journey. Thank you for adventuring with us and for helping to make Oddsparks shine!

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What's better than a handcrafted hat? Hundreds of handcrafted hats! Spark hats are not just looking great, they are also a great alternative way to organize your Spark traffic. They are compatible with Spark Filters, so you can reuse paths and send your Sparks different ways based on their hats.

While the Tailor already sells two hats for this purpose, you can now automate their production and distribution with the new Hats & Helmets DLC:

The DLC offers:

• 10 new hats

• Loom recipes for all hats

• 2 new workstations to equip and unequip hats

• New Tier 4 Woodsman-Quest "Spark Clothing" to unlock the recipes and workstations

We've also made some general changes to the game (no DLC required):

• Sparks with hats can be used in productions again.

• Sparks with hats can now also be used in quest goals that require Sparks without hats (but they will be ignored by the transfer quest items button).

• Scouty Sparks with hats can now be used to construct sensors.

• The hats will be lost in any of the cases described above.

Other Bugfixes:

• When a Spark with a hat enters your inventory (picking up the disc or returning with now available Spark slots), the hat will now be shown in the icon appearing on top of the player character.

• Fixed an issue where you could interact with or even accidentally delete an (invisible) train that was actually supposed to be outside your screen.

Today’s patch fixes several issues and adds a new decoration DLC.

Bugfixes:

• In rare cases where the boss cave is separated in two parts, enemies are now able to jump between them.
• Fixed Cannons shooting one additional item when the stack at the target position is already full, potentially still slowly creating infinite stacks of items.
• Fixed respawning harvestable objects not taking terraforming into account.
• Fixed multiple music tracks playing at the same time in multiplayer sessions.
• Fixed train sounds being played without a train being close.
• Fixed an issue where Sparks shot from Spark Cannons wouldn’t return through walls.
• Ladders, Wait Gates, Spark Gates, Pressure Sensors, Metronomes and Musical Pressure Plates can now be cleaned from corruption.
• Fixed an issue where refilling Spark loadouts could delete Sparks depending on if they were wearing a hat.
• Fixed an issue where Hauling Sparks and Carry Sparks could delete Sparks depending on if they were wearing a hat.
• Fixed an issue deleting Sparks’ hats when trying to pick them up with a full inventory.
• Fixed Sparks with hats not working as distinct wireless signals and train identifiers.
• Sparks with hats in Item Filters, Spark Filters, Signposts, Musical Pressure Plates and Musical Speakers can now be copied with the copy tool (please note that the copy costs will not be displayed correctly as the copy UI doesn't distinguish between a Spark with and without a hat).
• If the copy tool's costs don't fit into the UI, they will now start to scroll automatically.

The following changes are temporary fixes and are probably going to change in the future:

• Sparks with hats cannot be used in productions anymore (note that they are still accepted into the item slots though!).
• Sparks with hats are not counting for quest goals anymore.

Craftsman’s Elemental Decorations Pack

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/d14baf14fab5465b15e70759eeb1c1c279369a17.png We’ve also released a new DLC for players who want to show their creations in the best light. It adds 3 new sets of decoration objects (Volcanic, Glacial and Quartz) and 3 new Spark Showcases to the Craftsman’s selection, that’s 42 new items in total! Check it out: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3678630/Oddsparks_An_Automation_Adventure__Craftsmans_Elemental_Decorations_Pack

Time flies when you’re having fun!

It’s been almost a month since we released Oddsparks 1.0! It’s been a great experience to see so many people play the game for the first time or again after trying it out in Early Access. We appreciate all the feedback, bug reports and amazing mods you have already created!

Tailor's Animal Costumes

While our coders were busy fixing bugs, our artists could focus on some new cosmetic items for your player character.

The result is a new DLC with five charming animal sets consisting of 28 individual items that you can mix and match to create your own look!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3678620/Oddsparks_An_Automation_Adventure__Tailors_Animal_Costumes_Pack

Here’s a complete overview of everything the DLC will add directly to the character editor:

What’s next?

We are still collecting feedback and bug reports but are also working on exciting new gameplay related stuff. Unfortunately, we cannot talk about that yet, so stay tuned!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/73bee6d8d6159cf9d2a4b95fe6dd854c1ccd56aa.png

• Fixed ancient and stone decorations not unlocking correctly. That means 22 new decorations for you!
• Fixed lagging or slow movement speed on very high framerates.
• Fixed some crashes.
• Fixed desyncs in multiplayer.
• Fixed scrolling map to top left corner when zooming while opening the map.
• Fixed logic filter still muting all other sounds after closing it or going to the main menu.
• Fixed reverb sound effect not changing properly when transitioning between biomes.
• Fixed player stuck in ground when playing in offline mode.
• Fixed Wild Hunt achievement counting unique enemies more than once after saving/loading.
• Fixed the inventory/chest UI shaking on different resolution+UI-Scale combinations.
• Fixed exclamation marks of Craftsman and Tailor not being cleared correctly.
• Improved performance of Noxious Shrub & Noxious Tangle.

• Fixed an issue where the player would not stop walking when pressing modifier keys like Shift/Alt/Ctrl.

Thanks for all the feedback and bug reports. We are working on some more fixes and hope to have another update ready in the upcoming days.

Friends and Soon-to-be-Friends, 🎉 Oddsparks 1.0 is now out on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series! 🎉 So, of course, it’s time to talk about all of the changes that we’ve made from Hot & Cold update to our new 1.0. There is one important thing in case you haven’t read anything - You cannot continue your existing save. We’ve deliberately broken savegame compatibility to finally take care of some longstanding world generation issues that we really wanted to fix. However, we have an “earlyaccess” beta branch, where you’ll still be able to play your old saves on the last early access version. If you’ve never accessed a beta branch, you just right click on Oddsparks in Steam, select Properties and go to the Betas section in the new window. Alright, our list is quite long, so get comfy!

New Biome: Corrupted Ruins

We now have our final biome, the Corrupted Ruins and the final tier 10 quests! In this gloomy and rainy area, you’ll find some unusual enemies who will attack your base when you build in the biome! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/74cfd1ed368855079779ee543b85df68efdaedff.png These slimes come over from the Rift-Touched Ruins and attack your workstations, covering them in Corrupted Aether that turns your bustling base into silent stillness. Your Sparks in the buildings and on the paths can’t work and walk. You won’t be able to open, move or delete anything that's been corrupted. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/07a4cf1700a7f01e6deec9494aadcf4766d11692.png Thankfully, you’ll have a Spark that can help you out, Scrubby Spark! You can throw Scrubby Sparks onto your gooped up buildings to clean them and get them back to work. However, the Scrubby Sparks won’t last forever. They’ll also become too dirty at one point and you’ll have to clean them!

Base Defense

Since now you have to defend your base, you’ll get a whole new set of tools to help you. The first is the Hostility Overlay. It’ll allow you to see what areas are hostile before you build on it, by showing you whether a building is seen as something that will be attacked by the slimes or not and the danger level of an area! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/dba7660db3651d817e134905763540d37f27c757.png Of course, an area is more dangerous if it can be attacked by multiple spawners, but it also warns you about the strength of the spawner. The more you’re able to defend yourself, the stronger the spawners will become, so you’ll need to update your defenses. Let’s talk about those defenses! So you have a Defensive Wall that blocks enemies. The slimes can move through gooped up buildings, but the wall still acts as your initial line of defense. You also have the Aetheric Attractor which the slimes are more interested in sending waves to than your base, giving you some room. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/e6f4785b0787e13fd4ee85c601005789c564002e.png You also have a new Enemy Sensor! It’s a sensor that sends a logic signal when it sees an enemy or any corruption. You can filter it with a plushy, so it’ll only send a signal when it sees a specific enemy type. You can also change the angle and length of the sensor! We also added this feature to the Motion Sensor to make it more useful. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/24de6a37632492f44c66a28abaef9bc13ba2dd9c.png And of course, we have the Spark Cannon! It’s an upgrade to the Spark Thrower and is able to target things by itself. You can set the targeting mode to Enemies, Harvestables, Corruptions and Items. There’s even a little hidden feature where, by turning it off with logic, it will call back your Sparks! With it, you can have one cannon that uses Burning Sparks to set the enemies ablaze, another cannon with Stumpy Sparks to pick up the items that drop, and one last cannon with Scrubby Sparks to clean up the corruption, all working in tandem! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c5aca0604020621ab7416abda51466f448f685b0.png Last but not least, we also tried to make the functionality of the Animal Scarer a bit easier to use. You can now see where enemies spawn before you build it and feel a bit more secure about whether the spawner is actually off or not. It's all about you playing the pace that you want to - so you can actually use the Animal Scarer to turn off all of the Rift-Touched Ruins too. This way you can control how many spawners are going to attack you and take the challenge of base defense on your own pace.

Automation Challenge

And of course, inside of the biome, there is the final automation challenge. This is the end game that you do after completing tier 10 and it’s inside of this mysterious cave. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/10a76052c2a68c9d7a468dbb9f0f0115bd00713d.png We won’t spoil much here but we’ll say that we tried to distill all of the different parts of the game into this one capstone challenge. Everything you’ve built outside is going to feed into this challenge and you’ll need to bring everything you’ve learned and juggle your base in the outside and in the inside to complete it!

Main Story

So we have an illustrated end-game cutscene for you, just like the beginning of the game. But what might be more interesting for anyone who’s curious in the lore of the game is that we’ve added more to the Ancient Tablets in the game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/03d1ba6026fcd4e9a367bac715b2e684b2500a46.png Previously, the tablets show a very small snippet of text from a mysterious unknown person, presumably the one who created the Sparks in the first place! But now, when you unlock a Shrine, you’ll get access to some more information. If you’ve ever wondered about the origins of the Sparks, how they got in this world, and why they were even made in the first place… Well, here’s your chance to find out!

World Settings

We’ve also added a new section when you create a new game! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/87c6b5d2317cd448b6b04322110fa4c2ee389b1c.png You can now change the world settings! In general, we’ve split it up into 5 categories. Options in the Progression category allow you to skip parts of the progression or unlock all decorations and player upgrades for that save. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/ec5a7f22175ad22f60f1edbce767567dbecc433f.png We also have a special “Automation Head Start” category. These allow you to unlock specific automation-focused quality of life features much earlier and play with them from the beginning. This is great for someone who’s already played a lot of other automation games and already want to start with the late game tools, like the replicas of the ancient bases, allowing you to build your base with more freedom. This is in it’s own section because what’s important is that we also change the actual price of the buildings so they can be used earlier in the progression. There’s of course the World Generation category. You can change smaller things, but there’s two big things here. You can use the World Elevation setting to create completely flat maps for sandbox testing and your giant builds, and we included a terraform tool! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/9577aa45081b0f8a08fe98cf20bd968a392c1927.png The Terraform Tool allows you for a cost to raise/lower a tile in the world. It’s meant as something to help you manage the world generation. Maybe there’s one bump that’s just too annoying, or you want to extend a little area? Then you can use the Terraform Tool. The settings in the Items category allows you to make all recipe speed slower/faster, make fuel burn slower/faster, have the enemies drop more loot, buildings cost more or less items and have the villagers ask you for up to four times the amount of quest items! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/ef4f8c47fac6919c30dcdb4c63ed35572e00fc6b.png We also have an item cheat menu. By turning it on, you’ll find a new button in the in-game menu that’ll lead you to a new screen where you can spawn any item to your inventory. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/db189f703009a5d8f7cb7933a05c88f5b4da63bb.png Last but not least, we also have a Combat category where you can turn on God Mode to receive no damage, and make the combat difficulty easier or harder. You can also make enemies spawn slower/faster and be more docile/aggressive. We also have some presets which you can use as a base. Default is our default experience. Automation Focus is a version of the game for those who are used to automation games and want a bit more freedom earlier in the game. Sandbox makes everything free so you can test out some build ideas. And Hard Mode bumps the difficulty of everything to create a more challenging experience. You can also change some world settings mid-game via the in-game menu. There is one important thing - turning on some world settings can mean that the save will not be able to unlock achievements any more. Stuff like the item cheat menu, making buildings cost less or the combat very easy, that kind of thing. Anything that makes the game harder is obviously not an issue, and there's room to make the game a little easier while still getting achievements. Oh, maybe you were wondering about the other little button in the new game section? It’s a Seed Preview! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/e5af2d7783a2573e6aea404c00b327354c16b870.png

Mod Support

You can mod the game! And we already know because we’ve been working with community members who’s looked over the documentation and shout out to the early modders! We’ve also made some mods ourselves, like the Recipe Switcher and a mod that gives you access debug tools that we, as developers, use. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/59930084b292e3b0f09d60ba415ff00efd6ca645.png We have some documentation (you can check out the modkit now!) but if you need support with a mod you’d like to make, you can come to our Discord! The modding channel is open and we’d love to help you add what you’d like into the game.

Other Features

Alright, let’s now talk about some features that we added into the game, but didn't talk about properly in our previous roadmap!

Various Quality of Life features

We’ve added some additional quality of life features separate everything we’ve talked about. Let’s go through our small list. Filter path addons now have reverse/additional functionality. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/6c618edcfebd0c2c4476deabebd66100b0ed8884.png We’ve made our filter path addons more useful! The Spark Filter and Item Filter now can be “reversed”. So if you have an empty item filter, it allows any spark without an item and if you click the reverse button, now a spark with any item will walk through! We also added different modes to the Amount Filter, so now it can ask for not just a specific number but “equal to or more than” and “less than or equal to”. Spark Gate to use with Logic {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/456047f3de218660ea29e449dd3b79994eb51506.png We also added one more path addon that’s unlocked late, the Spark Gate. It’s only usable with the logic tools but essentially, it acts just like the wait gate. So the Sparks will queue up behind the gate, and then when the gate receives a signal, it’ll let the Sparks pass! One click path network up/downgrade {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/1f8236cd3e48f3a198ee4e63e2b338288f5bedc4.png You can now upgrade and downgrade a network of paths with a single click! It stops right underneath path addons and follows the path network itself. It’s great for when you’re up/downgrading a windy network.

Map Views

We wanted to make the map a bit more manageable and give you a better overview over a few things, so we added a bigger quality of life feature - Map Views! They’re essentially lists on the map to help you find and manage a few bigger things (trains, waypoints, wireless logic) easily. Waypoints View {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c77af8551dd4de2089aa9707171b9a235450640d.png When you first unlock Map View, you’ll get a list of waypoints. To not make the list too full, they only appear on the list if you feed or open the waypoint. The one on top is always the village waypoint, and after is any that you’ve built yourself and then the prebuilt waypoints sorted by range. With a click, it’ll take you to that waypoint. This way, we hope you can save some time scrolling the map to the waypoint you’re looking for. Trains & Wireless Logic View {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/7e62b15b34ea27e901ce93b8c9efa0e95eaafdab.png Once you unlock the Map view, you can upgrade it further and not just see Waypoints but also the Trains View and the Wireless Logic View. The Wireless Logic View groups together various Wireless Signal Sender and Receiver into the channels that are being used, and whether something is on. The Train View gives you a list of all your different trains with their ID, their colour, whether they’re fueled or not and with what.

Train Quality of Life features, including Remote Train Management

We also in general, made the trains a lot better. You can now use the edit tool to move train poles and other train buildings. We also added a new stop mode on both the train poles and train stops, so you can more easily pause a section as you work on another and reworked information on the train poles so that it’s a bit easier to understand. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/e09fa413ec477292394c49527ae52e8d1d15a9a7.png Also once you’ve gotten the Train View, you can unlock Remote Train Management! Now you don’t just have a convenient list to browse your trains, but you can open your trains, train poles and even train stations from the map! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/f8f7023d5990087f612e5da8446ad32eea0236d4.png You can’t delete, build or move any of the buildings, but you can change IDs, refuel trains, and change modes of train poles and stops. The idea is to make managing big train networks a little easier. We also added a Big Cargo Wagon. It has one big item slot, which means it can carry ten stacks of a single item, compared to carrying six stacks of any item. This way, you can specialise your networks into carrying single items, but have flexibility when you want to. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/45d115befe90aa908297fccf93e78ccda27ce88c.png

Glossary Overhaul

We completely overhauled the glossary with a new layout and optimised it. You can click at items and buildings like before, but now also collapse and open categories with one button press. We also pushed this to other parts of the UI wherever appropriate. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/138e8de8ef29335e78dc5c86ebfb81459e1a8105.png The gameplay glossary is now in these nice categories and are resorted so it’s a bit easier to find the information you’re looking for. We also changed how the gameplay glossary popups hide themselves. They’ll do something like a minimise first, so you can finish whatever you’re doing and then check it out or close it on your own time. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/a1dc268010a15158383f195c322ca376c29bc9b3.png We also made the recipe numbers clearer. We now show both the “time cost of recipe” and the “item per minute” everywhere, so you can do the maths however you prefer. You can also change the decimal scale in the settings, so you can get the level of precision that you want! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/ad48b8577df10040e43e0ce291b113482966d1ff.png We also tried to make the damage system clearer with these damage resist icons that are now in the glossary and when you hover over an object. We also took the chance and reviewed all of the enemies and changed some of them! You might want to make sure you have more than just the Stumpies before you start fighting the Mantis Stags!

New Customisations and Decorations

We added a bunch of new customisations! 20 new items in total, and a lot more combinations for you to express yourself. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c5388a3f4dd1da1e59e7ab57652a8fdb90438f21.png We also went through all of the customisations and moved a few, so if there’s something that you liked, but you can’t find, it might be that it’s now locked to a different achievement, or that it’s in the tailor’s shop. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/8864e200ed30d6772291109a7eb47f1b394674b4.png Talking about customisations, we got feedback about how annoying it is to get juuuust the right colour using the mouse, so we changed the UI for the character colour picker. You can now use the scroll bar to get somewhere quick, like last time, but then use the small arrows to do fine control. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/73bee6d8d6159cf9d2a4b95fe6dd854c1ccd56aa.png We also have new decorations. We’ve added a set of stone decorations and a set of ancient decorations. We’ve also created more plushies to fill out the ones that were missing and made sure that the plant pots have all of the plants that was missing from the Hot & Cold update.

Steam Achievements, Trading Cards & More

We’ve gone through all of the achievements and added a few more and now have the final set of 60! They’re of course, connected to the Steam Achievement system and we also added Trading Cards and Badges so you can collect your favourite Sparks and show off with your favourite villager. And of course, there’s the emoticons too. Here's a selection! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c8e78aae08878b6ab0d883f8db96973fe2fdb84e.png

First Time Setup Screen

We now have a first time setup screen to point you towards a few things, like the autosave interval, gamma, and the accessibility settings.

Small Features and Changes

Final section! Let's quickly go through some smaller stuff we added Minor Quest Rebalancing We did some minor quest rebalancing to make the beginning a bit smoother, added an optional quest to try to get people using the Spark Thrower earlier. There's not a lot of changes. Hopefully you shouldn't notice anything! Dedicated delete item from inventory button So we’ve been figuring out what our “final” controls will be and we decided that the move to trash inventory shortcut was worth a dedicating a button to. In case you didn’t know, we actually have some shortcuts in the controls that’s not set to any buttons, and you can change them if there’s something you use more! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/79e55ab0d10f36f49f4f171a7d966ff546c3a2be.png PC Multiplayer We’ve moved it out of “beta” after more extensive testing. We’ve always felt relatively comfortable about the stability of the multiplayer (although, of course, there was still the occasional issues) but we’ve spent some time to iron out a lot of the wrinkles. Misophonia Mode - Electric Humming Sounds We added one more misophonia mode setting, so now you can also silence any kind of electric humming sounds. Force Accurate Timestep So! Our game forces an accurate timestep and depending on how many calculations have to be done at once, this may cause performance issues. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/62db35838aa32629f1db0db56507c2638304b5fa.png We’ve now added a way for you to disable forced accurate timesteps. That means that if you’re having a CPU bottleneck (e.g. your camera stuttering, even though the graphics setting is low), you can disable forcing accurate timesteps and change your timestep budget to stabilise your framerate. The timestep budget is the number of milliseconds per frame the game has to calculate everything happening in the game, and if there’s more calculations on that frame, it’ll simply push the calculation to the next frame. You’ll have a stable framerate, but this means that parts of your base will end up being delayed. We set the default to 4 so it immediately feels better and you can crank that number up until you notice any more performance issue. (The default for the budget looks low, but that’s not the actual budget used if you’re forcing an accurate timestep.) World Generation Rework This is going to be mostly invisible, but we reworked the world generation to ensure that locations of various cells in the biome is more reliable. Improving Load Distance We also tried to improve load distance so that there’s less of a chance for you to see things popping into frame. Art and music polish for Hot & Cold biome The Hot & Cold update was a bit rushed on our side, and some of the world objects (like various rocks and trees in the hot/cold biome) wasn’t as polished as we’d like to be. So we spent a little more time making it look extra nice. We also shipped fewer tracks for the hot and cold biome, so we added a few more too. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/47a352a84f7b855f2b8e349b83bf50b832c5d961.png

Deluxe Upgrade/Deluxe Edition

Oh, in case you wonder where the Supporter Pack went and what this new Deluxe Upgrade is all about: It's the same thing! We renamed it, as the Deluxe name made more sense on other (non-Early-Access) platforms and we didn't want it to be called different things depending on which platform you purchase it on. If you have already purchased the Supporter Pack, you'll already own the Deluxe Upgrade. The content is also still the same: You'll get the Royal Outfit, the Corrupted Aether Outfit and decorative golden statues of all Sparks! The Supporter Bundle has also been renamed to Deluxe Edition accordingly. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3073500/Oddsparks_An_Automation_Adventure__Supporter_Pack/ Alright, that's everything!

What’s next for Oddsparks?

You want to know already?! Well, I understand. Of course, our first priority right now is keeping our eyes out on any bugs you find and fixing them as soon as possible. We do have a small list of things that we were interested in adding but didn’t have time for. Depending on how well our release goes overall, we'll see how much time we can dedicate to continuing to support and add more stuff (both included in the main game and as DLC) to Oddsparks. So if you like Oddsparks, please tell your friends and your favourite streamers about it! For now, since our programmers have been busy bug hunting and the artists had a little more time, we do want to say that we have some customisation and decoration focused things in the works! Please look forward to something soon. Well, that's all I have! You should play the game or something. And maybe go to our Discord and talk about all of the new things you've found, tell us all the weird tricks you've learned and show off all of the spaghetti mess that is your base. Thank you so much for all those who have joined our early access and given us feedback, and to everyone who have supported us. We're quite proud of what we've made and we're looking forward to seeing everyone play. Thank you so much for reading! Enjoy Oddsparks 1.0!

We are very excited to finally reveal our official release date: Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure will release version 1.0 on PC and consoles on the 27th of May! Early Access has been a great journey! From our start one year ago in April 2024, to the big updates ("Trains & Trades" in August 2024 and "Hot & Cold" in December 2024) and some smaller updates in between. It has been amazing to see the community grow, see all the crazy builds, cozy fan art, constructive feedback and overall love for the game. So, let's quickly recap what to expect from the 1.0 update:

• New biome: "The Corrupted Ruins" isn't just the name of the 1.0 update, it's also the name of the new biome. The ruins of a long-gone civilization now lie in a gloomy swamp in the North, populated by aggressive slimes and golems.
• Base Defense: The new enemies will attack structures built inside the new biome and corrupt them by covering them in purple slime. Corrupted buildings are not destroyed, they are only deactivated until the corruption has been cleansed by the new Scrubby Sparks. You can build walls, attractors, and Spark Cannons to defend your new bases.
• Main Story End: Who made the Sparks? And why? You'll finally uncover the mystery of the Sparks and finish the journey that began over a thousand years ago!
• Automation Challenge: You'll need to apply everything you've learned in a final isolated automation challenge, while defending your base!
• More QoL + World Settings: World Settings allow you to customise your game experience. You want easier or harder fights, reduce building costs, or even abolish them entirely? You can even manage the world generation better with the optional terraforming tool. You'll have lots of different options available before starting a new game and while playing. We've also added more quality of life features. We reworked trains, added a toggle inside filters to reverse them, updated the glossary, and more.
• Mod Support via Steam Workshop: We've added tools and documentation to lay the groundwork for future community creativity. This will allow you to go way beyond what we ever imagined the game to be.
• Achievements + Community Items: You'll finally be able to unlock Steam achievements and collect/trade cards, craft badges and get rewards like emoticons and profile backgrounds.

Savegame Compatibility

We knew if we ever wanted to implement some deeper system changes that would break the save games, this update would be the last chance. And there were some longstanding world generation issues that we wanted to tackle to have better and more reliable results. This means that we will deliberately break savegame compatibility for the first (and last) time during Early Access. So, while everyone will have to start from scratch, you will have a more robust and future-proof world generation. We'll keep a public "earlyaccess" beta branch, where you'll still be able to play your old saves on the old Early Access version. This branch is already live now, although until the 1.0 release the version will be the same on both "default" and "earlyaccess" branches.

But wait, consoles?

We've said in the past that we wanted to concentrate on PC first and look at consoles after the Early Access phase. But for Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 there was already significant progress due to our work on the demos. One important thing is that the console version won't have multiplayer. Unfortunately, console multiplayer has been a lot more work than we were able to take care of. Instead of making everyone wait much longer for a console version, we figured it was better to let console players enjoy singleplayer Oddsparks. For now, we don't have plans to add console multiplayer. Apart from that, you'll be able to play the full game on PC, Xbox Series X/S or PlayStation 5 on release day.

What's next?

We are almost finished with the 1.0 release and can't wait to share the complete game with the world. If you don't want to wait for the release alone, join us on our Discord to discuss everything Oddsparks! The release also won't be the end of the journey, but it's too early to talk about what might come after... For now, we are very excited for all of you to get your hands on the full game. See you in May!

Hello! It’s been a little while, so let’s update you on what’s happening. Oddsparks 1.0 is currently in the stage of playtesting and bugfixing, and things are going pretty smoothly. We’re currently spending a lot of time going over the whole game! We’re changing some of the earlier quests to make the flow smoother and adding new quests to make some things clearer. We’ve added new functions to old path addons and the trains. We’ve done an overhaul on world generation, the glossary, the damage type system... And that’s not counting any of the strictly new stuff we’ve added, like the final biome and end game challenge! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/72d1bf794f7dc311df48ff6c0c261645141cd0f9.png Reverse settings filters on your spark and item filters and operators for your amount filter! We want to put our best foot forward with 1.0 and make it a polished game that you can confidently buy and recommend to your friends. We’ve already started working with modders to test out our modding tools and making sure we have good documentation. (And if you’re maybe interested in modding our game early, you can join our Discord and apply there!) In fact, if you enjoy the game and would like to help us have a great launch in general, you can give us a positive review on Steam, and tell your friends and maybe your favourite streamer and youtuber about us! That’s it for the preamble. Things are going smoothly for Oddsparks 1.0, no release date yet but we’re looking forward to announcing something soon. For now, let’s talk a little about two new features we’re going to have in 1.0!

Base Defense

So Base Defense only happens in the new biome. As seen in our roadmap, we have a new biome called the Corrupted Ruins and in this gloomy biome are not just the broken ruins of the past, but also some rather unusual looking enemies. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/fec35d781884541febde6c87ef0097b8a865a6b4.png These little slimes can be fought relatively easily and drop Corrupted Aether. However, they spawn back pretty quickly and the real issue is that if you start building in the new biome, they will not be happy. They’ll come to your base in waves and start spreading their corruption. These enemies will cover your buildings in a slime that’ll stop the buildings from working, cover your paths to stop Sparks from walking on them… If you let them, they’ll cover everything in the new biome and freeze your base. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/59e768019182c9475b7cf6c8a2070ec8e7464972.png Thankfully, you have a few different tools to take care of them. First, you’ll get access to a new Spark, the Scrubby Spark! These clean up corruption from buildings and the ground, although at some point, they can only take so much. Maybe there’s also a way to clean up the Scrubby Sparks themselves? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/07a4cf1700a7f01e6deec9494aadcf4766d11692.png Knowledge is power and with the new Hostility Overlay, you can know the danger level of an area if you build there. In general, the corrupted enemies won’t attack you unless you build in these areas and they also won’t attack your base outside of the biome too. However, as you defend yourself, they’ll also grow stronger, so you’ll need to keep up with them and you can keep an eye out with the Hostility Overlay. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/dba7660db3651d817e134905763540d37f27c757.png And then, of course, you have your new set of base defense tools. To add to the Animal Scarer and Spark Thrower, we now have the Defensive Wall, an Aetheric Attractor, an Enemy Sensor, and a Spark Cannon! The Spark Cannon is an upgraded version of the Spark Thrower, able to aim directly at whatever you want it to. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/24de6a37632492f44c66a28abaef9bc13ba2dd9c.png With it, you can have one cannon that uses Burning Sparks to set the enemies ablaze, another cannon with Stumpy Sparks to pick up the items that drop, and one last cannon with Scrubby Sparks to clean up the corruption, all working in tandem! We won’t spoil how all the different tools work, but we look forward to you playing with them.

World Settings

We also wanted to talk to you quickly about World Settings! For us, Oddsparks is about solving open ended puzzles your way, and that can be pretty tough to design for. After all, one person’s easy is another person’s difficult, and we wanted to make the game fun for a very broad audience of folks. Because of that, we always knew that we wanted to add World Settings and Mod Support to let you play Oddsparks your own way! But what does that mean exactly for World Settings? {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/2bc77be5fa0394d9ac680d60f3392855974fdcf1.png Well, a lot of it is just empowering you to mess around with a lot of stuff! Of course, you can start with parts of the game skipped, but we added a way where you can start a game with automation features unlocked for the folks who already understand many of the concepts. So for example, you can start the game with the late-game ancient replicas, which functionally means that you’re not location restricted anymore. If you have this world setting enabled, the costs of these buildings also change so that you can use them from early game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/4c4e6bc5435d7fe4135a48cd6cf0032e9211c2bb.png We'll also allow you to change a lot of values and give you access to a whole bunch of fun things. Give yourself a harder challenge by multiplying quest numbers, or by making all of the enemies aggressive and respawn faster. Or you can make the game easier by making fuel slower to burn, making yourself invulnerable to damage or access the Item Cheat Menu where you can give yourself any item for free. You can play the game in an entirely flat world (the cave walls still exist though) and we even added a terraform tool option in there! (We didn’t want to add it to the default experience, but we know that people are sometimes looking for a more sandbox experience out of Oddsparks and we wanted to give you the option.) {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c987c962b856ab3e1627c28514bf647a9aac437a.png However, you may not be able to earn achievements in a save game depending on the settings. In general, if we feel like something makes the game way too easy, we make it so that you can’t earn achievements, but we're pretty nice about it. You can also change some (not all) world settings while playing, but of course, if you had enabled something that turned off achievements, that save will continue to not get you achievements, even if you turn that setting off later. Oh, one more thing. Maybe you were wondering what that little eye icon above the World Setting does? Well, it opens up a Seed Preview! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/90213496da524b139cc9c29f59a12cd85bd37119.png That's it for now. We've already shown a lot of this in our Discord, so feel free to hang out with us there for some more sneak peeks. We look forward to announcing things soon!

Half a year ago, we released the Supporter Pack as a way for players who really like the game to express their support and get 3 exclusive customization and 5 decoration items as a bonus. We are very thankful to anyone who purchased this cosmetic DLC and to celebrate the first 6 months, we decided to add a lot more items:

• The Royal outfit got 4 extra items (trousers, skirt, boots and staff).
• A new Corrupted Aether outfit has been added (5 items).
• 13 new Spark statues for all remaining Sparks have been added. You might even spot a new Spark that will be part of the upcoming 1.0 update (The Corrupted Ruins)!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/424023eb65c572c6c88a7fa9e72cc48283a34863.png The price of the Supporter Pack has also increased, but if you have purchased it before, you’ll get all these extra items for free! Get the Supporter Pack here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3073500/Oddsparks_An_Automation_Adventure__Supporter_Pack/

Multiplayer Bugfix

We also released a new patch with a fix for a bug that would break multiplayer sessions. This fix should prevent the game from desyncing when refilling Spark loadouts.

What’s next?

We are working on the 1.0 release with full steam, polishing systems, implementing new features and addressing your feedback. You are always welcome to join our Discord where you might even get some sneak peeks on what’s about to come.

Wall-builders, Historians, and Spark-Researchers, It’s another roadmap update! Let’s talk about our upcoming 1.0 and what we’re planning to put into the game. We hope you look forward to our big 1.0 update, titled “The Corrupted Ruins” that we’re planning to release on Spring 2025! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c3b9a45809315278058ec1d67e04f3db7bd2fade.png Let’s talk quickly about what those features mean!

New Biome: Corrupted Ruins

We have a new biome that’ll round out our 1.0, and it’ll have new enemies that will actually go out of their way to attack your buildings! They’ll also spread corruption, making your buildings unusable. Thankfully, you’ll have a new Spark to help you clean things up and get things back into working order.

Base Defense

And you’ll also get new tools to help you defend your base from the new enemies to stop you needing to clean up in the first place. We’re expanding your defense kit - you’ll build walls and automated defenses to take care of enemies before they reach your base.

Main Story End

We’re also wrapping up the main story. Who made the Sparks? Why were they made in the first place? We’ve been keeping things only in bits and pieces, but you’ll finally get to uncover the mystery of the Sparks and finish the journey that began over a thousand years ago!

Automation Challenge

But you can’t just have the story ending without a cool final boss! This is where you take everything you’ve learned from the game and apply it into the final automation building and throughput challenge. Of course, you’ll also have to tackle this while defending your base.

More Quality of Life + World Settings

Of course, we’re always looking to make the game better. We’ve reworked the train system so you can move the tracks, we’re reworking the glossary so you can go through the information easier, and see about adding screens to make managing your base a bit easier. We’re also going to add a world settings screen and figured you’d be excited to know about it early. You’ll get an easy way to change your game experience. Do you want the combat to be easier? Or maybe you’re looking for more of a challenge? Maybe you want to just start a little faster, with a few things already unlocked? We’re working on it so you can enjoy Oddsparks how you want!

Mod Support

And as we’ve already talked about from our first roadmap, we plan to add tools and documentation to help you, our wonderful members of the community, create mods and bring new experiences to Oddsparks!

What about consoles? What about after 1.0?

So we are also working on the console release, but we don’t have any news to reveal yet. Don’t worry, the moment we have something, we’re going to shout about it everywhere we can. And after 1.0? Well, this isn’t the end of the road - so stay tuned for more info and updates. Also, some of you who are very keen eyed might notice that Oddsparks now has some Steam Achievements! We've added them for testing purposes, but since we're in Early Access, we can't actually test them in Steam unless they're in the live version. So, with the aim of preventing a lot of questions about how come a steam achievement didn't unlock, we wanted to say that you currently cannot unlock Steam Achievements. They'll, of course, be available in 1.0. If you’re interested in seeing more into what will be in our 1.0, we’ve already started showing off some stuff in our Discord, so feel free to join us there. We’ll talk again soon!

Dark, cold, and snowy days are the perfect time to stay in and dive into great gaming experiences. So, fill up your library with amazing games for even more amazing prices! Embark on exciting adventures, defeat your enemies in action-packed shooters, solve puzzles, experience beautiful worlds in platformers, or have a great time with friends or family playing our party games. It does not matter how you want to spend your time. We will have something for you - now for up to 90% off! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/d318b471143b3223442984b8d4da6e3ffdc06723.gif

Friends and Soon-to-be-Friends, It’s another big update! Like last time, let’s talk through everything we’ve added. Please get comfortable. What’s important is: You should be able to continue your save. If you reached all the way to the end of the previous version, we had to undo any progress for the Mayor Tier 7 quest because of all of the new stuff we added to Tier 7. We also haven’t changed any of the old progression (just added one or two new things, but we’ll talk about that later), so feel free to continue your old save! Also, if you were affected by a bug where you were using a save started from the demo version and the mason sisters are missing, we’re sorry about that! With this update, you can now continue that save. Alright, let’s talk about the new features that we’ve crammed in!

Two New Biomes: Glacial Plateau & Volcanic Cave

We have two new biomes past the mountain! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/090d8f95f7099893e03bdbb98005571a91af6627.png There's the Glacial Plateau in the northwest . It’s a cold and frosty place where snow is eternally falling. You’ll be visiting this place for the precious magical life energy frozen in the extra-pure waters. This place won’t make it easy for you either. The enemies here will freeze you and your Sparks, slowing you down and encasing your Sparks in ice. Meanwhile, there's the Volcanic Cave in the northeast. It’s a hot and dark cave that you’ll need to carve a space in. You’ll find metal here and as you go deeper, the hotter this place gets. It’s also pretty cramped inside, you won’t be able to build the train in the cave. The enemies and hazards here will try to burn you and your Sparks, so you should keep an eye out for ways to extinguish yourself. There’s lots of new gameplay, but we won’t talk much about the specifics here. All you need to know is that there are a total of seven new enemies for you to find and fight. Some are easier, a way for you to learn about the new mechanics, but we’ve tried to ramp up the difficulty of other enemies. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/335e956343f4bd9c429b80725a3bc0e7554f5427.png Of course, you also get to play with fire and ice with two new big Sparks: Burning Spark and Freezing Spark. These two will help you out and make fighting the new enemies easier by burning and slowing them down, but you’ll have to go deep in the caves and high in the plateau to find them. Good luck with your exploration!

Digging & Caves

Let’s talk a bit more about that Volcanic Cave. It’s an actual cave where you’ll need to carve out your own space and your Sparks have to dig through the various layers of dirt, rocks, metal, and more! You’ll throw your Sparks and order them to dig a specific way through and they’ll keep going until they find an item or are done with the order. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/80a400deacf223426a393c547d101a163522f58a.png Different layers will also require different Sparks, so you’ll need to equip various sets of Sparks. You should also be careful because digging out a cave can be quite dangerous! Digging some dirt might cause a small cave-in! An unusual-looking pocket of rock might have some copper, but there could be a hidden lava geyser underneath. And as you get deeper, the place will get hotter and even more dangerous… {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/8cf087ab8be99e7bd40a0c297cc3a1ef7617fcf2.png Thankfully you’ll get a new Spark to help you out, the Drilly Spark! It’s a one-use Spark that can drill any kind of hard material like Obsidian or Permafrost.

Botany

We’ve already talked about Botany in a previous devlog, but to give you a quick explanation, we’re upping the automation puzzle with a new type of recipe that has a progress bar. So you’ll need to complete a single recipe multiple times to get the item. Ten times for smaller plants, but a hundred times for bigger ones - After all, growing a plant takes a lot of time and care! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/aaee68789f06629ea86fc8fa71d48b7f13acd582.png You’ll grow smaller plants in a Greenhouse. You’ll need to feed them twenty to sixty items in total, and they can take from five to fifteen minutes to finish growing before you can have the fruits of your labor. However, the big plants only grow in an Arboretum. They’ll need to be fed up to a thousand items in total, and if a recipe takes about five minutes, that means growing a single plant can take over eight hours! Thankfully, they’re fed by a separate building, the Arboretum Feeder, and multiple feeders can connect to a single Arboretum. You can have a large number of feeders and cut the time it takes to grow a plant from eight hours to one hour, or even less. Of course, assuming your production line can handle that many feeders efficiently! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/8a551c5c06baba394039c91963dfbe668ae3a86c.png So once you’ve grown the plants, what do you do with them? Well, we have a new Plant Extractor, a workstation with two outputs! With the Plant Extractor, you’ll be creating looping production lines. You’ll bring Coral and Fertiliser to the Greenhouse to grow Coral Seeds and some of those you’ll bring into a Plant Extractor to get Coral back from the Coral Seed, while the rest you use in other buildings or to cultivate other plants! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/42e41305d60eab97a3a98c0e8e73699953bd4cfa.png You’ll also unlock some very special late-game buildings that will make creating your end-game base simpler, but we won’t spoil for you what it is.

Temperature Automation

We’ve also talked about this in our last devlog! So with names like Volcanic Cave and Glacial Plateau, these biomes are, as to be expected, also hot and cold. This heat and cold is actually great for your buildings! Almost every recipe has an optimal temperature, somewhere between -5 and +5. They’ve been running at 100% efficiency so far, but if you move parts of your production line to the cave or plateau, or use new buildings like the Heater, Cooler, or Temperature Regulator, you can get your recipes into 125% or even 150%! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/00506259b9508381d7add3e2d404365f858eb9bd.png So for example, anything made in the Aetheric Distiller has an optimal temperature of +3. They work best in a warm environment to get rid of excess moisture. Meanwhile, the Furnace has an optimal temperature of -3. It heats up so much that it works best when it’s in a cool environment. Of course, it also goes the other way. Running a recipe at the wrong temperature is a quick way to get it working at only 75%, 50%, or even all the way down to 0% efficiency. You also can’t just stack the heaters and coolers. You need to use both the land and your new buildings to be able to optimize recipes that want to be in extreme temperatures! Thankfully, the new Temperature Overlay makes checking this easy. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/1932b6c00313a1bfd291da488ed5a5bd716038cb.png To help you manage your efficiency, there’s also one new Spark: the Handy Spark. which is an upgrade to the Crafty Spark! With this new Spark, you’ll be able to offset some of the efficiency losses when working in non-ideal conditions and reach an even higher efficiency than you weren’t able to before! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/1f0b9936ee5c00a6517d8ded859a4ef563a62592.png

Quality of Life

There are a lot of quality-of-life features that we’ve added to the game!

Destroying Ancient Containers

We’ve made it so Ancient Containers are now destroyable with Impact damage, like the Rocky Spark. So from around tier 4, you’ll be able to destroy any that are in your way! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/35f0237afa566e6ffda994073cd9b42b479d4e37.png

Build Presets

We’ve been a bit unhappy with the build menu, especially with the “last five buildings” history, since it doesn’t really allow you to get a good muscle memory going with the game. We’ve decided to change this by having Build Presets! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/59832b9ab5c0102e35adf30861e954edfc55009e.png Unlocked at Tier 1 in the Monument, you can now create your own collection of your most used buildings and tools and quickly swap between them as you build. Hopefully, this makes building a lot faster and easier. We also swapped the location of the recipe and the build menu bar. We did it for a few reasons but it means that changing the height of train tracks on the gamepad is now way easier and more intuitive!

Spark Loadouts

Before we get to the actual feature: We’ve changed it so that now, you cannot unequip your Active Sparks if any of them are affected by status effects, like Stun. It was a bit of a gameplay loophole that we know folks have been using and we’ve decided to finally close that loophole so that this feature would work as intended. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/54ce8937c2a0a8e9b33694869a01e0f10765ad19.png Because after you’ve unlocked the three Spark Slots, what’s next is the ability to juggle multiple Spark Loadouts! At Tier 7, you can unlock a Spark Loadout, a new set of three spark slots. You can only have one set out at a time, but you can quickly swap between the two loadouts so you can better organize your Sparks. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/e2b3efa81f836ec7d75cbe24356bd1688b4a0ef4.png You can fill and swap between the loadouts in your inventory, but you can also quickly swap between them in Aim Mode, as long as none of the Sparks are affected by a status effect!

Minimap Scaling

You can now change the zoom level of the minimap to see more (or less). It doesn’t affect how much of a new area is uncovered, so it’s mostly useful to see more when you’re in already explored areas. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c80d545faffdde685a64cbab45364506412bd93a.png

Quest Pinning

More than one quest can now be pinned! It’s very basic, where a new pinned quest is pinned underneath existing pinned quests. You won’t be able to scroll through the pinned quests, so we’re just going to let you pin too many quests at once and you can figure it out for now. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/27231807aa8f5a527b6c3383c31b547bf0fe8dfc.png

Updated Copy Tool

You can now use the copy tool to paste recipes into existing buildings! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/bcc971760bc6c125c774138d619e649942d8836d.png So let’s say you built a bunch of sawbenches but ah! You forgot to pre-set them to the right recipe. Well, you can now set just one of them to the right recipe, copy that building, and then just paste that recipe right on top of the other sawbenches. Saves a lot of clicks.

Updated Monument Screens

We’ve overhauled the monument unlock screen where you unlock new monument upgrades so it’s easier to navigate through them. We also overhauled the monument overview screen so that the quests are categorized by tiers. It even checks what item you have in your inventory and tells you which monument unlocks you can take care of now! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/78d1465ec35e78ba7cae2b19cdbea8c2c569f922.png

Updated Badges Screen

We’ve also grouped the badges to make them easier to navigate through! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/6f11216390ddc0b4981f6f86b858369837e824db.png

Updated Quest Overview Screen

We made the Quest Overview screen a bit better. You can now see the details of a recipe in the quest overview before you unlock it. This means you should be able to understand better which quest you should do first! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/c998fd00c14d59600d068f4ddafc6d68b958febb.png

Updated Item Glossary Screen

We want to do more updates to the glossary screens, but for now, we added on every item entry which recipes use that item. Now you can see how to make the item and where it's used! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/71159bc7a17e63d27fe7a7122d528b998528d728.png

Updated New Game Screen

We wanted to smooth out starting a new game and basically cut it down so that you’ll need fewer clicks to just start a new game. This one is kind of hard to explain through text, but you can just play it and see. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/ed189f5eb0f68f4c8654e45de61a429130f631cb.png

Apart from that…

Let's talk about the stuff we didn't mention in the roadmap!

Spark AI Changes

We’ve done some Spark AI changes, specifically for when you harvest. There’s no change for when you target a specific object (e.g. a tree), the Sparks will do as they have been all this time. However, to make harvesting a bit smoother, we’ve made two changes: The first is that the Sparks won’t try to harvest infinite resources unless you’ve targeted it. We’ve also extended this to a few other things, like the Spunny Warren. This should mean that the Spark Thrower is a little less annoying to use and that harvesting in general feels a bit nicer. The second one is a big change! Previously, when a Spark was thrown on the ground, it harvested the first thing it saw and then immediately came back. We've now changed it so that when you throw a Spark without targeting anything, it will harvest until it finds an item, and then comes back. This is similar to the behavior we’ve implemented for digging and we feel it makes clearing areas a bit nicer and easier. We've also changed Rush to do the same.

Arty Spark Combat

We wanted to add this last big update! We didn’t have time then, but we managed to squeeze it in this time. You can use the Arty Spark to paint the enemy! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/510c7b9282e9e893d194fa5b4cc4877d8819ad76.png The Arty Spark will try to use up its paint charge when it hits the enemy. Once an enemy has been hit five times with paint, it’s stunned for a few seconds. All the paint on the enemy then disappears and it’s temporarily invincible to being hit by paint. It’s balanced in a way so that it’s not overpowered and isn’t always the best thing to do, but if you’re finding a fight very difficult, it might be worth it to bring a stack of paint-filled Arties to stun the enemy at its most annoying moments.

New Gameplay

We have some new smaller gameplay stuff that isn’t part of a specific feature but is important to mention.

Three Input Building

Just like how we now have a two-output building, we also have a three-input building to make the automation puzzle a little more difficult. It’s the new Spark Workshop, the building where you’ll be making the new Sparks! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/707906cd4587927960d4193806638a22a0dfe87c.png

Random Output Building

And we also added a random output building! We’ve added Geodes in the game, which you can find in the Volcanic Cave and you can put them into the Geode Breaker. Each type of geode will give one of three items when they’re broken, and you’ll need to keep the output clear so it can keep working on opening new geodes. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/bdbb3df25844e2062c7761ac0185046858cc6565.png

Diminishing Harvester

In the Volcanic Caves are Giant Ore Deposits where you can get Copper. However, the Ore Miner has a diminishing rate of production. What it means is that when you build the Ore Miner, it starts with a high harvest rate and then it reduces over time. You’ll need to build more and expand, or figure out new ways to create the new resource. Don’t worry, it’s still an infinite resource, so you’ll always have some but it might not be enough.

Accessibility Options

And we added a small selection of Accessibility options. These exist both in their appropriate tab and in the Accessibility tab to make it easier to find them - so for example, Misophonia mode can be found in both the Audio tab and in the Accessibility tab. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/b61dd09bb69bd1b3cc328ef1f6267dbafba15524.png

Screenshake Slider

You can now change the intensity of the in-game screenshake.

Misophonia Mode

We got some feedback about how the beelephant’s munching noises were a little much for some people, so we added Misophonia Mode that turns off specific sounds, such as the beelephant eating. If there are more sounds in the game that you feel should fall under this setting, feel free to reach out to us so we can add them.

Gamma Slider

Since we now have dark areas in the game, we’ve also added a Gamma Slider so you can make things a bit brighter if it looks too dark in the caves.

Balancing Changes

We’ve changed very little of the existing game.

• We’ve changed the Delivery Chests, Big Crates, and Big Barrels to now use Big Slots. When you migrate the save, any items that didn’t fit will just drop in front of your house in the village. Delivery Chests and Big Barrels now have 4 Big Slots, and Big Crates now have 2 Big Slots.
• Alchemy Lab costs 2 Squilican Tubes to build instead of 3 Squilican Tubes. You’re going to be building more of them and we don’t want you to have to grind too many Squilicans.
• Rock Terons will now drop 2 or 3 Rock Teron Shells instead of 1 or 2. Again, we’ve put a bit of a bigger importance on the Furnace, so we want to make it less grindy.
• And as we said earlier, we completely changed the Tier 7 mayor quest.

Bugfixes

Let's quickly go through what bugs we fixed!

• Cargo loaders will now only connect with train wagons if the locomotive is stopped by a station.
• We also worked on the autosave and some loading issues. Hopefully, it’ll hang a bit less!
• Fixed a bug where minimap, compass, and tagged quest can disappear after opening the Map while you're on a train.
• Fixed a bug where copying the counter gate wasn't copying the values properly.
• There was also the bug mentioned up top where if you started a demo save before the 27th of November, that save wasn’t actually compatible with the full version of the game because the Mason Sisters weren’t spawning.

What hasn’t been said…

If you’re keen-eyed, you might notice that a few things are not mentioned and that's because these weren't added this time. So in this update, there are no new decorations, customizations, or badges. This particular update has been more work than expected and we really wanted to get it out before the year was ending. This has meant that we set aside a few things for later, including the winter seasonal event. As you play, you might even notice that the new quests don’t have any dialogues, like the state of the Mountain quests before the Trains & Trades update! We feel like even with some of these touches missing, you can still have a really fun experience with the core features that are in this update. We look forward to adding these very important touches in for the next big update (our 1.0!!), if not earlier, but we’re first going to enjoy the winter/New Year break. We really want to thank you for supporting us as we continue developing Oddsparks. Mixing up two genres in a way that makes the game more approachable but still interesting hasn’t been easy! As we’re shaping up the final version of the game and creating the ending, we’re going to do some overhauls. We’re going to comb through our game, and all of the different systems, and spend a lot of time making sure that everything feels as good and well-rounded as it should be for the 1.0 version of the game! All of your feedback has been super helpful for us (please keep sending us more!), and we hope you have a lot of fun with the Hot & Cold update. We look forward to seeing your new cave and plateau bases, and seeing the spaghetti mess of a path network you make as you grow your big plants.

Friends and Soon-to-be-friends, A lot of you have been asking when you'll finally be able to explore the Volcanic Cave and the Glacial Plateau! We are excited to announce that the answer to this question is Monday, 16th of December! If you want a reminder on what to expect, you can check out the two previous devlogs Devlog #11: Roadmap Update! and Devlog #12: Botany & Temperature Automation or join our Discord for more sneak peeks and WIPs from behind the scenes. See you next Monday! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/315922c6e8a71af9ebd389dbfc2034ca7730dddc.png{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/e78661aa33666110ff8797db5e1b419f80fc5436.png

Botanists, Thermal Engineers and Spark-Growers, We were a bit too busy to do an October devlog so to make up for it, we’re gonna talk about two features this time and how they interlink with each other, Botany & Temperature Automation!

Botany

Botany is the next level of automation challenge in Oddsparks! So far, everything in the game uses the basic recipe concept. You input an amount of item A (and maybe also an amount of item B) and after a certain amount of time, the building consumes those items and outputs an amount of item C. It sounds like a small change but Botany introduces new recipes with a progress bar. After all, growing a plant takes time! So now, to get the output item C, you’ll need to complete the recipe multiple times. For small plants, it’s only ten times, but for larger plants, it’s a hundred times! This means you’ll need to really work on your production lines delivering consistently to ensure that you’re growing your plant as efficiently as possible. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/5d80a656a5a5a39f70a2a590bb82cce92d19603a.png Small plants can be grown in the Greenhouse. You’ll need to feed each plant ten times, a five to fifteen minute period in total. Once they’re fully grown, you’ll get the literal fruits of your labour! You’ll be growing unusual plants in the Greenhouse like Fluted Coral Reef, Aether Flowers, and Fireshroom Colonies. Larger plants are grown in the Arboretum. You’ll need to go to one of our new biomes, the Glacial Plateau, and find Aetheric Fissures to build them on. You'll be able to grow some very strange plants in the Arboretum like the Geode Reef, Copper Bamboo and Aether Tree. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/8a551c5c06baba394039c91963dfbe668ae3a86c.png Each of these big plants need to be fed a hundred times, and if a single recipe takes five minutes, growing a single plant can take over eight hours! Thankfully, they’re fed by a separate building, the Arboretum Feeder, and multiple feeders can connect to a single Arboretum. This means you can use eight feeders to cut the time it takes to grow a plant from eight hours to one hour, or even shorter, if you use more! Of course, this assumes your production line can handle that many feeders efficiently. What will you do with the plants and what kind of automation puzzle will you have to figure out with your new plants? We'll talk about that another time, for now, let's talk about...

Temperature Automation

We’re also introducing new ways for you to get more efficiency. With names like Volcanic Cave and Glacial Plateau, these biomes are, as to be expected, also hot and cold. This heat and cold is actually great for your buildings! It hasn’t mattered yet, but almost every recipe has an optimal temperature! All of the temperature information won't be visible until you complete a monument unlock. We try to keep things simple and use a very small scale, from -5 to +5. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/43876e9d11cae7825655304d248b950055c00a0b.png So for example, anything made in the Aetheric Distiller recipes has an optimal temperature of +3. They work best in a warm environment to get rid of excess moisture. Meanwhile, the Furnace has an optimal temperature of -3. It heats itself up so much that it works best when it’s in a cool environment. As for the plants… well, that depends on the plants! Some plants, like the Fireshroom Colony, grow better in hot conditions and others, like the Fluted Coral Reef, grow best in cold conditions. All your previous recipes have so far been working at 100% efficiency but by ensuring they’re at the right temperatures, you can make them work at 125% or even 150% efficiency! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/20f71c4084cec14e93806aaa073e766f566e8e0d.png You can achieve this extra efficiency by building them in the right environment, or managing the local temperature with a cooler or a heater. Coolers and Heaters can raise and lower temperatures by up to +2 or -2, but what’s important is that they don’t stack with each other, only cancel each other out! Two heaters next to each other in the woodlands won’t stack to +4. A heater and a cooler set at max will just create an overlapping area of 0. However, they do affect the current area temperature, so if you put one cooler in a -1 area, it will lower the temperature to -3. If it sounds confusing, that's okay. You can quickly check at a glance what temperature things are, and therefore, what efficiency your production line is running at with the new temperature overlay! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/1932b6c00313a1bfd291da488ed5a5bd716038cb.png Later, you’ll also get the Temperature Regulator which can reach more extreme temperatures and occupies less space, but requires fuel. You’ll need them to deal with new buildings and recipes that have extreme optimal temperatures of +5 and -5. And of course, temperatures will also affect a building negatively. Placing the Furnace in the Volcanic Caves is a quick way to get it running at 75% or even 50% efficiency. With the new recipes that have extreme optimal temperatures, you can end up going all the way down to 0% efficiency! Splitting up your base between hot and cold areas and using the heater, cooler and temperature regulator to manage the temperature of your base will allow you to reach a new height of automation that’s yet to be seen! It's especially important for your new plants and recipes, where that extra efficiency will allow you to get your production line running at a reasonable time. That’s all for now but if you want more sneak peeks and WIPs, you can join our Discord. We look forward to showing you more very soon!

We fixed a savegame compatibility issue with the new demo. Players reported that the Mason Sisters didn't appear when they continued their demo savegame after purchasing the Early Access version, meaning they couldn't progress much further into the post-demo content. We've now updated the demo, so future demo savegames won't have this issue and are now fully compatible with the Early Access version! Unfortunately, this fix doesn't affect already existing savegames. So if you already started a demo savegame before this update, you won't be able to use it in the current Early Access version. In this case you have 3 options:

• You can start a new game in the Early Access version.
• You can keep your savegames and wait for a future Early Access update to be able to load them.
• You can ask for a manual fix in the Demo Save Manual Compatibility Requests thread on our Discord.

We apologize to anyone affected by this issue and hope that you'll still have a great time with Oddsparks. Thank you so much for joining us on our Early Access journey!

We are thrilled that Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure has been nominated for the esteemed GWB Game Awards 2024. As one of the year's top indie games, we have secured a spot in the international shortlist alongside 60 exceptional titles, chosen from over 570 global submissions. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/329c7962d4b0f1df8bfbea067134b66837fa6e89.jpg To celebrate the nomination, a new demo is available throughout the GWB Awards 2024 Steam event, which will take place from November 22nd to 27th, 2024. This updated demo features roughly the same 3+ hours of content as previous demos, covering about half of the first biome. It is based on the current version of the game. This means that it will include quality-of-life improvements from previous updates. Additionally, the savegames will be compatible with the Early Access version. Now is the perfect opportunity to encourage your friends to join the fun or dive into Oddsparks yourself! Stay tuned for more updates! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2637970/Oddsparks_An_Automation_Adventure_Demo/

Friends and Soon-to-be-friends, As the cold wind starts to come over us here in Germany, we’re putting on our sweaters and getting cosy as we work on our next big update. Did you see our new roadmap? We’re also already showing off a bunch of stuff on our Discord if you're interested in seeing work in progress things! However, there’s a very small update that we wanted to do now. It’s the start to a “seasonal event” system that we’re introducing to the game! The Seasonal Event system is a small system that activates specific audio and visual content in the village depending on the time of year that you’re playing the game. It basically just looks at your system clock and changes things when it's the right calendar day. These changes have no effect on gameplay. It only affects the village visuals and music, and not the game world itself. They’ll also be in the game forever, so you won’t “miss out” on anything and can experience it next year if you don't play the game for the next few weeks. In general, we see automation games as something that you can play for a long while as you learn, explore and play with the systems. Some people play a single automation game for a concentrated period of time. Others play until they have their fill and then come back every once in a while. We added this seasonal event system to make playing our game feel a little fresher over time. For now, there’s only this autumn event, but we’ll add more as we develop the game. This particular “autumn/halloween seasonal event” lasts three weeks, from the 17th of October to the 7th of November. This means during those dates, the village will look and sound a little different! There’ll be some lighting changes, visual effects changes, new autumnal models (like some 🎃Pumpkins🎃), and a variation on the village music. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44489382/6d7e85f48bb2bf41db2cc50240b660caa5ee8bec.png Here's a little sneak peek! If you're enjoying the autumn village and feel like dressing up for the season, don't forget to take a screenshot when you're done! Maybe you'll find something on our Twitter or Reddit this weekend about another little contest we're running between now and Halloween~ Separate from that, we're also fitting in some bugfixes!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed map interaction being stuck when dragging the map by a small amount.
• Fixed some items lost when picking up death backpack due to big inventory slots.
• Fixed different staff sounds not working in multiplayer.
• Fixed multiplayer desyncs related to the Spark Thrower.
• Fixed Loamy Spark sound being played in 2d.
• Fixed "Knock On Wood" achievement not requiring Arty Sparks.
• Fixed Boomy Spark token and Crashy Spark token having the same texture.
• Fixed Show Player Names option not being saved when the game was closed.
• Fixed some controller options appearing when they weren’t supposed to.

That's it for now. We'll talk later this month in our devlog about a feature that's coming up in the next big update. Talk to you very soon! Update (30/10/24): Oh man, we're really busy this month! Unfortunately, we won't be able to write up a new devlog but we'll try to make up for it next month. We hope we can talk sooner than later!