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A new difficulty system has been implemented, the Surge system. Each stage has a set of default Surges and their own personal Surges which can be selected to add challenge to a run. Each Surge selected will also amplify the amount of Mnemoria and Aptitude gained at Voyage end. Additionally, each stage has new unlockable Memories which are obtained by reaching a certain threshold of Surge Level. More difficult Surges are worth more Surge Level.
Chapter 2 of the Main story has been implemented, including 6 new Main Story scenes. This transition chapter leads the Starfarers to the Whalers in search for a way to gain access to the Pillar, as well as introducing some new characters to the story.
Added 2 new stages.
The Southstop: This derelict trading hub marked the Pillar's southernmost point ere the Divide first began to rage. Foes arrive from below in dangerous hordes, supported by rallying enemies that provide area buffs.
The Cygnus Loophole: The Great Divide lives up to its moniker, but the lethal storm is at its weakest here, near where the old Pillar was sundered. Lightning will still scour these asteroids, damaging friend and foe alike, but you may yet survive to tell the tale.
Added 2 new weapons.
Beast of No Nation: Control the battlefield with this jet-powered spear. Special is a Dash that can execute weak foes. Burst inflicts Fear. During Burst, defeating foes with Fear will Charge active weapon's Special.
The Briarchord: Conjure Bloomsong summons to attack foes, even when off-field. Weave random Blooms and consume them with Special or Burst for unique effects.
Each character has been given new skills.
Rampart: 3 cost. Gain 15% Defense.
Collector's Heart: 3 cost. Gain 2 Grab Range. Heal 2% HP when collecting items.
Starwall: 4 cost. When taking damage, damage taken can not exceed 30% Max HP.
Pure Power: 4 cost. Gain 2 base damage.
Astral Alignment: 5 cost. When gaining a buff that can stack, gain one extra stack.
Pierce the Veil: 3 cost. Gain 15% Defense Penetration.
Tactics in Tandem: 3 cost. On Swap, Activate a random Memory. 12 second cooldown.
Ascended Potency: 4 cost. Gain 25% Effect Duration.
Swift Specialist: 4 cost. On Dash, gain Specialized for 1 second.
Mystic Incision: 2 cost. Add Defense to Crit Damage. (Reworked effect.)
Kinetic Transfer: 3 cost. When a Summon attacks, lower Dash cooldown by 0.1s.
A Wolf's Acumen: 3 cost. Gain 0.2 Movement Speed.
Master Machinist: 4 cost. Increase Summon damage bonus by 25%.
No Time For Caution: 4 cost. Lower defense by 15%, but lower Burst cooldown by 25%.
Reflective Merit: 3 cost. When a Memory Activates, Heal 1% HP.
Applied Arsenal: 3 cost. Gain 15% Memory Damage.
Even The Odds: 4 cost. Damage over Time effects deal 250% more damage to Elite foes.
Decay Theory: 4 cost. On hit with Special, immediately trigger all Damage over Time effects.
Expert Deduction: Adjusted to 5 cost.
A new character is available after completing Chapter 2. Nemo's kit revolves around dashes, survival, and elite-slaying.
The Whaler Captain: Innate Ability. Nemo's Dash is replaced by an Invincible grapple that targets the nearest foe to the cursor, dashing through them while dealing 100% Primary damage. On Dash End, gain Swiftness for 1 second.
Battle Spirit: 1 cost. Gain Fortified for 2 seconds when taking damage or On Dash End.
Quickstep: 1 cost. Swiftness grants an additional 0.3 Movement Speed.
Coyote Time: 2 cost. Invincibility from Innate Ability is extended by 0.5 seconds.
Reinforced Hookshot: 2 cost. Gain a Dash Charge.
A Fight To Survive: 2 cost. Gain 2% Lifesteal.
Dire Straits: 2 cost. When taking lethal damage, gain Last Stand for 5 seconds, preventing HP from dropping below 1. Once per Voyage.
Giant Slayer: 2 cost. Deal 20% more damage to elites.
Unending Pursuit: 3 cost. When dealing damage to Elite foes, deal an additional 1% Max HP. (3 second cooldown.)
Heart of The Hunt: 3 cost. When taking damage, lower all weapon cooldowns by 15%.
Captain's Command: 4 cost. On Dash, Activate partner's On Dash effects.
Adrenal Force: 4 cost. Crit Damage is converted to Memory Damage. Crit Chance is converted to Defense Penetration.
Added 12 new Memories. Added a new type of Memory, "Rare Memories." These are 25% less common, and are denoted by a golden name.
Basketworld Ambrosia: Gain 1 Max Health. 15 second cooldown.
Reach Observatory Level 5.
Book of Few Shadows: When taking damage, gain Swiftness for 2 seconds. Gain 0.2 Movement Speed.
Reach Observatory Level 5.
Dream of Ascension: On heal, deal damage to nearby foes based on health restored.
Reach Observatory Level 6.
Shepherd's Sunstone: On Special, conjure a blade of light per Special charge to strike nearby foes, dealing 30% Special damage. 8 second cooldown.
Reach Observatory Level 6.
Cyclic Diagram: On hit with Special, Activate Special. 30 second cooldown.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in the Forgotten Outskirts with Surge Level 8 or higher.
Fragmented Form (Rare): Summon a crystal that tracks foes. On Primary, the crystal attacks, dealing 15% Primary damage in an area while inflicting Vulnerability for 4 seconds.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in the Forgotten Outskirts with Surge Level 22 or higher..
Sovereign Sea (Rare): Blast the highest HP enemy with churning water, dealing 550% Burst damage. (50 second cooldown.) Cooldown lowered by 1 second per HP loss or increase.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in Dozmary, Lochworld with Surge Level 18 or higher.
Veilstruck Macrochip: When a Memory Activates, fire a homing beam that pierces 5 times, dealing 30% Primary damage.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in The Neon Veil with Surge Level 12 or higher.
Phantasmal Inkwell: Gain Burstsurge for 8 seconds. (80 second cooldown.) Cooldown reduced by 1 second when defeating foes.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in Phantasmal World Inkmarch with Surge Level 8 or higher.
Phantom In The Mirror (Rare): When Invincible, gain 1 Movement Speed and 40% Crit Chance. Invincibility after taking damage now counts as true Invincibility and scales with Effect Duration.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in Phantasmal World Inkmarch with Surge Level 22 or higher.
Rogue's Last Resort: On Dash, consume 10% HP to gain Lifethirst for 3 seconds. On hit, consume a stack of Lifethirst to Heal damage dealt.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in The Southstop with Surge Level 12 or higher.
Storm Eternal: Burst additionally counts as a use of Special. On Special, lower all weapon cooldowns by 1 second.
Unlocked by completing a Voyage in The Cygnus Loophole with Surge Level 18 or higher.
Added Observatory level 5 and 6.
Added new achievements.
Yet There Is Gravity's Burst cooldown has been reduced to 18 seconds.
Fixed Garridine's drone dealing held weapon's Primary damage instead of its own damage. Adjusted tooltip to reflect its damage (100% base damage) Passive items that automatically trigger weapon abilities no longer consume a charge. Keyword changed to Activate.
Marble Over Oath's upgrade that lowers Primary cooldown on heal has been reduced to 0.2 seconds.
Adjusted sorting of the tutorial book.
Innate skills have a different colored icon in the Constellation.
When tracking projectiles have no targets, they'll disappear.
Added "common" titles to the regions of the map. Consolidated the two early regions into one region (they will continue to share bosses, etc.)
Added the next region of the game, "The Pillar." While the stage "Cygnus Loophole" takes place within the new region, because the boss of that stage is static, there is no new boss pool yet.
Added some more flavor locations in the Pillar.
Fixed modifiers being unable to bring weapon cooldowns negative.
Replaced the "Bonus Experience" and "Bonus Mnemoria" stats with Bonus Memory Damage and Bonus Summon Damage.
Avebury now innately has 15% Bonus Memory Damage and Garridine now innately has 15% Bonus Summon Damage.
Fixed Blossom Hilt activating on all Specials even when on cooldown.
Rerolls now get more common as the Voyage progresses, from a 1% drop rate to a 5% drop rate per enemy.
Fixed pause menu only showing Character 1's equipped Memories.
Hopefully addressed the issue wherein the pause input would not work under certain conditions.
Added new VFX when the effect for Bloodbloom's Perfusion triggers.
Each character now has innate Defense:
Asphodene 20%
Eridani 15%
Garridine 10%
Avebury 5%
Nemo 10%
Enemy scaling has been reduced- original enemy scaling has been moved to a Surge.
Healing now counts even if HP is at full for the purposes of memories and weapons.
Added a close game button to the title screen.
Added new menu dialogue, and removed dialogue based on Observatory progression (To be reworked)
Changes included after beta testing:
Added extra checks to dashes to hopefully prevent dash collision bypassing problems.
Briarchord Special cooldown increased: 2.5 -> 4.
The skill Swift Specialist now has a 4 second activation cooldown.
The skill Chain Stratagem should now correctly share the crit rate bonus to both characters.
Surge Levels above 30 now grant the correct amount of bonus Aptitude and Mnemoria.
Removed info about scrapped mechanic on the Cygnus Loophole stage.
Enemy aura buffs can never buff enemy defense above 50%.
Addressed certain Southstop enemies from persisting into the stage boss.
Fixed an error that occurs when a sword attack is cancelled (for instance, when exiting gameplay)
Addressed characters in story dialogue from being positioned in the wrong place.
Fixed incorrect music hit after Cygnus Loophole stage boss.
Adjusted the new boss's HP to match the HP of other stages bosses. (originally set lower due to the way the boss hitbox functions)
Additionally, removed the ability to deal damage to the boss through attacking the guns.
Fixed a bug wherein Meridian Ripple's Burst hitbox persisted, causing lag.
Fixed a bug wherein completing the Forgotten Outskirts with 30+ Surge Level also granted the achievement for doing the same on The Southstop.
Fixed issues with Korean translation display.
Fixed formatting with negative stat values in certain places.
Fixed Roguethirst buff icon.
Adjusted descriptions to use "Max HP" instead of "Max Health"
Fixed missing Health Regeneration from Prime Cut Level 2.
Fixed Cyclic Diagram not firing properly.
Fixed error that occurs when healing HP with a heart pickup after the voyage ends.
Adjusted widescreen dropdown and fixed FPS settings not applying correctly. Removed default vsync.
Resolution dropdown is much cleaner and only has resolutions instead of refresh rate.
Hello everyone! The next major update to Second Stellar is coming soon, v0.2 "Ocean of Storms." This update focuses on fleshing out all aspects of the game with new items, weapons, skills, and more!
The biggest element of this update is the new Surge system, replacing the original 4 tiered difficulty. Each stage will have a set of default Surges, and other optional Surges- there are 3 tiers of Surges tied to Key Surges (these are the original difficulty toggles.) Additionally, stages may have unique Surges that interact with the stage's mechanics. For instance, the Neon Veil's Surges add a Dash cost to the teleporters, or increase their cooldown. To unlock new Memories, you'll need a certain Surge level- choose Surges you feel you can handle, and tailor your character's equipped skills to cover your weaknesses! Expect this system to be adjusted and expanded upon as the game's development continues.
This chapter of the story follows the Starfarers as they parley with the mysterious Whalers to gain access to the Pillar. You'll meet some new faces, but expect this chapter of the story to be shorter.
After a certain story segment, you'll unlock a new character, the Whaler Captain Nemo. His innate skill replaces your Dash with a targetted grapple that launches you towards an enemy near your cursor while dealing damage and granting Invincibility. His kit focuses on survival and elite-slaying.
Furthermore, each character has 4+ new skills available in their arsenal- this opens up a ton of buildcrafting and should add a ton of diversity to your runs!
Venture to the new stages of The Southstop and the Cygnus Loophole as the Starfarers try to gain access to the Pillar. The Southstop's foes always arrive from the south, and they're flanked by enemies which provide aura buffs to them. Packing enough single-target pressure to handle these stronger foes is important! The Cygnus Loophole, caught in a galaxy-spanning storm, will have you dodging incredibly potent lightning. However, the storm doesn't discriminate- you may be able to use the lightning to your advantage to clear large hordes.
Wield the "Beast of No Nation" a rocket-powered spear that allows you to dominate the battlefield with fury and speed. Or, try your hand with "The Briarchord" the first summon-type weapon. Conjure allies to strike your foes while you empower them and yourself with potent songs.
Acquire 12 new Memories in this update, as well as the introduction of new Rare Memories. Unlocked by completing stages with high Surge level, these Memories are harder to come across but can win runs if you build around their talents!
The Cygnus Loophole's boss will be unique to the stage, and while there won't be any spoilers this foe may be quite the difficult opponent...
This update includes lots of other changes and additions, including new Observatory levels, new achievements, a rework to the pre-game menu, FPS capping, lots of bugfixes, polish and VFX changes, and more!
Expect another devlog after the update launches! Thank you for playing Second Stellar!
Hello everyone! This post will be a roadmap of what's planned for the next major update v0.2 and beyond!
First of all, thank you again everyone for the support! I'm glad the game was recieved well and I'll be working hard to polish the game to perfection!
As for the content planned in the next major update, I'm planning at least 2 new Observatory Levels: this means at least 2 new weapons (previews included below!) and more Memories.
Chapter 2 of the story will be included, with new story characters to meet and at least 2 new Voyages to embark upon, and 2 new bosses to fight as well.
There will be a new playable character: still a WIP so no preview yet, but their kit should be really fun and open up a lot of options!
As for novel content, I want to focus on replayability of the game. Right now, after unlocking all the available Observatory Levels, the only content is hunting for other achievements. To combat this, I'm planning on adding 2 new features:
Stages can randomly be under the influence of several unique conditions. These conditions rotate daily (in real life) and provide unique challenges to the player that you are encouraged to build around. Stage conditions can range from voidgates causing new enemies to appear to hazardous meteor rain. Stage conditions only appear after Observatory Level 4. Stage conditions make the stages harder, but can provide unique rewards which flows into the second planned system:
A new type of item gained after a Voyage, Stellar Prisms can be equipped on Weapons to provide unique effects and bonuses. The effect of Stellar Prisms are dictated by the Voyage location, but the substats of the Stellar Prisms are influenced by the current Stage Condition. For instance, collecting a Prism from the Neon Veil could cause Primary hits to cause digital explosions and the stage condition when you collected that Prism could influence its stats to grant crit chance, crit damage, and an extra dash. (Just as an example, may not reflect gameplay.) Prisms will have tiers based on current Observatory Level, so every new Observatory Level will grant slightly stronger Prisms to acquire.
Some especially dangerous (and valuable) stage conditions expect Stellar Prisms equipped on your weapons to succeed, but the rewards are even more powerful Stellar Prisms to bolster your offense as well as some achievements locked behind these conditions. There will be a way to guarantee a certain stage condition for a Mnemoria cost.
These features are subject to change!!
Weapon Mastery (Tying weapon achievements to the weapons, more info later)
Controller support
Voice acting for each playable character
Tutorial fight against Garridine to introduce mechanics
Ultrawide support
Training/testing stage
Character outfits
Character active skills
Multiplayer?
Not in the works, but it would be really cool and I would love to support it. However, working on multiplayer means a while spent learning and implementing it, which means not working on new content. If it was something like a Patreon stretch goal or something, perhaps, but no plans at the moment. Still on the table, though.
Endless Mode?
The game was not designed with an Endless mode and I feel like it would quickly become stale (Progression stops once your inventory is full- there aren't any small permanent bonuses like other games of the genre.) Will need testing.
New Gamemodes?
I have at least one new major gamemode planned- this gamemode will last a lot longer than the current Voyage duration but it's still in the planning phase for now- that's all thats set in stone. I want the main game to have enough content before dedicating time to creating this content, but please look forward to it!
Paid DLC?
There won't be any content dlc (stages, weapons, etc.) before Early Access ends. While outfit DLC may be on the table, again the game needs more content I feel to warrant this sort of thing.
Mod support?
Not planned at the moment, but will be looked into later on once the game has enough content.
Steam Points Shop?
The game is eligible for Steam Points stuff (animated avatars, frames, backgrounds, etc.) but I need to find some time to work on that. On the backburner for now.
Thanks for reading! Here's a preview of two upcoming weapons, as well as their descriptions:
Beast of No Nation
Control the battlefield with this jet-powered spear. Special is a Dash that can execute weak foes. Burst changes if Special is active and inflicts Fear. After Burst, killing foes with Fear will Charge active weapon's Special.
Arborlyre (Name pending.)
Weave random Weaveblooms and consume them with Special for unique buffs that affect both characters: use identical flowers in sequence for even stronger effects. Burst can reshuffle Weaveblooms and extend buff durations.
Hello everyone! I finally gathered up the courage to check sales- and it has truly blown me away! I want to thank everyone for your support, and I will be working hard on the game to make it as fun as possible! Please check out the Discord Server for the most up-to-date info on the game! Will have info on the next major update soon! Discord Link
New Additions
- Added complete CN translation, thank you to MeireiHakuya and Mercu3y!
Changes
- Localized Steam achievements to CN and JP.
- Fixed Health Regeneration not calculating properly. Adjusted all character's Health Regeneration stats.
- When an enemy is defeated, their hitbox immediately disappears, which should prevent dead enemies from dealing contact damage or absorbing projectiles.
- Lowered the speed of the Starskip teleport and increased invincibility duration (to stop clipping issues.)
- Fixed Garridine's skill "Flux Engineering." Nerfed damage bonus from 100% to 50%.
Bugfixes
- Sigil of Hope now correctly only applies to the owner of the passive item instead of both characters.
- Fixed a bug where the sword slash animation would return null if the sword was destroyed early and throw an error.
New Additions
- Added preliminary CN translation, thank you to MeireiHakuya and Mercu3y! (Does not include full story yet)
- Added a red gradient to indicate when below 40% HP, increasing in brightness as HP reaches 0.
- Added another HP bar below the active character and made swapping change the indicators immediately.
Changes
- Updated JP translation.
- Rewrote the requirement for Chapter 6 to be more clear.
- Brightened locked story chapters.
- Marble Over Oath's Special will reduce the user to 1 HP and no longer defeat them if overspent.
- Adjusted the dialogue background to be more visible.
- Achievement progress is rounded to the nearest integer.
Bugfixes
- Attempted to fix the skill Starskip from being able to teleport the player out of bounds.
- Achievement progress is now rounded to the nearest integer.
- The Observatory Achievement tracker should now correctly display achievement points until completion.
New Additions
- Added the JP translation, thank you to rokubana!
Changes
- Adjusted some english dialogue to flow better and fix grammar mistakes.
- Widened the story recap textbox.
Bugfixes
- Skipping story rapidly or pressing the return to menu button after a Voyage rapidly no longer causes the game to break.
- Enemy attacks should immediately disappear when the enemy is defeated.
- Gain invincibility for the entire duration of the fadeout before the boss fight.
- Fixed the item Argentum Shard causing the burst UI to appear on cooldown when it was ready.
- Adjusted position of speaker name in dialogue.
- Added a fallback if the pause input fails to register for any reason. Let me know if the pause issue continues after this update (v0.1.1.0.)
- Attempted to remedy an issue where defeating Thespian did not end the Voyage. Let me know if this issue persists.
v0.1.0.2 changes: - Hovering over the weapon icon in the Pause menu now displays acquired weapon upgrades.
- Fixed the "Fatewalker" achievement from not properly counting Meridian Ripple follow-ups.
- Updated the PT-BR localization.
New Additions
- Hovering over weapons in the in-game pause menu opens a new UI that shows the weapon's description and descriptions of Primary, Special, and Burst.
Balancing
- The item "Prime Cut" now has a short internal cooldown before its cooldown reduction effect applies. Other Changes
- Dialogue audio settings should now update immediately instead of when audio changes tracks.
- Adjusted certain dialogue and tutorial text to read better.
- Dialogue starts at the top and proceeds down, instead of starting centered.
- Rounded refresh rates for resolutions for easier readability.
- Squished the story menu so stories are more visible.
- Fixed passive items getting stuck in their "refreshed" animation.
- Encouraged stale tooltips to disappear.
- Hopefully resolved a bug where pausing during gameplay would not function properly.
- Swapping right before a Weapon Upgrade no longer causes the UI to get stuck. (Hopefully)
- Addressed some buggy client logging.
- Fixed a rare error that could occur when defeating an enemy on the frame it appears.
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Second Stellar, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Second Stellar statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.