Starvester news & patch notes

Hey everyone,

Thank you so much for your patience while I put out fixes and updates for the game!

If you've played the game, you might've encountered a bug that causes deployed drones to not load in while continuing an existing save file. I've been trying to fix it for a while now and have found another potential fix, which I've pushed to the latest version v1.0.5 of the game. Here's some quick notes/instructions about the fix:

- The drones will start saving AFTER YOUR NEXT PRESTIGE OR NEW GAME after you've updated to v1.0.5! The way that the save system works in the game, if you've already encountered the bug, your drones will have been unfortunately wiped already before you update the game.

- If you load in and find that you've lost your drones, they unfortunately won't be able to be retrieved... I recommend prestiging and starting a new run. If you're updated to v1.0.5, the drones should start saving normally from then onwards.

- While exiting the game, I highly recommend Exiting to Main Menu first using the button in the Settings menu! This will save your progress manually, and will ensure your drones will be present when you load in next time.

Other than this fix, v1.0.5 also has:

- \ Energy boost from Maxed planets on Ceryx now adds the amount correctly

- \ Triton's Eye Scrap Speed upgrade has been expanded and rebalanced to reduce idle time

I want to apologize for the delay with the update and reduced communication. I've been mostly focused on trying to solve this drone-loss bug since the last update. It's kind of stumped me, as the game didn't have this issue before launch, and only got worse as I tried to fix it. I was also quite burnt out leading up to launch and had to take a few days break to rest. Eventually, I had to rewrite the save system (being careful not to delete any previous saves) and also rewrite some of the button objects that were part of the issue.

I hope this has solved the issue, but please let me know as usual if you're still encountering the bug after your next prestige or new game (in v1.0.5)!

I know there are other fixes and suggestions to work on, so I'll get back to it and see you all with the next one!

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone!

Thank you for your patience while I roll out the updates with the requested fixes and changes!

The most requested feedback so far has been about: bug fixes, reducing idling time and giving more clarity to the player.

To that extent, I've just pushed the v1.0.4 update with the following changes:

Fixes:

- Titanium requirement for expansion (at Pistol Star) has now been removed

- Triton's Eye Satellite cost no longer freezes when discount is maxed

- Integer Overflow at Aeolus has fixed by putting a hard cap on costs = 1 Quintillion resources (for now)

- Loss of drones while loading game - a potential fix has been put in place

Balancing changes:

- Star Dust requirement for expansions have been reduced

- Proxima Ares upgrades have been extended so Star Dust can be collected faster

- Population requirement for expansions have been reduced

- Black Hole - Population requirements have been reduced

- Black Hole - Requirement for detonation has been reduced

- Neutron Stars - upgrades scaling has been reduced

- Max Drone limits at Vesta and Triton's Eye have been increased from 200 to 300 (for now)

- Buying Trades at Cybele cost have been increased from 1 Spyce to 2

QOL changes:

- Numbers now shown on progress bars on Cindermoon and Black Hole

- Golden Asteroids now look more golden (instead of orange lol)

I know that these changes will not fix every issue and there's more that needs to be done. I'm also reading every feedback so please be assured that I'll get to your suggestions eventually. But while I work on those, hopefully these changes result in a smoother experience for your next run!

This update has had quite a few changes so please let me know if there's anything that isn't working correctly after this update that used to before. Also please let me know if you're still encountering any of the issues that this update should have fixed! (especially about the loss of drones when loading in)

Please keep the feedback coming :)

On another note, I wanted to quickly say another thank you, as we've reached over 40,000 players in less than a week! This is such an amazing response, and such huge motivation for me to keep making the game better and making more games! <3

See you all soon!

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! Hope you're all having a relaxing time playing the game this weekend! While I take a bit of a breather, I've gone ahead and pushed update v1.0.3 with the following changes:

• \ wrong icon for certain expansions showing after you prestige - fixed

• \ wrong icon showing in tooltip for an upgrade on Cybele - fixed

• \ exiting to main menu from prestige screen allows player to keep prestige upgrades without resetting the run - fixed

• \ Commercial Hubs on the Ringworld have been slightly nerfed :)

I'm rolling out updates as/when I find fixes for the bugs, but I'm reading and working on all reports and feedback, so please keep them coming!

Have a great weekend,

See you all soon!

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! For those of you who were experiencing the issue with windowed mode where it auto-centers after the last update, this should now hopefully be fixed with the latest v1.0.2 update.

Thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience! Please let me know under this post whether you're still encountering the issue after updating to v1.0.2. Please keep the feedback coming! :)

See you all soon,

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! It's been a wild release day, and I'm super overwhelmed by your support and response! I'm aware of the issues that players with ultra-wide displays are having. To that effect, I've just put out a hotfix with v1.0.1 that should hopefully make the game playable on ultra-wide displays. Please update the game and try again, and please let me know if you're still having those issues in the comments of this post! Thanks and see you all soon!

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone!

🚀I’m super excited to announce that my game Starvester is Out Now!! 💫

I can’t wait to hear what you all think and see just how giant you can build your megastructures ✨

A reminder of what to expect before flying in:

⭐ Deploy swarms of drones

⭐ Mine resources

⭐ Unlock upgrades

⭐ Harvest the power of the stars!

Join the fun in our discord here and see what’s going on over on Instagram / TikTok ♥️

Starvester is a game that I’ve poured all my passion into over these last 8 months of development, and I’m overwhelmed by the response so far. Thanks for all your support and feedback in the past few months, I couldn’t have finished the game without it!

I’ll be here working to fix any issues that come up over the next few days. 

See you in space 💫

Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone!

We’re one week from Starvester’s launch, and I’m really excited to get the game into your hands and hear your thoughts! 🚀

Here’s everything you might wanna know before launch:

- Price: $6.99, £6.29, 7,19€. Check your local currency for pricing on launch!

- Launch date/time: 29 May 2026 @ 15:00 BST / 07:00 PDT (you can check your local time zone here).

- Launch platforms: Windows PC (Steam) There will be a 10% launch discount as well!

I’m also excited to share that we’ll have bundles with some amazing games at launch:

- Tower Wizard

- The Gnorp Apologue

- Berry Bury Berry

- Shelldiver

- Scritchy Scratchy

- Keep on Mining! - Lyca

- A Game About Feeding a Black Hole

- Space Rock Breaker

- Scale The Depths

- Cloverpit 

- Exo One 

- Slots & Daggers 

- Tiny Aquarium 

You can pick up Starvester with any of these games for an extra 10% off! (if you already own any of these games, you can still get an extra 10% off on Starvester through the bundle!)

Lastly, if you haven’t already, please wishlist the game so you’ll be notified when the game launches! This helps tiny indies like me a lot 😄

See you all May 29th! 🪐

- Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone,

I’m super excited to announce that Starvester will be out on the 29th of May! 

Here’s all you have to know before diving in:

⭐ Deploy swarms of drones, 

⭐ Mine resources,

⭐ Unlock upgrades,

⭐ Harvest the power of the stars!

I can’t wait for you to see what I’ve been working on and to hear all of your thoughts! Feel free to join my discord here to stay up to date and follow Instagram / TikTok where we’ve been going a bit viral recently (over 600k views in the last month!) ♥️

See you on the 29th!

Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! Today, I'm super excited to share that I've partnered with Future Friends Games for Starvester, who will help make sure the game is the best it can be and fully ready for launch! For those of you who don't know, Future Friends are the publishers of amazing indie games like Cloverpit and Slots & Daggers, and have helped market some juggernauts like Vampire Survivors and Content Warning! They're one of my favorite publishers, and I've wanted to work with them for years now. https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/futurefriendsgames We've already been working together for a bit and they've set up accounts for Starvester on socials, so please follow them here!

https://www.instagram.com/starvestergame/

https://x.com/syphono4

https://www.tiktok.com/@star.vester https://bsky.app/profile/syphono4.com As for Starvester's development, it's still proceeding smoothly and has my full focus. We're cooking some exciting things leading up to launch so stay tuned! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! Steam Next Fest is here, and that means an updated Starvester demo build! Here's what's changed in Demo v0.6.0: - \ Number of SFX from indicators is now capped to avoid audio issues - \ Brittlerock UI now updates correctly with prestige upgrades - \ A rogue click sprite shows up in a certain area of the play space - \ Unlocalized text "are you sure text" for prestige UI has been fixed - \ Line breaks for translated text in UI have been updated (still now final) - other minor changes and fixes

- \ Ultra wide monitor support - \ Resizable windows

- \ A NEW ENDING for the demo! Now, the new ending does NOT add any extra playtime or mechanics, but is only a little tease for what's to come in the full game! I hope it'll be worth playing through the demo again to see it! :) You can try out the updated demo here! I'm really excited for the Next Fest and the eyes it will hopefully bring to the game! As always, any and all feedback is welcome, and the best place to give feedback is the Discord! (link in demo and my developer page) Tons more to come, so please stay tuned! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone, I wanted to push a quick update before I travel over this weekend, so Demo v0.5.1 is out now! Korean translations have now been implemented in the demo! There are also some changes/tweaks in the translations of the other languages (notably French) based on the feedback :) If there are any critical bugs/issues, I'll fix them ASAP next week. Otherwise I'll push the slightly chunkier update at the start of Next Fest on Feb 23 instead of having frequent updates with very tiny fixes! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! The Starvester demo is OUT NOW on Steam!

You can play it here: (go on the store page and press the green "download" button for the demo!) This demo (v0.5.0) is the playtest demo with all the fixes, optimizations, QOL implementations and balancing changes that were added during the playtest. Other than those changes, I've also added translated text into the following languages: Simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, Italian, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese! (Korean translation also coming soon!). The option to change language is available in the settings menu in-game (press 'English' button to toggle between languages). I'm aware that there are still some bugs related to the translations (the alignment and line-breaks are a bit wonky in the UI), and these will be fixed ASAP! The playtest has now been taken down. Again, thank you to the 23,670 people who played and all the feedback you've given me! Since the load game function has been rewritten for the demo, the save progress from the playtest unfortunately won't carry over to the demo. Alright, please keep providing me with feedback for the demo as well, and expect some more updates to the demo leading up to the February Next Fest! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! The Starvester demo will release on Steam on Feb 9, 2026! Please make sure you've wishlisted the game so you'll be informed when it goes live :) This demo will have all the fixes, optimizations, QOL implementations and balancing changes that were added during the playtest, as well as a couple of extra things including QOL improvements and localized text! I'll release the full build notes in the announcement post when I release the demo on Monday. Thanks to the overwhelming amount of feedback, support and data that I received during the playtest, I feel ready to release the full public version of the demo next week. While it is still far from perfect, I think this is the best version of the demo so far, one that will give a good taste of what the full finished game will be like! The playtest saw over 20,000 players play the game, with a median playtime of 1 hour 36 mins, which is crazy to me. Around ~300 responses on the feedback form and dozens of messages on various platforms like Discord, Reddit, Steam, etc. helped me reach here so far. If you're one of the people who helped out by playing and/or giving feedback, thank you so much! While there isn't any new content in the demo release, I hope you will try it out to see how far it's come because of your feedback! Playtest update v0.4.7 is live now. This will be the final update before the demo release. Here is the changelog: - \ Ceryx has been re-reworked so that the production rate of Compressed Gas doesn't reduce with time. Instead, the speed boost from Compressed Gas has been nerfed. - \ Upgrade values and expansion requirements have been slightly tweaked to improve pacing. - \ Minor tweaks related to visuals I am planning to have some regular updates for the demo leading up to the next fest, including a new ending that I plan on releasing on Feb 23! I hope you'll tag along for the ride and see where this game goes. See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone, A balancing hotfix for the playtest is out now (v0.4.6) Here is the changelog: - \ Ceryx cost scaling has been increased from +0% -> +0.1% - \ Prestige fuel requirement scaling 8x -> 7.5x - \ Expansion 6: 10b fuel -> 2b - \ Expansion 7: 100b fuel -> 50b - \ Expansion 8: 10T fuel -> 1T - \ Hephaestus, Ceryx and Star upgrades cost and cost scaling reduced

This update should roughly bring the pacing of the demo back to the original after the changes from the last couple of updates. More balancing changes and fixes will follow in the next update. See you all soon! - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone!

Playtest build v0.4.5 is live now! Here is the changelog:

- \ Exiting to main menu before first expansion no longer breaks the quick travel and Vesta UI - \ Research station UI text has been fixed - \ Prestige requirements no longer reset upon exiting the game (prestige points are now hard-capped at 11 for the demo) - \ Solar panels and dyson swarm are not rendered above the Star anymore (please let me know if anyone is still encountering this bug after updating to v0.4.5!) - \ If game was muted previously, it no longer plays the music for a second upon reopening the game before muting - \ UI buttons for Hephaestus have been rearranged so that fuel burst is on top - \ Clicking and holding Asteroid Mining station now gives an appropriate boost to resource gain - \ Base resource gain boost from Metals Satellites is now 200% instead of 100% - \ Expansion requirements for common metals have been increased to compensate for satellite boost There will be a full balancing pass this week, so expect another update later in the week (likely Thursday!) Tentatively, I'm aiming to release the demo on Steam on February 9th, so please stay tuned, and provide feedback to make sure I can release the best and most polished demo possible!!

See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone!

Hey everyone!

Playtest build v0.4.3 is live now! Again, thank you for all the feedback you've been leaving on the playtest build, it's super helpful for me to make the game better! Here is the changelog for v0.4.3:

- \ An alpha version of the Save system has been implemented. Currently, only game settings and prestige upgrades will be saved upon exiting the game (no mid-run progress is saved). - \ Hotkeys have been added to the quick-navigation menu (press 1, 2, 3, etc. to quick-nav to places you've unlocked) - \ The stats screens for Vesta should now show the correct resource generation rates (again) - \ The number indicators during resource generation are automatically turned off if the frame-rate drops too much (can be turned back on in settings) - \ There is now a hard cap of Compressed Gas cannisters that can be on screen at once Still got a metric ton of stuff on my to-do list. Keep the feedback coming, and I'll keep the updates coming! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! So I was not expecting over 4200 people to opt into the playtest and leave tons of feedback (thanks to Idle Cub for putting eyes on the game at such an early stage!), it's been really amazing and also overwhelming! I was able to get a ton of data and have already fixed most of the bugs/issues some people were having a implement some quick QOL and balancing changes that will make the demo feel better and smoother. Here is the changelog for v0.4.2: - \ Resource generation from planets no longer gets 'bricked' when the Ceryx speed boost gets too high - \ The Mining Amount upgrade for Asteroid Station now should correctly display the upgrade level - \ The stats screens for Vesta and Brittlerock should now show the correct resource generation rates - \ The animation for Brittlerock no longer freezes for 1 frame before looping - \ Prestige node for Satellite upgrade now starts at 0 points instead of 1 - \ Satellite tooltips should update with prestige upgrades - \ Non-replicable crash where the game crashed upon first expansion: I've implemented a failsafe for now that makes sure the game won't hard-crash at that point. - \ Prestige upgrade for clicking boost has been buffed to 100% per tier instead of 20% - \ Prestige upgrade for starting drones has been buffed to 20 per tier instead of 10 - \ ETA for prestige bar has been shortened to make it easier to read - \ Prestige node point indicators are always visible, even when not hovering over prestige node - \ Clicking and holding the star speeds up the leveling bars instead of giving a flat increase to energy

More fixes and changes will keep on coming, so stay tuned and please keep leaving feedback! See you all soon, - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! I'm super humbled and excited about the response that the announcement for Starvester has gotten, and it's made me really motivated to get the game into your hands and make it as good as possible! To that end, an early playtest build of the demo is NOW LIVE on the store page for you to try out and leave any feedback you might have! Try it out here (press the green "Join the Playtest" button!)

There's a feedback form and discord channel linked on the main menu of the build where you can leave feedback. If you wish, you can also leave feedback in the comments of this post as well as the Steam community page for the game as I'll be monitoring those. :) Few quick notes about the build: - This is an almost finished (but not quite) version of the demo, so please expect a few rough edges that will be ironed out over the next couple of weeks. - There is NO SAVE FUNCTIONALITY in this build, so quitting out of the game will result in all progress being lost. This will of course not be the case in the demo. - The build is currently in ENGLISH ONLY. The demo will be translated to multiple languages though. - The build should take about 1 hour 15 mins to complete (based on my own testing, although your playthrough might vary). Thank you so much again for following along the dev journey of Starvester and for playtesting! Your feedback is invaluable to me and will help me make the best possible game for you all. See you all soon with more news about the full demo release (currently I'm aiming for Feb 2, but that depends on the feedback I get from the playtest!) - Shaun (dev)

Hey everyone! Today, I'm really excited to announce Starvester: A short incremental game about expanding a star-system wide factory to build giant megastructures in space. 1. Deploy drones to automate mining 2. Gather various resources and unlock upgrades 3. Expand your factory and build megastructures. 4. Harvest the power of stars and other celestial bodies! Features in the full game: - Active incremental progression through resource gathering - Tons of upgrades with prestige system and unique mechanics - Approximately ~5 hours of gameplay to complete the campaign - Mesmerizing drones and relaxing soundscapes to get into a flow state - Strictly NO AI was used in the making of this game Wishlist now on Steam!: Starvester is a more ambitious project than Lyca and a natural evolution of my game design. I'm really excited to get it into your hands, and will try to have a playtest up before the end of the year. You can expect a full demo release in January, and I'm aiming for a full release in May 2026! Also, Hear the Bell Toll development is going well and will have an updated demo early next year as well! Happy holidays and thank you for all your support - Shaun