What? A new demo and a bit of a dev update?

I know, I know. RARE.

I’ve held off on a demo update because I’ve been so deep into the full game. It's been surreal writing the ending(s) I've had in my head and my notes for the last few years and seeing the key story scenes finally visualised. 

I've been finishing off the other planets in the Fall from Space solar system and throughout I've been close to the max file size, prompting me rewrite several key game systems. For example –

Discovering a new location

This happens a lot on each planet. You see a mysterious spot on the overworld map, you walk into it, and it becomes permanently uncovered (tile swap). It also unlocks on the scrollable map, becomes a teleport destination once you have your ship, and your first on-foot visit triggers a GBVM script that introduces its name (which is a pain, since it interferes with the UI and any bespoke intro text).

This whole stack of interacting scripts gets reused across every location. They were already custom scripts—inside other custom scripts—handling counting and adding flags, and so on. I’ve now streamlined them, saving a few hundred KB overall (a huge win in terms of space for new content). But of course, rewriting meant risking breakage.

Which happened, and there were quite a few of these systems I replaced.

So in order to get a new demo out, I had to do another full playthrough of the first planet, up to the point where you leave it (i.e. the end of the demo). It’s old content to me now, so I spotted plenty of typos (ugh, people saw those!), tightened some dialogue, and fixed minor bugs. This version feels stable enough to finally replace the now somewhat dated demo.

What’s new in the demo?

Content-wise, not much—it's still a large demo covering the first planet, with The Tomb remaining inaccessible. Most of my effort has gone into later-game content.

That said, there are optimisations and bug fixes throughout. It’s now much easier for me to spin off a demo build, so future fixes and improvements in the full game will reach the demo faster.

Other updates:

• Visual load slots are available from the main menu, see which planet you were last on!
• A look-ahead camera (still tweaking how this works), but helps with some of the long range jumps later in the game.
• A splash screen for BeatScribe, who created the full OST, it's so good. I'll start to tease more of this later.
• File size halved—the demo is no longer 4MB like the main game.
• You're a bit faster, hopefully the main character feels a little more nimble.

If you spot any bugs in the demo, please let me know! 

Or any feedback, good or bad, as a solo dev it's easy to fall into the trap of unconsciously avoiding things that would be 'bad' to do, cause a bug etc, or just taking the correct path because I know it.  I can't gauge the difficulty or tell how intuitive things are only guess, and the comments I've had already have been invaluable, so thank you to everyone so far!

What’s gone?

The Radiated Zone has been removed. It could return, but right now I think the file space is better spent on other planets. Pandæmonium is already well covered.

If it doesn't come back, I'll just move it to my list of 'ideas shelved for one reason or another'. It's a rather large list now, sometimes I go into it and look back to some of the earliest and rather mad ideas from early 2022 in there. I think I actually thought I was making Mass Effect and I was a team of 25 *shakes head at self*.

What’s next?

With the game hovering around 3.8MB (3.9MB is the limit I'm working to), as I trim and add bits, it's getting very close to 'content' completion, by that I mean levels/scenes, these take up the file space I can't really get more of. Although some developments in the upcoming version of GB Studio do promise a little more leeway there, I'm not counting on any more to come, that would be a bonus.

Regardless, right now I’m playing through the whole thing start to finish. The story, multiple endings, bosses, and planets are all in place. It’s mainly about polishing, testing, and deciding how best to use the small amount of remaining space I have.

I also want to slip in more secrets, reactive dialogue, and branching events as these are less demanding of file space but I feel really flesh out the game world depth. For example: TVs can already show slightly different adverts depending on game events, and bar conversations change if you’ve taken a less “moral” path earlier. I’d like to expand on that.

And yes, a new trailer is definitely on the list. The current one is nearly two years old and doesn’t show any of the newer planets at all. That’s something I want to tackle later this year as the game heads toward finalisation.