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A bug introduced in Major Update 14 disabled sound effects from some environmental objects and also disabled Replicon 'chatter' sound effects. This little hotfix resolves that issue. This also brings the main branch version in line with the newly released demo.
Builds 1.41, and 1.42 were minor hotfixes, released last week, that only contained minor tweaks and bug fixes. Build 1.43 deserves it's own announcement as it brings much bigger changes that may go unnoticed otherwise.
Whooah. New build? Cool. Wasn't expecting that. Let's Go! The public test for Main Update 14 is now live in the public test branch. Full patch notes are available in game and will be released publicly here on Steam when this build goes officially live for everyone (probably next week). The major new features of this build are based around speedrunning. There are new speedrunning leaderboards and a speedrunning split time overlay. There's lots of other tweaks and improvements too. For more information, download the beta and check the 'What's New' tab on the main menu. Have fun, let me know if you find any issues and if anyone needs help accessing the public test branch let me know. Note: Everyone can try out this public test prior to it's full release next week. Simply swap over to the publictestbranch in the game's beta options and use the password 'iunderstandthisisatest'. Oh, and twitch/Dr_Doof will likely be doing some speedruns and testing of this new build over the coming days so pop by and say hi. If he's playing Space Bob, the chances are I'll be hanging out with him too.
Survival mode is here, Bob!
Main Update 13 is a complete game changer. For everyone who likes their games to last for tens of hours, survival mode is here to save the day.
It's been a busy month, with many long days, but here it is! Main Update 12 is live.
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First up, I hope you all had a fantastic holiday season and happy new year!
Before I share some dev news can I say a big thanks and welcome to everyone who picked up the game during the Steam Winter sale.
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Here's the news:
It's here! The first significant content update since the 1.0 launch. Rather than spoil all the surprises, with overly detailed patch notes about the new content, here's a quick summary:
There's some good news and bad news. The bad news is we found a bug that needed a hotfix. The good news is that along with the hotfix this build contains two highly requested new UI features: a new waypoint system that allows the placement of destination markers while using scan mode, and a new UI that lists all recently salvaged materials.
We weren't planning to release these features for another few weeks; they are technically the first part of the upcoming Main Update 11, but seeing as they were ready, and we were releasing an update, we thought why not let you get an early look at them. If you have any suggestions on how to improve these features or run into any issues, leave a comment below.
As always, have fun and take care of Bob.
This update is a combination of a number of hotfixes that addressed a few bugs and added a handful of tweaks that have or requested by players since the 1.0 release last week. Although it contains no major new content this announcement helps to keep everyone informed about the recent hotfixes and also offers the opportunity to let you all know how the launch went and how it has forced overall development plans to change for the foreseeable future. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. I want to be as transparent as possible so you know exactly what is going on.
It's time! It's been 6 months since Space Bob entered early access, 18 months since the free open alpha became available for download, and 2.5 years since development first began, but Space Bob has now gone gold and left early access today. It's been a fantastic journey and I've met so many great people along the way who helped to shape the game at every stage of development. I can't thank each and every one of you enough for showing support and making Space Bob what it is today. I hope I did you all proud but our journey is far from over. Like Bob reaching the jump-gate, it's is only the beginning. I have some wonderful ideas brewing for post release content and you can expect updates and new features to continue to appear as often as they did during Early Access. There are still so many cool things to explore in the world of Bob and I could happily work on expanding it for years to come if there's enough support. Whatever happens in the future, I'm extremely proud of how Space Bob turned out and now it's time to have some fun and make it even better. Thanks again and here's hoping for a successful launch. Edit/Update: Oh dear. Steam has changed so much since the release of my last game in 2015. New games no longer get a spot at the top of the new releases list on the front page, so Steam is generating very little traffic to us here. This is very concerning for me right now. Views are only about 5% of what I was expecting based on previous experience. If you can help to spread the word about Space Bob's release today it would be very helpful otherwise the game is going to disappear before anyone even knows it exists. Somehow we need to get it trending to grab that front page spot.
Space Bob's journey through early access has been incredibly useful in helping to smooth off the rough edges and the full 1.0 release is now just around the corner. This update includes the final balance tweaks and changes before that happens along with a couple of cool new features: hazardous weather and procedural grass.
Don't expect to find hazardous weather on every planet, or even most planets, as this would soon become more annoying than fun. Instead you'll run into the non-hazardous hail and rain far more often than the new hazardous heavy hail and acid rain. You'll be able to spot the differences easily though. Heavy hail is much bigger and acid rain is not only green but also fizzes into puffs of smoke as it hits the ground (see the GIF above). Needless to say, don't spend too much time in those conditions and get Bob underground quickly.
There was also a significant update to the score multiplier system in this update. The starting multiplier has been increased to encourage playing at higher difficulties by offering much higher scores for doing so. If you are looking to climb the leader-boards you'd be wise to increase the difficulty especially if you are an experienced player.
I'm excited to announce that Space Bob vs. The Replicons will be leaving Early Access on September 28th. Space Bob originally launched into Early Access in February 2018 with all of the major gameplay mechanics and story-line content already in place but Early Access offered a fantastic and unmissable opportunity to work directly with the players to polish off any rough edges while adding the remaining planned features and content. Space Bob would be a very different game today without all of your input and suggestions and I can't thank you enough for sharing your thoughts on what needed to be changed or improved. With that said, game's like Space Bob are never truly finished. I could easily spend another two years adding new features and planets to explore but those pesky things called bills need to be paid. The good news is that everything that was originally planned is now complete and we are more than ready for a 1.0 release. The even better news is that development is not going to stop any time soon. Bob's world has so much expansion potential that it would be a shame to stop here and the plan was always to continue development, adding new content and features, for a minimum of six months post release. I'm hoping this can extend much further but that is entirely down to you the players. If the game gathers enough support and momentum I can see development continuing for years to come. Time will tell.
Linux and Mac support became the primary focus of this update cycle but there's still plenty of tweaks and updates for everyone here.
A huge shout out must go to the redditors from r/linux_gaming and r/macgaming who volunteered to help out and especially to those who sent in their compatibility and bug reports. The Mac port worked flawlessly first time and although we had a few hiccups on Linux we were able to get them resolved and everything is now ship shape and looking great.
Space Bob is now available on 64bit PC, Mac and Linux systems with this build!
Update 0.8311 is now live. It contains only a new warning on the leaderboard and achievement panels to stress that the results only represent a tiny percentage of the game's user base. Only 1% of players have replayed the game since the last update so only 1% of players have completed any achievements. This update was necessary due to the recent negative review trend warning that the game was too difficult based on the assumption that only 1% of players had unlocked any achievements. It also likely explains why we've had a recent flurry of negative reviews complaining about various difficulty related topics when this was never a problem in the past. Please update your reviews if you made this incorrect assumption because it's hurting the game. If you personally find the game too difficult then please share your thoughts in this feedback thread dedicated to discussing the game's difficulty. Negative reviews dramatically effect whether other players buy and support the game. If you enjoy the game, and want others to play and support it, but you also want to share feedback, writing a negative review is not the best place to do that. Please share your thoughts in the discussion area instead. I read and seriously consider everything posted there. Thanks. NOTE: This update is 10Mb because it also contains some new planets that are not yet enabled. The next 'main update' will include these new planets and many more.
I would have prefered to not need to create this announcement but Space Bob needs your help. A wave of negative reviews have suddenly appeared and although they complain about many different things they essentially all say the same thing in various ways: The game is too hard. This has caused the game's 91% positive review rating to drop to 77% in a matter of days. Visitors to the store page have fallen off a cliff because of this and sales have all but stopped. Needless to say this is a very bad situation and totally unexpected. I thought we had the difficulty balance about right. The difficulty of various elements of the game have been discussed here on Steam and tweaked many times so it was a complete surprise to suddenly see a flurry of negative reviews out of the blue all complaining about difficulty. (Edit: It turns out at least one of these recent negative reviews was based on the fact that only 1% of players have completed the first achievement. The truth is that only 1% of the player base has replayed the game since achievements were added last week in the latest update. Things are starting to make sense.) As a solo developer, one of the biggest problems we must deal with is that we know every inch of our games. We know how every mechanic works and so the game always feels too easy. We never get the opportunity to play a new feature or mechanic without already knowing a way to beat it or how to avoid it. I'm not trying to make a super difficult game. The goal was for it to be challenging but only so far as to be consistently rewarding. Ideally I wanted it to be playable by every skill level. I've made a topic in the discussion area to discuss the subject of difficulty and would seriously appreciate your support by getting involved. Unsurprisingly, sales have dropped dead after the negative wave of reviews and it could spell disaster if we don't get this resolved. There's a link to the discussion below. If the game really is too hard for most of you, and more frustrating than fun, then tell me! This is news to me. That's why the game is in Early Access: to get player feedback and make any necessary tweaks. So please, speak up. Have your say. Let's get this fixed. If you want to see Space Bob succeed please get involved and share your thoughts and experiences with the game. Here's a link to the discussion on this subject. https://steamcommunity.com/app/780390/discussions/0/1727575977555648848/ Thanks for any feedback you can share on this subject.
As mentioned in the Early Access information section, the $9.99 price tag was always likely to increase as we got closer to final release. With the 1.0 release only a few short months away we will soon be increasing the price to $14.99. Originally, this was planned to coincide with Main Update 5, a few weeks ago, but it could have come across as a bait and switch to first increase the price only to drop it again for the Steam summer sale. Don't expect to see the game at such a low price again until well after it's full release.
Developers often say how excited they are by their latest release or update but it couldn't be more true in this case. Main Update 6 brings both leaderboards and achievements and I can't wait to see you guys battling it out.
During development, Space Bob's design was built around a deep scoring mechanic and difficulty curve that extends way beyond what most players experienced in the past. With the addition of leaderboards this is all about to change. Players are going to need to develop totally new strategies, and explore every possibility, to have a chance of reaching and holding on to the #1 spot and new changes to the scoring system will only make this even more exciting.
Hi all. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying Main Update 5 released last week.
Surprises are good right? Enjoy a weekend surprise update that includes:
First, thanks so much to everyone who wrote reviews and offered feedback over the first few weeks of release. Your help in highlighting what needed tweaking was invaluable and much appreciated. It resulted in improvements and changes across the entire game that can be found in this first main update. There were four things that popped up frequently in feedback.
One of the most frequently requested features during the first week of release was for a mid-game save system and so it became the primary focus for the first major update. If you've been checking in on the discussions you'll know that we've been working to get a full game-state save system implemented on the public-test branch and it's now ready for everyone who is interested to give it an early try. It will not be moving over to the default game branch for another week or so. There's still a couple of final jobs to be implemented and then a few additional days of final testing before we can update everyone's game to the lastest build. It's easy to swap over to the test branch and you can find out how HERE. You'll also find that the latest build includes a number of other tweaks and fixes. Thanks for your patience while we've been implementing this and for supporting Space Bob vs. The Replicons during it's first couple of weeks on Steam.
Space Bob vs. The Replicons will release tomorrow (Friday 23rd Feb) at approximately 2pm GMT. Thanks to everyone for the amazing support leading up to release; thousands of you have already added it to your wishlists. We can't wait. Have fun, take care of Bob, and together we'll make the game the best it can be. ❤
Yesterday (11th Feb), a 15 second teaser gif for Space Bob vs. The Replcions was posted to Reddit. Within 90 minutes it had received 15,000 upvotes and was the #1 post on all of Reddit. Wow.
Thanks so much everyone for the kind words and support. We can't wait for the 23rd.
You can find the full 720p version HERE.
If you'd like to see what Reddit had to say, take a look HERE
Okay.
Hey there! Glad to see you here so early. Space Bob vs. The Replicons has been in development since early 2016 and is our second major Steam release. Our first was NeonXSZ. We're now nearly ready to let you try out everything we've been working on since the success of Space Bob's pre-alpha-preview release over on itch.io back in early 2017. Setting up the Steam store page is an important first step but there's plenty more still to do. We're currently working on the final testing, tweaks and updates while making sure everything is ready for a smooth launch. While we do that, if you have an opinion on the game or any questions, fire away. Thanks for stopping by and we'll be back with updates as soon we have them. Intravenous Sofware
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