The last version of Devouring Stars changes a lot of things. * Now the Destiny map is more open, you can decide to start a run by any level (only the last one remains locked) * I changed a couple of things to render nicer backgrounds, with more vivid colors. * The UI for unit selection and movement is more clear and (I hope) prettier. * The game is now available in three more languages! Spanish, Italian and German. * I removed (hopefully) the last remaining bugs. That includes a new way to handle resolution, which should remove the previous bugs encountered (please tell me if you still have issues). Also, the last solo gameplay bug (when multiple units try to activate the same portal) should be treated. Enjoy! François, game dev.

The last version of Devouring Stars changes a lot of things. * Now the Destiny map is more open, you can decide to start a run by any level (only the last one remains locked) * I changed a couple of things to render nicer backgrounds, with more vivid colors. * The UI for unit selection and movement is more clear and (I hope) prettier. * The game is now available in three more languages! Spanish, Italian and German. * I removed (hopefully) the last remaining bugs. That includes a new way to handle resolution, which should remove the previous bugs encountered (please tell me if you still have issues). Also, the last solo gameplay bug (when multiple units try to activate the same portal) should be treated. Enjoy! Franois, game dev.

Devouring Stars reaches 1.1, with a couple of corrections. The main one is about the difficulty curve. The game was a bit unfair for many people out there : you build your small armada and find yourself in a tough run that just destroy your tribe (every tribe has a different set of behaviors and some are especially difficult - like fighting Dardanians at the end of a run or Molossians in middle game). That mechanic was intended, because it's a good way to try to build a new set of entities and explore possibilities. But starting fresh every time can leave you dangerously out of options, especially towards the endgame. There were three outcome to a run : you win and go forward, you lose and lose all entities, you try another destiny and lose all entities. I didn't touch the first two (so it will still be a challenge to finish a run), but if you draw another destiny, you will be able to keep the engaged entities, as well as the one you build during the canceled run ! This way, people facing especially difficult runs will be able to build up their armada again by winning a couple of levels in a run (always possible even with basic entities) then canceling for another destiny WITH the entities engaged and build previously. This way you won't face an endless cycle of defeat with only access to basics entities and memory bonus. This should make the experience better without compromising the main aim of the game (build sustainable combinations and strategies). Note that there's still can be only one Chaos (even if you build multiple Chaos, only one will be available in your inventory). This updates features other small corrections, notably a better recognition of dance patterns™ in the Curbas level :-). UPDATE : I also corrected a small broken feature in the game. You were able to exit a level just before a defeat, and eternally retry it with the same crew. It's not possible anymore : when you lose an entity, you won't have access to it anymore. Similarly, the entities you build or gain during a level will stay around if you exit and load the level again. This makes the choice of canceling a run to save your entities more meaningful. Enjoy ! François

Devouring Stars reaches 1.1, with a couple of corrections. The main one is about the difficulty curve. The game was a bit unfair for many people out there : you build your small armada and find yourself in a tough run that just destroy your tribe (every tribe has a different set of behaviors and some are especially difficult - like fighting Dardanians at the end of a run or Molossians in middle game). That mechanic was intended, because it's a good way to try to build a new set of entities and explore possibilities. But starting fresh every time can leave you dangerously out of options, especially towards the endgame. There were three outcome to a run : you win and go forward, you lose and lose all entities, you try another destiny and lose all entities. I didn't touch the first two (so it will still be a challenge to finish a run), but if you draw another destiny, you will be able to keep the engaged entities, as well as the one you build during the canceled run ! This way, people facing especially difficult runs will be able to build up their armada again by winning a couple of levels in a run (always possible even with basic entities) then canceling for another destiny WITH the entities engaged and build previously. This way you won't face an endless cycle of defeat with only access to basics entities and memory bonus. This should make the experience better without compromising the main aim of the game (build sustainable combinations and strategies). Note that there's still can be only one Chaos (even if you build multiple Chaos, only one will be available in your inventory). This updates features other small corrections, notably a better recognition of dance patterns in the Curbas level :-). UPDATE : I also corrected a small broken feature in the game. You were able to exit a level just before a defeat, and eternally retry it with the same crew. It's not possible anymore : when you lose an entity, you won't have access to it anymore. Similarly, the entities you build or gain during a level will stay around if you exit and load the level again. This makes the choice of canceling a run to save your entities more meaningful. Enjoy ! Franois

Hi there! It seems some people encountered different bugs involving the Steam overlay (when a notice appears, it "hides" some elements in the game like the stars, which could be an issue :-). Hopefully this should be solved in the updated build. Enjoy!

Hi there! It seems some people encountered different bugs involving the Steam overlay (when a notice appears, it "hides" some elements in the game like the stars, which could be an issue :-). Hopefully this should be solved in the updated build. Enjoy!

Following the first feedbacks on the MP, here is a list of improvements: - Better synchronization: you won't find yourself in a situation where both players can win the match (although it's an interesting idea :-). - Improved Lamia's behaviour ("vamp" the other units) in MP. She should work fine now. - Removed a bug that was randomly destroying units at start (really frustrating one). - Added a full tree so you can decide which units to select during the draft selection and the game. - The game won't exit too violently if you press "esc" or press the exit button, it will ask you nicely if you really want to do that, like everywhere else in the game. There will be other improvements soon. Enjoy !

Following the first feedbacks on the MP, here is a list of improvements: - Better synchronization: you won't find yourself in a situation where both players can win the match (although it's an interesting idea :-). - Improved Lamia's behaviour ("vamp" the other units) in MP. She should work fine now. - Removed a bug that was randomly destroying units at start (really frustrating one). - Added a full tree so you can decide which units to select during the draft selection and the game. - The game won't exit too violently if you press "esc" or press the exit button, it will ask you nicely if you really want to do that, like everywhere else in the game. There will be other improvements soon. Enjoy !

This is a small update following the feedbacks I received after the launch. - Chaos maximum attraction power will not be achieved as quickly as before. Chaos is still a very powerful unit, but at least is shouldn't be totally unstoppable :-). Note that a large Briareos can beat even a very large Chaos. - You can now switch between the languages (for now, English and French), in the options. - It seems like a couple of players have resolutions issues on Mac. If that happens to you (black screen or flickering screen), try to press "R", "E" and "S" at the same time. This will force the Window mode (800*600) and erase any faulty resolution settings. If you restart the game then, it should apply your desktop resolution. If it still doesn't work, please contact me. - Solved a small UI problem when you open the reference tree in the Destiny Map. If you have feedbacks, problems, please contact me, I'm checking the discussion page fairly often. I'm glad so many people enjoy the game! Please leave reviews, it helps a lot! best regards, François (the gamedev)

This is a small update following the feedbacks I received after the launch. - Chaos maximum attraction power will not be achieved as quickly as before. Chaos is still a very powerful unit, but at least is shouldn't be totally unstoppable :-). Note that a large Briareos can beat even a very large Chaos. - You can now switch between the languages (for now, English and French), in the options. - It seems like a couple of players have resolutions issues on Mac. If that happens to you (black screen or flickering screen), try to press "R", "E" and "S" at the same time. This will force the Window mode (800*600) and erase any faulty resolution settings. If you restart the game then, it should apply your desktop resolution. If it still doesn't work, please contact me. - Solved a small UI problem when you open the reference tree in the Destiny Map. If you have feedbacks, problems, please contact me, I'm checking the discussion page fairly often. I'm glad so many people enjoy the game! Please leave reviews, it helps a lot! best regards, Franois (the gamedev)

This is it. After two months of celestial tweaks, stars painting and titanic AI coding, Devouring Stars is finally out. The game is fully playable and, I certainly hope, highly enjoyable. That said, there's always room for improvement so I will continue to update the game regularly. This 1.0 version adds a very long list of final tweaks and corrections I won't list exhaustively. Here are the main new changes:

• New option to better differentiate the enemies. If you had difficulties differentiating enemies from your units, an option can now be selected to clarify the action.
• Final review of the soundtrack by Ryan (with a few additions in the special levels).
• A couple of new effects (when you switch off the active pause for example).
• Final AI tweaks. the "Leader" notion has been removed as it was too opaque for most players and resulted in very dumb behaviors, enemies are now more reactive if you try to sneak through a portal unnoticed, and some other annoying behaviors have been corrected.

This is it. After two months of celestial tweaks, stars painting and titanic AI coding, Devouring Stars is finally out. The game is fully playable and, I certainly hope, highly enjoyable. That said, there's always room for improvement so I will continue to update the game regularly. This 1.0 version adds a very long list of final tweaks and corrections I won't list exhaustively. Here are the main new changes:

• New option to better differentiate the enemies. If you had difficulties differentiating enemies from your units, an option can now be selected to clarify the action.
• Final review of the soundtrack by Ryan (with a few additions in the special levels).
• A couple of new effects (when you switch off the active pause for example).
• Final AI tweaks. the "Leader" notion has been removed as it was too opaque for most players and resulted in very dumb behaviors, enemies are now more reactive if you try to sneak through a portal unnoticed, and some other annoying behaviors have been corrected.

As the release is a lot closer now, updates are happening more often. Let's hope the game (and its dev :-) won't break. This version includes : - Single: renewed tutorial to reflect the last improvements to the control scheme. Also, the tutorial is shorter and less messy towards the end. - Single: correction of sound levels. - Single: new music for Ulysse, Curbas (dance) and Hephaestos levels. If you don't want to play the game again to see curbas, here is what it looks like (spoiler!!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfz60ZHj870 - Single: small corrections on the "How to play" page. - Single: replugged French version. Next job will be to work on trading cards. I have an idea that could be nice for that one...

As the release is a lot closer now, updates are happening more often. Let's hope the game (and its dev :-) won't break. This version includes : - Single: renewed tutorial to reflect the last improvements to the control scheme. Also, the tutorial is shorter and less messy towards the end. - Single: correction of sound levels. - Single: new music for Ulysse, Curbas (dance) and Hephaestos levels. If you don't want to play the game again to see curbas, here is what it looks like (spoiler!!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfz60ZHj870 - Single: small corrections on the "How to play" page. - Single: replugged French version. Next job will be to work on trading cards. I have an idea that could be nice for that one...

This build adds a way to assign hotkeys in order to quickly select different groups of units. To define a hotkey, keep any key pressed while you do a selection (by drawing a rectangle or clicking on an unit), you will then be able to retrive that selection by pressing the key. It works with every key of your keyboard, except space, tab and esc (used as shortcuts everywhere else). This was asked early on in the dev. I may keep the explanation of that in the "how to play" page for now. Also, this build includes some bug corrections: - Single; The golem is not attacking you anymore when you summon him. - Single/MP: There can be only one Chaos in the area where you are. So if you tried to build a Chaos you ended up with Anchiale instead, which was (really) annoying. Now you just can't merge Briareos and Narcissus, it won't work (except if there's no Chaos on the stage). - Single: Mixed some music and sound volumes. - MP: Added special attacks. Enjoy!

This build adds a way to assign hotkeys in order to quickly select different groups of units. To define a hotkey, keep any key pressed while you do a selection (by drawing a rectangle or clicking on an unit), you will then be able to retrive that selection by pressing the key. It works with every key of your keyboard, except space, tab and esc (used as shortcuts everywhere else). This was asked early on in the dev. I may keep the explanation of that in the "how to play" page for now. Also, this build includes some bug corrections: - Single; The golem is not attacking you anymore when you summon him. - Single/MP: There can be only one Chaos in the area where you are. So if you tried to build a Chaos you ended up with Anchiale instead, which was (really) annoying. Now you just can't merge Briareos and Narcissus, it won't work (except if there's no Chaos on the stage). - Single: Mixed some music and sound volumes. - MP: Added special attacks. Enjoy!

We're releasing a new update that should improve the player's experience. First new things: - MP: a draft screen where you and your opponent are able to choose your crew members: depending on your choice, you will be able to go for one strategy or the other. It's really a rush game so the entities you start with are crucial. Hopefully there should be more players on the MP soon so I could have some feedbacks about this. - MP: a "handicap" that depends on the number of games you're able to win. The handicap is an evaluation of your strength and something that will give you a slight disadvantages on the field: the more handicap you have, the further you start from the nebula's centre. It's not much, but enough to balance the encounters between pure newbie and more experienced players. New players (less than 5 victories) basically start in the middle of the starfield, where there are plenty of stars. - Single: music and sound have been greatly improved, featuring 4 new (and exceptional) tracks from Ryan + a new soundscape for the "destiny map" (it's really nice to move the map around, almost physical). - Single and MP: a new and, I hope, improved control scheme. I have always been a bit unsure about how to the special actions, it's kind of messy with the the two mouse buttons. So to make things simplier, I decided to go for this: left button = selection & movement, right button = special action (including merging/division). It should make sense when you try it. Corrections and other stuffs: - Single and MP: Every entity (except the ones who are guarding a portal) will start the level with just one star. This gives a bit more time at the start of a level to decide on a strategy or another (everyone will have to gather stars before attempting anything). - Single: a new portal activation animation and sound, when an enemy is spawned and when you "secure" one of your entities. - Single: many bugs, among which: bug when Lamia tries to "convert" an enemy, bug when multiple entities try to activate a portal (generally there shouldn't be any more portal activation bug), Erynies' bug,... - Single: AI has been reworked. It should be more logical yet still a bit surprising. You may have noticed that at some point in the game, your enemy will decide to go for different actions (generally attacking you in a coordinated manner). That happens when there's a leader among your opponent (generally the one that's not doing like the others). These orders will less often result in a direct and difficult to avoid frontal attack. There will also be rebels that are not following the leader's orders + correction of some bugs (like when entities gather on a point). - Single: many improvements to the UI (you don't have to drag things around anymore). - Single: AI is now able to use Orion and Aether abilities. - Single: there's really no reason for you to wait for a portal activation when there's no more enemy around so it's a lot quicker to do that when you're alone on the map. - Single: reworked a bit the difficulty curve. You should meet equal force after the 5th run (then it escalates a bit :-). That's about it (among a lot of small tweaks along the way). Release date should be announced soon, I'm working on a very rad trailer for DS I can't wait to share with you :).

We're releasing a new update that should improve the player's experience. First new things: - MP: a draft screen where you and your opponent are able to choose your crew members: depending on your choice, you will be able to go for one strategy or the other. It's really a rush game so the entities you start with are crucial. Hopefully there should be more players on the MP soon so I could have some feedbacks about this. - MP: a "handicap" that depends on the number of games you're able to win. The handicap is an evaluation of your strength and something that will give you a slight disadvantages on the field: the more handicap you have, the further you start from the nebula's centre. It's not much, but enough to balance the encounters between pure newbie and more experienced players. New players (less than 5 victories) basically start in the middle of the starfield, where there are plenty of stars. - Single: music and sound have been greatly improved, featuring 4 new (and exceptional) tracks from Ryan + a new soundscape for the "destiny map" (it's really nice to move the map around, almost physical). - Single and MP: a new and, I hope, improved control scheme. I have always been a bit unsure about how to the special actions, it's kind of messy with the the two mouse buttons. So to make things simplier, I decided to go for this: left button = selection & movement, right button = special action (including merging/division). It should make sense when you try it. Corrections and other stuffs: - Single and MP: Every entity (except the ones who are guarding a portal) will start the level with just one star. This gives a bit more time at the start of a level to decide on a strategy or another (everyone will have to gather stars before attempting anything). - Single: a new portal activation animation and sound, when an enemy is spawned and when you "secure" one of your entities. - Single: many bugs, among which: bug when Lamia tries to "convert" an enemy, bug when multiple entities try to activate a portal (generally there shouldn't be any more portal activation bug), Erynies' bug,... - Single: AI has been reworked. It should be more logical yet still a bit surprising. You may have noticed that at some point in the game, your enemy will decide to go for different actions (generally attacking you in a coordinated manner). That happens when there's a leader among your opponent (generally the one that's not doing like the others). These orders will less often result in a direct and difficult to avoid frontal attack. There will also be rebels that are not following the leader's orders + correction of some bugs (like when entities gather on a point). - Single: many improvements to the UI (you don't have to drag things around anymore). - Single: AI is now able to use Orion and Aether abilities. - Single: there's really no reason for you to wait for a portal activation when there's no more enemy around so it's a lot quicker to do that when you're alone on the map. - Single: reworked a bit the difficulty curve. You should meet equal force after the 5th run (then it escalates a bit :-). That's about it (among a lot of small tweaks along the way). Release date should be announced soon, I'm working on a very rad trailer for DS I can't wait to share with you :).

So that's it, following the first feedback I received, I decided to develop a real multiplayer mode, next to the existing local. It's still in alpha and there's a good chance you won't find someone to play with you at all time. But it's there, and it works ! Right now it's the most simple way to do multiplayer: you go in "multi" and announce you're ready to play. Anyone around can accept your offer and the game starts from that point. I strongly encourage you to use the game discussion page to organise timeframe to play. From that point, I plan to add : - A way to select units to play with - Some integration with Steam (like play with friends) - Different multiplayer scenarios (today it's a really simple skirmish) - Some basic leaderboard stuff Here you go! I hope you enjoy that, it's been quite difficult to do right and the server is relatively small yet, but I think it's a good start. There will probably be bugs and weird behaviors (hopefully nothing serious). Please post on the discussion pages if that happens, I'm around regularly. My aim for that feature (as well as for the whole game) is to keep things simple and go forward without overpromising anything I can't do properly. Thanks to your feedbacks and support, I'm really happy with the way the game is evolving. Apart from that in the next month I will : - correct AI bugs - arrange a couple of things regarding the difficulty curve - add the last music and sound effects to the game - revise every texts in the game best regards, Francois, game dev

So that's it, following the first feedback I received, I decided to develop a real multiplayer mode, next to the existing local. It's still in alpha and there's a good chance you won't find someone to play with you at all time. But it's there, and it works ! Right now it's the most simple way to do multiplayer: you go in "multi" and announce you're ready to play. Anyone around can accept your offer and the game starts from that point. I strongly encourage you to use the game discussion page to organise timeframe to play. From that point, I plan to add : - A way to select units to play with - Some integration with Steam (like play with friends) - Different multiplayer scenarios (today it's a really simple skirmish) - Some basic leaderboard stuff Here you go! I hope you enjoy that, it's been quite difficult to do right and the server is relatively small yet, but I think it's a good start. There will probably be bugs and weird behaviors (hopefully nothing serious). Please post on the discussion pages if that happens, I'm around regularly. My aim for that feature (as well as for the whole game) is to keep things simple and go forward without overpromising anything I can't do properly. Thanks to your feedbacks and support, I'm really happy with the way the game is evolving. Apart from that in the next month I will : - correct AI bugs - arrange a couple of things regarding the difficulty curve - add the last music and sound effects to the game - revise every texts in the game best regards, Francois, game dev

Hi ! Following the first feedbacks, I did a relatively large update of the game, available right now. The feedbacks I received are extremely detailed and useful. Thanks for that. This new version includes :

• A brand new scenario, triggered during the middle / late game : "Rescue" where you're able to rescue one of your advanced unit in the middle of a run. Hopefully it should rebalance this part a bit, still quite unfair (I'm working on it).
• More help in-game to decipher the use of each units. Now the entity description box previously displayed in active pause is also available during the game. You can get rid of it at anytime by clicking the close button.
• That entity description box features the number of stars of the selected entity.
• Limited the annoying banding effect with a more efficient dithering gradient for the background and darker Colors.
• Added a "light" explanation of each symbol on the Destiny map. It should help you "compose" your run.
• Fixed the bonus unlocked when you find Curbas, Hephaistos, Odysseus and Eureste.
• Fixed the chase of Eureste.
• The outer scape is a lot more dangerous, it won't be as easy as before to try to escape and only the first entity to jump will carry on.
• Zoom is now a lot more efficient.

• More variety inside each scenario, more surprises and unexpected events.
• First test for online multiplayer.