General Update #11 - New Horizons

Hello there!

With the release of Starwatch 0.3.10, we're now working on Starwatch's most significant patch, major version 0.4.0. We'll be unveiling more and more about it over the next weeks as implementation of the various features is completed. Today we will go over some elements of the main plot and some of the features you can expect from this patch.

Progress has been really steady on Silent Echo's next update as well and we're going to share some news about it!

Starwatch Academy

0.4.0 is a major content patch that begins with the launch of your personal cruiser, the Eos. It's both your home away from home and your base of operations to complete the special orders you will receive from the admiralty board.

It's been a patch or two since we've seen anything of the rebels, the main opposing force in your career as a future Starwatch Officer. You can be sure that the launch of your cruiser isn't going unnoticed by your foes.

Aside from that, access to the cruiser begins to free up more possibilities for you to pursue and new exciting worlds to discover. You'll be making first contacts, meeting exotic new life like the new Lamia huntress seen above, treading through ancient ruins, and coming head to head with a mysterious cult.

The 0.4.0 patch is not only our most significant, but also our most ambitious patch, and we hope that it lives up to your expectations when it does drop.

Performance Improvements

We spent efforts over the past few patches improving the user experience on mobile devices and we have made some additional adjustments in the upcoming patch to further improve the experience.

However we were also aware of the performance issues with the game on mobile devices and we've spent some time profiling the game and testing on these devices to improve performance and in some cases reduce crashes.

Based on the results from the tests, crashes are now eliminated and the experience is much smoother, especially on iOS devices.

I would also like to give special thanks to Admiral Sawtooth for his help testing these changes.

Silent Echo

We've finished all the changes we wanted to make to the combat system and we have fixed a lot of problems such as the unpredictable visuals of the enemies when collapsing the sidebar or playing on mobile devices.

We've reworked some parts of the UI to be able to account for more enemies than it currently could. As you can see above, we now have proper support for up to four enemies! What you see above is a real fight that has been added to the game, which may happen if you decide to engage in some reckless (but fun) behavior in the new areas.

Content wise, we are about 50% complete and we're currently implementing some banter scenes that happen when you have squad members.

We've finished implementing a fun interaction you can have at the break room located on the administrative floor. If you have squad members like Emilia and Ava (or both) in your squad when you go to the break room, you will have the opportunity to have little breakfast session with them, learning more about their personal life and earning new trust and bond points with the various characters.

All in all, we expect that we need between one to two more weeks to finish the update before we can release it in early access and move on to Chapter 2. It's getting there!

Next week we will have more news for both games and we will also show you a pretty special feature coming to Silent Echo that we've been working on that will allow us to provide you with some cool exclusive ingame rewards!

Have fun!