Space Station Designer News

Happy Monday! At the end of June, we shared a comprehensive development update in our blog. Today, we're proud to announce that Space Station Designer v. 0.5.0 became available on Steam Playtest minutes ago.



This update introduces a series of mechanics, updated interactive tutorials, bug fixes, balancing of the game's database, and a lot more! We've also temporarily removed some of the existing mechanics and broken down the game into three phases, as one recurring piece of feedback that we received is that the large amount of options available made the game quite overwhelming to newcomers. This update focusses entirely on phase 1. We'll be opening up phases 2 and 3 in subsequent updates.



Space Station Designer still supports modding via the cross-platform modding service mod.io. You can find Space Station Designer's page in mod.io here: https://spacestationdesigner.mod.io/. The system allows you to create new space station modules, resupply spacecraft, and astronauts. It also provides a mechanism to replace the original ones that already ship with the game.

If you're interested in making mods, we've written a comprehensive guide which you can find here. The guide comes with seven sample mods, and provides extensive documentation so that you can use them as a starting point for your own creations. The samples include new modules such as 'Skylab', a realistic replacement for the 'Space Shuttle', and a realistic version of the 'Apollo' spacecraft. You can find some screenshots here.



As always, we're very interested in your feedback! Please let us know if you run into any bugs or glitches, and any thoughts regarding gameplay mechanics, the interactive tutorials, and the user interface.

Lastly, we're also interested in learning more about the gameplay strategies that you're adopting. The game has a lot of moving parts, so if you come across strategies that give you an unfair advantage (or disadvantage!), let us know by either opening a thread in the Steam forums.

For our next milestone, we'll start polishing the elements from phase 2 and addressing any issues reported by you in the forums/message boards.



You can request access to the Playtest version by clicking on the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this large new update.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)

Hello! The development of 'Space Station Designer' continues at a steady pace, and a written update is well overdue. Since our last announcement, we've implemented a large number of features, conducted extensive balancing, and fixed loads of bugs and edge cases that came up during playtesting.



We're currently hard at work finalizing the details of our next update (version 0.5.0), which we're hoping to share with all of you via Steam Playtest in the upcoming weeks. If you're interested in the details, please see this article in our blog.





If you haven't enrolled already, remember that you can join the playtesting for free by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Have a great rest of the week!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)

Happy Thursday! A few days ago we shared with you a development update of Space Station Designer. Today, we're making version 0.4.20 available!



Version 0.4.20 features a variety of features and improvements, such as:

• A first version of a launch minigame for all resupply spacecraft, where unexpected things will happen and you'll be required to make a decision on whether to push your luck and go ahead with the launch or abort it.
  
• The possibility to skip the time to the following week.
  
• Several performance improvements.
  
• We've integrated an analytics system, which will allow us to understand better how players are engaging with the game. You can always opt-out of this system, but we'd encourage you to leave it on, as this information is super important to us in order to guide our development efforts.
  
• Tons of minor improvements to the UX, the texts, and cosmetics issues in the UI.
  

In case you missed it, we've also published an online game manual, which you can find here. The manual contains the material available via the in-game interactive tutorials, along with some extra nuggets of information that will help you gain a better understanding of the core mechanics behind the game.



Are you interested in trying the game but don't have access to the playtest version yet? Click the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the new update.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)

Happy Sunday! It's been a while since our last public update in our Steam product page, but we continue making good progress in the development of Space Station Designer.

We've implemented a first version of a launch minigame for all resupply spacecraft, where unexpected things will happen and you'll be required to make a decision on whether to push your luck and go ahead with the launch or abort it. You can find below two examples from the Union resupply spacecraft (based on the Soyuz) and the Space Shuttle:





We've also added back a feature that used to be part of the first versions of the game: the possibility to skip the timer and jump straight to the next week. Adding this feature back took us a few days of development, as the recent inclusion of random events introduced some edge cases that needed to be handled:



We've also added back random events, which will definitely increase the challenge of the campaign mode!



On top of all these features, we've been fixing various issues all across the game and implementing performance improvements. This also includes the integration of an analytics services, so that we can better understand how players are interacting with Space Station Designer and fix any usability issues.

We've also been working on an online game manual, which you can find here. The manual contains the material available via the in-game interactive tutorials, along with some extra nuggets of information that will help you gain a better understanding of the core mechanics behind the game.



Remember that the game is already available for playtesting by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



There's no ETA for the next update, but we're aiming to make this available as soon as possible.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)

Season's Greetings! We have been a bit quiet since our last update in October. Despite the lack of posts, we have been hard at work fixing various bugs, improving the user experience, and optimizing performance. We have also been working on the implementation of a launch minigame for resupply spacecraft (you can find a WIP screenshot that we've posted two days ago here)

Before 2021 comes to an end, we wanted to thank you for being with us during this past year and providing invaluable feedback for 'Space Station Designer'. This has been a great year for us, and with the addition of various features such as modding support, interactive tutorials, and the Earth facilities, the game is really starting to shape.

As always, please let us know if you have any feedback, and remember that you can sign up for the Playtest of 'Space Station Designer' by clicking the 'Request Access' button in the game's store page:



Merry Christmas and Happy New Year =)

Best wishes,

--Ignacio and Mauricio (Polar Motion)