Exogate Initiative News

Hello Gaters!

Come on over to the Exogate Iniatitive Steam page to check out our pre-recorded let’s play featuring our latest build. While you’re there, make sure to download and try our completely updated demo, including new features and a completely revamped Medbay, Mess Hall, and more!

If you like what you see, we’d appreciate a wishlist to help more base-building and management fans to see what we’re working on.

Thanks, and all the best,
The Xenobits Team

Hello from the other side of the universe,

Long time no see, I know. If you are not aware of it, we are a very small team, with 4 people at its core, and all our energy is currently dedicated to making the game ready for the early access in a few months. So the development is going very well as you will see below but we lack the time to properly communicate our progress with you guys.

[h2]What’s new[/h2]
[h3]Heavy suits[/h3]
For the most extreme destinations you will now be able to equip your gaters with heavy exploration suits, they probably won’t be able to dance though.


[h3]Medbay[/h3]
The medbay is now complete, and all the injury management with it.
Gaters could sustain one of the 33 currently implemented medical conditions like broken arm, punctured lung or depression. Each will require a specific diagnosis and treatment so you will have to properly setup your medbay so that they can get the care they require and be back on their feet ASAP to return to the other side of the universe.


[h3]Game flow reworked, no more generated missions[/h3]
After countless hours trying to generate exciting missions procedurally we threw in the towel. We weren’t satisfied with what we had and it was quickly becoming boring for the player. The game experience being our top priority, we decided to remove entirely the generated contacts from the game, and modified the exploration gameplay accordingly.
Now the teams will explore each planet on their own, they might contact you occasionally (you will be able to setup the frequency at the start of the game) and offer some interesting narration through our manually crafted contacts .

[h3]Auto-refill[/h3]
As pretty much everyone asked for it: yes, equipment like the meal dispenser will automatically order a refill when they are empty now, and you won’t have to do it manually anymore.

[h2]Next steps[/h2]
[h3]Workshop and destinations exploitation[/h3]
We are now close to completing the workshop room, and with it the exploitation of geological destinations. More on this really soon.

[h3]Library and artifacts[/h3]
You will encounter alien artifacts on dedicated planets and will be able to bring them back in order to display them in a dedicated equipment of the Library room.


[h3]Updated demo[/h3]
An updated demo with far more content will be available in february for the Steam Next festival!

[h3]Early access[/h3]
The early access is still planned for the first half of 2023, we hope to share with you our roadmap soon.

[h3]Private beta [/h3]
In January we will start some closed beta and will need your help to test the game and give us critical feedback, if you are interested, be sure to join our discord. We will communicate more about it here in the coming weeks.

[h2]Cursed bug of the month[/h2]
No, advanced medical treatment is not supposed to make you levitate.



That’s all for today, the team will soon take a well deserved rest for the holiday season. We wish you the best!




The Xeno Bits team

Hello the exocommunity,

You missed us! We were a bit busy between the demo update and the early access version progress. But exciting things are to come and we’ll welcome an animator to our team very soon!

Let’s move on to what we achieved lately!



[h3]The alien invasion feature[/h3]

You asked us a looooot about this feature! It’s still in progress but we start to have a clear idea of how its system will work. We’re facing many challenges, including:

• The trigger of the invasion. It’ll mainly happen when a team of Gaters is outside the Exogate.
  
• Its impact within the base. It's mainly about the threat these alien life forms represent and what kind of damage they’ll make inside the base.
  
• Base attack means defense mechanism. How to repel your enemies, with which weapon and find a way to protect your base more efficiently!
  

They’re coming!!!

The alien design is not definitive but we already like to think that this will spice up the game!

Quick info: the invasion feature won’t appear in the demo update! We rather keep it for the Early Access version.

[h3]Dev stuff[/h3]

There are many points we took and are still taking care of to guarantee that we don't forget anything. This includes:

• Constantly polishing the game, more specifically the rooms and their objects, the Star Map – which is still a delicate point to handle because there are a lot of things to undo, redo and add – and taking into account your feedback from the Itch.io demo regarding more general stuff such as bed attribution, base navigation, UI and more.
  
• Integrating the 6th and last Gater class: the Diplomat! We won’t elaborate more about it right now because it’s at an early stage.
  
• We’re improving balancing since as we add new characters or modify the research monetization system, this creates a gap that we must fill. We have to make sure that all of this doesn’t make the game unplayable. This is a long-run issue that makes us test a lot of things to see how they fit.
  

[h3]Cursed bug of the month[/h3]

Since we talked about invasion earlier, how about a compilation of bugs for this feature? The last one is a masterpiece.



Feel free to join the Discord server of the game to chat with us and to never miss any news about the development of Exogate Initiative!

See you in the next devlog, Gaters!

The Xeno Bits team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1681060/Exogate_Initiative/

We've asked our community on Exogate Initiative's Discord server to write short questions about the development of the game that we'll answer with a GIF. No extra text, just GIFs.

It's now time to reveal the answers!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[h3]Hardest feature to implement?[/h3]


[h3]How many tons of coffee/pizzas for the devs?[/h3]


[h3]The CM's favorite Gater class?[/h3]


[h3]Sneak peek of aliens?[/h3]


[h3]Funniest bug you've seen?[/h3]


[h3]What did the first version of Exogate Initiative look like?[/h3]


[h3]Will there be an option to rename your gaters/characters?[/h3]


[h3]Will there be mod support?[/h3]


Any other questions related to the development are available on the Steam community hub, you'll find the full topic here!

Thank you to all the cool people who have sent their questions!

Liked this format? Let's chat in the comments section!

See you, Gaters!

The Xeno Bits team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1681060/Exogate_Initiative/

Hi fellow Gaters from all around the world,

First of all, there are so many of you now! Many thanks for following the Exogate Initiative development journey, we can’t express how encouraging it is to read your lovely comments, constructive feedback & suggestions! You can join the community Discord server anytime to ask your questions and follow the news!

Let’s move on to the latest additions!

[h3]Gaters have new faces[/h3]
We received feedback saying that Gaters’ faces lacked life. While we had an artistic direction for the faces, we wanted to try out a new design. It is still in progress but we can already show you what we plan with these new faces!

First off, here’s a short before/after to show you the difference between the old work and the new result.



Side note: We’ve received feedback about these new faces too! They’re not perfect and we’ll continue to improve them in the future!

Then, we added expressions to their faces. They’ll mainly be used during missions so instead of having a neutral face all along, Gaters can express their surprise, excitement, frustration and more according to the situation!



Also, we added facial expressions so they reflect their condition inside the base, here they are:



[h3]Dev stuff[/h3]
Remember the Star Map? This is it now, feel old yet?



The Star Map issue was to try to make it visually interesting, stable despite the procedural generation and easy to navigate. It’s not totally finished yet. Redesigning the Star Map brings up many challenges such as:

• setting clear icons indicating which kind of resource you can earn by exploring an exoplanet
  
• Adding a progression system as Gaters perform missions
  
• defining the difficulty level concept in an understandable way and adding missions in accordance with the difficulty level displayed
  
• having colors adapted to color-blind people
  

The Tech Tree, which allows you to unlock new technologies to upgrade your base and progress in the game, will also be redesigned!

[h3]Cursed bug of the month[/h3]
Lately, we’ve been having some… merging issues? To sum this up, Gaters tend to merge with each other, which is a bit disturbingly cursed… This gives some The Thing vibe, not gonna lie…



Many thanks for reading! If you’re curious about a specific aspect of the game, feel free to use the comments section to write what you’d like to see in the next devlog and we’ll see what we can do!

The Xeno Bits Team


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1681060/Exogate_Initiative/