NET.CRAWL News

[h2] [0.7.5p4] - 22.03.2025 [/h2]
[h3]Added[/h3]
- randomness control for the initial Corrosion spread (it will avoid loot and system, and spawn further from the avatar. Not strict)
[h3]Changed[/h3]
- modifier icons moved to the right side;
- The Missing Link+: Public keyword added and effect changed to be the same as the regular version;
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Power bank+ Multiuse(2) not working;
- items panel fix;

[h2][0.7.5p3] - 19.03.2025 [/h2]
[h3]Added[/h3]
- new music track;
- some visual effects;
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- map movement animations;

[h2][0.7.5p2] - 18.03.2025 [/h2]
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- tutorial tooltips positioning;

[h2][0.7.5p1] - 17.03.2025 [/h2]
[h3]Added[/h3]
- Linda: final artwork;
[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Mayson strength was reduced 24->16 to correct for Instant Message nerf;
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Poser Bank+ localization and trigger fix;
- Wake-up call localization fix;
- missing art on checkpoint;
- empty default Chinese localization;

[h2][0.7.5] - 15.03.2025 BIWEEKLY UPDATE #1[/h2]
READ MORE - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2958140/view/521959859806012745?l=english.
[h3]Added[/h3]
- new stuff: 4 Cores, 7 Aspects, 4 nodes, 2 minor locations;
- some new artworks;
[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Map generation for deep is in the middle of a large rework;
- Instant Message nerf: End of Turn exhaust changed to exhaust when an Action is spent;
- Life Insurance: +25 Credits instead of an Empty Heart when full;
- Lighthouse+: Express removed, reveals nodes up to 2 spaces away;
- Presentation: Express, Exhaust self on reveal (Presentation+ isn't changed);
- Switch: reenabled, regular version gets Limited keyword;
- Bookmarks+ nerfed to gain 6 Callbacks instead of 7;
- Chat History effect moved to Flood, Chat History node disabled;
- Mirror copy rework: both version gain X Data. Only regular version has Singleton.
- 2*X replaced by flat 2 for on End of Turn aspects (Librarian, Technician, Receptionist);
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Bug(node) correctly jumps away from the player;
- upgraded back fixed on ~10 nodes;
[h3]Known issues[/h3]
- items are still buggy;
- map scroll is junky;

Biweekly is a very strange word. I'm pretty sure I've Googled it at least five times and I’m still not sure whether it’s supposed to mean twice a week or every other week. It seems that it’s allowed to mean both, making it so no sane person will ever use it.
Anyway, our first biweekly update is here, and let’s take a closer look at what’s in there.

[h2]New Aspects[/h2]


Prewarm was in the game before, but I’m showing it here because those three now create a nice 1-2-3 series.

Wake-up Call is a filler. The game probably needs more fillers at the moment.

Doppler’s Shift is much more interesting. It buffs everything that restores Link, makes the Missing Link more useful, and negatively "scales" into the late game, making increasing Link less efficient. It also applies pressure to the player in a way that feels fair. My only concern is that +3 Actions might be too much.



Home Reading is another first-turn aspect. It’s easy to understand and might be very impactful, plus it has some nice synergies (first-action Mirror Copy) and anti-synergies (Clear Mind).
I don’t like that it has the word "Home" in the name, though. There’s no need to use "Home" on an aspect that doesn’t reference the Home node in its effect.

Home Surveillance is supposed to combo with non-Home reboots, which are all a little weak right now.



The last two don’t have the final art yet.
In the case of Pioneer, it’s not only about the artwork but also about the flavor. The effect is clean and interesting, but I have doubts that "Pioneer" matches it well enough. I was thinking along the lines of "exploration" (reboots force you to keep exploring), but it’s a stretch.

Tapped Line is really cool, but it certainly needs some kind of drawback. Even though the game doesn’t have too many ways of generating Callbacks, "doubling" the value on all of them is going to be too strong. It’s an interesting comparison with Stack Overflow.

[h2]New Cores[/h2]

[h3]Dr. Godron, Ned, and Bucky[/h3]

(the artwork is not final)

All three of them are early-game Cores that somehow refer to the concept of Full Memory. Two of them have Data Overflow triggers, and the third one has an "If memory is full" check. I think they turned out at least decent. You’re almost guaranteed to meet at least one of them during a Deep run.

[h3]Tetra, Hexa, and Octa[/h3]



The idea here was to make a reference to Deca from Slay the Spire. It was somewhat obvious that it should have "Set to 10" somewhere in its effect, but setting both Trace and Firewall to 10 felt very strong, so I thought we could create Deca’s smaller brothers. That’s how we got Tetra, Hexa, and Octa.

The problem with this concept is that 3D shapes don’t telegraph the correct numbers. We needed 4-6-8, and those shapes were chosen because they have 4, 6, and 8 sides. But I don’t think it works.
It’s not bad, and by the way, said Deca from Slay the Spire has 8 sides and 6 vertices, which absolutely makes no sense.
I think we'll keep looking here. There should be a much better way to telegraph numbers through artwork (flat polygons would probably be much better).

[h3]Ayrton[/h3]


The idea here is simple—force players to make laps around the level.
It introduces the "restore" keyword, where Checkpoint gets recreated if it was somehow destroyed. I think this is required if we want to have this Core as a late-game boss.
On the other hand the prospect of destroying all the checkpoints and then completing the level in one turn is very tempting. Need to keep an eye on this one.

[h2]New Nodes[/h2]



Nodes are the least important direction for us to work on. We’re long past 100 nodes (it should be more than 150, not counting Cores), and that means that a single node’s impact on the pool is very weak. Of course, we’ll keep adding more, but for now, I think we should slow down and concentrate on more important gameplay systems.

Paradox is very cool, though. It might be the highest skill-ceiling node in the game right now. I certainly have very little idea how to use it.



[h3]Golden Lotus[/h3]

The other cool thing we’ve added is a Golden Lotus location and a loot node with the same name. Alex really outdid himself with the artwork on this one. They both grant +3 Actions when activated/visited.
The one on the location proved that one-time next-level bonuses work and are fun to play with, so we’ll add Link and Memory boost locations in the next update.

[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
This thing is getting long, and I don’t know how many people are going to read it (you can let me know by hitting the Like button or reaching out with feedback), so I better wrap it up.
The past two weeks made me realize how big the game has already gotten and how much more we need to do to make it complete. It will take time. But I think we’ll be able to handle it. Two weeks at a time.

See you then.

Denis

We’ve finally released the demo for NET.CRAWL. It was a lot of work, but everything went relatively smoothly. Sure, we completely flopped on the marketing front (which was expected), but I have no regrets and am overall satisfied with where things are at right now.


Now that the demo is out and some of you have launched it more than once, it’s time to shift gears a little. We’re rethinking how we should approach updates and have this idea of transforming the demo into something that feels more like a free early access experience.

[h3]What's free early access?[/h3]

Well, most demos are designed in such a way that you wouldn’t want to spend more than a couple of hours in them. We want to have a demo where people could easily spend 10, or better yet, 20+ hours in and be reasonably entertained in the process. We want people to have a reason to launch it a couple of times per month.

To get there, we need to focus heavily on gameplay. The current version of the Deep Run is... well, old. It was built as a testing ground, not something you’d play after work for fun. I think we can make it way more varied and replayable with relatively low effort.


Starting in March, we’ll be rolling out two updates per month, each with around 20 new gameplay entities (nodes, aspects, locations, etc.). That will put us on track to eventually double the amount of content the game has, and that’s when it should get close to a release-ready state.
We won’t be holding anything back. But we might start rotating content eventually; otherwise, the new stuff will get diluted by the old one too much, and it would be harder to receive feedback.
The next update is scheduled for March 15th.


In conclusion, there’s not much else I’d want to say, other than I’m happy with the fact that some people seem to enjoy the game a lot, and I’m super excited to finally get back to working on gameplay after months of polishing and telling other people what to do.

Huge thank you to everyone who reached out to me or made a video about the game. And especially to those who had left a review for the demo on Steam. If you are reading this and you haven't reviewed the game yet, please consider doing so. It will help us out a lot.

See you in 2 weeks.

Denis (ObsoleteOne)

[h2] [0.7.4p2] - 01.03.2025[/h2]
[h3]Added[/h3]
- Next Trace/Firewall wave preview next to a turn number (only in deep);
- very basic controller support (mouse imitation);
- "not enough data" visual proc on nodes with "spend data";
[h3]Changed[/h3]
- green "Trace" replaced by the green icon;
- Watchful Eye: Add 1 Trace if 3 Data wasn't paid when activated;
[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- build size and loading times reduction;
- Random Walker wasn't random at all;
- dead end if there are no valid targets for a targeted ability;
- some smaller things;

[h2][0.7.4] - 24.02.2025 - NEXT FEST build[/h2]
[h3]Added[/h3]
- game speed option (see misc tab);
- credits window;
- fancy under the hood logic for text coloring, formating and adding icons;

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- vertical layout for tooltips, [trigger] changed to /trigger;
- Midas: moved transformation effect to the End of Turn;
- tiny difficulty adjustments;

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- some bugs with items;
- credits level removed from the deep stage 9;