A Game About Feeding A Black Hole News

[p]We’re happy to announce a bundle with Gamblers Table![/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Grab the bundle to save a bit if you’ve been eyeing either game.[/p][p]Now you can feed the hole and flip some coins.[/p][p]
~Cory aka "Thornity"[/p]

[p]Wow..... we're still in a bit of shock...[/p][p]We hit 100k copies sold on January 4th, just 20 days after launch![/p][p][/p][p]We’ve been busy fixing issues related to Steam Deck support, and on January 5th Valve came back with the results: we’re now Steam Deck Verified![/p][p][/p][p]We’re still cooking on things behind the scenes. I’m looking at bringing the demo version into the main game as closely as possible, given how differently the money scales compared to the demo.[/p][p][/p][p]Andy shipped a roguelite mode to the beta branch to start testing out the vibes. How to join the beta, here.[/p][p][/p][p]Thank you for all the comments and suggestions, we've been working through all of them.[/p][p]More details to come in the future. Enjoy feeding the hole.[/p][p][/p][p]~Cory aka "Thornity"[/p]

[p]Happy Holiday! Fun fact the Black Hole is still hungry even though you might be stuffed.. so make sure to keep on feeding it! The game recently hit 1000 reviews on Steam and over 70k total players (a number that we honestly didn't think we’d hit in our wildest dream). So another huge Black Hole sized thank you to anyone who's play our game and left us a review.[/p][p]If you haven't already please leave us a Steam review, it really helps us a lot![/p][p]This is likely our last patch for the year as both Cory and I are going to take a much needed vacation to rest, relax, and celebrate the holidays with our friends and family. We plan to be back the first week in January, but we will still do hotfixes as needed. I plan to check in daily to answer any questions via Steam Discussions and Discord, but we are only a two person dev team, so please be patient as we might not be as available for the next week. [/p][p]On a personal note, this past week has been quite life changing for me and I can't thank you enough for playing our game, sharing it with others, and making sure the Black Hole stays fed! This was a great way to end the year, and I can't wait to cool up some fun new modes in 2026. [/p][p]Cheers, [/p][p]Andy (Aarimous)[/p][h3]
Normal Mode Changes[/h3]

• [p]After a week of reading all your feedback and watching people play the game we have identified a few changes we wanted to make[/p]
• [p]Our goal here was to smooth over some of the rough parts that felt too much like a slog as well as speed up parts where we wanted you to feel more powerful[/p]
• [p]There are too many changes to list, but it general the we moved the location of various nodes, changed the costs, added/removed some nodes, and in some cases adjusted the mod values[/p]
• [p]These change might impact existing save files, but worst case I think you'll just need to go back and buy some of the nodes which were moved. Please let us know if you experience any major bugs and we can send you over a fixed save file.[/p]

[h3]Roguelike Mode[/h3]

• [p]We need help testing this mode![/p]
• [p]You can test this mode on the “Testing” branch in the Steam Beta and while there is a playable version ready, we still have a few features and design challenges to overcome[/p]
• [p]Right now this is a "Proof of concept" and essentially just has support for “choose 1 of 3 random upgrades”[/p]
• [p]Currently the mod pool is limited to the asteroid mods (but I did add a surprise mechanic to), and I will expand it to Planets/Stars as we get feedback[/p]
• [p]I have a lot of ideas for where to go from this POC, but I'd love to hear if you have any ideas[/p]
• [p]Warning, we spent very little time balancing the value ranges in mod pool, cost scaling, and black hole growth numbers so please let me know if these need to change[/p]
• [p]If you test this mode please jump into Discord and share some feedback[/p]

[p][/p][p]How to access the Testing branch on Steam from Properties:[/p][p][/p][h3]Zen Mode[/h3]

• [p]We’ve seen some great love for Zen mode and while I am mostly happy with it I there were a few changes I wanted to make based on feedback[/p]
• [p]Our goal here is to make Zen more more satisfying and to give it just a bit more variation with allowing the asteroids to spawn with different sizes[/p]
• [p]You now one shot all asteroids[/p]
• [p]Asteroids now spawn randomly size 1-3[/p]
• [p]Breaker radius has been increased from 250% to 350%[/p]
• [p]Breaker Rate has been increased from 110% to 120% of the base speed[/p]
• [p]You now need to break 10,000 asteroids to beat the mode. I’ll bring this back down if I see the play times are not around our goal of 10-20 minutes.[/p]

[h3]Bugs/Misc Changes[/h3]

• [p]Update the save system to be able to support roguelike mode and future game modes, this should be backwards compatible with older save[/p]
• [p]Added smart work text wrapping to the upgrade node tool tips[/p]
• [p]Added some missing translations[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the controller glyphs could show when switching modes[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where some text would not update when changing languages[/p]
• [p]Updated the Spanish translations. Thank you Li for helping us out. Please reach out via Discord if you’d like to help us review or add your given language.[/p]
• [p]Adjust the width of the game mode panels so they will now properly scale with text size[/p]
• [p]Changed the colors of the game modes[/p]

[h2]Day 6 Update[/h2][p]We hope you are having a nice weekend and are keeping the Black Hole well fed. If you haven't already please leave us a Steam review, it really helps us a lot!

After a long and crazy launch week Cory and I are taking a break this weekend and will try and get one more major patch out before we take a longer vacation for the holidays. We don't want to make any promises but here's a post if you want to know more about what we are working on.

Cheers,
Andy
Aarimous[/p][p][/p][h2]Developer Q&A[/h2][p]Here's a highlight video from our live Q&A episode of my podcast Scope Creepers yesterday on my Twitch channel. Please note that everything we talked about during the Q&A is subject to change.
[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][h3][/h3][p][/p][h3][/h3]

[p]Just a quick update today. We blew past 500 reviews which has personally been a long time goal of mine. A Black Hole sized thank you to anyone who's left a review. If you haven't already please leave us a Steam review, it really helps us a lot!

We're currently at 90% positivity which means the tag will show "Very Positive" on the Steam page. Which is a huge compliment and achievement for us, but we want to aim even higher and see if we can earn the "Overwhelmingly Positive" tag by getting up to 95%.[/p][p]Our plan to do this is simple. Keep adding fun new modes for the foreseeable future. We don't want to make any promises for how frequently we'll add new stuff, but we are inspired by the Mini Motorways devs (Dinosaur Polo Club) who have continued to add new game levels to their game years after their game was launched. Cory and I are having a lot of fun working on this game and we hope you're continuing to enjoy the new game mode.

Cheers,
Andy (Aarimous)
[/p][h3]Live Developer Q&A Tomorrow[/h3][p]Cory and I are going to do a live Q&A episode of my podcast Scope Creepers tomorrow on my Twitch channel. I will record the stream and make a post on Steam once the episode is published on YouTube.
[/p][p]Planned to start around 12pm CST (6 PM GMT) on Friday December 19th.

Please let us know if you have any question you'd like us to answer or feel free to drop by and ask us live.
[/p][h3]Zen Mode Added[/h3][p]We added a new mode. It’s called Zen Mode. In this mode there is no timer, no upgrades, you simply just need to break 1000 asteroids. If you like this mode let us know, we can add more types of Zen modes that are longer, shorter, or that focus on other game mechanics.[/p][p][/p][h3]Giant Grid Mode[/h3][p]Cory is working on Giant Grid which currently has 840 (!?) nodes in the tree. We wanted to get that out today, but we ran into a few bugs and loading issues since that’s like 4x the size of the main game mode’s tree.

[/p][h3]Roguelike Mode[/h3][p]I’ve started to work on Roguelike Mode which will be our first mode which has a fair amount of new development work.

The general idea is: What would it be like if each time you bought an upgrade you instead got to choose 1 out of 3 random upgrades with random values based on a randomly rolled rarity.

I'm hoping to have a beta build ready for testing tomorrow (Dec 19th), but that is subject to change since it’s already the end of the day on Thursday and tomorrow is a Friday after a long week of work supporting the launch. Plus I have the itch to dive into the new POE 2 league or play the new TFT Set.
[/p][h3]Speedrunning[/h3][p]Lastly, a few people in our Discord community are trying to get a Speedrun.com category of the game made so we can have some official world records. But for now a huge congratulations to Kaede who set (from what I can tell) the current Normal Mode World record of 1 hr 9 min 39 sec. [/p][p][/p][p]A time which blows my mind since my best time is around 2 hours and I thought I was playing fast. So now I wonder… is a sub 1 hour run possible? [/p][h3]Patch Notes:[/h3]

• [p]Added Zen Mode[/p]
• [p]Added an achievement for beating Zen Mode[/p]
• [p]Updated the German translations. Thank you Davidak for helping us out. Please reach out via Discord if you’d like to help us review or add your given language.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted the game mode screen so the previous and next button are now in the corners of the screen instead of all crammed in the bottom center. In the future we plan to rework the selector so it’s easier to find a mode that suits the vibe you are looking for.[/p]
• [p]Added Giant Grid Mode as a coming soon game mode[/p]
• [p]Added Idle mode as a coming soon game mode[/p][p][/p]

[p]Ok.. so it ended up being not such a quick update. But hey I'm excited about this game and I could talk about it for hours.[/p]