A Game About Feeding A Black Hole News

[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]

[p]First off, we must say a huge THANK YOU to you for playing our game. Cory and I are blown away by how many of you have played and fed the Black Hole, but it’s still hungry, so we must keep on feeding it![/p][p]If you haven't already please leave us a Steam review, it really helps us a lot! [/p][p]Over the past two days, we’ve been prioritizing fixing bugs, UI/UX issues, and adding quality-of-life improvements (you can find today’s changes listed below). That’s left us with little time to focus on adding the bonus game modes we had planned for this week and next. So we’ve updated our target dates to now show “COMING SOON” instead of a specific date. To be honest, I think those dates were a bit too ambitious for a two-developer team like ourselves, and to be even more honest, we didn’t think the game would blow up like it did.[/p][p][/p][p]Now, to be clear, we designed the main game mode to be the full game, and toward the end of development we realized we could add even more content for you with these additional modes. We came up with some quick and fun mini modes for commutes or lunch breaks, and as we kept talking, Cory and I realized that we could probably even make some modes that would be good enough to have been the main game mode. [/p][p][/p][p]Some might call this last minute scope creep, but in the weeks leading up to release we focused in on executing our vision for the main game mode and planned to work on the additional modes post-launch. But then the game blew up, and now we are here. So moving forward, we won’t promise a specific date, but instead we can promise that we will keep adding game modes and new content. [/p][p][/p][p]With that being said, here’s a taste of a few ideas that we are cooking up.
[/p][h3]Electric Clicker Mode: [/h3][p]What would it be like if every time the breaker clicked it would also shoot out lighting like the electric asteroids and stars?[/p][p][/p][h3]Roguelike Mode: [/h3][p]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.[/p][p][/p][h3]Full Idle Mode: [/h3][p]What would it be like if the clicker had a mind of its own and auto-targeted nearby asteroids or what if you could recruit minions who would break asteroids for you?

*These ideas are all works in progress and subject to change.

Do you have ideas? We want to start coming up with modes which really push the bounds of what this game is and has to offer. So while we can’t make any promises that we’ll add your idea, we’d love to hear them. [/p][p]
For the rest of the week we are going to keep fixing bugs, UI/UX issues, and quality of life stuff. But we will also see if we can get a new mode or two added (no promises, but we will do our best).

Cheers,
Andy (Aarimous) [/p][p][/p][h2]Patch Notes[/h2][h3]Bugs:[/h3]

• [p]Fixed a bug where achievements were not working for Mac[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where at 150% text scale you could not see the Play Epilogue button[/p]
• [p]Fixed some text typos for in game text and Steam achievements[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the Epilogue achievement could pop up more than once[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the comets could sometimes not make you auto crit[/p]

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• [p]Added a sensitivity slider to the setting menu so you can now adjust how fast/slow the breaker moves when using a controller/Steam deck[/p]
• [p]Change the upcoming game modes to now show "COMING SOON" instead of a specific date. We were simply too ambitious with the data and as a two dev team we need to make sure we are realistic with our timelines[/p]
• [p]Changed the logic so that Upgrade Tree based achievements will now be checked after you unlock an upgrade. Previously it would check when you started a run.[/p]

[p]New Game Mode: The Line
[/p][p][/p][p]The Line is a mode with minimal randomness, built for players who want a quick game but with full control.
[/p][p]Every choice matters in getting through quickly. You're in control! Stop, think, and min-max your choices.
[/p][p]How efficiently can you finish The Line?[/p][p][/p][p]Other Changes[/p]

• [p]Added a confirmation when starting a New Game that would overwrite existing save data[/p]
• [p]Removed hotkeys from Continue and Play/New Game buttons[/p]
• [p]Fixed money not counting on Game Over and Epilogue screens[/p]
• [p]Milestone rewards now only round up, never down[/p]

[p]Throughout the day we've been pushing out mini hotfix patches to fix any small bugs that you all have reported. In the coming days we plan to start adding some quality of life requests as well as the new game modes.[/p][p][/p][h2]Summary of Changes:[/h2]

• [p]Added a setting to turn off the particles that flow into the Black Hole (for accessibility, but this might also give you a boost to performance)[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the Main Volume slider was not working[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where some of the sound effects were not being impacted by the effect slider[/p]
• [p]Updated some of the achievements descriptions to match how you can actually unlock them[/p]
• [p]Update transitions based on player feedback[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the debug panel would show for Mac builds on the Upgrade screen[/p]
• [p]Updated steam settings to show that our game does support modern Mac OSs[/p]
• [p]Probably a bunch of other minor bugs?[/p]
• [p]Removed speedrunning achievements based upon feedback from the community[/p]

[p][/p][p]Thanks for playing our game![/p][p][/p][p]-Andy (Aarimous) & Cory (Thornity)[/p]

I do not know if a black hole is something we should feed. Ostensibly they are things (anti-things? I'm not a black holeologist) that I would like to be far away from, given what I've heard. And yet here I am, having tinkered around with the demo for A Game About Feeding A Black Hole, which is a game about feeding a black hole, left with the feeling that this is not only a thing I can do, but find tranquility in.

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