Steven the Sperm News

Welcome to 2024!!! You thought I'd finally left? Nah, Steven the Sperm forever, baby! If STS was an actual child, it'd be in kindergarten or first grade by now, and much like that theoretical child, STS has been getting better and better over the years! So for this update, I figured I'd keep that development up by adding some pretty sweet quality of life improvements to the game's more system-level stuff.



[h2]Major Changes[/h2]

• PAUSING! You can now pause the game using ESC on keyboard or Menu on controller! From there, you'll see a menu which lets you resume from being paused, restart the stage, go back to the title screen, or quit the game. A new related feature and a useful note:
  
  
  1. A new "Back" button has been added, which behaves like ESC did in previous versions. On keyboard it's set to Backspace, on controller it's set to Back (obviously lol)... if you press it during a stage, you'll be asked if you want to return to the title screen. Hitting it again or selecting the green check mark will then take you there. You can also press either Back or Menu on Options, Extras, or the High Scores screen to return to the Title Screen, and pressing either button there will quit the game.
  2. Using the Restart Stage pause option, you can now choose to replay a stage from the beginning without having to turn checkpoints off. In previous versions, if you had checkpoints on, got one, then decided you wanted to try the stage fresh, you would've had to toggle the checkpoints option to delete the data. Now you don't have to! This also means that if you complete a stage and get an unsatisfactory time, you can just pause, reset, and try again!
     
• YOU CAN NOW NAVIGATE THE MENUS WITHOUT THE MOUSE! With this update, STS has complete controller support! ...unless you wanna change the volume, but eeeeehhhhhh...
  
• New volume change display, and the game will save and load your set volume between sessions! Pressing + or - to raise or lower the volume respectively now shows you the volume level on the bottom of the screen in a retro TV fashion, and the game will actually save this value to be loaded next time you start the game. Also, you can no longer set control keys to the volume buttons.

[h2]Minor Changes[/h2]

• There are now control hints over the navigation buttons which tell you what key uses it. This explains the shortcuts for buttons such as the green back and blue forward arrow. You can disable these hints on the Options screen under 'Controls'.
• The mouse cursor will now always hide when any key/button is pressed. The option to change this has been removed to simplify things, because now that you can navigate the menus with the keys/controller, the mouse isn't as necessary.
  
• Pressing right no longer submits buttons (like when you complete a level). This was a legacy feature from an earlier version when I thought I was being fancy and revolutionary, but really it just meant that you'd accidentally skip stuff while fidgeting around, which really sucked. So now it's fixed!
  
• Flashing text will now appear to tell you what to do in a certain spot. Being vague to avoid spoilers. This makes the part more fair, but also more exciting and fun.
  
• You can now revisit the screen which displays when you complete all the game's main challenges. I've also reverted its behavior back to earlier versions, where the game closes completely before displaying it. This makes it more suspenseful and surprising versus just popping in. If you don't know what I'm talking about - there's still more for you to discover!
  
• Added a drop shadow to the ingame mouse cursor.

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Stage 4 will now load your checkpoint correctly. This was a pretty nasty bug... the game would load which sections you've completed incorrectly, and if you redid a section, you wouldn't be able to beat the level. Things load correctly now.
  
• Fixed the dash not working if you use it immediately as a stage loads. Previously, if you were mashing the dash button as a stage starts, you'd hear the dash sound and expend the meter, but Steven wouldn't move. This update fixes that issue.
  
• You can no longer enable a certain mode before its unlocked. I can't believe it man. Before this update, if you hadn't unlocked the mode but clicked where the button for it is, it would turn on.
  
• The "Achievements" 3D text now properly spins when visiting the screen in the Extras menu.
• The object that creates a white fade effect in certain cutscenes is now hidden. I'm out here playtesting the menu controls, and I just see this random white square in the top left corner... oops.
  

Phew, that was quite a bit! This update took about 3 days of constant work... it was worth it though! I graduated college early so this is basically my job now. Hope you existing players love the additions and fixes, and hope you new players have an even better time starting out than everybody else did!!! ...oh, uh, yeah, not that your start was any less awesome, "everybody else"...

...since you're actually reading the changelog, here's a little unused graphic, just for fun:

I was thinking I'd show that in the top right corner whenever the game saves your data, but I figured it'd be more distracting than helpful. Steven with a 5¼ inch floppy... reminds me, I haven't been doing the sex joke thing in these lately.

See y'all later! As usual, let me know if you encounter any bugs or have any comments.


EDIT: Shadow update on April 1st - fixed the cursor not working after completing the game and going back to the title screen.

So. You know what day it is. That's right, you read the title,

[h2]It's National Gamer Day!!!!! YIPPPEEEEEEEEEE!!![/h2]

...or wait,





I've said it before and I'll say it again - this whole experience has been super cool, and I thank all of you for coming out of nowhere and playing. I hope STS has provided hours of sometimes-rage-inducing but satisfying and challenging gameplay, and I always love seeing videos and screenshots and reviews of the game, and even bug reports to help me tighten up the game even further.

Looking back on it, it's crazy just how far the game has come. When I first released it, I didn't think I was going to update it much. But then, slowly but surely, more and more things were added and improved upon, eventually leading to the 2.0 update, which would've been unthinkable back in 2018. But I did it to make the game better, and now, I have something I'm truly proud of, and that I think feels pretty professional.

So, that got me thinking about the past. Five years... has it really been five? That's when I remembered - STS had actually existed before being on Steam.

It was a little detail I had forgotten. The early versions of the game weren't really on ANY major game platform, instead being distributed amongst my friend group and on file sharing links hosted on websites I used free website-makers to publish, essentially stranded on a deserted-cobweb of the Internet.

Dusting through these old cobwebs, I discovered the ancient torture device known as "Steven the Sperm Classic". Devised in 2017, this version of Steven the Sperm man... hoooooo boy, It's best I don't tell you, because...


Interested? Click the image or the link below to check it out over on Itch.io!

https://pjsim2001.itch.io/steven-the-sperm-classic


It's over on that platform since I figured not everybody on here is gonna want to play it, so I figured I'd spare the disk space. It's also not DLC since, as you'll see, it's very... historical, so I don't think it exactly fits that.

But anyways, I hope you get SOME sort of enjoyment out of it and think it's cool! Again, thanks for five awesome years!

If you think about it, every birth is an achievement. So for this update, take a second to reflect and look back on everything you've achieved:

• Achievements you've unlocked will refresh with Steam once you enter the Achievements screen on the Extras menu.

Thanks to player "Duck" for letting me know about issues with the achievements. I too can relate to playing certain games, working hard to get an achievement, then not having them unlock with the online service... so hopefully this update will provide at least some way to fix things if that happens. Let me know!

And thanks to everyone for playing! Again, if anything comes up or you just have any questions, leave a comment on one of these updates or make a discussion post!

Never would've thought there'd be two updates in a row dedicated to the cursor, but it is what is...

• You can now toggle whether the cursor will hide itself when buttons are pressed. This is set off by default.
  
• Ingame cursor will no longer jitter when its visible while the screen is moving.
• If cursor hiding is enabled, the cursor will no longer disappear when pressing buttons to navigate certain menus.
• While leaving the Options or Extras menu, you can no longer interrupt the process by picking an option while the button sound plays. Very niche update, but one nonetheless.
  

I only ever had the cursor hide itself since it would jitter on the screen, but now that that's fixed, I figured I'd give you the choice on whether to hide it or not, since I know (from experience) that it can be a bit annoying at times. See you next update!

This update will help keep your pointer in your pants... or window... or whatever.

• The cursor will now become invisible if any button is pressed. Now you don't have to move it offscreen!
  
• You can now choose whether to use STS's cursor or the system default. - go to "Options", "Controls", and tick the "Use System Cursor" box at the bottom of the screen. I remember I thought it was so cool when I first implemented that custom cursor, but I realize now that some people might have their own cursors they'd want to use, whether for fun or for usability/accessibility.
  
• You can now manually stretch the window size. This was originally prevented for the sake of keeping the graphics on nice multiples, but I figure if you want to stretch it you should be able to - you can always reset it by going to the Window Size option in the options menu.
  

I got the opportunity to test STS out on the Steam Deck when my bro brought it over, and everything seems to be working just fine - but the cursor staying on the screen caught my eye, and I realized there was yet more work to be done, so here we are.

Let me know if you encounter any bugs or anything else that should be fixed up! Thanks for playing!