Version 2026.8.5 – Roll film: an intro, VEGA's voice and a research fanfare 🎬

August 5, 2026

This update turns launching the game into movie night: a real space intro plays on your very first start, VEGA's prologue got proper staging — letterbox bars, camera work, a glitch effect — and she finally has a voice. On top, the HUD now celebrates the moment your knowledge unlocks new research, the little critters move into the Codex, and a whole playtest round of fixes ships too. 🍿

Roll film on first launch. Between the title splash and the menu there's now a roughly 28-second space cinematic: a starfield and nebula peel out of the dark, the camera pans past the sun while a voxel fighter crosses the frame, then a planet approach and a white flash — menu. All of it is rendered fully in-engine, with the game's actual art instead of a video file — so it always looks exactly like what you're about to play. It runs once per install, any key skips it, and the Credits screen has a new "Watch intro" button for replays. 🎬

VEGA's prologue has a stage now. The three opening pages — a small ship, no memory of who you are, then VEGA crackling awake — no longer play over a black full-screen dialog: letterbox bars slide in, the camera slowly orbits your actually-landed ship from the outside, pushes in closer, and on the third page snaps back to the pilot seat with a glitch flash as VEGA boots. Esc still skips everything. 🎥

And she has a voice! While VEGA's lines type out, vocoder radio-babble crackles along — language-independent, so German and English sound equally alive, and it stops the instant a line finishes or you click on. On top of that, story memories now pulse as short flashbacks: light letterbox, cooler desaturated colours, a brief burst of grain — without ever taking your controls away. 📻

Research announces itself now. You used to have to open the tech menu to notice that your gathered knowledge was enough for a new blueprint. Now the HUD celebrates the moment: the blueprint's icon appears top-centre with "New research available!" and its name, plus a glow and a soft two-note chime. (Fixed along the way: achievements were mute — their sound simply never existed. They get a little rising fanfare now.) 🔬

And to make that moment mean something again: the research tree got a proper stretch. Until now the whole tree topped out at 24 knowledge points, and about half of all blueprints — every ship included — cost nothing at all; gather a little and you'd see the entire tree at once. Now every blueprint has its price (early ones ~3–10 knowledge, late-tier heavyweights like the Deathblock up to 120), and the chains are real progression: ships need the docking module, cannons need hull plating. The knowledge faucets are capped in return — arcade minigames pay per star newly earned instead of for every replay, and taming the tenth specimen of the same species no longer pays out. Don't worry about your saves: banked knowledge and everything already unlocked stays yours — the new upper tiers simply sit above what most of you have. There's something to research again! 🧠

The little critters join the Codex. Butterflies, fireflies and friends can now be scanned with the handheld scanner — 28 kinds with names of their own, a new Micro-fauna chapter in your discoveries and a small knowledge bonus per first find. Thermal vision shows them as small named contacts. And the bat-like skyray is history: in its place, the wisp now drifts through the night — a small glowing orb whose colour is different on every world. 🦋

And the playtest round: attacking animals no longer walk right through you (hunters keep a size-based distance), titans no longer spawn half inside ruins or bite through walls, "G: loot" only shows up when it actually works — and a full backpack tells you so instead of staying silent. Vitals below 10 % blink red and beep until they recover, the controls hint finally mentions jumping and crouching, and NPC ships in space — traders, UFOs, raiders, fellow players — fly smoothly instead of stuttering. 🔧

Enjoy leaning back — and if the new intro gives you goosebumps or you scan your first wisp: we want screenshots! ✨