Last weekend, we were showcasing Star★Vaders at PAX West in Seattle! It was really awesome seeing all the fellow devs and meeting with so many players! 

I had built a last minute demo from our beta build to showcase at PAX, and it was very well received - barely any bugs and the new changes worked great! So I fixed a few of the bugs and decided we would be uploading here!

Although this is likely the one of the biggest Demo update we've ever had, it is still a rather "small" content update, most of the changes are mechanical changes, or QoL features. If you'd like to check out and help us playtest *new content* for the game, you can join our closed beta from our Discord server over here .

What's new in the demo: 

What's new in 0.5?

Updated Visuals!

Added animations for all simple invaders in the game, and a new card shader too! We're planning to have animations for most entities in the game, and are still working on adding more.

Even Better Pilots!

We've updated the two pilots to truly have unique mechanics. Noel now plays with her unique *Frozen* card mechanic, while Zeke's deck has been simplified to make it smoother to play.

The pilots also now have unique cards and artifacts they can find in their card pool to support their new archetypes! (Even Roxy has new, unique cards!) You can click on the "Loadout" when selecting pilots and scroll down to check out what they have! (We're still working on the Glossary).

And much, much more!  We've done a HUGE balance pass throughout the game and changed almost 25% of the cards. Check out the full changelog at the bottom of the post. 

What's next? (delay)

We will unfortunately *not* be participating in the October Next Fest, and will also not be releasing into EA this year. We're still having discussions, but we're trying to make sure the game is in the best state possible and have enough time to market the game before it comes out! 

I'm also not sure when the next demo update will be, but I do want to rework the tutorial again - I've seen some PAX players confused about certain aspects of the game (like how bombs work), so I think it can still be improved.

Join our discord for closed beta testing!

In the meantime, if you're starving for more content, please join our discord server and request access to our beta! We are currently testing the second mech, new bosses, and difficulty levels in our closed beta.

Don't forget to Wishlist the game on steam!

Full changelog: 

FEATURES and NEW CONTENT:

- New Act previews to see what boss you will encounter each Act!

- Added Wild, Auto, Recycling, Salvage, components

- Added unique pilot cards, unique pilot artifacts, and updated pilot mechanics

- Steam Cloud Save

- New card shader

- Added idle animations for most entities in the game

- Added bug reporting feature (press F2)

- Better card input system (no more forced cancelling)

BALANCING:

- Added a minimum deck size of 8, card removal is now a flat 5000 stars (thin deck infinites were becoming a problem. Infinites are okay, but they should be fun to play and fun to obtain. This change aims to help with that! The same infinites and thin decks are still possible, but need clever gameplay to obtain instead of just hoarding money to remove cards. We are also adding a special artifact that removes the deck limit, since rules are meant to be broken!). But either way, we're always looking for more feedback and thoughts from players! 

- Whenever you are struck, Junk goes to your discard pile now

- Skip reward now grants 500 stars

- X-Ploder is now 0 cost but no longer draws a card

- SCR4P now strikes a random Shield-less invader and is now a Rare

- Shatter no longer draws a card, but fires a bullet *down* instead

- Hothead is now Legendary

- Expanded the max artifact count to 27

- Anti-Mag has been nerfed so it only works once per card. 

- Buffed Plasma Bomb to be able to be placed up to 3 tiles (from 2)

- Reworked Recycler to generate random cards whenever you purge a card.

- Nerfed Red Giant with "Increase cost of Bomb cards by 1"

- Salve now unburns ALL cards anywhere.

- Buffed many movement cards by 1 (Into the Fray, Momentum, Respite)

- Repair now draws and plays from hand as well.

- Flight now moves to any tile.

- Insulation now also draws on Burnt cards.

- Starter Fluid now works with Tactics too

- Operating System now only works once per turn, but gives +2 heat sink.

- Run & Gun has been renamed to BackFire!, and now works with Fire synergies.

- Annihilation is now 2 cost.

- Mimic has been nerfed so that Junk goes to your discard pile.

- Artillery Strike can now fire from both top and bottom

- Temporarily removed Rising Star, Care Package, Dust Devil,  and the Alpha-Gamma chain

- Reworked Threat Analyzer to draw a card whenever you move into a Danger Zone

- Interlinked now gives Linked for every 5 cards in your deck

- MisFire! has been reworked to fire in ALL diagonals.

- QuickFire! now makes the *most expensive* card free

- Heat Waste now fires bullets in diagonals

- Reactor Burn now adds Meltdown to your discard

- Plasma Fire! now also counts cards in your discard pile

- And likely more changes I have forgotten to note down! 

BUGFIXES:

- Updated a lot of the tutorial tips, card descriptions, and more info tooltips.

- Fixed Kraken soft lock 

- Time Angel no longer channels doom

- Fixed run time issues

- Shrapnel now never "whiffs" out of the grid on an edge bomb

- Fixed card input crash

- Fixed card glitchyness when pressing too fast

- Better seeding and rigged tutorial