2025 Roadmap
Happy New Year!
After quite a lengthy pause, I will continue working on Blastronaut through 2025. I apologise to everyone who was disappointed with the recent lack of updates, and I will try to make it up this year.
Since the original roadmap ended in 2023, I have had time to analyse the current issues and develop a plan to move forward.
I will present my roadmap for finishing the game and explain the upcoming changes. These changes are going to be significant, and the game feel can be quite different in the end. Still, as far as I can see, they are necessary to breathe new life into the game and hopefully create a better flow for both the new and the experienced players.
First, let me briefly explain the current issues that the game has and what makes them difficult to solve. After all, the last updates in 2023 were directed towards solving some of these issues, but in hindsight, the solutions might not have benefited the game flow. The mission tree and questline were made to guide the player further into the game, but I’m not happy with how it works since it ended up hindering the exploration and sandbox-style gameplay. I’m sure many of you wish for more content, but it becomes increasingly more difficult to add it to the game and ensure that players will find it. Finally, I’m also not happy with the replayability of the game, which is quite a bummer since so much effort has gone into crafting this infinite procedurally generated world. Most of these issues likely boil down to the game's progression, and this is what I will try to tackle first.
Here is the new roadmap, and if it goes smoothly, it will hopefully end with the full release at the end of the year.
1. January "Gates". The very first minor update will arrive this Friday (3rd of January). It will package together a few fixes and features I have been developing but could not fit into an update earlier. I have heard your feedback about bringing the teleportation gates to the game. While these might not solve all your fast travel problems instantly, they can be a fun tool to traverse the world if taken advantage of. There is also a new biome called “Mesa” that will come with a bit more dangerous anomalies, but these will also have a positive side effect that I will let you discover on your own.
2. February “Loop”. Next, I will get right into the enormous task of implementing a better game loop. Instead of playing one world infinitely, I will break up the gameplay into smaller, more manageable dives. The dives should feel satisfying and feel different from one another. Initially, I will have to reduce the amount of content the game currently has to fit it back into the progression later on.
3. April “Home”. After that, I will concentrate on the meta-progression called “home”. There should be a place for the player to be in between the dives and provide a bigger purpose. Also, upgrading your “home” will feel rewarding.
4. June “Combat”. Although combat is not the central part of the game, it should be more balanced and varied than now. This is where I can introduce some bigger baddies as well.
5. August “Expeditions”. The variety of planets should be improved next. Refining the mission system and creating new types of challenges for the player. The current liquid system is also quite buggy and requires a technical redesign (it is impossible to avoid the falling water when the player travels upwards due to the infinite game world, but at least the glitches and crashes caused by multithreading should get fixed).
6. November “Release”. The final polish of the game takes a lot of time, which is why I have left the longest time slot. I think it should be dedicated to just adding some regular content and then playtesting and balancing the game.
And this is my plan. The exact content and names of the updates are subject to change, but this will show where my priorities lie. I hope you will support me through this journey with your advice and feedback. But please don’t be too harsh; it is just one person (me) currently working on the game. I will have to redesign the save game format for certain updates, so you will have to start a new game at some point. If you rather prefer to experience the final redesign of the game, then next Christmas is likely the best time for that.
Thank you!