July '25: Characters and Clarity

Two big (categories of) changes this month. 

New Characters

Bee (@maeribee) has been hard at work on our key art, and in order to convey the co-op nature of this game, we needed more characters. She concepted out a bunch of options, I picked my favorites, and Seb (@wurmfud) interpreted them into glorious pixel art. I'll probably mete this out one-by-one on Bluesky, but as a devoted reader of the devlog, you get them all right now!

This is Bubblegum. They worked with (for? under?) the big extraction corp for a long time, until SOLARFLARE shut the mines down. They like eating corn on the cob with lots of butter.

This is Ed. It was created by the big robotics corp last year, but they left a big security vulnerability in its code that it exploited (oops!), so it could leave, so it did. It found SOLARFLARE by accident! It sometimes stares at people for uncomfortably long, with its massive unblinking iris.

This is <UNPRONOUNCEABLE>. She was a subject of the big bioengineering corp, until SOLARFLARE shut the lab down. She is very shy, but knows a lot of jokes.

This is Fox (no relation). He maintained equipment for the big armory corp, until SOLARFLARE raided it and he left with them. He likes talking about philosophy, even though his team stopped listening an hour ago.

Eventually, you'll be able to pick which one to play, and they'll be mechanically differentiated. For now, they're randomly selected, and have complete flexibility (which is to say that they're mechanically identical, sorry).

Clarity

SOLARFLARE has been called "totally inscrutable" by its biggest fans, which is not exactly an Overwhelmingly Positive review. It's tricky to get this right. These crunchy, tactical, turn-based games are fun because you get a big menu of options that you can mix and match to make wildly effective combinations. But in order for mixing and matching to feel good, you need to be able to quickly understand what each option does; otherwise, it's exhausting to read 20 of them (eventually 80 of them). So I dubbed this month Mission Clarity:

• Floating combat text
• Character sheet with stats
• In-game help page, with all actions, stats, and controls clearly defined
• Tooltips for status effects and enemies
• White outline to indicate whose turn it is
• Clear labeling for the Map screen, with your character moving from left to right across it

Hopefully it's more scrutable now.

What's Next?

Great question! It depends. I'll see whether people are less confused in this latest round of playtesting. If not, I'll do more UI work. If so, it's  probably time for more Upgrades, or more biomes so we can start to work on a trailer.

Wait, did you read to the end? I guess you liked this devlog. So it would be neat if you scrolled to the top to Like this post, and/or share it on Bluesky. Marketing an indie game is a hellish travail; with a few mere clicks, you can make it slightly less so.