In 2020, I removed Destination Ares from all stores, including Steam.

A few months ago, I quit my job as a tech lead at a game company to start a new studio. While I'm waiting on admin stuff to go through, I've been touching up Destination Ares.

And so, I'm happy to announce: Destination Ares will be re-releasing this Spring.

This game had burnt me out. I haven't updated it since 2017, shortly after launch. It's both incredibly flawed, and incredibly niche. It never has and never will make me enough money to be worth spending any time on.

However, one of the game's fans reached out privately awhile ago, hoping I'd come back to DA one day. And, like all things that you hurt yourself loving, this game means too much to me to let it die so quietly.

Indeed, over the years I had occasionally come back to it when I felt a burst of inspiration. Much of that work never went anywhere and remains unfinished, but it started a base for the new update you'll see this Spring.

So far, the re-release will include:

• new features!
  
  
  • in-flight construction
    
    
  • salvage of systems
• new events!
  
  
• hotly requested difficulty options!
  
  
• and a minor amount of polish and bugfixing

It's still the same old masochistic and obtuse Destination Ares, and I look forward to giving it back to you.

Dear players,

Destination Ares is temporarily disabled for new purchases, effective immediately.

The ongoing situation in the US has become critical, and while self-care and relief from that pain is important, it is the opinion of this American developer & publisher that this game can exacerbate a person's stress, considering current events. It's not the time for a stressful story about fleeing oppressive regimes and questioning the nature of humanity.

Instead, putting resources and time into changing our broken systems, caring for ourselves and others in what's to come, and enabling others to do the same is paramount right now.

Thank you for understanding. Black Lives Matter.

--> What is #loveindies week?

Destination Ares will be 29% off here on Steam! (wtf, why 29%?)

I'm also running a bit of a competition for part of the week, and winners can get swag (stickers!) for themselves and keys to give to their friends.

Find out more about the competition in this blog post.[blog.patrick-scott.com]

I scored a sweet opportunity with the Indie MEGABOOTH folks and will have a little station Thursday and Friday (April 5th and 6th), section 17070.

If you're going to be at PAX, come on by and meet me! I'll have stickers to give out, and you can show off your ridiculous and sadistic ship design skills. :kitchen:

Hope I get to meet some of you.

-Pat

You may have noticed that Destination Ares has had suppressed sales prices on Steam.

This was an intentional experiment. :redscientist:

From launch onwards, every sale was 10% off, plus 1% per sale before it. So, the second sale was 11% and the sixth was 15%. My goal was to build a sense of consistency and transparency with my sales pricing structure.


First, I didn't tell anyone that I was doing this. :evafacepalm: Whoops, there goes the transparency part.

Second, 1% per sale is too slow for a game of this scale, if we consider how many Steam sales can be squeezed in a year. My rough estimate based on previous data is 12 sales per year (5 or 6 weeklongs + 4 seasonals + 2 or 3 randoms [like the Lunar New Year event that happened recently]). If Valve :2017meatball: ever reaches out to do a special promotion, this could go up slightly.

Still, that's only 22% off, max, by the game's launch anniversary, *if* I participated in every sale opportunity (which, for various reasons, doesn't always happen). 22% is a respectable discount, but doesn't light a candle against other pricing schedules.

I could see some games making that '1% per sale' work. It hasn't worked for this title, however.


Step one:
Let you all in on the secret.

Done.

Step two:
Make up a bit for lost time.

This week and this week only, Destination Ares is 20% off on Steam.

Step three: :alarm:
Decide and announce the new pricing structure.

Today it's 20%, next time it'll be 23%, then 26%, and so on.

It's not a dramatic increase from sale to sale, and it's not supposed to be!

I want you to be confident that you're getting a good deal when you buy this game that I put so much literal blood, sweat, and tears into making. Whether you buy it on sale or not, you should know what you're getting into, and part of that is knowing how much you could be paying.

However, if you're going to wait anyway, I don't want you to have to wait until the heat death of the universe. :bluemedic:


Thanks for taking this ride with me.

This update is mostly Quality of Life, bringing in a bunch of fixes and improvements to clean up the experience. :redscientist:

Notably, crew will do off-task work more often. This should make the game demonstrably easier for less attentive AIs. (You still won't win. Git gud)

Patch:

Improvements
• Shortened how long it takes before the minigame tutorial turns on
  
• Slowed minigame tutorial down
  
• Clarified wording in minigame tutorial
  
• Improved clickability of minigame's "Return to Ship" button
  
• Destroyed systems are now more recognizable in their tooltips
  
• Increased how often crew will do off-task work. Should see more idle usage and repairs, especially with jobless crew
  
  
  Fixed
• Fixed some special loss events getting ignored if the player resumes a run after exiting the game
  
• Fixed a couple achievement toggles (incl The Arean Trail. Grats if you got it free), though I suspect there's something else going on here
  
• Fixed typo in one of the Madness possibilities
  
• Fixed a bug in event management that had weird cascading effects
  
• Fixed Loss events getting overridden
  
• Fixed Loss events not spawning
  
• Made some tweaks that hopefully prevent a rare, hard-to-reproduce crash
  
• Fixed some blank crew chatter popping up

---

On a personal note, I'm glad to see the full game is well-liked — especially after a rough Early Access.

Sales haven't been enough, though. No one is surprised that getting visibility is not my strong suit. It seems that I am going to have to begin work on other projects; I've been working for nothing for too many years.

Still, I reserve the right to come back and add to this game at any time ;)

-Pat

Today we leave Early Access.

Welcome players, new and old! I think you'll like what you find in Destination Ares.

By the way, Steam cards are here in time for launch!

New Events
• (Helpful) Critical Systems Repair: a chance to fix something destroyed or broken that you absolutely need to succeed
  
• (Helpful) Gained Experience: a chance to level up the crew or systems
  
• [SECRET] A Dark Truth: a shift in priorities
  
• (Standard) Hungry Crew
  
• (Standard) Electrical Surge
  
  New Secret Achievements
  
• "A Dark Truth"
  
• "Rigged and Armed"
  
• "Glitched Understanding"
  
  Polish
  
• Added custom victory results other than "Reached Destination"
  
• More fading, always more fading
  
  Balance Changes
  
• Reduced how quickly crew pass out from exhaustion, and how that affects their stress levels
  
• Also reduced odds of passing out from an accident (side effect: increased odds of being injured instead)
  
• Increased negative effects and possible results in Puketastic event
  
• Trimmed event timing to be a bit more accurate
  
• Events that feed crew are now more effective
  
  Fixes
  
• Character chatter that's all punctuation should once again show properly
  
• Game Over stats will set its correct height
  
• Achievement popups will actually stay on screen for a couple seconds
  
• Other minor things
  
  Steam Trading Cards Added
  
• 13 Cards; resources from the game
  
• 10 Backgrounds (4 common, 3 uncommon, 3 rare)
  
• 10 Emoticons (4 common, 3 uncommon, 3 rare)
  
• Oh, and some cheeky badges. I hear you like those
  
  ~~ Also included: ~~
  
  v0.9.1 (Hotfix)
  
• Fixed a crash
  
• Smoothed text chunk typing
  
• Colorized in-event dialogue

This is the last planned update before release on September 22nd!

Version 0.9.0 brings a bunch of polish to the table. Most of the focus is on a revamp of the new player experience, as well as improvements to the Game Over presentation. There's also a small bit of new content.

Tons more content coming for the launch!

v 0.9.0 Notes:

Beginner Experience Overhaul

• Introducing your new frenemy: Guide Bot!
  
• Ripped out the old tutorial
  
• Fused together a second beginner ship: the Gerridae
  
• Crafted a better (and more visible) explanation of the minigame
  
  
  New Content
  
• Fuel Line Pressure event
  
• "Viking Funeral" Achievement
  
• Game Over events
  
  
  Polish
  
• Slight gradient overlay
  
• Ship naming input now has a red backdrop to match other UI elements
  
• Talking happens in words and chunks, rather than each letter
  
• Prettified the Game Over screen
  
  
  Balance Changes
  
• Radar now spends twice as much energy over time (doubled chance of burning energy)
  
• Capped how far you can go off course
  
  
  Bugs
  
• Fixed ships being unlocked when they shouldn't be

This has been a whirlwind to make.

The imminent update brings a ton of overhauls and metagame progression, in addition to new content.

Expect a tutorial revamp and even more content in the next updates. Until then, enjoy!

Side note: Destination Ares' price will now be rising to it's release level, in anticipation of the upcoming launch. :)

Metagame Progression
• Unlock content by spending advancement points
  
• Gain advancement points from achievements
  
• Gain advancement points from completed runs
  
  
  New Ships
• Caelifera, a tiny new starter ship for beginner players to learn the ropes
  
• Mantodea, a difficult but powerful ship for veterans
  
  
  New Roles
• Electrician — +2 Mechanical when repairing systems that consume energy
  
• Maimed — Reduced movement speed
  
• Athlete — Increased movement speed, less likely to get maimed
  
• Military — increased priority when tasking (currently locked)
  
  
  Balance Changes
• HUD Warnings about beds, toilets, and kitchens now better account for ignored systems
  
• Loneliness hits unconscious crew for less. Likely harder to get a death from it now, but also more likely to result in psychotic breaks (and dying while in a psychotic state)
  
• Nerfed total loneliness amount
  
• Added chance to become permanently maimed when falling unconcious from an injury
  
• Low mass ships stay on course a bit better
  
• Added storage leak HUD warning
  
• Helms lose a *little* less raw speed when adjusting the ship
  
• Events now give you all their resources (even if you can't store them)
  
• Fuel cells have 1 latent capacity (even when turned off, but not when broken), in addition to the capacity gained while turned on
  
• Reactors' 8 latent capacity now goes away when broken
  
• Increased driftiness of ship (go offcourse less)
  
• Crew will take more care of their needs
  
• Increased hunger resistance
  
• Reduced distance to Ares
  
  
  Customization Options
• Personalities can now be chosen in ship building, under crew appearance
  
• Tons more ship stats unlockable: thrust, navigation, capacity, mechanical score, science score, command score, energy production, materials prod., oxygen recycling + prod., fuel prod., food prod., waste prod., and waste recycling
  
  
  Fixes and Quality of Life Improvements
• Killed a crash bug that's been around since ancient times! (fk yeah!!)
  
• Cut the opening exposition down a bunch
  
• Unplaced objects now trashed from your hand when opening menus in ship building
  
• In-game achievement announcements
  
• Detrimental roles are now colored red in tooltips
  
• Event results now tracked correctly when result tags are off
  
• Mouse pings show regardless of wildly different scene setups
  
• Space dust is more uniform in speed (still a little differentiated for parallax)
  
• Camera controls more lenient and spacious
  
• Turned off system audios in ship building (it was annoying af)
  
• Turned base music levels down a bit
  
• More menu fading
  
• Added reminder on controls bar on how to lock it open
  
• A few minor HUD & UI tweaks