I have a confession to make. I have been living a lie for far too long, and the guilt weighs on my conscience like a great, barnacled, blubbery mass. Lately, it's taken all my energy to keep my head above water, so I'm just going to spout it out:

Whew... That's a relief. I feel like I can breathe again.

So... context. If you're not already a member of our Discord community, this statement makes no sense. You see, I have been denying its existence for more than 7 years. It does exist, though it hasn't always, and it is very, very rare. What started as a running in-joke got carried away, and today I will tell you that story, but first...

My inky-black deception shall not go unanswered. I must begin the long journey of my penance! To begin, I pledge this to you:

When Nova Drift's 1.2 update launches, for the period of June 5th-12th, I will donate 20% of the game's profits to the WDC Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity. And over a hundred other games will do the same!

Read more about their contributions here: https://games.whales.org/world-ocean-day-festival-2025

Please, mark your calendars, grab some amazing games at low prices, and let's do some good together.

Ever since Nova Drift's 2017 Kickstarter campaign concluded and people started migrating into the game's Discord server, players have been asking for a Space Whale.

They've been asking... a lot. The game's reception was more than I expected. I tried to respond to everyone but I was eventually overwhelmed by the torrent of feedback and requests. I got some help from players and also implemented some systems like a feature voting website and bots. Those helped, but even after I found a community manager, it was still a leviathan task.

After a while, I noticed that the more players requested Space Whales, the more other people piled on. This only became more true as it went unanswered. Interesting.

Years later into development the meme was still going strong, and people were enjoying it, so I leaned into it, pretending to forbid people from discussing Space Whales.

Naturally, this resulted in community members warning new players that they could get banned for even mentioning a whale, further stoking the fires. By the time the game started to go viral, I was refusing to engage with discussions about whales in any form, and the meme self-perpetuated for years after.

It was funny to me for a while, and it seemed to be a good thing for the community, but I felt compelled to take it to the next level. April Fool's was coming up soon, so that was perfect. I usually made fake patch notes or released a mini-game, but this time I did this:

Kuva?? In this economy?!

Even with all the in app purchases and pay-to-win-dark-patterns-bullshit I was surprised that some people thought this was real, but I shouldn't have been. Every developer knows you can't make gamers read. I'm a gamer. I don't read.

Doing this made me realize that that the funniest thing I could do would be to secretly, finally, add the whale to the game. I'd already made the art. I had to do it.

I started work on this shortly after, but it got sidetracked, so the assets were in the game for a while before I actually made it possible for the whale to spawn in game. I realized that this could be fun misdirection. Knowing that my players love to data mine, I gave the files confusing names as an attempt at plausible deniability, but it was not enough. Players used the Undertale mod tools to rip the sprites and then assemble them into something approximating a whale, but I expected this. I claimed that putting them in the engine was the easiest way for me to spoof that April Fool's day shot. But mostly I tried to stay out of the conversation. I'd muddied the waters enough that, with the help of the other community members, people weren't sure what was true anymore. Perfect.

At long last, I put it in the game as a rare spawn. Riiiight before the game fully released.

A really, really rare spawn. If you're interested in the way it works under the hood, it's like this: Every few minutes the game is likely to have a chance to spawn a Cargo Train. Whenever that chance occurs, there is a 1/7777 chance that it instead the Space Whale appears.

I didn't want players to try to kill it, so I made it almost indestructible. Also, as long as it swims around, it unleashes a stream of orbs which grant experience. Early game, this translates to a whole lot of free levels, but its not so much that it breaks the game balance. So, if anyone did manage to kill it, it would be to their own detriment. One of our top players did actually manage to bring it down, and I doubled its health as punishment for his sin. Whales are our friends.

I wanted the encounter to be infrequent enough that seeing it was actually insane, but not so uncommon that long time veterans never saw it. Estimating play time, my friend and I tried to make it so that you'd be likely to see it once every few hundred hours. My plan was that it'd be just rare enough that players couldn't be sure whether evidence was doctored. After all, the art had existed in the game files quite a while before anyone captured it in a screen shot. This was of course unsustainable as video evidence did eventually appear, but by the time it did, we were way past the truth mattering. I'd just claim the video wasn't playing or that Discord was busted.

Or I'd deflect.

Or I'd just act really impressed at their forgery skill...

No longer shall I deceive you. Instead, let us revel in the existence of the Space Whale together. Nay, let us celebrate all whales! For we are all connected!

In honor of World Ocean Day and WDC, I have snuck a Space Whale calf into the game. See if you can figure out how to encounter it during the 1.2 update!

Oh?! It's hatching!

Listen, maybe a 7-year-running gag is taking things a bit too far. Maybe I shouldn't have lied, obfuscated, and denied the evidence against my claims. I owe it to my players to apologize for that deception. So, I'm sorry.

Moving forward, what I can promise you is this (and I mean this from the bottom of my icy, black, abyssal heart):

(Unless its funny.)

Cosmic love,

Jeffrey (Chimeric)

Oh, right, I should probably talk about the update:

June 5th's 1.2 update introduces a new mode of play, "Daily Challenge", where you can take on a new seeded challenge each day, competing with players globally.

Here are a few of the new modes of play you can take on:

SUPER NOVA BROTHERS – Begin your journey alongside a unique and powerful Ally construct. You and the Ally share a portion of damage taken.

SERPENTINE DRIFT – Begin your journey as a Leviathan and munch orbs to increase your size. Protect your head, and don't chomp your own tail! Your only threats are cosmic hazards and yourself.

BOSS RUSH – Face a gauntlet of every boss. Bosses are faster and much tougher. You earn massively increased score and experience.

All together, there are 10 main Daily Challenges, and 23 modifiers that can be applied to them to in different combinations. This results in an enormous number of unique challenges that cycle daily.

Other Daily Challenge modes include: Cosmic Egg, 20-Point Draft, 45-Point Draft, Purity, Turbo, Turbo Endless, and Way Of The Sword.

Daily Challenge launches June 5th, along with the World Ocean Day Steam Sale, as a free update. I hope you love it.

Thanks for reading!

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

Hello all,

If you didn't already know, the Daily Challenge Update will launch on June 5th. It's stable and ready for you to preview in the BETA branch if you want to check it out early. Thanks to everyone that helped us shape it up over the last few months.

Also, Pixeljam is going to start streaming again to support the Kickstarter Campaign to get the Nova Drift soundtrack on vinyl and CD. The campaign is 40% funded with only 2 weeks left, so we really need your support to make it happen! Even if you don't want vinyl or CDs, there are plenty of digital-only rewards for those that pledge.

Click here to visit the campaign.

I'm going to start streaming again as well, please subscribe to Pixeljam's Twitch Channel[www.twitch.tv] to get notified when we go live. Here is the planned schedule. All streams start at 3 PM EST:

• Friday May 30
  
• Tuesday June 3
  
• Friday June 6
  
• Tues June 10
  
• Thursday June 12 (last day of the Kickstarter!)

This Friday (May 30), I'll be examining the track Chronos and deconstructing it live, and probably starting a remix for it as well. If you have ever wondered how the music for Nova Drift gets made, this is a good opportunity for it. You'll even see my face for the first time!

Hope to see you there,

- Miles @ Pixeljam

The Kickstarter Campaign to bring the Nova Drift Soundtrack to Vinyl and Compact Disc has launched!

Check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/milestilmann/nova-drift-soundtrack-on-vinyl-and-cd

• Printed on BioVinyl, no toxic dino-sludge involved.
  
• Compact disc options for those that could give 2 craps about vinyl.
  
• Digital-only rewards for those that could give 3 craps about physical rewards. Grab some extra discounted Steam keys for your buddies!
  
• No-reward option for those that like to put money into creative projects and receive nothing in return (wow!)
  
• Shipping to 6 different countries supported now, but if we get enough requests for certain countries I will add them to the campaign. Drop a comment here if you want to buy Vinyl but your country is not supported.

Please spread the word as well to all Nova Drift fans! We’ll need a lot of support on this if we’re going to meet our goal.

Talk to us in the #soundtrack channel on our Discord[discord.gg] if you have questions or feedback.

- Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello Drifters,

After much blood, sweat, and a few minor electrocutions, the Daily Challenge Update is ready for beta testing!

Switch to the BETA branch on Steam to check it out. Here are the details:

Take on a new seeded challenge each day. Here are 3 examples:

Boss Rush: Face a gauntlet of every boss. Bosses are faster and much tougher. You earn massively increased score and experience.
Serpentine Drift: Begin your journey as a Leviathan and munch orbs to increase your size. Protect your head, and don't chomp your own tail! Your only threats are cosmic hazards and yourself.
Super Nova Brothers: Begin your journey alongside a unique and powerful Ally construct. You and the Ally share a portion of damage taken.
Other modes include: 20-Point Draft, 45-Point Draft, Cosmic Egg, Purity, Turbo, Turbo Endless, and Way Of The Sword.

Also, we have more information on the Soundtrack Kickstarter Campaign:

• We are making CDs as well as Vinyl.
  
• We are pressing on BioVinyl, which is fossil-fuel-free.
  
• It launches on May 20th.
  
• Please sign up to be notified here when it starts!
  
• Tell your drifting buddies who also might be interested! We'll need a few hundred people to pledge in order to make our goal.

Thanks for testing, and potentially supporting the soundtrack campaign as well.

Take care,

-Miles @ Pixeljam

Hello all,

I'm considering pressing up vinyl for the Nova Drift Soundtrack, but I only want to move forward on it if there is enough interest. It would not be the entire soundtrack (since it's almost 3 hours long), but probably 2 discs (4 sides, about 15-20 mins each side) of select tracks from the OST, with some player input about what's included as well.

So... drop any comment here (doesn't matter what the comment says, "+1" is good enough) if you would actually be interested in purchasing it on release. Price would probably be around 30 dollars for a double disc set or 20 dollars for a single disc, depending on how many we made and the production cost of each. Thanks!

- Miles @ Pixeljam

Made a few changes to comply with Steam Deck verification requirements:

• Fixed non-value settings items getting greyed out incorrectly on Steam Deck
  
• Fixed Window Size setting being selectable on Steam Deck
  
• Fixed loading and saving settings that are disabled on Steam Deck
  
• Fixed Custom Skin sprite overlapping the score on the End Score screen
  
• Upgrade screen descriptions now use the standard-scaling small font to comply with Steam Deck text size requirements
  
• We now hide key indicators in construct UI when using gamepad controls
  
• We now don't grey out the Online Leaderboard setting item on Steam Deck
  
• Fixed line wrapping length in end game unlock messages

Announcing our latest Steam Bundle:

Genome Guardian is a criminally underexposed game and I aim to do something about it. It's a perfect fit alongside Nova Drift, so we are bundling UP.

Genome Guardian is a turret roguelite survival game. There's a lot I like about it. It's well presented, creative, funny, and inventive. There is also a huge amount of content to unlock.

I particularly like the weapon combination system which is a blast to experiment with. Any combination of Pistol, Shotgun, SMG, or Bomb results in a unique weapon type, for a total of 70 weapons.

Just as you starting to master it, it'll surprise you with entirely new game modes, like one that transforms the game from a central turret config to a vertical shooter.

Complete the bundle by clicking here, as HARD as you can.

Alpherior's next game, Cell Command, is also shaping up to be very interesting. I'm pretty interested to see where this is going, so I'll be following for sure.

Check it out, maybe drop a wish list?

Hello Drifters,

This update focuses on achieving two main goals: Offering an even smoother experience on Steam Deck than we already do, and preparing the game for porting. While there are many optimization challenges associated with porting (the focus of the next update), I'm particularly excited to share the game experience with mobile and Switch players.

A few highlights from 1.1:

• Reworked the Settings menus: Each category section is now a tabbed page
  
• Fonts are crisper & more readable, especially at non-native / small resolutions
  
• Ensured all controller glyphs, tutorials, and messages are accurate, large, and clear for Steam Deck and future consoles and mobile devices
  
• Reworked unlock progression, improving the pacing for players of varying skill levels
  
• Support for virtual keyboard high score entry on Steam Deck
  
• Many bug fixes

Here's the full change log.

Now that I've had a fair bit of time to recover from launch and play with a few other projects, I'm feeling ready to start thinking about new content for Nova Drift again.

Last month, we previewed a few ideas for Nova Drift Weapon Mutations.[blog.novadrift.io]

I've continued iterating on what Weapon Mutations could be, and have arrived at a experimental concept for each existing weapon. The challenge is balancing unique weapon identity with the difficulty of tuning effectively twice as many weapons as the base game has. It still sounds insane to me, but... I'll figure something out?

Here are a few more experimental concepts:

• Blaster Mutation: Kinetic Blast
  
  • Kinetic Blast is an innately-charging, hard-hitting, close-range weapon that fires a pair of focused blasts ahead of you. These blasts can launch enemies
    
  • Kinetic Blast automatically charges up while you move, gaining charge from your speed. While equipped, mobility reductions don't affect you
    
  • Kinetic Blast fires either manually or triggers when you collide head-on. In the latter case, its damage is also scaled by your crash damage modifiers
    
  • Targets launched by Kinetic Blast can collide with other targets, dealing additional blast damage to each-other on impact, based on their respective hull strength and velocities

• Grenade Mutation: Sticky Bomb
  
  • Instead of exploding on impact or proximity, Sticky Bombs attach to enemies and explode after a short fuse, triggering all other nearby Sticky Bombs
    
  • Stacking additional Sticky Bombs on a target that already has some increases the fuses of the other attached Sticky Bombs
    
  • Sticky Bombs triggered by other Sticky Bombs increase their damage and blast radius for each reaction in the chain
    
  • Compared to Grenades, Sticky Bombs have a greater rate of fire, and deal more damage, but produce no cluster explosives

• Dart Mutation: Harpoon
  
  • Instead of dealing splash damage or burn damage to targets they're lodged in, Harpoons deal burn damage via a searing hot tether strung between them and their shooter
    
  • Compared to Darts, Harpoons deal much more impact damage, last longer, and have a much slower rate of fire

• Swords Mutation: Greatsword
  
  • Instead of deploying a pair of Swords, you deploy a massive Greatsword
    
  • Compared to Swords, Greatsword is slower, larger, much more powerful, and indestructible, but cannot create Spark Projectiles
    
  • Greatsword deals more damage the more missing hull you have
    
  • Wielding a Greatsword provides a small amount of armor and damage reduction
    

I'm sure these ideas will change and evolve as I experiment with them. My current estimation is that Weapon Mutations will appear in Nova Drift's first DLC, which may ship alongside all new Gear.

A few years ago, I received this amazing piece of fan art, and I never got it out of my head:

Shield Gear: Chakram, by Arch_Imedes

If there's time, I'd love to introduce something like this to the game. Since there is considerably more Weapon and Body Gear options in the game than there are Shield Gear, maybe this DLC could include a small Shield Pack to even it out.

On BlueSky[bsky.app] (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram[www.instagram.com], or TikTok[www.tiktok.com]


We've got quite an active discord[discord.gg] with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos!

Jeffrey (Chimeric)

If you're one of the many people who have wishlisted Nova Drift, but haven't pulled the trigger, the demo is HERE. Tell your friends. They must know the exaltation of biomechanical wings cutting graceful arcs through luminiferous aether. You can show them.

The Demo Version allows you to reach wave 60, and rank your account up to 15. We even snuck in some Super Mods so players can learn how they work earlier than you'd normally access them.

Check it, here.

Even though we've been pretty quiet, we've been busy:

Nova Drift is already perfectly playable on Steam Deck, but it isn't listed as "Verified" for a few trivial reasons, which we're solving. Getting verified means players can easily find it while shopping on their Steam Deck.

We've started working on the many obstacles in the way of smooth console and mobile porting. Devices with small screens or low resolutions would benefit from larger and crisper text.

The first order of business has been using tabs on menus so we have the screen real estate to increase text size, or to add any new features we want.

For readability on small screens, we've improved text rendering, which will benefit all versions of the game. No more jaggy pixels!

The hardest part of porting is getting the game to run smoothly on low-end devices. Namely, Nintendo Switch and phones. Computers are beasts compared to those. For better and for worse, Nova Drift is a game that won't try to stop you from filling the screen with projectiles if that's how you want to play, so we have a lot of work to do on optimizations for projectiles and collision detection.

To stress test, I asked players to create the most degenerate builds they could in terms of performance, they said "challenge accepted", and it was so much worse than I ever could have imagined. 50,000 Torrent projectiles on screen at once, easily.

The two worst offenders were builds aptly named "Lag Mines" and "Lag Ceptors", which maximize Torrent projectiles using mines or interceptors. And they only take around 22 mods to assemble.

"Lag Mines is unrivaled in fps krangling powers if you save up all 18 mines, but Lag Ceptors provides a constant stream of lag instead of a single burst. Though, the funny thing is you could totally build both of these at once."

Obviously, we can't solve this only through optimization, but I doubt that from a gameplay perspective, 50,000 projectiles is truly more meaningful than a thousand, assuming the damage expected is being done. We'll look into dynamically controlling the number of objects on screen, trading quantity for power when needed, among other things.

Most players and our team seem to agree that the most valuable addition to the game would be a Daily Challenge mode, which we discussed in our previous post. Today I will talk about by far the most popular feature request, Gear Mutations, which are also on the table for a potential future update.

So the idea is that around the level 20 mark, you're offered a chance to "mutate" a weapon, body, or shield gear in a way that changes its fundamental behavior. While they can be very strong, they're more side-grades than direct upgrades to existing gear behaviors. We'd probably start with 1 mutation for each weapon for the first update. I can see a few ways it could be handled...

Gear Mutations could completely replace weapons:

• Create and release a massive orb. The orb is slow-moving, decelerates, and deals burn damage to enemies it passes through.
  
• Only one orb can exist at a time. While an orb exists, firing creates a torrent of twisting, damaging submunition projectiles that erratically home in on the orb.
  
• Submunitions that make contact with the orb are consumed by it, increasing its size. The orb also consumes any targets it destroys.
  
• The orb detonates after a short time after it stops consuming, dealing blast damage in a radius proportional to its size.
  
• Modifiers to projectile count instead apply to submunitions.

Or it could instead modify existing weapon behaviors:

• Pulsewave fires a single, intangible projectile instead of a cone of projectiles.
  
• Your pulses now originate from the projectile instead of from you, with 50% reduced damage and size.
  
• During the projectile's lifetime, it creates 7-10 pulses in random positions around it, each with randomized size and damage.
  
• Modifiers to projectile size affect the number of pulses.

Years ago, when Thermal Lance was added to the game, Weapon Mutations were pitched like this:

I'd also interested in creating a particularly special mutation for the Blaster weapon, rewarding players for never swapping off of it. You know, kind of a Magikarp situation.

We'll see where we're at after porting is well underway!

On BlueSky[bsky.app] (My preferred platform), Twitter, Instagram[www.instagram.com], or TikTok[www.tiktok.com]

We've got quite an active Discord[discord.gg] with a very chill and inclusive community. The dev team is also pretty active there. There are channels for #ask-the-devs and #feedback. I also enjoy the #game-dev-help channel, which is a space for current and aspiring developers to learn and collaborate. So... come chat with us!

Steam Reviews really help! As a tiny operation, Nova Drift relies on its quality and reputation to sell, and fantastic reviews help people choose games with less exposure. Please do take a moment to fill out a short review, even if it's only a few words. It just might make a big difference.

To everyone who has patiently awaited the release of Nova Drift throughout its long development, I appreciate you! It wouldn't be half the game it has become without its community, and I thank you for the opportunity to do what I love for a living. I can't wait to show you what I've got planned for the future. Good luck out there, in the cosmos!

Jeffrey (Chimeric)