Happy Monday! At the end of June, we shared a comprehensive development update in our blog. Today, we're proud to announce that Space Station Designer v. 0.5.0 became available on Steam Playtest minutes ago.

This update introduces a series of mechanics, updated interactive tutorials, bug fixes, balancing of the game's database, and a lot more! We've also temporarily removed some of the existing mechanics and broken down the game into three phases, as one recurring piece of feedback that we received is that the large amount of options available made the game quite overwhelming to newcomers. This update focusses entirely on phase 1. We'll be opening up phases 2 and 3 in subsequent updates.

Space Station Designer still supports modding via the cross-platform modding service mod.io. You can find Space Station Designer's page in mod.io here: https://spacestationdesigner.mod.io/. The system allows you to create new space station modules, resupply spacecraft, and astronauts. It also provides a mechanism to replace the original ones that already ship with the game.

If you're interested in making mods, we've written a comprehensive guide which you can find here. The guide comes with seven sample mods, and provides extensive documentation so that you can use them as a starting point for your own creations. The samples include new modules such as 'Skylab', a realistic replacement for the 'Space Shuttle', and a realistic version of the 'Apollo' spacecraft. You can find some screenshots here.

As always, we're very interested in your feedback! Please let us know if you run into any bugs or glitches, and any thoughts regarding gameplay mechanics, the interactive tutorials, and the user interface.

Lastly, we're also interested in learning more about the gameplay strategies that you're adopting. The game has a lot of moving parts, so if you come across strategies that give you an unfair advantage (or disadvantage!), let us know by either opening a thread in the message board.

For our next milestone, we'll start polishing the elements from phase 2 and addressing any issues reported by you in the forums/message boards.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this large new update.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Best wishes,

--Ignacio, Mauricio, and Nicolas (Polar Motion)