Greetings, scientists!

April has been a crazy month for us, and we are super excited to show you what we have been working on today! We apologize for being a bit late for this Dev Log, but trust us it’s worth it. So as usual, take a seat, grab a coffee, and dive with us on what April was all about for Lithobreak!



Episode 1 Rework:

This month we heavily focused on refreshing and reworking the Episode 1 for LithoBreak, and it is shaping up to be a major overhaul of the entire game! While we had our work cut out for us, we’re proud to say we have made huge steps towards the final version of the Episode. Once we finish getting everything together, we will hold a limited access Closed Beta for you to try it out before anyone else. We are always looking for our community’s feedback to help shape LithoBreak into the best version of itself, so gathering that feedback in our Closed Beta test is extremely valuable to us.

Throughout the process of completing Episode 1, we improved the gameplay experience by adding in a new voiceover for our main characters, and a heavy rework of some mining mechanics; some of those changes are detailed below.



New Voiceover:

Part of the Episode 1 rework includes a brand new voiceover, giving Eli and Sara more lines and enhancing the story. While the player expands their material gathering and part production operations, the two characters will engage in more comedic conversations. A lot of those will be dropping tips about the mining flow, and help the player figure out the best materials to make even better parts.

This voice over will provide a deeper dive into Sara’s character, and greatly expand her lore! We won’t spoil it there though. ;)



Mining Camera:

After hearing feedback from our community on Discord, we decided to rework the camera from scratch. It will now behave like a more classic orbit-style camera. We spent a lot of time smoothing the camera movements out to make sure everything is set correctly, and will give the player nice feedback while moving around their mining operations.

To help with base navigation, we implemented higher zoom levels to watch your base from afar, but it’s still possible to zoom close to the ground and buildings to see the finer details! These new changes will allow the player to play in a more familiar top-down perspective, as is cherished in classical base building games.



Hex Grid:

A very big change has been implemented in the last couple weeks that we’re absolutely stoked to introduce today: A hexagon based building grid!

This grid will help you place your buildings in a more detailed way, thus making your mining operations easier! The grid is generated based on the moon’s topology, so the player can instantly know if a spot is viable terrain for a new building or not.

All the current buildings in the game have been modified to fit the grid layout properly, and any new additions will follow this same grid pattern. This will be a very nice feature to test out if you’re lucky enough to get in our planned Closed Beta. ;)

This grid will fit very nicely with our reworked camera mentioned previously. The top down view combinated with the new Hex grid will make planning your base much easier and your operations smoother!



That’s it for this month, scientists! Thanks for sticking with us till the end, and we hope you’re as excited as we are for these new features! If you want a sneak peek at what we’re working on next, make sure to join our Discord, and to check out our Dev Live Streams.

Catch you in the Verse,
Tau Ceti Labs