Hades' Star Development blog

As explained in a previous blog post about Hydrogen , the DARK NEBULA update will rework many aspects of the currency economy to address fundamental core problems in the game. While not as far reaching as the Hydrogen changes, the Credit changes will also affect many systems and will be quite visible in daily play.

Equipping ships with Modules is the most important gameplay system in Hades' Star. All combat and economic activities on all star types heavily depend on Modules. The exact same activities can range from mind numbingly boring to extremely fun, depending on how well tweaked the involved Modules are. Without properly designed Modules, there's no progression, no strategy, no gameplay, and no Hades' Star.  Given the importance of Modules, the Dark Nebula update will take the time to carefully review the role and place of every single module in the game. The goal will be to fix the current Module problems described in detail below. 

Hades' Star foundation is the economy around its 3 main resources (Credits, Hydrogen, Crystals). The economic focus of the game gives it a very unique experience compared to all other similar games. Despite the success Hades' Star has found thanks to its unique economy mechanics, there are also serious problems with these mechanics that threaten the long term viability of the game. The Dark Nebula update will focus on fixing the problems head on. Fixing the problems means that existing game mechanics can realize their true potential and become far more interesting than they currently are. It also means means that new exciting mechanics can be properly designed and built on top of the base economic features in the future.

From all the game modes in Hades’ Star, White Stars have the most potential to be a truly unique, truly tactical, truly social game - all important goals for Hades’ Star in general. But the overall complexity in other parts of the game has done White Stars a disservice so far. Modules like Time Warp (which should never have been allowed in White Stars in the first place) and unintended features like bonding Cerberus ships as Leap targets, have taken over gameplay completely, eliminated vast categories of interesting tactical choices, and made the overall experience swift towards random directions over the years. With Dark Nebula, we are taking a step back and dedicating a lot of time and effort required to bring White Stars back to their original vision.

Today, we're releasing Hades' Star: DARK NEBULA in Early Access on the Google Play store. You can download it here and start playing:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ParallelSpace.Cerberus2 (Update: DARK NEBULA is also available in Early Access on iOS and Steam. For detailed instructions on how to join, visit our Discord server https://discord.gg/hadesstar , #dark-nebula-chat channel).  In the first stage of Early Access, you will be able to access Blue Stars and Red Stars (and if you reach all the way to RS5, Dark Red Stars). Later stages of Early Access will focus on other star types. As you'll see in the build, DARK NEBULA update will bring significant changes to Hades' Star. The reason for the significant changes is simple: I want the game to survive for decades into the future. During the first 5 years, we have received feedback and evaluated in game activity from a very large number of players. It's become clear some early design decisions h...

In a few weeks, it will be 5 years since Hades’ Star launched. During that time, we’ve had 3 million players creating an account. Collectively, all these players have discovered over 30 million stars. There are thousands of players that are still active more than 4 years after they first downloaded the game. Far more important than any numbers is the quality of the community that has formed around the game: welcoming to new players and helpful, without aggressive and abusive elements found in other online games that have competitive elements. I have no doubt these qualities of the game will allow it to thrive for many more years in the future. Up until now, we’ve been improving the game with updates small and big, and this will continue in the future. But after 5 years of development, the time feels right to try something bigger than any update we’ve done before. The upcoming DARK NEBULA update, which we announced late last year, will feel more like an expansion pack than a regular...