Astronaut: The Best update for 17 October 2023

Today marks the first major content update for Astronaut: The Best! Besides the usual bug fixes and polish, we've got some significant improvements tailored to address player feedback. Since much of our early criticism has centered around the game's difficulty, we asked each of the High Priests of Flaustria to help by giving our players a blessing.

In short, this update adds:

• Time Travel
• New Challenges
• Friendlier Metagame Progression
• Bug Fixes
• Our First Sale - 25% off, this week only!
• ICYMI, we're Steam Deck Verified!

Accolades Trailer

Before we get into the details, here's a new trailer to share what games media thinks of AtB so far:

Now let's dive further into the update! To explain more, here are the High Priests of Flaustria.

Time Travel

Even though we tried to make failure fun and rewarding, it's still human nature to want to succeed, and understandable to tilt when plans go awry. That's why we're adding a Restart Day option to the System Menu. When your run turns to ruin due to wheel of fortune or human flaw, you can now make a choice whether to ride it out or turn back time to give it a fresh try.

Details:

• The Restart Day button is unlocked when you have completed two or more runs. The Lion will tell you about it in the Void.
• To access the button, open the in-game System Menu (the gear at the right of the top HUD bar). Restart Day will appear on the left side if you've met the conditions above.
• The button will reset to the start of the current day, undoing everything that has happened since (including any unlocks or other metagame changes). Be aware that the space launch, parade, and final judgment all count as one day, so restarting anytime during that sequence will return to the morning before the launch.

This is basically institutionalized save scumming, because we the devs don't have any problem with save scumming. We encourage you to explore and find the game's many weird avenues for failing forward, but at the same time, if you're invested in a certain outcome we don't want you to feel like you've wasted an hour or more. (That true final mission can be pretty tough, after all.)

New Challenges

Five new Challenges are now available in the postgame store! We felt that there wasn't quite enough variety in challenges originally, so players too often felt obligated to pick ones that were repetitive or upsetting. This new batch offers a pleasant assortment ranging from silly changes to straightforward difficulty spikes to real hardcore sicko stuff.

New Challenge Descriptions

• Blind Date: Astronauts start with none of their traits revealed
• Nabobs of Negativity: Televised judges have a higher difficulty.
• Same Name Game: All astronauts have the same name, which cannot be changed
• Super Accountant Mode: The HUD does not track your resources; you must do so manually.
• Alternative Schooling: You cannot train astronauts.

Friendlier Metagame Progression

Every mission in AtB is built to be replayable, but we don't ever want players to feel like they're "grinding" to unlock new options or progress the metagame story. To that end, this patch makes it significantly easier to reach new missions, Challenges, and other metagame unlocks.

• A successful space launch is no longer required to unlock the next mission or earn a Nice Bird stamp. Instead, you just need to complete your mission. In other words, any run where you make it past Day 10 will unlock the next mission or challenge set.
• Rebalanced prices for all postgame unlockables to be lower, so playthroughs can have more variety.
• Also rebalanced postgame prices so that the things we recommend you unlock first tend to be cheaper than the weirder or more expert options.

That should make it easier to discover Flaustria's mysteries and track down that elusive True Ending!

Bug Fixes

What patch would be complete without a panoply of fixes and miscellaneous improvements? Details follow:

Parade Pacing

• Made a few changes to make parades more concise and less repetitive
• Cut skill tests for astronauts, outside special circumstances
• Cut down on the amount of discussion about each astronaut: now only mentions traits or minor events if there isn't anything more interesting to talk about
• High Priest cars now only stop if you have a positive or negative relationship with them

Menu Functionality

• Fixed bug causing system menu to be unopenable with mapestry open
• Fixed bug where sometimes hovering over the mission progress HUD with the mouse could instead highlight the System Menu button
• Fixed some rare circumstances where System Menu would not recognize input
• Added title to System Menu

Readability / Ease of Understanding

• When an event asks you to choose an astronaut for a skill test, the relevant stat now appears on each astronaut's selection bubble
• When an event asks you to choose an astronaut for a test of multiple skills, all the skills will now be highlighted instead of just one
• Instead of saying "0 days remaining" or "1 day remaining," mission UI now says "today" or "tomorrow" to be more clear
• Changed warning about replaying "Earning Your Wings" to be more clear that succeeding at its space launch is super hard and you should probably move onto other missions instead

Small Visual Fixes

• In "Earning Your Wings," fixed Vladagar comedian's face appearing as blank/uninitialized at first in the parade
• Repositioned flowers during mission intros and tutorials to fit onscreen
• Changed lock icon on mission/uniform select screens to fit fully in the window
• Darkened unrevealed mapestry icons to make it more mysterious what they will be
• Moved Inside-Track upwards to be better framed in the Shop
• Changed camera position of Astronauts menu to make spreadsheet easier to read

Limited Time Sale

That's right, High Priest Inside-Track! For the next week (October 17th to October 24th), Astronaut: The Best will be on sale for 25% off! That's Five percent off for each of The Five, slashing our price to a lowest-ever $11.25 USD.

Don't delay! Get your hands on the new and improved Astronaut: The Best now, before this deal careens into an asteroid and gets incinerated!

Steam Deck Verified!

We're also thrilled to share the news that Astronaut: The Best has been Steam Deck Verified! If you have a Steam Deck, we think it just might be the best way to play it. See our previous patch notes for some optimizations we made for playing on the go.

That's all for Update 1.1! As always, we appreciate your interest and support. If you find bugs or other issues, or if you just want to discuss the game, please drop by our Discord.

Best,
Mike and the UHM team