We're excited to announce a brand new pre-alpha demo for Out Here Alone! This new demo comes packed with new features, fixes, and quality of life improvements. Download it here and let us know what you think, either by posting a comment on the itch page or by joining our Discord - your feedback is important helps us to make Out Here Alone the best experience possible.

Before submitting feedback, you may want to check out our feedback and bugs board, as well as our roadmap, to see what's already on our list.

New Features

• New fast travel system added to derelict vessels, to allow players to transition between levels quickly.
• "Derelict core" added to derelict vessels, which players will need to find in order to restore power.
• Added Comms node to allow player to check vessel's log and/or check current objective, as well as offer some flavour dialogue.
  • Added "residual power" effect to Comms node, to ensure vessel can somewhat speak even when the power has failed.
    
  • Ensure vessel cannot speak if Comms node is damaged directly.
• Added random dialogue prompts from vessel to remind player of the current objective(s).
• Added a "Star Infant" enemy, which can directly attack the player vessel's internal nodes.
• Added dialogue from derelict vessels.

Quality of Life & Other Improvements

• Pressing interact button during dialogue first time completes the dialogue. Only when pressed a second time will it skip it.
• Moved "skip text" to its own dedicated button, to ensure it does not interfere with player interactions.
• Ensure the beam (both player and vessel) snaps to the correct position when initially fired, instead of rotating from the previously fired position.
• Added interaction and skip text prompts.
• Derelict rooms that have power are now lit.
• Added different sprites per player.
• Highlighted controls in tutorial dialogue.
• Added level assets to multiple derelict rooms.
• Updated tutorial dialogue and disable certain mechanics until certain dialogue is reached.
• Updated gamepad control scheme for interacting with nodes.
• Removed player downward drift and added bobbing effect.
• Ensure particles follow the player character during the recharge effect.
• Stalker enemy now rotates when moving up and down ramps.
• Increased the damage output for the player's beam slightly, particularly in split mode.
• Added a new zoom level if only one player is piloting/shooting, to ensure the other player can navigate around the vessel easier.
• Reduced the size of the demo level slightly to reduce travel time between sensor blips.
• Added a queuing system for dialogue, so that dialogue doesn't interrupt other dialogue.
• Made damage effects on enemies more obvious.
• Smoothly rotate the player character's head when they turn left or right.

Fixes

• Controller support added to sensors mode.
• Fixed issue where direction indicator doesn't appear when a player selects a sensors blip while the other player is already in piloting mode.
• Fixed issue where player 2 could accidentally quit the game without the confirmation box appearing.
• Fixed issue where spamming the perception node caused space assets to not hide correctly (which reveals the position of the warp gate).
• Fixed issue where spamming split mode may cause players to get stuck in the merged form.
• Fixed issue with widgets not being focused on when sensors mode is entered.
• Fixed issue where direction indicator sometimes doesn't disappear when it is supposed to, e.g. when asteroids are destroyed.
• Fixed an issue where the player couldn't move after being killed while stunned and then resurrected.
• Ensured vessel is constrained on the Y-plane.
• Fixed lines showing through tiles when zoomed out (particularly for derelict vessels).
• Fixed the position of the Stalker stabbing attack.
• Fixed issue with the Control node not kicking the player off it when it becomes damaged.
• Ensure enemy blips show up in sensors mode.
• Fixed issue where tutorial text would sometimes not trigger in split mode.
• Fixed issue with vessel avatar not appearing if text is skipped too quickly.
• Fixed issue with direction indicator on small screens.
• Fixed issue where player 1 gets stuck moving if they are moving via controller when they trigger a split.
• Fixed issue where player could not stop using a node if they "drift" outside of the interaction trigger box.
• Numerous other small fixes and improvements.