Super Space Crystals

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• Announcements·4 Sept 2026Official

  Grading Up Again

  Everything is on track to start the Steam playtest next week! Meanwhile, I’ve turned my attention to what is, in my opinion, one of the game’s weakest points: the upgrade system. For those who started following the game more recently, I’d like to offer a quick recap of how this system developed, and then some reflections on its current failings, and a glimpse of what’s ahead.How we got hereThe first version, initially tested last December, simply allowed the player to buff a single stat, chosen from 2 random options (which was expanded to 3 random options in January). This system provided a sense of basic progression, but it wasn’t particularly interesting.The next iteration, introduced in May, allowed an upgrade to be picked from 3 randomly selected upgrade trees, with each tree containing multiple tiers which could be unlocked. This system was in the demo that was shown at SEGE in July. It provided much greater variety, but required a lot of fidgety clicking around to learn what options were actually available at any given time.When I got home from SEGE, I created a more streamlined upgrade system which was a hybrid of the previous concepts, and this has appeared in the demos since then. It retains the upgrade trees internally, but only presents 3 options for the player to pick from.The itchThe current upgrade system has many shortcomings, but I could probably overlook most of them - at least for a little while longer. There is one glaring issue, however, which (in my opinion) demands my attention: The upgrade system simply isn’t fun.To be clear: I’m not saying that the effects of the upgrades themselves aren’t fun in their own way, but that the process of choosing an upgrade right now isn’t fun. Once you’ve played the game enough to have a preferred build, every time the upgrade dialog pops up, you either get what you wanted, or else you have to decide what to settle for instead.Some of this could be mitigated by making the various upgrades more complex and inter...
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• Announcements·28 Aug 2026Official

  The playable web demo is here!

  I'm delighted to announce that a demo of Super Space Crystals is now playable in your web browser at:https://benjiflaming.itch.io/super-space-crystals-alphaMuch thanks to everybody on the game's Discord server who helped with testing and improving this demo! There have been a lot of changes over the past week:Crystal spawners have been updated to keep up with fast-moving players in the late gameOrbs move toward the player with greater speedTwo of the speed upgrades now buff the Orb Magnet stat, to prevent speed-heavy builds making it too difficult to collect orbsSaucer shots no longer spin so wildly when they deflect off player shots or other objectsSaucers glow visibly as they obtain a targeting lock and prepare to fire at the playerThe color of the red saucers has been changed to orange, to help make them visually distinct from the color of their shotsSound effects have been added to the shots fired by the saucersThe Spoils of War upgrade has been nerfed slightlyThe Tab and Backspace keys can now be used to pause the game without dropping out of full screen display mode in the web buildThe controls list dialog has been updated and refreshedThe packaging system has been made more robustIt's been a long road, and the real journey is just beginning! Next week I'll be starting work on Steam integration, we so can get Steam playtesting started in September! Cheers!
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• Announcements·21 Aug 2026Official

  Thanks for all the input!

  There have already been many new features and improvements based on the initial feedback and conversations from the Discord-exclusive preview demo.Thanks to everybody who has tried it out! Here's a recap of what's new since that initial release a week ago:Each successive "generation" of broken cube fragments glows brighter than the previous one, and releases more Magic Woo-Woo orbs when brokenSaucers are generally brighter and easier to see (they had accidentally become a bit darker due to an optimization a few weeks ago)Saucers fire more often and more dynamically (still scaling with difficulty setting)Red and green saucers have been switched (red ones are faster, fire more often, and yield more loot)Shields recharge fasterYou can turbo boost in whatever direction your controls indicate - including backwards!An experimental version of turbo boost was tried out for a few days, with behavior more like a "dash" than a "sprint" (this will probably return as an unlockable piece of equipment at some point in the future)Fixed a bug where mission completion sequence could be interrupted by level-up (causing mission completion to be impossible)A complete automated build/packaging system was written, with a variety of safeguards to prevent packaging errors - this will make it much more practical for me to release smaller updates more frequently across all 3 platformsOther minor stuff that I forgot to put in this list. :)Special shout-out to @SlicdBread of RAILSHOT for providing so much constructive feedback and discussion this week!If you haven't had a chance to check out the Super Space Crystals demo on our Discord yet, stop by and give it a spin! :)
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• Announcements·15 Aug 2026Official

  Demo Preview is available on Discord

  It's been a long road, but I'm finally ready to share a preview demo with the Super Space Crystals community on Discord!The week has been entirely focused on preparing for this release. Here's a quick rundown of what has been done:Unused music files have been removed, for smaller download sizes.Unused sound effects are no longer being synthesized, for faster start-up times.All difficulty settings now have names and descriptions, to make it clearer what to expect from each.Choosing the "New Game" option from the main menu now brings up a dedicated dialog where you can quickly choose difficulty, and toggle tutorial messages, according to your preferences.Pressing the W key while the Ctrl is being held (e.g. to go forward while moving down) no longer closes the browser tab in the web build.The web build also includes a workaround for a longstanding mouse input bug in Firefox.Gameplay in the demo now consists of a single 10-minute mission, with a clearer progression of events.Safeguards have been introduced, to prevent rare and unlucky physics interactions from confusingly 1-shotting you from full health.Additional stats are now tracked during gameplay, and reported upon mission completion or death.Much progress has been made toward resolving lock-ups when running under Firefox, and this is still ongoing.At the time of writing, the web version of the demo is playable in the browser at a secret URL in the #announcements channel on the Super Space Crystals Discord. You can also download standalone builds of the demo (which look and perform better) for Linux and Windows there.
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• Announcements·8 Aug 2026Official

  Death by SpaghettiOs

  Looks like you’re not the only one getting new stuff. The maintenance crews in The Fraternal Brotherhood of Evil Magic Space Robots have been retrofitting their entire fleet of flying saucers with deadly new ring lasers. The ‘bots have also upgraded their targeting systems, so they’ll be significantly more accurate now - although still nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.Speaking of accuracy, your auto-fired shots and your manually-fired shots are now tracked separately, so you can get a more accurate impression of how you well you were aiming. The manually-fired shots are a different color now too, and they have slightly different physics properties than the auto-fired shots.As a matter of fact, all of your shots are heavier than they were before, so they pack a lot more punch. You’ll be able to push the crystals around a bit even if your first few shots don’t shatter them.In related news, the stats and upgrades which previously increased the size of your projectiles will now increase their weight (and their knockback) instead. This mitigates the “flashbang” effect that was happening when large numbers of huge glowing projectiles were being rapidly fired against the backdrop of space.The sky, it seems, is also being “upgraded” (so-to-speak). You’ll notice things being a bit more colorful now, with more distinct transitions between different parts of a mission.The mission system itself has become more sophisticated, and can now provide a much more dynamic number of enemies, bringing more ebb and flow to the gameplay.One thing which was unexpectedly disrupting the flow of gameplay was the new upgrade system which I introduced last week. The main problem was that the upgrade selection screen showed up too quickly to register that anything was happening, and this often resulted in upgrades being selected by accident. As a solution to this, and an in-universe explanation for why you are invulnerable while choosing your upgrade, there is now a bubble-shield which appears ...
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