- SOMEONE ACTUALLY DID IT! - 1 September 2026
The one whose solution I accidentally lost?The one I then spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to solve myself?The one that eventually made me give up and issue a public challenge to all of you?WELL. SOMEONE SOLVED IT.Meet 人见人爱花见花开鱼摆摆: The Fish Beloved by AllAbout a year ago, I challenged the Astra Ignota community to solve the final bonus puzzle. The prize was eternal glory, a place in the game's credits, having the puzzle renamed after its conqueror, and a small mystery prize.For fifteen months, nobody did... Until now.The Fish tells me he has been working on the puzzle for about half a year.Six months! On one puzzle!Now, as promised, I have updated Astra Ignota accordingly:The Fish Beloved by All now appears in the game's credits, and the final bonus puzzle has been renamed in honor of another nickname of our hero:THE SHAMELESS PIRANHAI have also sent our victorious fish a Ste…
- Unsolved Puzzle Challenge: Beat the Dev at His Own Game - 28 May 2025
🚨 The Final Puzzle Is Unsolved So here’s a fun pre-launch challenge for all you puzzle lovers: I accidentally lost the solution to the hardest level in the game, no joke, and now it's just sitting there, mocking me 😅 It was originally part of the main story, but it turned out so difficult I had to move it to the Bonus section, which normally only unlocks after completing the game. With the full launch just one week away, I thought: why not turn this into a fun community mystery? The level is available right now via map import (both in the free demo and Early Access), so anyone can give it a shot. And yes, this is real, I’ve even mentioned it somewhere in the forums before... 🎁 Rewards for the first person to solve it Your name in the game credits! The puzzle will be renamed after you! A small mystery prize! 🕹️ How to play Copy the code below to your clipboard (Double-click it and th…
- Small update ahead of launch - 28 May 2025
Brought minor fixes already available in the demo version to the Early Access version.
- Launch Love Letter - 22 May 2025
Astra Ignota is leaving Early Access. After years of late nights, polish, and quiet hope… the full version is here. I wrote a letter about what this journey has meant to me, what it means to release something you've poured your soul into. ▶ Read the full devlog on Itch.io Thank you for playing. Truly. I’ll be writing more of these, so follow me if you’d like to come along for the ride!
- 🎉 Full Release: Astra Ignota is Here! - 18 May 2025
Astra Ignota is launching out of Early Access! This minimalist sci-fi puzzle game takes you aboard a sentient spaceship drifting between stars. Your mission: grow symmetrical galaxies from the core outward, solve handcrafted logic puzzles, and piece together a mysterious narrative told through brief story episodes. 60 handcrafted levels Procedural puzzles for infinite play Hauntingly beautiful soundtrack and illustrations A mysterious sci-fi story Fully localized in 7 languages After a year of feedback, improvements, and new content, Astra Ignota is ready for its full release. 📅 Mark your calendar — Astra Ignota launches June 5! 🧠 Wishlist it now to be notified! 🕹️ Play the free demo today ⭐ Leave a review after playing, it really helps! 🌌 Share it with friends who love puzzles, sci-fi, or both! Thank you to everyone who helped shape the journey! Xavi
- Still Alive! - 17 April 2025
Hello friends! Wow, it's been more than 2 months since the last update! I am so sorry! Well, here's what's been going on: Development is complete The artists have delivered all remaining illustrations, and the game is now feature-complete. Everything I wanted to include in version 1.0 is in, tested and polished, thanks to your feedback and support. The final builds are ready. All that’s left is to press the button to transition from Early Access to full release. So... why the delay? Steam issues: negative wishlist count I seem to have run into a weird Steam bug: Astra Ignota currently has a negative number of wishlists. I'm not kidding, more people have removed the game from their wishlists than have added it: I've contacted Steam Support and they agree this is weird. Since Steam gives more or less launch visibility depending on a game’s wishlist count, I really want to wait until this…
- Ready... Set... - 30 January 2025
Hello my friends! It's been a while since my last message, so here's a small pre-launch update: Code-wise, the game is ready to launch! All planned features have been implemented, reviewed, and battle-tested. And I've got a long list of new features waiting for the following releases. Artwork is 75% done. It shouldn't be long now before the rest of the images arrive. I commissioned some drawings to go along the story pages, and I am super hyped about how nice they are. That's it! Once I have the last remaining images, I'll announce the launch date! Until then... here you have a little sneak peek to help you with the wait 😊 Can you guess what part of the story is that? Remember to spread the news! Share the game link far and wide! Do you know any YouTuber I should try to reach? Are you guys nervous too? Honestly, I cannot sleep at night! Xavi
- BETA 21: Putting the finishing touches! - 11 December 2024
Hello friends! I've been working on this level completion effect for a while. What do you think? And don't worry, you can disable it in the options menu :) In this update Tiles now turn into beautiful galaxies when solving each puzzle. Add rolling credits when finishing the game. Move the super-hard level 60 to the bonus levels section and use a different puzzle as level 60. Small tweaks everywhere, like removing shields from under single-tile cores, or bigger "Next level" button, Fix bugs uncovered by playtesters. Yay! What's next? I'm waiting on the story illustrations to be delivered and then Astra Ignota will be ready for launch. Estimated release date is somewhere around January 2025. There are still a ton of features I'd like to add, but they will have to wait, or the game will never launch! Thanks for reading! Xavi
- BETA 20 Patch 1 - 26 November 2024
Readability improvements: used a font that renders better in windowed mode, used a thicker font for small text, darkened the background of the text in the story screens. Less distractions while playing: disabled animation of the logo, the area that shows the option buttons is smaller, so it's harder to hit it accidentally.
- BETA 20: New design! - 25 November 2024
Hello friends! This is a big update! New visual identity, logo, and title screen. Tell me what you think about it! New user interface, more stylish, and tailored for desktop instead of mobile. Story has pictures! Well, only a couple for now, but more are coming. New tile textures, subtly animated. The plain old ones can still be enabled from the options menu. More mouse controls: Tile lock and Undo can be operated from mouse buttons 4 & 5 (forward and back) Assorted fixes. OK, what is going on here? Only good things! I thought the game could use some visual polish so I partnered with an artist and did an overhaul of the user interface. Do you agree it looks far more professional now? On top of that, story pages have amazing pictures now, so you will have something to look forward to after finishing each episode. These are still work in progress, but you get to see a sneak-peek for a few…
- BETA 19: Feedback addressed - 21 October 2024
Development Update Hello! I'm working with a designer on a general revamp of the layout. We are giving the game a far more polished look, adding color, illustrations... it's not going to look like the old Astra Ignota, and that's a good thing. Oh yes, yes it is. At the same time, I'm spicing up the game tiles so they don't look so flat. Take a look at the end of this message! While all that is getting ready, I bring you some assorted improvements, based on the feedback I'm receiving: Changes The range filler can now be used only with the mouse. Much more comfortable. Just left-click while holding down the right-button. Removed click mode. Feedback is unanimous in that it requires far too many clicks. Tutorials have been changed accordingly. One continuous song for each episode instead of constantly changing tracks. This gives each episode its own identity. Fixes to the space theme: remo…
- BETA 18 Patch 3 - 29 September 2024
Fixes: Zen mode. Zen mode was broken since 18.1 and nobody told me :/
- BETA 18 Patch 2 - 22 September 2024
Fixes: In the first levels, in windowed mode, incorrect rendering of opposite tiles, sometimes leading to a crash. Thanks for the bug reports! Keep them coming!
- BETA 18 Patch 1 - 18 September 2024
Fixes: Incorrect rendering of Level 60 in small screens (it's the biggest level, so it has the smallest tiles). Precision issues with 3- and 6-arm cores on big maps. This caused incorrect rendering of valid moves and editor crashes. All this thanks to your feedback, people! Thanks a million!
- BETA 18: Content done! - 14 September 2024
Hello hello! I bet you didn't expect an update so soon, huh? Well, get used to it! BETA 18 has: 10 more levels. They are HARD. I mean, they are the last ones, come on! I moved level 50 a bit further up, but it's still there, don't get your hopes up too high... A complete story, ending at level 60. There are now two story pieces per episode, so if you already completed some episodes, I recommend revisiting them again, because they now have TWO story buttons. Drag mode improvements: It's easier to use now. It has the same visual cues as Click mode (arrows and red crosses), and the galaxy you first click on never loses focus. Bugfixes. Again, I don't know who put those bugs there. It wasn't me. Ninjas, probably. The entire story is fully translated into all supported languages, but I would greatly appreciate it if you could read it and point out any mistakes I made! Thanks! 谢谢! ありがとう! 감사해요…
- BETA 17: Summer break is over! - 30 August 2024
Hello! Summer break is over, it's time for an update! I believe the game mechanics are maturing quite nicely, thanks to all your feedback. The next update will be focused on adding more levels and progressing the story, ramping up to finally launching this guy. A demo version will be available soon, so newcomers can test the game for free. Once the demo is out, expect a price increase :) Back to the present! This is what you get in this update: Unlockable features: Not everything is available from the start, you get more tools as you progress. Allow removing tiles: Just CTRL + click and watch those mistakes go. Don't worry, you need to confirm, and Undo still works. Initial levels must be played sequentially, to prevent newcomers from missing important tutorials. Small zen maps are more varied. They tended to be pretty repetitive, specially the triangular ones. Ukrainian translation add…
- Fix tutorials when CAPS LOCK is on - 25 July 2024
This is what happens when you cut costs in the QA department. Oh wait, I don't have a QA department.
- Localized tutorials - 23 July 2024
Translated tutorial text to Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Catalan. Please tell me if you detect any problem. I may or may not have used automatic translation this time...
- Fix ESC key at end of tutorials - 22 July 2024
Tutorials that required pressing the ESC key ended too abruptly, and players wondered if the tutorial was really finished. Now the proper TUTORIAL COMPLETED message is shown.
- BETA 16: Range Indicator and Tutorials! - 17 July 2024
Hello! As promised, here are a couple of tools that simplify filling-up big boards, along with tutorials to learn how to use them. What's new? The Range Indicator shows you how far a core can be extended. The Range Filler assigns all possible empty tiles to the selected core. If there are no empty tiles, then it steals tiles from other cores. Caution! Tutorials explain these and other game mechanics. Tutorials appear as the game progresses, and can also be shown using a new in-game button: What do you think? Are you going to use these tools? Tell me in the forums! Next up Translated tutorials, Unlockable features. 'til next time! And if you enjoy the game, don't forget to give it a ːsteamthumbsupː! Xavi
