- 1st of September Balancing Patch - 1 September 2026
Hello everyone,soon I will be uploading a balancing patch, intended to target some of the less popular ships and provide them with opportunities for buildcrafting and specialization. Smaller ships and those with a single weapon slot in particular are difficult to gain significant power with, so I have added native set bonuses to 8 ships:The Corvette has received a native Marathon point to solidify its role as the #1 speedy boyThe Destroyer has received a native Golem point to offset its awkward handling and allow it to build into a "hazard zone specialist" roleThe Drone Carrier has received a native Summoner point, adding to its existing drone respawning speed buff to make it more competite with verdant drone shipsThe Mosquito has received a native Polymath point, further enhancing its base stat strength and making it easier to build it toward high armor and hullThe Wasp has received a…
- 6th of August Minor Update - 6 August 2026
Hey,while today's update is largely bugfixing-focused I want to call out some small additional changes and content additions that are coming with it:A new Black Hole Skybox element can spawn rarely in all sectors, similar to how planets are currently spawned. This is (mostly) just decoration ;)A new Ringworld Segment megalith can appear as the centerpoint of sectors. This is a large square plate with some landscape and building geometry on top, with fixed POI locations so no traversal around the megalith is necessary.A procedural greeble shader has been added to all artifical megaliths, creating a look similar to the texture that these megaliths used to have in the demo.UI flicker has finally been eliminated. All UI elements should now remain static and flicker-free regardless of player world position. This change required some internal reworking and has had the side effect of making th…
- New Update: The Cycle - 20 July 2026
Hello everyone,today I am releasing the latest update to the game titled The Cycle. This patch brings the first localization, a new gamemode as well as numerous bugfixes and small changes.LocalizationWith this update, Catharage receives its first translated version - German! As a native speaker, this translation was entirely home-made (no AI here!) and frankly, a pain to put together. It turns out that localization support is not best done 8 months after a game's launch. Despite some issues, the game now supports localized text for both static instances like buttons as well as runtime-generated text, such as weapon descriptions, and groundwork exists for more future languages to come. Work is currently ongoing on French, Spanish and Italian localization. While I cannot give a fixed date for these, expect to see them at some point in the future. Note that as a result of this localization…
- New Major Update - Covenant - 8 May 2026
Hey everyone,last announcement I teased that work was being done on a new feature - now it's here: Online Coop is coming to Catharage with the Covenant update!This has been a long-requested feature that I had initially considered out of scope, owing to the massive amount of knowledge, time and money required to bring it to life. After doing some research a few months back I found a third party middleware capable of bridging the gap, one specifically designed for this case: bringing online multiplayer to singleplayer games that weren't designed for it. Using this solution enabled me to offload a significant portion of the backend programming and took this conversion from unthinkable to (relatively) easy. As such, I have to go into some legal and technical detail about the exact nature of the coop coming to the game.Catharage uses Coherence Networking SDK to facilitate its online componen…
- New UI Options and one more thing... - 23 March 2026
Hey there!I've just uploaded a new build containing UI features that have been in internal testing for a while, all regarding the behaviour of targeting icons on the HUD. The new menu, titled "tgt icon options", contains the following items:Enable/disable target icon bloom will toggle a new behaviour where target icons "flee" from the cursor in a bloom-like fashion, intended to help select specific icons from dense clusters.Screen Fraction to Hide/Show Tgt Icons determines how close the permanent readouts for distance and lock percentage need to be to the cursor before being shown, given as an integer divisor for screen height.Threshold for bloom behaviour controls how many targets need to be in close proximity to the cursor (close being twice as close as the hide/show fraction value) before the blooming behaviour starts.Icon bloom strength determines how strongly target icons flee from…
- New Major Update - Angelwatch! - 22 February 2026
Hello!After some delay I am very happy to finally release this major update, Catharage: Angelwatch. Before I get into the details I want to thank the new and returning contributors as well as community testers, all of whom helped make this the largest and best update to the game yet.Systems changes and additionsNew Keybinds have been added for many actions such as activating individual weapons, using abilities, cruise and tractor states as well as fleet commands. These can all be accessed and rebound in the options menu, and new hotkeys will also now be displayed on their respective button in the game UI. Note that the new keys will not show on the keyref in the top right, which would otherwise bloat to unwieldy proportions, and that warping and extracting do not have keybinds - I do want players to scramble to hit those still!Fleet Commands have been greatly expanded and added to a new…
- Camera Rework, Movement Options and more - 15 January 2026
Hey there,first of all I want to welcome all the new players, followers and others who have found the game over the past few days. Most of you will likely come from Splattercat, who did a fantastic showcase of the game: The outpour of support, feedback and engagement has been wonderful and I hope you all enjoy the game!Onto the new changes, some of which are direct results of suggestions and feedback:Internal Camera Rework: I've spent the majority of the past two days reworking the camera code to make it more streamlined, more performant and easier to modify and play around with. This has resulted in some changes to specific aspects of some of the modes, although these should not be disruptive. Users of the non-horizon orbit camera (default for advanced preset) will find that their camera no longer accumulates rotational error over time. This will make the movement of this camera more p…
- Movement Update, New Demo Announcement and Angelwatch Details - 6 January 2026
Hello,in today's update I want to recap the changes of the last couple of days, announce the upcoming new demo and give more details on the Angelwatch content update.If you've kept up with the changelogs on Steam or the Discord you'll already know that I've made some minor changes to several aspects of the game. Today's update includes a larger change to how movement stats work so I'll recap all of it here for easier consumption:Speed stat has been removed and replaced by new "AGL" and "SPD" stats that show as decimal multipliers, similar to how range and damage bonuses are displayed. This is because the previous speed stat was an internal value that worked together with several unexposed values (like physics drag and mass) to determine ship behaviour, but was not readily comparable and causing confusion. Additionally, because this value was being directly modified by speed-changing ele…
- Launch Recap and January Update Announcement - 22 December 2025
Hello!It has been nearly two weeks since the launch of the game, and I want to give a little update on how it went and where we're going. First of all I want to thank everyone who bought, played and streamed the game, as well as everyone who wrote on the discussion forums and joined the Discord! Launch has performed about as I expected based on the wishlist numbers, and I'm very happy with the response so far. Over the past two weeks I've uploaded a number of small, unmarked fixes that mostly dealt with bugs reported by players and slight balance tweaks, and from what I can tell, no major issues have appeared that would make the coming winter break problematic.I'll be taking a holiday for about two weeks, being unavailable to fix bugs or address platform issues. I'll still check in and respond to discussion threads occasionally, and the Discord has other community members/moderators cap…
- Catharage Release Devlog - 11 December 2025
Hello!in this Devlog I will cover what's been happening in November and talk in depth about the upcoming release version of the game. I've spent the last month making the remaining content, fixing bugs and finalizing Catharage for release. For about two weeks now, a public playtest has been running where interested players could preview the (almost) final version before and until it comes out. This has been very helpful in gathering more needed feedback and discovering bugs and issues to fix. I want to specifically shout out the Discord members, who've been instrumental in making this playtest a success and have provided fantastic suggestions as well as found many a bug I'd missed.Release ContentThe full version features the following new content:Three new NPC factions have been added. This includes 18 new playable ships, over two dozen new enemy types, new upgrades bringing the total u…
- Thank you for 1000 Wishlists! - 21 October 2025
Hello everyone,with NextFest coming to a close, I'm very excited to share that the game has surpassed 1000 Wishlists! This past week has been quite eventful, with a couple of updates, plenty of new players and some coverage on Youtube and Twitch. NextFest has been a huge boon to the visibility of the game, vastly increasing the amount of players and multiplying the number of wishlists by over 4x. If you're interested in this type of data, here are some of the more impactful numbers:Over 780 players have launched the demo - that's nearly as many as have wishlisted! While the conversion of demo plays to wishlists is nowhere as high, since most people who visit the NextFest capsule only wishlist, I'm still very happy with this player count.Of those players, over 200 have successfully completed the tutorial. That is more than a quarter and a higher percentage than I had expected going off t…
- 17th of October Update - 17 October 2025
Hey everyone!Today I'm uploading the second mid-NextFest update, again focused on feedback points collected over the last few days.Tractor mode has been added. This new button to the left of the stat bar enables you to view surrounding loot in a similar way to sensor contacts. If you click on the "reel in" button, the loot will fly to you. This uses the same functionality as material and currency pickup, so if you're in the process of flying away from the respective item, it will take longer to arrive. Loot should be fast enough to catch up with cruising ships that have not been otherwise speed-enhanced. Note that regular contacts will not be displayed while in this mode; to see them again, toggle it using the same button. The tutorial has been updated to reflect this change.Several UI tweaks have been made. The Repair button has been resized and moved. A new "kill drones" button has be…
- 11th of October Update - 10 October 2025
Hello!In what is likely the last major update before NextFest, I have some significant changes to both UI and controls! Controls are in a lot of flux right now, this is because I'm getting a lot of input from testers, and the quest to make the game more accessible is everlasting.UI has been expanded to show weapon icons on non-selected targets, making it easier to see at a glance which gun is shooting at what. I've also modified the threat display background to be more noticeable and in a better position.Control modes have been overhauled once more. There are still two modes, but they have been renamed to "modern" - the new default, and "advanced" - the old default. Modern now functions like the hybrid mode did before this update, albeit with a crucial change. Clicking to set alignment target is still possible, but it is now also possible to press WASD (or whatever Pitch and Roll are bo…
- 4th of October Update - 4 October 2025
Hello!I've got the first October update coming and there are some notable changes:Unity version has been updated to fix the recently discovered engine vulnerability before it can be exploited. This was a rather small update for me and has not created any issues on the development side, but I cannot guarantee that no new bugs have appeared on account of it. Fingers crossed!Drone upgrades have been added to the demo. This feature was originally intended to only become available once the full version launches but based on feedback I've moved it forward and implemented it now. Together with a slight renovation of the ship select interface, two new upgrades have been added: Drone hull and Drone armor. These are relatively expensive to account for the power of armored and tanky drones, but should be attainable for drone-focused players during mid-endgame.Forges have been nerfed somewhat. Spec…
- 28th of September Update - 27 September 2025
Hey there!I've uploaded an update with the following changes:Overview Text has been improved to properly match camera rotation in all modes, significantly improving the usability of ship-aligned camera mode (formerly "fighter mode").Indirect control has been expanded with a new mouse pointing control. Simply click on a point in space while in indirect mode to immediately move the steering pip to that position. The graphic of this UI element has also been changed to be more readable and clear.Throttle control has been enabled during indirect control mode. Previously, a bug prevented the normal, incremental throttle adjustments (default bind Q and E) from working properly in this mode. Together with this, a small adjustment has been made to turning behaviour in this mode to make it more less variable based on angular distance from the steering pip.Tutorial flow has been improved by adding…
- 23rd of September Update - 23 September 2025
Hello!I've uploaded an update containing the following changes:Item comparison is now implemented. Colored + and - icons will show next to attributes like range, damage or ship stats like armor and shield when viewing both weapons and modules. These icons show whether a stat is better or worse than the existing, already installed item. On weapons, hovering over an installed weapon will switch the comparison so it is always relative to the selected weapon. Note that not all attributes are compared: Set bonuses, perks, burst behaviour and ability values are still as-is. This change was one of the longest-requested from way back during private testing - I expect it will help ease some players into the loot game by taking a part of the cognitive load of item comparison off their shoulders.Forge buffs have been updated to be exclusively bonus-based instead of the prior trade-off behaviour. W…
- 12th of September Update - 12 September 2025
Hello!I just pushed an update with the following changes:A weapon and module selection menu has been added after embarkation. This menu allows players to pick a weapon type for the first slot as well as spend credits (250 per) to start with a module in each slot. In addition, playing the tutorial now guarantees that the first weapon is a laser. This change was made to address the frustration of bad starting weapon RNG, particularly when spawning with all launchers. It should allow some mitigation of this issue as well as build planning when used in concert with some of the pre-embark temporary bonuses. While weapon selection is free, modules have a small credit cost to offset the power boost from weapon selection and provide a credit sink.Resolution options have been tweaked to properly show the current running resolution as well as be visually coherent with the rest of the UI. The reso…
- 7th of September Update: Photo Mode and New Achievements - 7 September 2025
Hello!I've pushed a new build that includes the following new features and changes:Photo Mode (returns): You can now enable a photo mode from the pause menu. In this mode you can move the camera freely using your controls for Pitch/Roll, Yaw, Throttle, View and Zoom. When activating photo mode, time stops and all UI elements are made invisible. Photo mode uses a traditional WASD+Mouselook setup for movement that may be awkward using custom keybinds, specific photo mode keybinds will come at a later date. Keep in mind that the modifier key used to rotate the camera in normal play is required to move the photo mode camera as well. The mode can be exited by using the respective pause menu option. Note that there is no built-in photo taking function, please use Steam's built-in screenshot option or other capture software. Be aware: Photo Mode has a technical limitation that I haven't yet be…
- End of August Update - 30 August 2025
Hey everyone!I just pushed an update containing a number of QOL and polish features:Free floating scrap and credit chests now track to the player like materials do.Scrapping loot now shows a preview of the potential scrap value gained. This value is now influenced by rarity, and most items are worth more. This should make it easier to gain scrap throughout normal play rather than just in large bursts when collecting Keystones.Suspending now correctly stores and restores individual drone slots, meaning the Odachi hybrid battleship and runs with at least 2 Summoner set bonus points can be suspended without losing drone slots.Targeting Overlay layering has been improved. Target Icons remain layered behind normal UI elements as they currently are but selecting them will move the expanded detail view in front of all other UI, making it no longer obstructed by things like weapon slots or the…
- Devlog: Starmap, Progression and Faction Objectives - 25 August 2025
Hello!In this first devlog-style post I want to lay out the structure of the release version in more detail, going over how warping, objectives and unlocks will work as well as expanding on the "sectors" concept I mentioned in the demo announcement.The StarmapI'm currently working on the starmap, a central part of the release content system. This interface will appear when the "Warp" button is pressed, replacing the fully random warp with a player selection. On the map, a persistent, infinite grid of cells represents space, with colors denoting the dominant faction in the area. The central cell is the player's current location. Several cells will be highlighted (as shown above) - these are potential warp candidates. Players can hover over them to see the dominant faction in that area as well as a listing of neighboring faction influence. Clicking will initiate a warp to this new locatio…
