Dev Log #1 - Playtest to Demo Changes

Since the playtest, we’ve been poring over your feedback and bug reports, watching videos of your playthroughs, and working through improvements for our upcoming demo. Your reports have been invaluable in tracking down problems, and seeing how you play has helped us understand where things feel confusing, frustrating, or need more work.

Here are some of the changes you can expect when the demo lands on October 12th!

Get Into the Action Faster

• Learn with friends: You can now enter Multiplayer without completing the tutorial, so friends can show you the ropes. Tutorial completion is still required to unlock Single Player.
• Multiplayer is front and center: It’s now the first option in the main menu, and completing the tutorial takes you directly to the Host/Join screen.
• Faster post-match results: Hit Skip to speed up the milestone tally and get on with your next expedition.
• Easier rejoining: If you disconnect and rejoin a friend’s session, the game automatically selects your character so you can get back into the action.

Introducing the Mod Deck Builder

You pointed out that unlocking more Mods diluted the reward pod pool, making it harder to pursue the builds you wanted. That’s fair. Unlocking something new should feel good.

Adapting to what you’re offered is still an important part of the experience, especially when a run comes together with a killer combination of Mods. But we wanted to give you more control over the possibilities.

After unlocking a couple of Mods, you’ll gain access to the Mod Deck Builder. Build a deck of 10 common Mods and up to 2 Showstoppers from your library. Those are the only Mods reward pods will draw from during your expeditions. You can swap them between expeditions to try different strategies as your library grows.

This is our first version of the feature, and we’re looking forward to hearing how it works for you.

Choose Your Starting Weapon

Your initial reward pod will now offer all the weapons you’ve unlocked, so you can take that shiny new weapon you’ve been saving up for straight into your next expedition.

Movement & Combat

• Free ground dash: Ground dash no longer has a cost to use.
• Smoother pipeline grinding: We’ve adjusted boosting and auto-jumping, reduced accidental snapping onto pipelines while sliding, and improved clearance around turrets and infrastructure.
• Fewer unplanned space launches: Fixed bugs that could send you flying when grinding over infrastructure or boosting through a teleporter.
• Weapon tuning: Base weapons are slightly more effective, while upgrades and Mods have less extreme scaling at the upper end.
• More effective grenades: Higher damage, a larger blast radius, longer throwing range, and a longer fuse.
• Play Dead reworked: We’ve made it more useful within a team. It provides invulnerability and stronger healing while you’re down, then traps nearby enemies in a temporal bubble when you get up.
• Fetch and Bark improvements: Fetch has received movement fixes, and you can now fire while it’s active. Bark now deals a small amount of damage alongside its knockback.
• Gravity Bomb fixes: We’ve improved performance and toned down some of its more ridiculous chaos. It’s still wild.
• Turret and enemy balance: Rocket Turrets have a smaller blast radius and slower firing rate, some tankier enemies are less durable, and acid bombs from the Goopers no longer cause damage over time.
• Courtesy Turret upgrades: Upgrading the Courtesy Turret Mod allows it to spawn higher-tier turrets you’ve unlocked. The turret is chosen at random, so a higher-tier result isn’t guaranteed.

Progression & Resources

• Research Point milestone rewards reworked: More RP at the start, steady earnings from stat milestones, and larger payouts from expedition completion and time played to open up progression options sooner.
• Milestone tracking fixes: We’ve fixed pipeline-building and perfect-performance milestone tracking.
• Mod tree and upgrade changes: We’ve adjusted the ordering of the Mod tree and upgrade prices. Mod upgrades now require Biomass alongside Research Points.
• Biomass healing: Biomass now heals 10 HP when fully harvested.
• Electrium collection counted correctly: Breaking the core to release crystals directly onto a pipeline is a fast way to collect Electrium, but that collection wasn’t being credited in the end-of-match stats. That’s fixed.
• Titanium mining improvements: Depleted Titanium cores now disappear properly and the progress meter matches mineral extraction.

Fixes, Performance & Quality of Life

• Heal Coffee Cat: You can now heal her with your mining laser. She’s also tougher and has more reliable pathfinding, with fixes for getting stuck on pipelines or falling through the ground.
• Visible objective health: Coffee Cat and the Refinery now have health displays so you can keep track of how they’re holding up.
• Planet improvements: We’ve added shrines, teleporters, side activities, and rewards for completing activities. Several maps have received layout, lighting, and navigation improvements to make exploration and backtracking smoother.
• Blueprint on Star Map: We have added information about how many blueprints are available on each planet and this updates to show whether the you have collected them or not, so you can keep track.
• Less COSMO chatter: We’ve reduced how often she delivers non-essential information while increasing variety for some of her events.
• Hazard Pay for everyone: Fixed the bug that meant only the host received payouts from this mod.
• Fewer progression blockers: Fixes include getting stuck while building a Fabricator, Build Kits trapped under trees, and objects falling through the ground.
• More reliable multiplayer: We’ve addressed black-screen hangs, rejoining problems, and connection failures, with clearer messages when you disconnect.
• Xbox improvements: A big thank you to the Xbox Insiders who played and shared feedback. We’re working through a substantial certification pass and fixing issues with saves, suspend/resume, profile switching, and multiplayer to improve the Xbox experience.
• Performance across all platforms: We’ve continued optimizing the game and hope you’ll see meaningful performance gains in the demo.
• Additional fixes and polish: Depleted resource markers now disappear from Drone View, howl emotes are back, and we’ve made improvements to save reliability alongside additional crash fixes and animation, audio, and effects updates.

Thank you to everyone who played, reported bugs, and shared feedback from the Playtest. Keep your suggestions coming on Discord , every report helps us make Gravhounds better.

The Octopus Panic Team