Hey Pioneers!

We have a massive patch today, dubbed the “One Small Tap” update! We’ve been reading all of your reviews, and watching your streams to see what everyone wants from Surviving Mars: Pioneer. We are thrilled with the overall positive reception, but we want to make SMP even better as we gear up for the 1.0 release. Today’s update addresses some of the feedback we’ve received while fixing a bunch of minor bugs.

We are hosting a Gleam Giveaway to offer a chance to win some exclusive limited edition merchandise! Win a t-shirt featuring the iconic poster, or a hat. Follow the Gleam Page for more ways to enter. For extra entries enter “RocketMan” as a secret code!

https://gleam.io/sF5OZ/surviving-mars-pioneer-giveaway

One of the biggest points of feedback that we’ve received was that players wanted to feel even more immersed in Surviving Mars: Pioneer! We have implemented a number of tweaks and improvements to help you feel even more at home with your new home away from home. Most screens can now be touched, and your backpack can be grabbed from behind. If you want to quickly drop loot into your inventory, just throw it over your shoulder!

A big debate within the community was the difficulty of Surviving Mars: Pioneer. Some players felt the game was too easy while others had trouble surviving their first couple of nights. We’ve decided to give players more control over their experience. 

We are introducing new difficulty sliders into the game, which will allow players to fine tune their experience. Three presets are available – Story, Pioneer and Survival. This can be done when starting a new game, or during your game at any time. You can also adjust the rate that your oxygen and hunger depletes, how often storms appear, how quickly resources regenerate and decide if you want to drop your items on death. Please let us know what you think of this new feature in our Discord (https://discord.gg/a6Kq86eTFN)

There is now a way to report bugs directly in the game! If you find something that causes an issue, please pause the game and use the in-game reporting feature to let us know. A reference number will be provided on the screen. If you have additional information you would like to share with us, please submit a Feedbear post (https://surviving-mars-pioneer-public.feedbear.com/boards/bug-reports)

We’ve also done a pass on the main menu screen to help showcase the latest version number. Now all versions of the game are using a unified version number which can help make reporting even easier!

Here is everything else that is included in the update:

🌟 New & Improved
- New Difficulty options (can be adjusted in game)

- Implemented physical (range) grabbing for objects

- Inventory can now be grabbed from over the shoulder

- Screens can now be touched

- Items can be dropped into backpack

- Ray only shows when pointing at something selectable

- New UI follow logic for head movement

- Adjusted construction gesture menu

- Changed “Help” to “Tips” in main menu

- New skyboxes in rotation

- Wind and solar can now connect directly to transformers

- Added move speed multiplier option

- Added player voice selection option

- Added visible version numbers to main menu and pause menu

- Updated main menu and pause menu design

- Airlock textures have been updated

🐛 Bug Fixes

- Updated connection visuals

- Weather wall display fixed

- Fixed blueprint terminal colliders

- Unified inner airlock door design

- Fixed vehicles flipping when changing scenes

- Fixed wall screen portraits not being scannable

- Fixed contracts leaking (also patches save files)

- Fixed "unknown ore" contract bug that broke saving

- Disabled autosave in dynamic scenes to improve stability

- Fixed interaction support for fridge upper row

- Fixed connectors not conducting power

- Fixed construction tool selection not always updating correctly

- Wall - Straight blueprint now available

As always, we really appreciate the community's support. We’ll be sharing more information about our plans for 1.0 in the coming weeks. Until then, please continue to sound off in the Discord with your thoughts and feedback!