You can pick it up for $2.50 over at itch.io OR as part of a groupees.com bundle of several games for $1 (or more – your choice!).

Hm… one of those options seems distinctly better than the other… 😛

For everyone who ALREADY bought the game from groupees.com, I’ve contacted groupees.com, and they’re going to update their Space bundle to include this latest version of Mysterious Space, so you can log in to groupees.com and download 0.6.0. As of the time of this writing, they haven’t updated it yet, but keep checking back with them; it shouldn’t be long!

And of course, when/if I get greenlit, I will send groupees.com Steam keys, and they’ll send those out to everyone who purchased the bundle. (Who knows when that will happen, though!)

The big addition this update is co-op play! I’ve added TWO modes of co-op: you can play standard, run-of-the-mill split-screen, OR one “Orbital” co-op, where one player is a small ship that’s stuck in orbit around the other player!

Standard split-screen is pretty, well, standard, so I don’t think I need to explain further. But Orbital co-op is a little weirder! In this mode, player two plays a little ball that, as mentioned, remains at a fixed distance from player one’s ship. It can move freely in a ring around the player, and can fire in any direction!

While the Orbital passes through walls and other terrain freely, it DOES collide with enemies, and their bullets, so be careful! The Orbital has no shield, and if it’s destroyed, doesn’t come back until the level is completed (something I actually want to change in a future release, but I’m getting ahead of myself…)

In Orbital co-op, player one can also equip Accessories to the Orbital, or use Upgrade chips to upgrade the Orbital’s weapons. The Upgrades are pretty powerful, so I’d definitely encourage doing it!

Orbital co-op is a bit more passive for the second player, as they’ve given up a lot of control, but it’s very interesting, and I’m looking forward to developing it further, especially for 2v2 PvP battles! (But that’s getting ahead of myself, again…) Still, if this sounds too weird for you, go for standard split-screen co-op! 🙂

I realize it might be hard to picture how this all works just by reading; I’m going to put together a video showing off the new co-op modes sometime tomorrow. I’ll definitely post when that’s ready!

Besides the two new modes of co-op player, this release also fixes a couple bugs that could crash the game, including a crash invovled with using Embedded Armor, and a rare lock-up when visiting mining worlds (thanks to DeltaBladeX for letting me know about this one!) There were a couple other little tweaks; you can check out the full changelog, if you’re interested.

Of course, I already have ideas for the next version of Mysterious Space! I haven’t started work on it yet, but things I’m hoping to get to:

• Improved UI for co-op
• Four-player co-op! (Two ships, each with an Orbital!)
• A quick PvP dogfight mode, both 1v1 (two ships), and 2v2 (two ships, each with an Orbital)
• Mini-bosses, designed both for single-player, and appropriately buffed and tweaked for co-op
• A new type of level to discover: asteroid fields, which would be progressed through like more traditional arcade shooters: straight left-to-right… but at high-speed! (Try not to run into too many asteroids!)

I don’t have a timeframe for the next release yet, but I’ll definitely keep you guys posted, as I work on it.

Finally: thanks everyone, for playing, and commenting, and caring! I’ve been having a lot of fun with this project, and seeing YOU guys have fun is part of that!