In a few weeks, Star Birds will receive its final major content update before the full release. But you don’t have to wait that long. You can try the new update already on the Public Beta Branch! TODAY!

The next Star Birds update takes you to Cinnakeet, a brand-new star system with three additional levels. Lava pools make building trickier, and you'll need to install a cooling systems to keep production running.

Look forward to new encounters and meet the Alien Trader! We just wish we could understand this cryptic language… can you? 👀

The Trader also introduces a Filter Building. Water left, sulfur right? Easily done! 🙌 Thanks to everyone in the community who sparked the idea for this new logistics building!

Included are also some changes that reach beyond the new star system. The update expands Free Play Mode, and as a plus, we also added in-game leaderboards. So from now on you can compare your score directly from the main menu with the best Star Birds players in the world!

Last but not least, there are two more major additions we’d love to hear your feedback on! First: We added full controller support. That means you can play more comfortably from your couch or on Steam Deck. And second: Star Birds is coming to Mac! Try it out and let us know if the controls and UI already feel intuitive. 👌

Thank you for being part of the Early Access journey. Your feedback helps us make Star Birds better with every update.

See you among the asteroids,

Team Toukana

Disclaimer: Please keep in mind that content on the Beta Branch does not represent the final game. The best place to give feedback is our Discord server[discord.gg].

To access the Beta Branch, go to your Steam Library > right-click Star Birds > open Properties > select the Betas menu. Thanks for playtesting! 🙏

P.S.: After playing, don’t forget to switch back to the Main Branch.

Listing in detail what we added and improved on the Beta Branch. Approved changes will come to the official Main Branch in a couple of weeks.

☀️ = Fixes & Improvements Based on Community Feedback

• Added campaign sectors 12, 13, and 14 with new story and dialogue

• Introduced a new star system: Cinnakeet

• Added new feature: Lava

• Added new feature: Cooling overheated buildings

• Added new feature: Alien Trader, speaking in an alien language

• Added new energy generation methods: Bio Energy Reactor and Geothermic Reactor

• ☀️Added new logistics building: Resource Filter, obtainable from the Alien Trader

• Added 8 new buildings

• Added 2 new alien plants

• Added 7 new resources

• Added 8 new hidden resources with secret crafting recipes

• Moved Free Play mode to the main menu

• ☀️Added many features to Free Play mode: Plateaus, Ice, Plants, Seedlings, Spider Ducks, Wigglers, Alien Trader, Slime, Lava, and Heat

• Added the Kardashev Scale to configure advancement state, available energy generators, and production buildings

• ☀️Added 15 Free Play mode challenges and achievements

• All star systems, features, buildings, and crafting recipes can now be unlocked in Free Play mode without playing the campaign

• Improved goal complexity calculation

• Some craftable resources, such as Carbon and Quartz, can now appear as natural resources

• ☀️Stats and victory screens in Free Play mode now display more relevant information

• Star Birds can now be fully played with controller

• Added controller navigation for asteroid view, building placement, and pipe drawing via a 3D cursor

• Added controller navigation and interaction for the star system map

• Added switching between UI and Game Layer with Y, using quick jump or radial menu

• Added D-Pad hotkeys for quick access to important UI sections

• Added X button support to move or recall buildings

• Added left and right shoulder buttons to switch directly between asteroids

• Added priority-based quest selection to quickly collect quest rewards or accept new quests

• Added controller support for menu, level selection, and UI navigation

• Added gamepad input labels for some less obvious shortcuts

• Added UI scaling to some UI elements, which we will continue to improve in upcoming updates

• Star Birds is now playable on Mac Silicon

• Added new Total Score display in the main menu

• Added Total Score leaderboard: the sum of all stars collected across all levels

• Added Campaign Highscore leaderboard: the sum of highscores across all campaign levels

• Added in-game leaderboard display with a Friends Only filter

• Improved calculation of the maximum achievable score in campaign levels

• Maximum achievable score is now calculated for Free Play mode levels

• Added new perks to increase starting credits, tech points, and strange points

• Added new perks for reactor upgrades: Nuclear Reactor and Bio Energy Reactor

• Added new perks for building upgrades for new production buildings

• Added new star system visuals, color scheme, and star design for Cinnakeet

• Added new level selection area and main menu visuals for Cinnakeet

• Overhauled the look and feel of the star system map

• Added icons for new resources, Free Play mode features, and achievements

• Added new VFX for Geothermic Reactor and Lava

• Added placeholder icons for new buildings

• Added placeholder alien dialogue character and cutscenes

• ☀️Different resource entities in pipes now have different colors

• Space station and star system map colors now differ per star system

• Added new dialogue backgrounds

• Improved sound effects for many gameplay actions

• ☀️Added new sound effects for gameplay actions that did not have sound yet

• Improved the general audio mix

• Rover now drives faster on ice and slower on slime

• ☀️Added an experimental resource crafting tree, accessible via the Wiki

• Resource and building icons embedded in dialogues now have a light blue backdrop for better readability

• Launch Pads and Landing Pads can now always be placed on unscanned plateaus, if allowed in the sector, and will trigger scanning of those plateaus

• Energy and cooling requirements are now previewed while placing buildings

• ☀️Rover nuggets no longer respawn immediately when all nuggets on an asteroid are collected; instead, they reduce the timer of one random spawner to 10 seconds

• Improved random position calculation for landmarks, pre-placed buildings, and plants. It is now more performant and should no longer prevent spawning when enough space is available

• Reduced unnecessary memory allocations in asteroid generation

• ☀️Massively improved asteroid generation performance through more optimized algorithms

• Launch Pads can now send rockets to Landing Pads on the same asteroid

• When more than 9 production buildings are available in one level, they are split into Production and Advanced Production categories

• Improved building hover UI positioning, so the speech bubble pointer now points to the building instead of overlapping it or pointing away when the bubble becomes too large

• Buildings that cannot be purchased, such as plants, are considered locked until they are discovered or received in the inventory. For example, quests asking for fruit now only appear after the player has access to plants that produce fruit

• ☀️Wiki building section now only displays buildings available in the current level, not all buildings

• Added a confirmation screen before quitting the game

• ☀️Wall-mounted buildings, such as Geothermic Reactor and Ramp, can now be placed when the pointer is close to the wall instead of only directly on it

• Unlock effects are now queued, so they no longer overlap when multiple unlocks trigger at once

• Reduced collider size of Small Explosive, allowing placement closer to other obstacles

• ☀️Ramps now have fixed lanes for pipes, always allowing 4 pipes per ramp

• Default zoom level in the star system map is now based on UI scale, starting closer when UI scale is higher

• ☀️Quest bar on the left now fills the full screen height when no excavation or Alien Trader quest is present

• UI scale is now initialized according to device: 1.5x on Steam Deck, otherwise 1x. UI scale remains fully configurable in the settings menu

• Sector 05: Rust’s explosive comment now triggers after the explosion, not when placing the explosive

• ☀️Sector 05: Small Explosive research sequence can now be started before the first excavation quest, hopefully reducing confusion about missing small craters

• Added selection and hover outline to supply quest icons

• ☀️Pipe hub now tries to alternate between inputs when input and output connections are jammed; previously, it always preferred the input from the same pipe

• Camera now focuses on the selected asteroid when switching to the star system map

• Added 0.3 player survey, accessible via the news section

• ☀️Fixed Solar Panels sometimes no longer producing energy when cycling through asteroids

• ☀️Fixed infinite money glitch when two nugget spawners are very close to each other

• ☀️Fixed some save/load issues

• Fixed small plateau bridges appearing between plateaus with very narrow gaps

• Fixed perks in the Perk Screen being unavailable when a building is locked in the current run, even though it is unlocked globally

• ☀️Fixed asteroid scanning probe visually getting stuck while scanning an asteroid

• ☀️Fixed Continue button breaking when deleting the last savegame

• ☀️Fixed pressing Esc while loading a savegame causing the main menu to load on top of the running game

• Fixed tooltip not anchoring correctly to its UI element when displayed for the first time

• ☀️Fixed rover driving backwards in loading screen animation

Phew, yeah, that’s a lot… so let’s dive in! Have fun in Cinnakeet! 🚀