Only four more days to go until Prepare For Warp: Unlimited Edition: Beyond Insanji is available on Steam Early Access. If you haven’t already, go wishlist this great game today! And shout it from the mountaintops that this game is coming. Tell your favorite streamers about it. Tell your friends, tell your dog, tell your grandma.
I’m feeling really good about where the game is for the Early Access release, especially after Friday night’s Prototype and Play session. Over the last week, the graphics have really come along and the game is now stunning and bright and flashy like it was intended to be.
before 
after
Unfortunately for now the bloom effects will be available on the PC version only. They do not perform well at all on older Android devices. At the moment I’m unsure whether I will let the bloom effects be exclusive to the PC version, put development effort into a mobile bloom solution, or increase Android device requirements.
I promised last time that I would talk more about the many gameplay improvements that have been made to the original (1.0) game leading up to this release. This will be a long read, so get comfortable. We’ll start with the economy, and then talk about retirement, new obstacles, and we will wrap up with mission changes.
Economy
The basic seven ship upgrades from 1.0 are still intact (Engines, Steering, Hull, Shield, Recharge, Laser, Missile), are still purchased using the base Argen currency, and as of yet no new basic upgrades have been created. However, the existing upgrades have had their maximum level extended from 4 to 12. Beyond level 4, upgrades become exponentially more expensive, requiring some means to be employed by the player to eventually bring those upgrades within affordability.
In addition to earning Argen from missions, Argen is now awarded for earning achievements as well. Bonus Argen can also drop from Ally ships in the form of a debit card.
Upgrades that were in-app purchases are now purchasable in the Subspace Market using a new collectible Dark Matter currency. Dark Matter can be acquired by destroying fighters with missiles, evading space mine explosions with an evade maneuver, having it drop from an Ally ship, or as a reward for every fifth achievement earned. Dark Matter can also be purchased with Argen in a pinch, but at an exponentially increasing cost per unit purchased.
Most of the Subspace Market items have been reworked to be granularly levelable, and a lot of new items have been added to the Subspace Market. Each level of item upgrade increases linearly in cost from the level before. Major Subspace upgrades have a max level of 20, minor Subspace upgrades have a max level of 100.
There is also a third class of currency and upgrades purchasable with with it. Prestige is a mid-to-late game currency which is earned upon pilot retirement, and is then used to purchase Legacies that tilt the balance of the game toward the player. I’ll talk more about Retirement, Prestige, and Legacies later.
Finally, there are Components, which are crates dropped by Ally ships and are awarded at a rate of one per level per pilot, starting at level 6. Each Component is identified by its starting letter, and when you collect four Components whose starting letters spell out a relevant word (SHIP for hull cosmetics, LITE for laser cosmetics, HALO for shield cosmetics, and FAST for warp cosmetics), you can unlock one cosmetic item from that category.
Those are the rough contours of the new Prepare For Warp economy. Next I’ll talk about Retirement, Prestige, and Legacies.
Retirement
The starting pilot has no hope of reaching Thend. The goal of reaching Thend is a multi-generational effort, requiring each subsequent generation of pilot to build on the foundation of the generation that came before.
Being eligible for retirement requires that you first reach the original final planet from 1.0, Insanji (level 10). Once you have earned the Insane Skills achievement for reaching Insanji (beating level 10), you will be eligible to retire using the nice Palm Tree button that appears in the Store.
When you retire, all Argen, Dark Matter, Ship Upgrades, Subspace Market Upgrades, Warp Licenses, Consumables, and Achievements are lost. However, Cosmetic items, Legacies, and Prestige are passed to the next generation. In addition, Prestige is earned based on High Score and number of Achievements earned by the current pilot.
Once you reach retirement eligibility, you can see how much prestige would be earned from retirement in the Store, both from your High Score and your Achievement Count. To retire, you will need to choose a replacement pilot from among three candidates. Each candidate Pilot will list one or two bonuses that will be granted through the duration of that Pilot’s career, if chosen.
If you don’t like any of the candidate Pilots, you can washout those and find new candidates for a nominal Dark Matter cost. However, every time you do this, the cost of doing so increases linearly, and this cost is not reset by retirement.
Once you retire, you will be able to spend earned Prestige in the Prestige section of the store. The upgrades purchased here adjust rules of the game world, and are not reset by retirement.
New Obstacles
The first of the new obstacles is very deadly, but very fun: The Space Mine. The Space Mine starts out inert, and it might be best to leave it that way. If you enter its line of sight, though, it will explode very violently. A very distinctive alternating high-low alert tone will sound whenever one of these is nearby, and will notify attentive pilots to position themselves accordingly.
If contact with a space mine explosion is unavoidable (or intentionally initiated), an Evasion can be employed as a last resort measure to escape damage from the blast. Doing so will generate Dark Matter that can be collected. There are series of achievements both for getting damaged by space mines, and for escaping space mines using an Evasion.
The remaining “new” obstacles are not really new per se, but are uplevel variants of existing obstacles. There are now mega-asteroids and giga-asteroids. These appear later in the level, mostly after the second phase change. They are extra large and pack an extra heavy wallop. You will know them from the bright glowing radiation emanating from them.
There are also mega-bombers and giga-bombers. These are a lot larger, require a lot more laser power to take down, and have a larger payload of missiles. They are still vulnerable to missiles, though.
Mission Changes
Each level is now subdivided into phases, with each phase representing a fixed amount of distance traveled. A change in phase is signified by an alert sound, a change in the color theme of the level, and a change of background music. The first two phase changes roughly denote where the level’s shifting obstacle composition might prompt a shift in player tactics.
On level 6 or later, a phase change also signifies the imminent arrival of an Ally ship. This Ally ship will drop a number of pickups before entering warp and leaving. The Ally ship is, as far as we know, invincible, and destroys all obstacles in its path, creating a wake of relative safety behind it that the player can draft.
The exact number of items dropped by the Ally ship depends on how much difficulty the player is having: It will always drop at least three items. If you are playing at a level higher than any you have beaten, the number of Ally drops will increase by one for every three failed attempts at that level, to a maximum of seven drops. Right now it drops Shield orbs, Superlaser gems, Dark Matter, and Argen debit cards.
In addition to this, the Ally will also drop a Component crate if the player has not yet collected the Component for the current level, for a maximum potential of 8 drops. Components are used to unlock cosmetics to customize the ship.
Music is no longer a cosmetic item. Each phase within a level has a designated music track that cannot be overridden. The selection of music in the game has been rotated to some degree to tighten up the theming of the music. Some tracks have been removed, and new ones have been added in their place.
Conclusion
That was a lot to cover, but a LOT has changed with this game since its original release. It’s more like a “Prepare For Warp 2” than an update.
I’m really excited about this game, both as a developer and as a player. According to my Steam stats, I’ve logged over 50 hours of playtest time in the past two weeks, and I still look forward to jumping in to it whenever I need to do more playtesting. I’ll be continuing my series of devtest playthroughs on Twitch, getting more into those higher levels that I personally have only seen a couple of times before.
The next dev blog will probably cover subjects that come up from players after the release, so be sure to check back for that.
Again, please help spread the word about this game. Tell anyone that will listen that Thursday, November 18, is the date that this great game releases on Steam Early Access.