Grettings surveyors!

I’m excited to announce that Periphery Synthetic is now available on Steam for Windows, Linux, and Steam Deck. In this chill and nonviolent metroidvania experience, you explore a planetary system, synthesize new abilities, and reveal its past. This release concludes two years of early access updates which quadrupled its size with new worlds, abilities, and story content. Continue reading to get the full release notes for its anticipated exit from early access, and an exclusive first look at its next updates.

Expansion reveals

My biggest goal with Periphery Synthetic was to create an experience that can be easily expanded with new worlds and abilities that further diversify its nonlinearity. This model was tested twice during its early access period with the incremental release of its worlds. These have always arrived as free content expansions for existing players, and coincided with a base price increase of $1 USD per expansion for the EP.

Today I have two of these free content expansions to reveal for you. Both expansions will introduce challenging new worlds which feature dynamic vertical environments to explore. They also include a new xenotechnology to collect, and new abilities to unlock that change how you play. These will also be released for free with a base price increase.

Side D reveal

Here is an exclusive first look at the Side D release:

Alpha Periphery D2 is a small terrestrial world covered in an ethereal moss. Throughout its day the moss undergoes colorful seasonal changes, morphing between two distinct planetary surfaces. Importantly, it features aerial materials to collect, with an overhauled aerodynamics upgrade system which allows for finer control while falling. The update intends to also reexamine the material economy.

Side E reveal

Next is an exclusive first look at the Side E release:

Alpha Periphery D3 is a large airless world lit only by an ocean of molten lava. The magma rises and falls in an oscillating manner to reveal materials on its extremely vertical terrain. As this expansion is much earlier in production, I’m still determining the best upgrades to include here. The ability to manipulate the flow of time is a major possibility, as it would be very useful on all but one of the worlds.

Information forthcoming

Beware that these are not merely pieces of concept art! The worlds are connected by portals, mostly sculpted, and fully explorable. However, they need their music, environmental sound effects, new abilities, unique points of interest, perception and milestone triggers, trinkets, and narrative text. Both will be extremely large endeavors to finish from here.

Soon I’ll also be thinking more deeply about when development on the EP should come to a close. Since the beginning, I’ve planned for there being six explorable worlds. Ideally, a hypothetical sixth world would combine elements from all worlds into one, such as an Earth-like world that has an equal amount of land and underwater areas to explore. Ultimately, getting there will depend on the success of the EP, and whether I have the stamina to reach it. It may end up needing to be its own spinoff project.

I’m looking forward to sharing more details about these expansions soon. In the meantime, I will continue to support the EP with new features and bugfixes while the expansions are in development.

Release notes

Following two years of early access updates, the full release adds over 75 new features, enhancements, and fixes that complete the experience. Importantly, these changes fulfil my promise to fully remake my games S.E.A. and E.X.O. into a seamless experience, combined with unified gameplay mechanics and a nonlinear narrative which threads them together. This is the ultimate experience of their universe.

Beware! There have been many breaking changes between this release and previous versions. If you have played an early access release, then your existing save will be migrated to a New Game Plus with some progress loss. Thanks for understanding!

Key changes

• Unlockable milestones. Earn up to 46 milestones which mark your journey as a surveyor, such as significant discoveries and achievements. Players on Steam will also earn these as Steam Achievements.
• Collectable trinkets. Uncover and collect randomized treasures across each world. The types of trinkets that can be found evolve alongside your story progress, and appear on a new screen when collected.
• Destination guide. Follow a new scanning mechanic which guides you to the next point of interest. The scanning sequence now also highlights the sonified terrain as it plays.
• Perceptions text. This release replaces 33 pieces of placeholder text to complete its nonlinear narrative. You may laugh, cry, or scratch your head over their explorations of a human-like experience.
• World and upgrade rebalance. The worlds have been rescaled with greater distance between their points of interest, which themselves have been expanded and enhanced. Upgrade modifiers were rescaled to speed up the pacing of getting you fully upgraded.
• And much more. Did you know that you can press X on the gamepad to play an instrument? What about the new unlockable Prototype game mode that provides an alternative quickstart? Enjoy remastered audio, new particle effects, movement improvements, and more in the full list of changes below!

v3.2.0 changes

• Core Gameplay
  • Added collectable trinkets.
  • Added unlockable milestones that persist across saves.
  • Rebalanced collectable placement and distribution.
  • Rebalanced structure and destination placement.
  • Doubled the materials earned from collectable caches.
  • Added uncollected artifacts and caches to scanner destination guide.
  • Rebalanced upgrade level bonuses.
  • Increased maximum turning speed.
  • Reduced turning speed while sprinting.
  • Improved bunnyhopping when mulligans are not installed.
  • Improved jumping on steep slopes.
  • Recharged Mulligans when upgrading mid-air.
  • Increased the lateral speed limit while in air.
  • Allowed thrusters to be applied in the opposite direction.
  • Added recharge to mulligans when fired in opposite directions.
  • Required scan to target new collectables.
  • Removed xenotech from portals.
  • Restarted existing saves with a New Seed Plus.
  • Added the New Prototype Seed start option.
• Core Interface
  • Added Milestones and Trinkets screens.
  • Added total trinkets value to Status screen.
  • Added gamepad X toggle for instrument in-game.
  • Added octave switching to instrument while not playing a note.
  • Added slider for instrument volume to Audio screen.
  • Added toggle for fullscreen mode to Graphics screen.
  • Mapped F to confirm on keyboard.
  • Remapped vertical look to Arrow Up and Arrow Down.
  • Redacted spoilers in Distillery upgrade descriptions.
  • Prevented spoilers on splash screens.
  • Reduced load times of splash screens.
  • Remembered last selected item on screens.
  • Revised menu verbiage.
  • Fixed screens not always hidden from screen readers.
  • Fixed animations repeating on fast screen transitions.
  • Improved compatibility between demo and full version saves.
  • Revised demo limitations screen.
• Core Audio
  • Added brief destination cues after scan.
  • Added flight and underwater collision warnings.
  • Added more subdivisions to the compass.
  • Increased number of audible collectables.
  • Increased overall mix loudness.
  • Improved the general audio mix.
  • Improved reverb mixing and fading.
  • Boosted vertical look sound at slower speeds.
  • Simplified collectable lock-on notifications.
  • Sped up interface notification sounds.
  • Used main volume level on initial title screen.
  • Faded out audio when quitting the desktop build.
• Core Graphics
  • Added visual scan sequence.
  • Added destination guide particle effects.
  • Added portal particle effects.
  • Added animations to focused screen elements.
  • Improved clipping of celestial objects at the horizon.
  • Switched perceptions to a monospace font.
  • Fixed overeager culling of terrain chunks.
• Alpha Periphery B
  • Expanded structures at city centers.
  • Increased sand particle density.
  • Revised perceptions text.
  • Fixed collectables not scanned while on sand.
• Alpha Periphery C
  • Added perceptions text.
  • Improved music mix, timing, and reactivity.
  • Enhanced and expanded cave generation.
  • Increased floor color variations.
  • Darkened the night sky.
  • Fixed movement physics issues on the surface.
  • Fixed missing terrain biome on the floor.
  • Fixed materials spawning in the abyss.
  • Fixed particle animations firing during scan sequence.
  • Fixed visual pop-in of cave entrances.
  • Optimized graphical transition between surface and floor.
  • Optimized cave graphics and sounds.
  • Optimized saving of exploration data.
• Alpha Periphery C2
  • Added perceptions text.
  • Enhanced and expanded mountain generation.
  • Improved mountain ascent destination placement.
  • Increased snow particle density.
• Miscellaneous
  • Updated documentation with new features.
  • Updated desktop builds to Electron 31.
  • Integrated milestones as Steam achievements.

Roadmap updates

There were a few things that I couldn’t finish before release. These items were added to the roadmap for a future update, but with no promises to add them in a timely manner:

• Mouse improvements. I’m aware that the mouse controls are unideal, especially for lower DPIs or other accessibility needs that don’t match the mouse that I use at home. I’d like to look toward some of my favorite simulation games, like Elite: Dangerous or MechWarrior Online, and try to implement a virtual cursor system which better controls and communicates the current state when using a mouse. For the time being, the EP is best experienced with a gamepad, or by using its keyboard controls for steering and looking.
• Audio balance slider. This was brought up to me during the Access-Ability Showcase this year. Some folks have trouble hearing or processing stereo audio for various reasons, therefore I would like to add some sliders to the audio mixer which can boost or change the stereo balance.
• Dark mode. I have been using operating system-level dark mode for many years to make my machine more accessible to me, and I think it would be cool for the EP to switch to a dark interface automatically for folks like me.
• Continued optimizations. It sounds great when it works as expected, but the EP can still stutter or halt, especially in intensive environments and when running for a long time. I’m used to just giving it a quick restart, but I understand that ideally it shouldn’t be this way.

Scheduling note

I will soon be taking a much-needed vacation. During this time, I will be unable to respond to issues or inquiries. However, I plan to address any critical issues with hotfixes within the next week. Thanks for understanding!

Thanks for playing

The full release of Periphery Synthetic marks the the most significant milestone along my game development journey so far. Yet it is just the beginning of a series of exciting updates and—hopefully—new projects.

I would not have been able to do this without the generous feedback and support of the audio gaming community and the folks on my Discord server. Thank you for playing all of the game jam submissions and early access builds that led us here. This would not exist without you.

Until the next one, please enjoy this exciting update! ✌

Now available on Steam