The biggest recent change is cloud sync. Red Planet Tycoon is still local-first: your saves live locally first, and the game should keep respecting that. But local-only progress is scary if you want to move between devices, clear browser data, or just trust that a long colony will still be there later.
To make that safer, I added a Sign in with Google flow. It lets me authenticate the player and get the basic profile data needed to link progress to an account. From there, the game can save progress to the cloud about every minute, so the browser save remains the first copy while the server becomes a backup and cross-device bridge.
Hardening the cloud path
Adding cloud saves sounds simple from the outside, but it forced some difficult decisions around the server and database. I spent a lot of time hardening both against future attacks, bad traffic, and the possibility that more people show up than I planned for.
There is always more to do on that front, but I am hoping the current foundation is enough to let the game scale without turning every new player into a source of operational panic.
Mobile is in a much better place
I also spent a lot of time tuning the mobile UI. The game already needed to be playable on phones because the browser PWA is the release path, but there is a big difference between "it fits" and "it feels good." Panels, buttons, spacing, and early actions have all had another pass.
The level 1 to 12 experience feels pretty solid now. It still needs a few tweaks, but the core path is finally getting close to the shape I want: understandable, active, and not too fussy while the player is still learning the economy.
Next on the list
The next batch is a mix of community features, content cleanup, and bigger design work:
- Evaluate additional sign-in options.
- Build a social page showing player progress and rankings.
- Revamp the map with medium resources, better crater rim and crater floor tiles, and a map that is fun to explore and balanced enough to matter.
- Add a wiki-like page explaining game systems such as adjacency and dust storms.
- Add a small amount of monetization.
- Start shaping phase 2: terraforming, expeditions, and guilds.
The map revamp will probably be the heaviest lift in that list. It touches art, generation rules, balance, and the basic feel of exploration. But it is also one of the places where Red Planet Tycoon can become much more itself, so I am looking forward to it.