- Cowmera Games September 2026 Studio Update - 17 September 2026
Hey everyone, Relentless Expanse is coming up on its 2-year anniversary in a few months, and our next game is still coming along well (hoping to announce it soon!), but I recently realized that I've never properly introduced the team behind Cowmera Games! So, here's everyone that's actively contributing to either Relentless Expanse or our upcoming game!Brock (MrCowdisease) - FounderAyyy, that's me! I'm the guy!!! I do a lot of coding, game design, and just lots of random things related to a game's success (QA, project management, community outreach, etc). I still consider 100%ing Hollow Knight and Celeste to be two of my greatest achievements to this day. I still haven't played Silksong tho (wtf? how?)Andrew Sutherland - Audio EngineerAndrew has been an audio engineer for 15 years, specializing in Musical Composition. He described himself as "Adept" in SFX, Dialogue Editing, and basic A…
- Cowmera Games August 2026 Studio Update - 16 August 2026
Hey everyone, this month I wanted to talk about something that I've been wanting to go into detail about for a while now; the history and creation of Relentless Expanse!Now, unlike many indie devs, Relentless Expanse isn't actually something I dreamed about making. I was very new (still kinda am) to game development, and I got the core gameplay idea from another free game on steam called Ruthless Conquest. You can probably tell that Relentless Expanse's name was inspired by it too! Me and my friends played it on and off randomly for several years, and I enjoyed the gameplay, but I always wished it just had more depth to it. The developer didn't update the game since he mainly made it for fun (very valid), but that made me a little sad since I genuinely enjoyed it but I knew that some of the more frustrating or missing features would never be updated. As lots of gamers do, I imagined cre…
- Update v0.6.8 - Ko-fi Announcement, New Font, New Map, and Maintenance Fixes! - 17 July 2026
For this month, we have another Relentless Expanse update rather than just a studio update! For this update, we mainly focused on general maintenance for the game, but there's still a new map from last month's event, and we decided to get a little experimental with a new font (mwahahaha >:)ALSO, before I get to the exact changes, I wanted to let everyone know that we have a Ko-fi now! Our next game will be monetized, but Relentless Expanse isn't, and I've just been turning down donation requests for more than a year now... which feels a bit silly. So, I've set up a Ko-fi that we can accept donations from! To thank players that donate, we've also added a "Supporter" role in our discord, which basically makes you a VIP playtester! Regardless of whether you all choose to donate or not, thank you for playing, and I hope you enjoy the changes!https://ko-fi.com/cowmera_gamesAdded the new "Jel…
- Update v0.6.7 - Cowmera Games 1-Year Anniversary Update + Event - 15 June 2026
Before I start talking about anything else, I first wanted to say that we’re hosting an event on our community discord server to celebrate the 1-Year Anniversary for Cowmera Games! Do you have a map idea that you’ve always wanted in the game? Now’s your chance to add it! Check #announcements for more details: https://discord.com/invite/ZjaBnbDVcU Now, I’ll have a long and hopefully interesting studio update below, but let’s first talk about the update! For this one, we REALLY wanted to finally fix multiplayer. We know that this has been a long-standing issue for quite a while now, and frankly, despite our best attempts, we really haven’t had the capability to properly address it until recently. That being said, we’ve hunted down dozens of multiplayer-specific bugs, fixed the long-standing lag/desync issues, and overall hopefully made multiplayer perform almost as well as singleplayer! I…
- Cowmera Games May 2026 Studio Update - 19 May 2026
Hey everyone, we're not dead! We've been hard at work on our next game for the studio (hint hint), although I can understand why you would think otherwise since we've been deathly silent since the 1-year anniversary update for Relentless Expanse. So, although we're not quite ready to announce anything, I wanted to break that silence!This will be the first monthly studio update for Cowmera Games, where I'll focus on telling you all more about the studio, what we've been doing, what we plan to do, and plenty more fun stuff! So, while we're not quite ready to tease our next game (more on that next month?), I figured now would be the best time to introduce myself and the brief history of our studio!Before Cowmera Games, and while we were still developing Relentless Expanse, it was just me (MrCowdisease), our awesome artist (Timberlate), and our musical genius (Andrew Sutherland). Me and And…
- Update v0.6.5 - 1 Year Anniversary Update Plus $100 Giveaway! - 14 January 2026
WE'RE GIVING AWAY $100!!! Now that I have your attention: Hey everyone, it's time for the 1 Year anniversary update, which is possibly the biggest update we've ever had for the game! And, great news, the game is now P2W! I know you were all greatly looking forward to P2W, so I figured this was the best time to include it :) Alongside that, there's also multiple new settings, features, a new map, and some fixes for some very annoying, and sometimes longstanding, bugs. Thank you all so much for playing, and if you're not in our discord server then be sure to join and check #announcements for a chance to win one of our giveaways, with $100 in total up for grabs! Here's an invite: https://discord.com/invite/ZjaBnbDVcUAdded P2W!!! From now on, you must select your income bracket for singleplayer games. This will affect the difficulty of the game (how quickly you generate energy and ships). T…
- Update v0.6 - Challenge Modes, Improvements, and Bug Fixes! - 24 November 2025
Hi everyone, we're back again with an update that focuses on challenges and fixing lots of long-standing bugs! Good luck winning without any energy! I really want to say that the game is finally in a very stable place after this update, but not even I believe myself when I say that... so please report every bug that you see, even if it's been reported in the past! As much as I try to address each and every issue, it's difficult to keep track of them all, so I want to make sure that I'm aware of every bug or issue that's currently left in the game! Thank you so much for your support, and I hope you enjoy the update :)Added "Challenge Modes" for singleplayer, and new achievements to go along with them, including:No Energy: Win without being able to generate energy!No Ships: Win without being able to generate ships! (Be sure to buy ships!)Fog of War: Every planet is a gas giant!Neutral Att…
- Update v0.5.5 - New Celestial Bodies, A Tutorial, Updated Help Menu, And More! - 31 August 2025
Hey everyone, I'm finally back with the first big update since we've become a studio, and this is a massive one! The new gameplay changes adds tons of new cool strategies, and the overall gameplay should be much more stable now that we've fixed a lot of long-standing annoying bugs! As always, I hope you all enjoy the update, and let me know if you run into any issues! Added new 5 new celestial bodies! Each of them has certain specialties, or new mechanics, surrounding them, which are:Red Giant: A massive star that produces lots of energy but very few shipsAsteroid Cluster: A collection of asteroids which is great at mass-producing ships, but has very little energy production and ship capacityGas Giant: A planet that has a very large ship capacity and hides the number of ships inside of it from other players, but has poor productionNeutron Star: A unique star that has very high energy an…
- Update v0.5.1 - Multiplayer Fixes and Debugging Reports - 25 June 2025
Hey everyone, just a small update for now to address many of the issues that players have encountered with the new multiplayer! After this update we'll focus on polishing multiplayer some more, before we finally move on to the next major content update, which will add new planet types and stars which will all have unique mechanics associated with them! I hope you all enjoy the fixes that come with this update!Added a way to investigate what's causing the multiplayer delay issue. If you run into the issue, then before you start another game, type %appdata% into your windows search bar, press enter, and then go to Godot -> app_userdata -> Relentless Expanse. In that folder, you'll find a file called "lastGameReport.dat". Just create a bug report, post that file, and we'll take it from there! Every report helps us narrow down the issue, so we greatly appreciate everyone that's able to help…
- Officially Announcing The Creation of Cowmera Games!!! - 15 June 2025
Hey everyone, I have an exciting bit of news that will forever change the development of Relentless Expanse, and much more! Today, we are officially announcing the creation of Cowmera Games, our very own indie studio! Alongside this, we are already deep into development with our next game! I won't be giving any more details on that for a while still, but hopefully sometime in Fall of this year I can start teasing it!To accommodate these changes, you'll notice that the discord server has changed so that it's now focused on Cowmera Games as a whole, rather than just Relentless Expanse. Here's a link to the discord server for those that aren't in it yet:https://discord.com/invite/ZjaBnbDVcULastly, what does this mean for the future of Relentless Expanse? The rate of updates will slow down a bit, however we still plan to support Relentless Expanse until it's out of Early Access, which is qu…
- Update v0.5 - The Long-Awaited Multiplayer Update!!! - 8 June 2025
Wow, this one has been a VERY long time coming, hasn't it? Well, it's finally here! You don't have to worry about being limited to just 3 servers or about servers randomly crashing or going offline, you can create your own lobbies, and you can directly invite your friends through steam! This one took a LOT of code, both adding new code and changing old code, so we're really excited to finally have it out!With the release of this update, Relentless Expanse finally feels like it's in a fairly stable position, although there's certainly plenty of aspects that can and will be improved upon. Also, we can now start working towards more ambitious updates that change up the gameplay in fun and unique new ways! We'll tease more about updates in the future if they start taking too long, so be sure to join our discord here:https://discord.com/invite/ZjaBnbDVcUAlso, as always, and for this update e…
- v0.4.8 Hotfix + Defensive Platform Energy Cost Rework - 17 April 2025
Hey everyone, I've got lots of good changes and fixes for you all here, including a rework of how the defensive platforms calculate the cost per shot! First, let me go over some of the bug fixes and changes: Halved the speed of decay when planets are above the ship cap Adjusted AI numbers a bit to make sure they don't get stuck in niche situations where they get stuck trying to take over planets Fixed planetary defense not shooting in multiplayer (apparently this was related to them not being able to see how much energy players have, which unfortunately wasn't an easy fix, so while they still shoot, they won't be able to consume any energy for now) Fixed some issues with earning/not earning the new achievements Several other minor fixes that I forgot to note Now, let's get to the real fun bit: planetary defense now costing energy per shot. This was met with mixed reactions, and I think…
- Update v0.4.8 - New Achievements, New Galaxy Shapes, Reworked Systems, And More! - 14 April 2025
Hey everyone, here's another update to help tide everyone over until the multiplayer rework! There's some pretty nice changes and fixes in here, so let me know what you all think about it! Good luck relentlessly expanding! (that sounds a little weird... oh well) Added 12 new achievements! Added 2 new galaxy shapes and a new "random" option that randomly selects from every galaxy shape Reverted some changes for AI so that they're much more aggressive again (and not so "slow" to react) Reworked defensive platforms so that they now consume 1 energy for every shot. This change has two main purposes: To make energy more valuable, and to slightly nerf defensive platforms. I'll be monitoring feedback on this change closely to see whether or not it lands well with players, so let me know your thoughts on it! Planets now decay much quicker whenever they're very far above their cap Spruced up the…
- Update v0.4.7 - Galaxy Shapes, AI Update, Key Rebinds, And More! - 11 March 2025
Hey everyone, it's been a bit, here's a big update for you all! The multiplayer update has been taking longer than expected, so I wanted to push out another update in the meantime! I hope you all enjoy :) You can now choose the shape of the galaxy that you want to play in! There are currently 7 options, and more can be easily added in the future, feel free to suggest new shapes! Heavily adjusted the decision-making for AI, they will now do a LOT of things differently, explore the new AI and let me know if you find any weird new behaviors! Added the ability to change keybinds in the settings You can now right-click on any empty space when you have planets selected and choose to mass-upgrade the selected planets Added a "preferred color" option in the settings (only works in singleplayer for now, will work in multiplayer after the multiplayer update!) Adjusted pathfinding some more - the…
- Update v0.4.5 Patch Notes - 5 February 2025
I've got a pretty big update for you all today which comes with a LOT of fixes and new features that were requested! However, I would first like to address the state of multiplayer. The connection is inconsistent at best, and there are a lot of multiplayer-specific bugs and issues that haven't been fixed yet. The bad news is that these issues require basically a full rewrite of all of the multiplayer code. The good news is that we've been working on fixing it for a while now and have been making great progress! We expect to begin playtesting the new multiplayer system soon, and we'll bring it to the public build as soon as we're able to! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the update! Added the ability to pause the game in singleplayer (you can also press space to toggle it, and it will auto-pause the game when you open the escape menu now) Added the ability to speed up or slow down the g…
- v0.4.2 Hotfix - 19 January 2025
Just a quick hotfix for some issues that were introduced in the last update! Here are the changes: Fixed an issue where planets weren't able to stop their continuous send orders in multiplayer Fixed a minor bug where 1 ship would get subtracted from player planets at the start of every game (inconsequential but very annoying)
- Update v0.4.2 Patch Notes - 18 January 2025
Before I get to the patch notes, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the massive amount of support! I expected almost no one to play the game, but so far over 650 people have played and I've received a huge amount of positive support and feedback! So, here's an update that addresses some of the main issues that everyone has been facing so far: Added 2 new servers to play on!!! Optimized ships a LOT, it should be very difficult to crash the game or get less than 30 fps now, let me know if you’re still having issues after this update! Benchmark tests showed an increase from ~5 to ~40 fps when repeatedly sending ships from every planet on a max size galaxy. Here are some of the optimization changes you’ll notice in the gameplay: Repeatedly sending ships from planets now waits until there are at least 3 ships before they are sent out, I know this is a bit annoying but the perform…
- Relentless Expanse Is Live NOW!!! - 14 January 2025
Relentless Expanse has been released in Early Access! I'm excited to see everyone try it out and give me their thoughts! Thank you to everyone that playtested the game so far and gave feedback, it was extremely helpful! For those playtesters, here are the patch notes for those that have played since the last update: AI will now more aggressively push advantages and focus less on expanding to neutral planets, I’ll be keeping an eye on this to see if this causes any weird behavior or if it makes the AI weaker rather than stronger When you select planets you can now see the total amount of ships that you have selected on those planets at the bottom of the screen, and whenever you’re sending ships to another planet it will also display the number of ships that you would be sending You can now press “R” to automatically select every planet that you control Added a LOT of new sound effects an…
