I’ve been making a lot of progress, polishing the visuals and UI lately. The home screen graphics have been updated, and I also reworked several of the UI systems. One of the bigger changes was adjusting the button colors so they now use my chosen palette—something that really should have been in place much earlier, but better late than never. The difference in overall cohesion is huge.

I also took the time to completely recreate the logo in a pure pixel style. This gives it a more authentic look that matches the rest of the game’s art direction, and it finally feels like it belongs in the world I’ve been building.

On the gameplay side, I added hover-over descriptions to most of the buildable items. This should make it easier for players to know exactly what each structure or object does without having to guess. Along with that, I moved the cost messages up to the top of the screen. I’m not totally sure if they’ll stay there permanently, but for now, the placement feels clean and readable.

One of the trickier parts of this update was wrestling with GameMaker’s Draw GUI event. It gave me more of a fight than I expected, but like most things, with a bit of trial, error, and persistence, I eventually managed to conquer it. The end result is smoother, more reliable UI behavior that I’m actually really happy with.