Hi there,

I know that 0.2.11 was supposed to be succeeded by 0.3 but... ☺
Yes, this means that 0.2.12 is mostly a hotfix update, but it also adds a few interesting features and polishes things up before the legendary 0.3 release.

Most important changes

Bailouts

There's now a chance of your company receiving a bailout offer from a kind competitor or a whole country. If your company is popular enough and goes under, on the last day before declaring bankruptcy and losing the game, you can choose to instead take the money, repay your loans, and hopefully design a hit product that pays off your debt. A second chance if you will. 

The bailout amount should be enough to repay all of your current debts and design one CPU. You will have approximately 18 months to repay the bailout. You can do so in the third tab of the bank. There are no monthly interest payments, you just have to repay 110% of the loaned money. If you don't do it in time, you will be fined an additional 110% on top of the repayment amount. It's also possible to refuse the offer and just end the game.
It's not that easy to go bankrupt if you already have high popularity, so this feature will only be for a select few to witness :)

Sidebar notifications

Instead of spamming the player with disruptive full-screen notifications, there is now a system for less invasive notification bubbles on the side.

It's not used for much yet, only a bankruptcy countdown and notifications about competitors achieving industry milestones. You can dismiss the notifications by right-clicking on them or with the handy clear all button.
In the future I want to make some notifications toggleable between off, sidebar-only, and normal full-screen notifications.

Important bug fixes

• Multi-core enhancement technology not unlocking in some cases
  
• High scores being counted incorrectly in some cases (don't worry, all submitted get later recalculated on the server)
  
• Some mods made for different versions of the game refusing to load
• Some variations of the bankruptcy news message never being shown

...and a couple of less important ones.

Overall polish & improvements

• CPU brands are now sorted descending by date created
  
• Replaced the sound on/off switch with a volume slider
  
• Slight changes to reviews and appending space to brand names if they appear before product names
• More sound effects
• Transition animation when switching milestone tabs
  
• Balanced high score multipliers and thresholds
  
• The ability to not show the bankruptcy warning notification again
  
• Added back anime girl :)

The full list of changes can be seen on the wiki.

This version doesn't work well with old saves, so I recommend starting a new game. If you really wish to continue an old playthrough, you should open the console (F2) and run this command: func Set Theme;Default
Mods from 0.2.11 should be fully compatible with this release.

Exciting future for the website

I was reluctant to the idea of adding user accounts to the game's website (https://ht.poggers.ltd) and I still feel like it's not a necessity (hence why you will still be able to use the website without one), but it will allow for many new features for the community and is quite a good learning experience for me.

The first thing I want to use the accounts for is a botnet that will help me take over the world mod list where you will be able to submit your own mods and browse, download, and vote on other people's.

There's still quite a lot of work to do. I will probably publish a separate devlog when it's done, but for now, you can take a look at some very early screenshots:

After the mod list, I will hopefully add the ability to log in through the game so that all your scores are linked to your account. I also wish to add direct payment via Stripe to avoid the current 40-50% tax rate on donations and perhaps an interactive wiki. Time will tell.

The next update will be the mystical version 0.3 with architectures and multiple products selling at once. I will be posting devlogs to keep you updated, so stay tuned!
In the meantime, I'll also be working on the website and the wiki.

Once again, thank you for all the support and see you next time :D

P.S. If you've donated to the game on itch.io, please let me know by DMing me the e-mail you used for the payment. There are small perks waiting for you on the Discord server (with more planned in the future)!