Before our team heads to a holiday break we wanted to thank you, our fantastic community, for all the support you have given us during the past year! We also take the chance and recap some of the highlights from the year 2021 and in the end also take a peek into the future of what is coming in 2022.
Recap
In 2021 we had eight major updates and many smaller ones in between. The update pace was a little less frequent as before, but it helped to produce more meaningful content to each update
- Reworked colony map generation to cluster deposits more together and distribute different soil types in a more balanced way around the colony. This helps to give more clear directions where to expand from the starting area.
- The new outposts system and diversity of different outposts were added to make the world map part of the production chain and resource logistics.
- Colony alarm enables players to choose how the population reacts to enemies attacking the colony, whether they be wild beasts or bandits broken through the gate. This feature is still work-in-progress and we want to make it a more useful tool in case of all types of emergencies.
- World Map combat makeover for clearer and better communicated fights. This allowed you to make informed decisions on where to attack and how many specialists you might need.
- A new hiring feature was added to allow players to recruit new specialists, since the outpost system created quite a large sink to “spend” them. Specialist hiring is being expanded on in future updates to add more options for the players.
- Tiered resource system for stronger progression from wood and plastic to concrete and advanced components, supported by better visuals. The more you progress, the more advanced resources you need. As a reward, your colonists fair better, you can support a larger population and the visual identity changes from tents to permanent housing.
- Colonist AI and task system has been improved to avoid irrational behavior and logistical bottlenecks in the production chains.
- Population cap has been increasing during the year multiple times.
- A lot of new buildings were added during the year to add diversity and depth to various features.
- We’ve also done QoL improvements and UI/UX work to every part of the game, but that is definitely something we are still focusing on the future as well.
The latest major release was obviously the 1.0 update, which upgraded the game in significant ways:
- Endgame content with a long main quest driving the gameplay toward the ultimate goal.
- New endgame related buildings and outposts to build.
- Brought back the improved version of the gate combat.
- Reworked malnutrition system.
- Voice-overs to bring life to events, quests and your population.
- Crispier visuals for buildings to identify them better in all conditions, lighting changes and polished effects for the final “look” of the game.
These were only a few examples of what happened during the last year, but since the release we have been working on the upcoming updates as well. Unfortunately the update we intended to come out in December did not make it before the holidays, but we will be releasing that early January. Currently our plan is to have three updates before March.
Next steps
If nothing changes, the first update includes dedicated repair and demolish buttons to make repairing and demolishing buildings easy and fast without a need to select each building individually. Victory in gate combat is rewarded with loot left behind by the defeated bandits. And something that has been requested a lot is a new tech that enables the production of Rare Metal in the colony once more by upgrading the Metal Auto-Extractor into a Magnetic Separator. One more thing that we’ve been experimenting with is a new “Very Hard” difficulty option has been added for those looking to really challenge themselves.
Other smaller things include balance fixes such as more aggressive guard and specialist AI with better target prioritization especially during an alarm, limitations to fishing building placement, removal of bandits that attack you from behind and so on. But we’ll come back to these in more detail as the update is released!
We’re not ready to reveal all details of what will come in the later updates, but as a teaser we are planning to add new game modes that allow customizing the start settings with more freedom and make scenarios that make the game playable and challenging in completely new ways. Also each update will have new content, fixes and QoL improvements. But let’s come back to these early next year!
Happy Holidays!
Now we head out to have a short break and return back in January to make the game we love as good as possible. Thank you for the past year and we wish everyone of you happy holidays!
