The ring is now bigger than ever, measuring 360 by 13 tiles, which is bigger than it sounds, given how tiny everything else is! Behind the scenes we are also now simulating the environmental conditions of the entire ring, instead of only inside the visible window. While this sounds like it should be a performance downgrade, it's actually the opposite! Things like temperature is now calculated only at the point in time when it's actually used by another system, so-called "lazy evaluation", and this is rare enough that computation gets neatly distributed over different simulation steps.
The next major change in this update is that the world is not divided into biomes. Forest, jungle and grasslands all occur exactly once on each ring. Currently they differ only in how plants look and are distributed, as well as how the grass is colored. However, with future updates, the aim is to continue diverging the biomes, such that the player has to adapt to the circumstances. This includes different species of plants and animals, biome-dependent mountain and lake generation, and soil quality.
On the gameplay side, we continue to streamline the early game. Technology has been reworked to function more like a "upgrade store", where you purchase new technologies using the knowledge resource and other resources related to that particular upgrade. Knowledge is generated by scholars, and like before, the dilemma of having people who "only" produce knowledge instead of foraging for food is still very much present.
Everyone who requested playtest access should have been granted it by now, and we will re-open signups when the next update draws closer. Conflict is on the horizon...