Sphere - Version 1.0.5 is live now: Achievements & more!
Hello Community! We're happy to announce that version 1.0.5 is now live, featuring a range of smaller updates to our game (full details below).
This includes the addition of Achievements, small bug fixes, UI refinements, and minor balancing changes, all aimed at enhancing your gaming experience. While this patch focuses on smaller improvements and has only a little impact on current gameplay, we're also hard at work on our next update!
After the game's release and an extensive development period, we took a short break to gain a fresh perspective. This time allowed us to reassess the game's strengths and weaknesses while also considering valuable feedback from our dedicated players. With a clear vision and renewed energy, we are eager to continue improving our game and providing you with the best possible experience.
While we hope you enjoy the improvements of this patch, we understand that many of you are excited about more substantial updates. Rest assured, we're working hard on our next update, which will bring even more exciting features and changes to the game.
We'll be sharing more details in a separate post, so keep an eye out for that!
In summary, we are grateful for your ongoing support and interest in our game. We hope you enjoy the small enhancements in version 1.0.5, and we can't wait to share more about the upcoming update with you.
Until then, enjoy your time in-game, and don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the community hub!
Best regards, Your Hexagon Sphere Games Team
Full Changelog v. 1.0.5
Achievements:
We have implemented 24 Achievements
3D adjustments / fixes:
Fertilizer plant now has smoking chimneys
Bulk storage facility had no outline when selected, now it has one
Snow flurry particle density reduced (flake density -50% + ice winds 50% slower)
UI adjustments:
Hierarchy in the sector display
Small graphical adjustment of the outer buttons in the bottom bar
Small graphical adjustment of the buttons in the top bar
Techtree:
We have taken out "Higher efficiency". Instead we have added two more technologies to reduce the flight time (Magnetic field interplay II + III).
Commanders! As promises yesterday, the team was busy getting rid of the Build-/Repair-Drones bug, some of you have reported!
So, without further ado, let's jump into the contents of this small patch:
Fixed: Build-and Repair Drones getting stuck after some time in the game, after dismantling ruins/buildings.
Fixed: Visual light beam effect of Build-and Repair Drones starting from a wrong location.
Improved: Increased overall responsiveness of Build-and Repair Drones after construction/destruction/repair.
Additionally, please feel free to visit our Steam Community Hub to leave your feedback, especially, if this fix is properly working for all those, who have provided us with the necessary details, but also to bring up suggestions, or simply have a chat with other Sphere-Commanders and their experiences with the game: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1273220/discussions/
Thank you for flying with us and your ongoing support! Please keep it up! Stay safe!
First Sphere - Flying Cities (v.1.0.3) - Third Hotfix now available!
Commanders, Today, we have released our third full release hotfix (version 1.0.3) for our Sphere - Flying Cities!
Without further ado, the following fixes will be included:
Added: Scrollbars to the Savegame lists in load game window and save game window.
Added: Click sound on left / right arrows.
Added: Display of ice storm event message and strength.
Fixed: Medical building service capacity fails to increase after researching the Better Coverage technology.
Fixed: Mouse scrolling is non-functional on the resource list from the Mining screen.
Fixed: Missing service capacity settings on hospital components.
Fixed: The player can send the drone to scout the own sector, which leads to malfunction of the Scout Drone.
Fixed: Some "attention"-event messages now showing the correct strength for dangers.
Important notice Our Team is still busy working on the Repair-Drone bug. Big thank you here to everyone, for all the details you have provided to get this pinpointed. Without any promises, but if we can get this sorted/tested during the day today, we might push another small hotfix today, or tomorrow with a respective fix. So please stay tuned and keep it up!
Additionally, please feel free to visit our Steam Community Hub to leave your feedback, bring up suggestions, or simply start chatting with other Sphere-Commanders and their experiences: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1273220/discussions/
Thank you for flying with us and your ongoing support! Stay safe!
First Sphere - Flying Cities (v.1.0.2) - Second Hotfix now available!
Commanders, Today, we have released our second full release hotfix (version 1.0.2) for our Sphere - Flying Cities!
Without further ado, the following fixes will be included:
Fixed a bug that could lead to savegames no longer loading.
Shoutout to everybody, who has provided us with detailed reports and savegames, to get this sorted and tackled quickly! Please keep it up!
Implemented Outro-Video
No abrupt ending anymore!
Fixed a bug with the production components of the Large Processing Plant.
Fixed pathfinding of pedestrians in the residential complex.
Wanna leave feedback, suggestions, chat about the game?
Please visit our Steam Community Hub to leave your feedback, bring up suggestions, or simply start chatting with other Sphere-Commanders and their experiences: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1273220/discussions/
Thank you for flying with us and your ongoing support! Stay safe!
First Sphere - Flying Cities (v.1.0.1) Hotfix now available!
Commanders, Today, we have released our first full release hotfix (version 1.0.1) for our Sphere - Flying Cities!
Without further ado, the following fixes will be included:
Fixed difficulty levels not being saved correctly
Fixed wrong description for “Extended View” technology (the tech screen had two technologies called “Proximity Sensor”)
Wanna leave feedback, suggestions, chat about the game?
Please visit our Steam Community Hub to leave your feedback, bring up suggestions, or simply start chatting with other Sphere-Commanders and their experiences: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1273220/discussions/
Thank you for flying with us and your ongoing support! Stay safe!
Take Humanity to New Heights: Sphere - Flying Cities has been fully released!
The sky is no longer the limit as today, together with developer Hexagon Sphere Games, we are thrilled to announce the full Windows PC release of our sci-fi city builder Sphere - Flying Cities, here on Steam.
Set in the future on an uninhabitable Earth decimated by the moon’s cataclysmic destruction, what’s left of humanity is forced to head up and into the skies with wreckless abandon — the last and only hope of survival. The question now is whether the ideas was too foolish to work, or whether mankind’s technological advancements will prove to be their salvation.
Watch the official launch trailer:
Get Sphere - Flying Cities now, with an amazing time-limited launch discount of 40% off now:
Described as “a gripping post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival game” by IGN, Sphere - Flying Cities combines strategy, simulation, and survival elements in an extraordinary and immersive scenario. Poised as Commander after a lunar Armageddon, you’ll oversee humanity’s attempt to reestablish civilization by taking to the skies with first-of-its-kind anti-gravity tech.
With the full release update, the game underwent a major overhaul, including:
All new logistics system with over 20 new resources
Randomized World Map
Completely new tutorial
New Difficulty Modes and relaxing Build Mode
Overhauled UI
Total Rebalancing
City turns green after shield level 4
It’s up to players to set mankind’s course to survival, but keep in mind that each decision made must weigh the lives of the last remnants of society at play. One wrong move can lead to potentially devastating consequences…and there is no second chance high above the clouds.
For more details about the full release update 1.0.0, please feel free checking out the Changelog, here on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1273220/view/3537039819723527434
Features of Sphere - Flying Cities:
A City in the Clouds: Construct your city with numerous retro-futuristic buildings, utilize the resources available from the unique sky-vironment, and send out drones to harvest (sometimes rare!) resources and repair buildings to keep everyone’s head in the clouds
The Sky’s the Limit: The anti-gravity device and its deflector shield are the only things protecting the city from (un)natural disasters; maintaining it means the difference between life and certain doom
For the Greater Good: Assuring the safety of your city’s denizens is of paramount importance — tend to their needs by supplying food, healthcare, and shelter, as well as undergoing rescue missions. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to save every building – nor every colonist.
Write Your Own Story: Each decision you make, turn you take, and building you create chronicles your own narrative in this compelling near-apocalypse scenario. Define your experience by the paths you follow and determine how your city’s story ends.
Save The World
Keeping in line with our company Slogan "Saving the World. Game by Game." we have partnered with Atmosfair, an environmental development organization that focuses on clean energy climate protection projects, to offer a unique Save the World edition of the game. Including a mini-artbook and in-game cosmetics, a portion of this edition’s profits go directly to the charity. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1273220/Sphere__Flying_Cities/
Sphere - Flying Cities Full Release Update (version 1.0.0) available now!
Commanders!
Today marks the day, Sphere - Flying Cities is leaving Early Access and is now fully released with version 1.0.0! Almost a full year (Sphere - Flying Cities started in Early Access on October 14, 2021) we are happy and excited to see, how the game has grown, thanks to the tremendous help of our community! Thank you for your ongoing support!
Down below, you will find the full changelog, with all changes coming with today's full release.
For more in-depth details, check out all new features outlined in our latest Devlog: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1273220/view/3276955672630075361
All new logistics system with over 20 new resources
City turns green after shield level 4
Randomized World Map
Completely new tutorial
New Difficulty Modes and relaxing Build Mode
Sandbox mode now has a lot more options to customize your playthrough, including playing in a “build mode”
Overhauled UI
Total Rebalancing
Epic conclusion to the campaign story
Huge update to Save Games
The game now has auto-saves
Save games can now be manually deleted
Save games now show information about when it was saved and what game mode it comes from (tutorial, sandbox, campaign) and difficulty
Players are now able to set the priority of all buildings of the same kind in the building detail menu
Element costs for research topics have been completely overhauled
Building status information is now shown in the building detail menu
More information in the overview menu
More information on building construction menu about building requirements
New customizable materials menu
Fixed problems with menus overlapping each other and/or buttons still being active when game modes are loading
The game now has the correct icon in the windows task bar
Extended Credits
Important notice
To all our Early Access Commanders! Please be aware that with the huge changes, additions and more with version 1.0.0, old savegames, from the Early Access/older versions of the game before version 1.0.0 will not work and we strongly recommend starting new games.
But this is not the end of the journey, just the next chapter!
Therefore, please feel free reaching out to us, providing feedback about the changes, and what else might pop up in your mind to further improve Sphere - Flying Cities! We cannot make any promises to touch, or even change core-mechanics, but as we already stated with the start of the Early Access last year, we will always have an open mind for any kind of feedback, to improve the game and to make Sphere - Flying Cities the best-possible game experience.
Devlog: New Features, Improvements, Reworks, New Release Date & much more!
What's going on?
Hello Commander, Chris here, Producer for Sphere - Flying Cities. We are working towards the exit from Early Access of this game and today I need to tell you that we are pushing out that date by one more week to the 13th of October.
Since we just recently moved the date already, I wanted to take the opportunity to let you know what we are working on and what changes you can look forward to for the main release.
Before we get into that, we truly appreciate all your input and your patience while we are working on this. I am sure a lot of you will find your feedback reflected below.
So, let's just dig right in, shall we?
Resource Management
Let’s get the big thing out front: At release, Sphere – Flying Cities will have over 20 different resources to gather, mine, store, produce and keep track of.
We are pumping up the resource handling and production chain muscles of this game tremendously. Some of the basic resources you already know if you played the game before, like water, different food types, oxygen and energy. These stay mostly the same although they might get different uses here and there.
New resources are either gathered/mined like limestone or topsoil. Or they need to be produced using other resources. For example, concrete is produced using limestone in the processing plant, one of the new buildings we are introducing to support the new production chains.
Before we introduced this change, a lot of things in the game relied on a global resource we called “material”, they were used for building structures but also for producing energy in power plants. This created all kinds of problems where building too much or not having any ruins anymore to gather any materials from quickly led to the collapse of your energy infrastructure. Now, every building requires a specific combination of resources (for example concrete, steel and electronics) and basic power plants run on fossil fuels which can be gathered or produced in several ways.
As you can imagine, this is a drastic change to the basics of the game, and it needs a lot of refining and balancing. This is the main reason why we decided to skip the release of the logistics update and kept working on refining this feature up until release.
Randomized World Map
You read that right. Sphere – Flying Cities will get a randomized global map. That means that every time you start a new game, the locations of resources, survivors and dangers will be different. We are also introducing more customization options for the sandbox mode so that you can make use of the randomization features as much as possible. This adds endless replayability to the game and makes every flight with your city a new journey of discovery. We also introduced a couple of mechanics that make sure that you always find enough resources and survivors around your starting position and that you don’t run out of elements in the long run to fuel your research.
Tutorial
We always knew that we would need updates to the tutorial elements in the game considering how many new gameplay elements we have added throughout the early access phase. At the same time, it became quite tedious for experienced players to go through the same tutorial steps every time they would start a new campaign and it grew harder and harder to cram all the necessary information into campaign missions.
With the full release of Sphere – Flying Cities, we are adding a dedicated tutorial that can be accessed from the main menu. It is self-contained and goes through all the important elements of the game, from camera movement to energy management, from production cycles to education and navigation.
At the same time, sandbox and campaign modes now are free from tutorial elements and the campaign mode starts off with more elaborate quests so that the player is not handheld so much if they jump into the campaign and have some time to build up the city their own way before they start pursuing the campaign quests.
Balancing
We previously already made a lengthy blog post about how tricky it is to balance a survival city builder. In case you missed it: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1273220/view/3131694291139090107
Part of the truth though also is that developers will play their game day-in and day-out and will often underestimate the challenges a “real” player will have with their game design. That’s not to say we are best at playing our game. Most of the time, we are not. But we might do some things automatically because we know how the code behind them works without even thinking if that is how a normal player would interact with the system. Listening to players and doing user research tests are the best ways to find out where our assumptions are wrong. We did both throughout the EA phase and one thing that became clear was that we should both offer a broader variety of difficulty levels and make the easier difficulty levels even more accessible to new players.
At release, both the normal and easy difficulty modes will be more forgiving than they were before. But hardcore players will still find a challenge in the higher difficulty levels. On top of that, we will have a special build mode that lets players just build their city without any strict fail states to try out different city setups, get acquainted with buildings and systems and generally have a more relaxed time. At this point, we would like to give a shoutout to our friends at Gentlymad Studios who shared their vast experience from working on Endzone: A World Apart with us, especially when it comes to balancing and difficulty levels. They rock, you should play their game as well!
New UI
User Interface is one of the most difficult things in game design, especially for strategy games. There are hundreds of pieces of information that a player could need at any given time, and it is hard to decide, what should have prominence on screen and how players should interact with the UI elements.
Early Access games pose an even bigger conundrum in that regard because developers tend to add more and more functionality and features throughout the EA phase. Functionality and features that need to find their place amongst the other already existing menus and buttons.
When working towards the release version of Sphere – Flying Cities we took a step back to determine which information was the most important for the player with all the features we now have in the game.
One thing that we had a look at is where players spent the most time in the game and which menus are important for their success in the game. And we had to see that those menus are kind of scattered all over the place. We decided that four main screens should be centrally accessible from a switch in the main HUD:
The city-building screen (this is the main game window)
The research screen
The world map and navigation screen
The mining screen
Each of these now has a button at the bottom of the main hub and the player can switch back and forth between them at any time. These buttons also all carry the main information the player needs at any given time. The research button shows if research is going on and at what percentage of completion it is, the navigation button shows the arrival time when the colony is traveling, and the mining button shows if any mining is going on and lets the player switch auto-mining on and off.
We hope that this setup lets the player find information and make decisions more quickly and thus add to a fun game experience.
As a survival city builder, Sphere relies heavily on the player always being on the brink of collapse. And for that to be fun, the player needs to always understand where the danger is coming from. What is threatening their colony. Over the months of EA, this became harder and harder to communicate. So, we have made some very central changes to the information portrayed on the main HUD.
The most dangerous thing for the player is the collapse of the AG device. The central element on the top of the screen reflects this. It shows how much energy is currently produced more than used and how that fills the batteries. Once this number turns negative, the battery bar flickers red while the energy from the battery is drained. Once the battery is empty, the shield starts collapsing. So, with a more pronounced red blinking and a longer lead-up time for the collapse, we are giving the player more time to enact counter measures and more clearly communicate the thread they are facing. If the player has more battery buildings, more excess energy can be stored which of course gives an even longer lead-up time.
Next up: Population. We discovered that lots of players fail because their population collapses. Either their people are unhoused, get sick or overage without the player even noticing. This may have been because the information about population was not visual enough. There were more and more numbers about population (sick, very sick, house/unhoused, skilled/unskilled, underage/senior, etc.) but they were all numbers on a board. So, we thought about which of these numbers were most important for the player and how we could visualize them best.
The result is a dynamic population bar on the right side of the top UI bar. It shows:
How many people are in the right age to work
How many of those people are unhoused (if any)
How many of those people are sick (if any)
How many of those people are skilled (if any)
How many underage / seniors the city has
The effect we hope this will have, is that players will take one look at this bar and know if the problem with their city is that they don’t provide enough health care or housing. Or that they overage their population. Or that too little of their workers are skilled. Visualizing this with strong colours gives the player a better chance at seeing and tackling those problems early and effectively. For players that want to dive deeper into data, there is of course the statistics area that holds more information about the details of the population, but the most important info is front and centre. Oh, and for those of you that are interested in the behind-the-scenes, here is some concepting we did on that UI element:
Green Cities
One thing we always wanted to do is give the player some satisfaction when they kept their city alive for a long time and it is thriving. Now, we can finally do that. When the city survives long enough, air pollution is low and the player has reached a high technology level, the area under the shield dome will slowly turn green and vegetation will sprout within the city wherever no buildings have been built. Aside from grass textures, we also have 15 different tree types that can grow in your city. While this is most probably not as impactful as other new gameplay elements, it is beautiful visual effect and perfect to wrap up this lengthy blogpost about all the cool things coming to Sphere – Flying Cities once it launches on October 13th.
Sphere – Flying Cities gets more polishing - Release rescheduled for October 4!
Managing the last remainders of earth is never an easy task. Like the life of a commander of a flying city, game development can be really challenging, too!
As we want to provide you with the best-possible game experience, we're pushing the release of Sphere – Flying Cities slightly to October 4!
Thank you for the patience! – Stay safe, and thank you for flying with us!
-Your teams at Hexagon Sphere Games & Assemble Entertainment-
It’s nearly time to ascend to the cloudscape, because today, we are thrilled to reveal a September 20, 2022, launch date for Sphere - Flying Cities, marking the end of its Early Access phase on Steam.
Unlike your typical post-apocalyptic city-builder, Sphere - Flying Cities introduces a unique plot twist: humanity’s last bastion isn’t on the decimated surface of Earth, but in the skies! Utilizing novel anti-gravity technology, players manage the well-being of humanity’s last inhabitants in their very first flying city.
Soar through the sky as the denizens of the aerial city rebuild, restructure, and protect the last semblance of society. Additionally, the full release of this sky-faring sci-fi title will see new features such as: a fully fleshed-out story campaign, six new building blueprints to discover, a completely revamped tutorial, and a terrifying new threat — ice storms.
Check out the newest teaser trailer:
The Journey of Sphere's Early Access so far!
About Sphere - Flying Cities
Inspired by James Blish’s novel “City in Flight”, Sphere - Flying Cities employs a distinct mix of strategy, survival, and city-building simulation elements. Players are put in the position of Commander, whose sole purpose is to maintain order and see to the survival of mankind. In the near future, the planet is thrown into turmoil when Earth’s moon is struck by a colossal asteroid. In the wake of this destruction, the world’s surface is rendered totally uninhabitable. Facing complete annihilation, humanity makes one final and desperate attempt to survive — thanks to newly-created anti-gravity technology, the first (and likely final) faction of flying cities ascends as the ultimate bastion of the human race.
Features
Not Bespin, but a City in the Clouds, too: Construct your city with numerous retro-futuristic buildings, utilize the resources available from the unique sky-vironment, and send out drones to harvest (sometimes rare!) resources and repair buildings to keep everyone’s head in the clouds
The Sky’s the Limit: The anti-gravity device and its deflector-shield are the only things protecting the city from (un)natural disasters; maintaining it means the difference between life and certain doom
For the Greater Good: Assuring the safety of your city’s denizens is of paramount importance — tend to their needs by supplying food, healthcare, and shelter, as well as undergoing rescue missions. However, keep in mind that you won’t be able to save every building – nor every colonist.
Write Your Own Story: Each decision you make, turn you take, and building you create chronicles your own narrative in this compelling near-apocalypse scenario. Define your experience by the paths you follow and determine how your city’s story ends.
Developed by Hexagon Sphere Games Sphere - Flying Cities is currently available on Steam Early Access and will launch fully on September 20, 2022.
Keeping in line with their philanthropic nature, Assemble Entertainment has partnered with Atmosfair, an environmental development organization that focuses on clean energy climate protection projects, to offer a unique Save the World edition of the game. Including a mini-artbook and in-game cosmetics, a portion of this edition’s profits go directly to the charity.
Interested in learning more about Sphere’s development?
