Dear all, as we have wrapped up one year and are preparing for a new one in our little lab located inside a flying asteroid, we have some exciting new features to announce!
Weekly Challenge
After the addition of the final scenario in the most recent update, we are looking into other ways of providing regular unique challenges. For this, we will include a new game mode: The Weekly Challenge!
The weekly challenge will be generated at the start of every week. It can be played in 5 different difficulty levels, which will determine the expectations & damage severity. It will pick a random victory condition from one of the victory conditions present in the scenarios. Also, there will be 3 modifiers that might alter your gameplay strategy. The modifiers are randomly picked from a list, and the combination of modifiers will be different every week. Some modifiers are positive, like robots providing 1 support per turn, while others can be negative, like penalties for trading with Earth.
The game will track how many weeks in a row you have beaten the weekly challenge, and on which difficulty.
Multiple save slots
As requested by many players, we are also working on adding multiple save slots! You will now be able to play multiple games at once, and start a new game while still being able to continue the old one. This will also allow you to keep games that you are proud of, and revisit those at later times or keep around to show to others.
These features are planned for the next big update, which will be the 1.0 release! Keep an eye out for our future devlogs to see the other features and content that will also be included in the full release of the game, for example cities on the moons of Mars.
We wish you a good new turn around the sun! After landing our asteroid lab on Earth the past week for a small game-dev break and to visit friends and family, we’re now back in orbit!
Terraf team
v0.9.49b
- nobr tag fixed on trade panel
Small patch v0.9.49
Bug fixes:
Fixed a bug where “docks” were not correctly proposed
Fixed a bug where the starting option would not be correctly offered on next game start
Technologies now have the same discarding values as other projects
Fixed more “nobr” related issues
Fixed a bug where potential projects were not correctly being reseted when re-playing the tutorial
Change some of the project proposition tables to get more varied projects earlier
Small patch v0.9.47
V0.9.47
Bug fixes:
Fixed the marsyclopedia scroll
Fixed a bug where the settings were not saving properly
Fixed that revert sent you back to the planet
Fixed the “reverse engineering” tech
Fixed the procedural skill issue with the “error building”. Unfortunately this will only work on new games and won’t fix ongoing saves.
Fixed the “nobr” appearing on the trade panel when the trade routes are in the negative
Added a toggle to let players scale the UI into the “unsafe” zone where elements will overlap a bit. This is for very small screens, like a steam deck, where more scaling can help readability.
Fixed a bug with the Expansion scenario where the number of cities to win was not accounted correctly.
Fixed a bug where technologies were stopped being proposed in the technology scenario (3 of them were missing).
Slightly increased the amount of docks and shipwrights proposed
Fixed some tooltip typos
Fixed the scaling of tooltips in the main menu
🚀 Major Update Out Now!
Hello Martians,
This is it: our latest update is live and includes major additions like coastal locations, survival and leasure modes, a new scenario and much, much more! 👩🚀
Check out the complete patch notes below:
[expand type="details"]
MAJOR ADDITIONS:
There are now coastal locations on the planet. A coastal location is a location which neighbors an ocean location.
City expansion now differentiates between land and ocean locations. population expansion is only possible on land. There are buildings like the “expansion hub” which only works on land locations and the “docks” which only works on ocean locations.
You can continue a game after winning, choosing between survival and leisure mode. In survival mode the expectations will keep rising. In leisure mode the expectations will not rise anymore.
A new scenario has been added: “expansionist”, where the goal is to own a certain amount of locations, and found cities in a certain amount of different climate zones.
A new difficulty level has been added. Difficulty of other scenarios has been lowered a little.
The overview popup now has a City and Climate Zone tab which shows summarized information about each, such as all buildings, the names, the resources produced, the lifeforms, the terraforming parameters… All elements have detailed tooltips and cities can be clicked to zoom to them directly on the planet. Buildings and cities will also have icons to show which ones are damaged or at risk of flooding.
Two “terraforming” landmarks have been added. Volcanoes which can be restarted as well as polar CO2 ice caps which can be melted (they will also melt by themselves if the climate zone is warm enough).
9 new ocean lifeforms have been added.
8 new leaders have been added.
48 new projects have been added.
Added 3 lifeform adaptation events impacting how life spreads.
Added 2 catastrophic events, a rare occurrence introducing a major crisis in the game which the player can choose to solve or not.
Added 2 new city slot layouts.
IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES:
It is now possible to swap locations between cities. Any further locations disconnected from its city will not be controlled anymore, the buildings will not be destroyed but not function and they can be reacquired normally. You will not lose expansion points. Switching city ownership has a timer of 1 turn (like the relocation timer).
You can now move/delete/replace expansion hubs and similar buildings due to the new changes to city expansion tracking.
Most of the new content needs to be unlocked first by playing.
Some of the content will auto-unlock and a popup will appear when starting the update for the first time.
Added gameplay tips on the loading screen.
Added a dynamic city name generator which takes into account the current state of the game to propose a city name.
The lifeform button has been revamped and is now split by lifeform type (bacteria, plant, animal). This gives more space for everything and avoids overlaps.
Protection from sandstorms by lava tubes, rain and plants is now better communicated in the game.
Cities have a new widget in line with the rest of the design. The size of the city will be visually displayed on the planet.
The landmark sidebar visuals have been revamped to follow the rest of the UI design as well.
Ocean flooding is now instant. A confirmation popup will appear to warn the player if he risks to flood a city, building or a lifeform. The popup will offer to have a look at the overview popup which summarizes all important data.
Ocean flooding will now make you lose control of your locations and you will have to use a dock (or other ocean expansion building) to acquire it back.
Ocean visuals now correctly follow the temperature of climate zones for the frozen / liquid aspect. Frozen visuals are now less bright as requested by the players.
Lots of memory and process optimizations. The game is lighter and faster.
Buildings had their colors updated to harmonize their intended purpose (food production buildings are green, science production buildings blue…).
All landmarks on the planet now have unique icons.
The game seed is available in the settings menu on custom mode.
To be more realistic, there are now more water deposits spawn on the poles, and less on the rest of the planet.
To be more realistic, crater cities are more likely to spawn in the southern hemisphere, plain cities more likely in the northern hemisphere and lava tubes more likely to spawn near volcanoes.
Climate zone generation and the name placement has been improved.
UI scaling now has a slider so people with rarer screen ratios can find the best possible fit.
The event popup option button will always have the same size now.
Added buttons directly on the map for building providing an action (like the lifeform spreader buildings).
Improved and fixed the way the music tracks are triggered in the game.
Fixed a bug where some life forms were never proposed.
Fixed a bug with the specialization “Varied Development”.
Lots of language related fixes in some tooltips.
Fixed a bug with how points were counted in the scientific scenario.
Buildings details popup will not fall outside the screen anymore on the planet view.
Renaming cities should now correctly display the name on the planet for non-Latin languages (Chinese in particular).
And more which I forget I’m sure :)
CONTENT BALANCE CHANGES:
GENERAL / OTHER
Lowered the early game expectation rise frequency, increased the late game expectation rise frequency.
Increased the amount of Mars points you get for winning a scenario by 25%. This will lead to faster content unlocking.
The damage system has been rebalanced to scale better with the progress in the game.
Lowered Dike cost from 4 to 3 titanium.
The game will now more strictly pick a negative event if you’ve been lucky with events so far or a positive event if you’ve been unlucky with events so far. Previously there was more flexibility and this was balanced over a longer span of turns.
Some events and projects will not appear until the player has reached a certain Mars level (to prevent information overflow for new players).
Ocean projects as well as projects with terraforming requirements will be proposed based on the progress the player has made in each parameter. This is to avoid that the player is spammed with projects which are not relevant to his current strategy.
BUILDINGS
Changed Massive radio Telescope. It now produces 4 science +1 if placed on a high location. It costs 30 silicates and 15 titanium.
Changed Particle Collider. It now produces 5 science and costs 30 science and 25 power.
Lowered cost of Automated Robotic Workforce from 5 to 3 science.
Increased cost of GMO Lab from 36 to 38 science.
Increased cost of Danlé Lab from 27 to 28 science.
Increased cost of Food Quality supervision from 6 to 7 science.
Changed cost of Luxury Workshop from 16 silicates and 8 titanium to 23 silicates.
Slightly increased amount of tritium deposits on the planet.
Bio generator now costs 37 nitrates instead of 36
Increased cost of Outdoor Cattle Ranch from 35 to 36 water.
Increased cost of CO2 factory from 10 power to 12 power
Increased cost of Nitrous Gas Factory from 35 nitrates to 40 nitrates
Changed "Electron Beam printer" project. It does not provide negative support anymore, but its costs went up from 11 to 21 power.
Reduced cost of road paver depot from 11 to 10 titanium.
Reduced cost of Rover exploration center from 10 titanium and 5 tritium to 9 titanium and 5 tritium
Changed cost of bus station from 6 titanium and 6 tritium to 6 power and 6 tritium
Reduced cost of train station from 14 power and 14 silicates to 13 power and 13 silicates
Reduced cost of hyperloop from 27 science and 27 power to 26 science and 26 power
Changed expansion hub costs from 8 power and 8 titanium to 16 power
Removed Airborne Wind Turbine from the game.
SPACE PROJECTS
Increased cost of Import Oceans from Europa from 24 to 25 tritium
Increased cost of Import Oceans from Ceres from 8 tritium to 9 tritium
Increased cost of Giant Space Mirrors from 21 silicates to 23 silicates
Reduced food cost of Space Hotels by 1
LIFEFORMS
Deinococcus now requires 0 temperature instead of -2, has 2 prestige instead of 1 and takes 9 turns to spread.
Increased spread duration of Methanogenium from 11 to 12 turns, but increased prestige from 1 to 2.
Cyanophyta now requires -2 temperature instead of 0, increased its spread duration to 13 turns. Increased prestige from 1 to 2.
Reduced spread duration of Radiodurans from 9 to 8 turns.
Increased spread duration of Dark bacteria from 7 to 9 turns. Increased its prestige from 1 to 2.
Increased spread duration of Metallidurans and Artificial Bacteria to 7 turns.
Increased local support and prestige of Tundra forest from 3 to 4.
Increased local support from Alpine Pine forest 3 to 4. Increased its prestige from 5 to 6.
Increased prestige of Mediterranean bushes from 5 to 6. Reduced local support from 6 to 4.
Increased prestige of Temperate forest from 8 to 13.
Increased prestige of Cacti from 15 to 16.
Removed temperature requirement of Boreal Rainforest. Increased its prestige from 14 to 20.
Reduced spread duration of Temperate Rainforest from 12 to 8 turns. Increased its prestige from 17 to 36. Reduced its local support from 10 to 6.
Reduced spread duration of Palm Trees from 16 to 12 turns. Increased its prestige from 13 to 36.
Lowered spread duration of arctic hare from 6 to 5 turns. Lowered prestige from 6 to 4. Lowered local support from 5 to 4.
Lowered spread duration of Penguins from 10 to 8 turns, lowered prestige from 14 to 1.
Lowered spread duration of Deer from 10 to 8 turns, lowered prestige from 15 to 12.
Lowered spread duration of Polar Bears from 10 to 8 turns.
Lowered spread duration of Birds of Paradise from 10 to 8 turns. Lowered its prestige from 16 to 15.
Lowered spread duration of Horses from 10 to 8 turns, reduced prestige from 20 to 18.
Increased prestige of Elephants from 32 to 45.
Increased prestige of lions from 35 to 40.
TECHNOLOGIES:
Increased support income gain per trade route of Improved space flight conditions technology from 1 to 2. Increased its cost from 10 to 20 science.
Reduced science cost of Improved Robotics from 10 to 5.
Self-Learning AI now requires only 4 science to have its science output increased by 1 instead of 5.
Increased support income gain per animal spread from the technology Animal Tracking from 3 to 8. Increased its science cost from 20 to 30.
Reduced support gain from Food & drinks technologies, Consumer goods fabrication and Open science database from 3 to 2.
Reduced cost of Terraforming Observations from 30 to 25 science.
Changed House printing from a tier 1 to a tier 2 technology. Increased titanium gain per city building constructed from 1 to 2. Increased its science cost from 20 to 40.
Applied research technology now provides 5 support income per tech played instead of 4.
Removed “DNA regeneration” technology.
LEADERS:
Maryam Fayed’s specialization now produces 1 power per 4 power produced instead of per 6.
Hong Tao’s specialization now produces 1 power per 7 expansions you acquire instead of per 10.
Jagrav Varman’s specialization now generates 1 support income per 10 resources you transport to a space project instead of per 20.
Dejah Robinson’s specialization now produces 5 support per landmark upgrade that produces support or comfort of living instead of 2.
Isabella Torres’ specialization now produces 1 oxygen per 3 new oxygen produced instead of per 4.
Arthur Foster’s specialization now produces 1 tritium per new 1 new tritium produced instead of per 2 tritium.
Flora Norouzi’s specialization now gives a 60% discount on plant spreaders instead of 40%.
Aishe Jäger’s ability now gives a 50% discount on animal spreader buildings instead of 40%.
Anastasia Dromedo’s specialization now produces 6 support income when founding a city in a new climate zone instead of 3.
Changed Naily Bolatbek to be a mid-game leader instead of a late-game leader.
Changed Modular apartment skill from Jorge Dromedo. He now gives 2 copies of that building as a project card for normal costs instead of directly constructing it.
Removed modular apartments from the research pool. Only Jorge Dromedo can provide them now.
Changed "Cultural Festivals" skill to cost more water and provide more support.
Changed "Local Art Gallery" skill to give adjacent support income instead of support income per natural sight.
Changed "Astral Temple" from 5 support for a high location to 4.
Changed the cost of Dejah Robinson's space hotel skill from 10 titanium to 3 food and 6 titanium
Reduced support gain from Anastasia's specialization (support when founding a city in a new climate zone) from 5 to 3.
Changed specialization requirement of Gustave from 7 to 6 robots.
As part of the Steam Awards, please consider nominating Terraformers in the 'Best Game You Suck At' category! Or feel free to choose another category – this will help us a lot anyway! 😄
Hello Martians! Let’s start with the most important point first: the next update will be released on the 7th of December! And it will be a big one: we’re merging updates 2 and 3 together into a single large update (and making some changes to the roadmap). Further in this devlog we’ll give insights in some iterations we’ve made to the way you expand over oceans, shine some light on the new scenario and explain in what way we’re tweaking the difficulty level.
Roadmap update
So why didn’t we release the second update earlier? Well the very simple answer is we encountered more challenges than expected and it took a bit longer to polish than what we had originally planned. Once we were finally ready with the second update we were well on our way to finalize the content of the 3rd update. Our plan was still to release the 2nd and 3rd update separately (though relatively close together) and as for the previous update we wanted to put the game on sale at the same time, but Steam has some limits and conditions on how and when a game can be put on sale. These timers, combined with Steam’s own events like the halloween and autumn sales made us push the date even further back. As by then the content for the 3rd update was in the polishing phase, we decided to just go for it and give you all a single much larger update.
We have also been working on some roadmap tweaks, shifting around some of the elements so that the 2nd update would be focused mostly on new gameplay features and the 3rd update would be focused mostly on new content. But now it will be both at the same time, bringing 57 new projects (buildings, lifeforms, space projects), 8 new leaders, 2 new city slot layouts, 1 new scenario and 9 new events.
We are sorry it took so long, but we think it was worth it. We are pretty excited to see everyone get their hands on all these new carefully crafted pieces and to get your feedback on it. Here is the updated roadmap:
Iterations to the ocean expansion
After we’ve implemented docks that automatically expand towards nearby oceans, as explained in the August Devlog, we’ve noticed that there was an issue with that mechanic: If you would be on ocean level 1 or 2, and later increase the amount of oceans, the already constructed dock would not give you access to those new ocean locations. After playtesting this, we discovered that this was unintuitive (why would the boats leaving a dock not be able to reach these new locations?). Therefore we’ve simplified and changed how it works: when you now construct a dock, it has a free unlimited action with which you can expand to oceans. You can do this at any time and expand as far as you want, though the further you expand, the more negative support is generated (just like with city expansion).
The new ocean expansion flow
Difficulty changes
We regularly receive feedback from players who find the game too difficult. A large number of players are currently not able to complete the final difficulty level, especially within 65 turns for the Platinum award. While designing the game, we thought this wouldn’t be a problem as everybody can just choose the difficulty that is appropriate for them. However, the way we’ve designed the scenarios screen can give the impression that you need to complete all difficulty levels to have “completed” the game. For the completionists among us, this can be frustrating.
Therefore we are lowering the difficulty and victory requirements of the scenarios a little bit, to make them more achievable for a larger group of players. Don’t worry though, they still are a proper challenge.
For the expert players, we’re adding extra expectation levels to the custom mode. In this way you can make the game as difficult as you want, still providing a good challenge for everybody. Here you can also select higher victory conditions (1500 points opposed to the 1000 points of the final scenario) so you can still play longer games if you wish.
One of Mars’ frozen CO2 glaciers.
Continuing your game after winning
We’ve received multiple requests that players would like to be able to continue a game after achieving the victory condition. We’re also adding this option in this update! You will be able to choose how you want to continue: in “survival mode” or “leisure mode”. In survival mode, the expectations keep going up, so the challenge will be to survive as long as possible. In Leisure mode, the expectations stop rising, so you can continue without the further stress of running out of support.
We’re looking forward to screenshots and stories of the awesome planets and cities you’ll build up to after a well earned victory.
Continuing after a well earned victory.
That was it for this devlog, in the next devlog we’ll expand more on the features that we’re also adding in the upcoming update that were originally planned for later, like the lifeform adaptation events and the catastrophic events.
Terraf team
September Devlog: Marine lifeforms, coastal city artworks & new leaders
Hello world (whichever one you’re on)! This devlog is the 2nd part about the upcoming ocean & leader themed update. In case you’ve missed it, the first part can be found on our blog. So put on your wetsuit, and join us as we dive into the Martian oceans!
Marine lifeforms
The first thing we notice is that we’re not alone in this ocean. In the next update, you will be able to spread a new type of lifeform: marine lifeforms. Ranging from plankton, to coral reef and even whales, we’re adding 9 marine lifeforms to the game. Marine lifeforms come in the same 3 categories as land-based lifeforms: bacteria, plants and animals. However, where a land-lifeform requires that at least 1 location of the climate zone is land, the marine lifeform requires that at least 1 location in the climate zone is ocean.
Some of the new marine lifeforms.
Coastal cities
As we start running out of oxygen, we leave the wonders of the Martian ocean and make for the surface. We’re adding that a city background will update if it is located next to an ocean. The ocean provides new opportunities as well: we’re adding 12 ocean related projects in the upcoming update. Gather your resources to construct seaweed farms, oceanic laboratories, water barrages and even, after a bit of terraforming, Martian beach clubs!
Work in progress city location location when near an ocean.
New leaders
We go inside a local bar to warm ourselves, and see on the news that elections are taking place. Leaders we’ve not seen before are running various political campaigns. The plans of seafaring leader Ayokunle Ndiaye directly appeal to us, as he orates about even vaster oceans and a network of connected docks and harbors. Let’s hope he will do as well as his 2 predecessors, Beatrix and Jan, who greatly helped Martian healthcare and dike construction move forward.
One of the new upcoming leaders.
Our adventure in and around the Martian oceans comes to a close for now (we’ve got a game to develop!). There is no exact release date yet for the next update, but that should be announced within a few weeks on our Discord server. See you in the Martian oceans!
Terraformers’ Team
August devlog: First major update release and a sneak peak into the next one
Hello Mars enthusiasts! We hope you are doing well. Here in Europe we’re seeing a warm and dry summer again. If only we could export our CO2 to another planet…
EA1 release
On July 18th, we released the first major update for Terraformers. Besides some bugfixes (and a few bug introductions), the main new features were:
A custom mode where you could define your own difficulty settings and game length (also endless), and share your game-seed with other players, so you could play the exact same map and compare your results.
The introduction of technologies. Technologies are suggested at specific moments and can be researched with science. They have an everlasting effect on the rest of your game and allow you to specialize more in specific strategies.
The addition of the Marsyclopedia. This is a digital library accessible from the main menu where you can read about all the projects, leaders and lifeforms you’ve encountered so far.
Thank you for the feedback on this update, and we’re happy that most of you seem to be enjoying it.
Sneak peak into upcoming ocean related gameplay
So far, oceans have been mostly inaccessible terrain. But with the next major update (which will still take some time), they can be traversed and used to your advantage.
A city near the ocean, you can see a few coastal locations.
You will not be able to simply expand towards the ocean with your current expansion points. Instead, you’ll construct a sea port on a coastal location (a land location that borders an ocean). This seaport will then expand to nearby ocean locations automatically in a similar way as the expansion hub currently does this over land. A small dock will only expand to adjacent ocean locations, while an industrial harbor expands multiple connections further. Then on the ocean you can build platforms that extend your reach even further.
After building a doc the city was able to further expand to the with an ocean platform.
Once expanded over the ocean, you’ll be able to construct new buildings there. For example a water filtering installation that produces water, a fish farm that produces food, or an oceanic laboratory that produces science. There will also be specific buildings for coastal locations, like a barrage that will generate power, or a beach club that will generate support (more if it’s also warm there). And of course we are also finally bringing ocean specific lifeforms.
Some of the new marine lifeforms.
As development is still in an early stage, we’ll have to postpone screenshots on this until the next devlog, where we’ll also discuss the other main aspect of this new update: new leaders!
Gamescom 2022
In two weeks we’ll also be attending Gamescom in Cologne, something for which we are very excited. It’s the first on-site edition in three years. The last on-site edition we were also present, pitching an early prototype of Terraformers to publishers on the business days. This year we’ll only be attending the public days, to demo the game to players!
The indie arena at Gamescom 2019.
If you’re also attending Gamescom, be sure to meet us at the Indie Arena! Otherwise, see you in the next newsletter (or on Discord/Steam)!
