January & February 2023

1.0 Release, Moon cities, expectations forecasting, new content & other improvements

Hello everyone! In exactly 1 week the moment is finally here: the 1.0 release! As we started this project 4 years ago, it almost feels surreal! With this devlog we want to inform you of the new things that will be in this update besides the multiple save slots and weekly challenge that were mentioned in the previous devlog.

Moon cities

With this final update, you will be able to found cities on the Martian moons! Over the course of the game, you might get an event that allows you to found a city on one of the 2 moons of Mars (Phobos or Deimos). If you choose to, you will get a special space project that requires 30 food and 10 water to complete. And once completed, you have a city on one of the moons. The Martian moons are very small (Phobos has a diameter of 22 kilometers and Deimos a diameter of 12 kilometers. That’s not much compared to our moon that has a diameter of 3,478 kilometers). Therefore they have less than 15 slots to construct buildings on (Phobos has 12, and Deimos only 9). However, they have other advantages:

Phobos has a slot that connects to 5 other slots, something not seen in other city layouts. It also has a great natural sight and an aquifer. Finally, once you have a city on Phobos, all your trade routes generate 1 additional support per turn due to the tourism potential.

Deimos has a titanium deposit and 4 anomalies that let science-producing buildings produce 1 extra science when constructed there. Also, once you have a city on Deimos, all your space projects will cost 15% less of each resource to complete. This is due to it being a great launch hub for other missions into space due to its neglectable gravity.

Expectation rise forecasting

For many players the moment expectation rise events would occur felt random and abrupt. Therefore, we’ve included an indicator with 4 stages above your stored support. The more filled up the bar is, the higher the chance of an expectation rise in the next turn. The bar is divided into 4 stages:

Stage 1, green: no chance of an expectation rise.

Stage 2, yellow: small chance of an expectation rise.

Stage 3, orange: likely chance of an expectation rise.

Stage 4, red: high chance of an expectation rise.

Every turn, the bar fills up a little, indicating the increased chance of an expectation rise event. Also if a positive event happens, the bar will fill up depending on how strong the event was. And when a negative or damage event happens, the bar will be partly emptied depending on how bad the event was or how much damage you suffered. Hovering the bar gives you more information about what affected the chance of an expectation rise this turn.

New content

With this new update, we’re also adding 8 levels of content unlock. It includes 17 new buildings, 1 new space project, 3 new technologies and 3 new leaders.

There are also 2 new events: asteroids that can be mined as space projects, and a catastrophic event: will you be able to protect Mars from a planet-destroying meteor?

Other improvements

We’ve also worked on many visual- and quality of life improvements. Such as an improved planet visual, improved tutorial and tooltips to help new players, and some animations.

How you can help us

The upcoming 1.0 release will be the most important one for us financially, as it will determine if our studio can be sustainable and if we can continue to develop more games. Therefore, if you think we deserve it, we would like to politely ask you to leave a positive review on Steam or GoG. As we are so close to release, a review now will have the biggest impact as it will affect our “recent score” once the game launches. We would be eternally grateful!

We would like to take this moment to thank all of you for your support during this Early Access adventure! Your feedback has helped us tremendously to improve the game in the areas that most needed it, and your stories have warmed our hearts to at least temperature level 3!

We hope to see you on Mars on March 9th!

Terraformers’ Team