Hey everyone, Gaia 2 store page is now out. Check it out here.

The game will come out hopefully late December of this year. That's the deadline I set, but if that's not possible, it will come out early next year for sure. If you have any questions or feedback or just want to discuss all the new features, please use the community hub of the second game. I'll be there!

Happy gaming!

Thanks to mrdrunya for translating the whole game into Russian!

Hey everyone, so I've started work on multiple projects and wanted to keep you guys updated it on it.

First off, I started working on Gaia 2.0. This new version will be a massive improvement on the first game. I'll be taking into account all of your feedback. You can expect new building mechanics, new environments, improved combat mechanics and lots of general polishing and design restructuring. Many thanks to all the reviews that provided deep feedback. I have no date on the release, it might be by the end of this year or next year, we'll see.

I've also started work on some side projects and testing out some waters. I'm branching out into different types of games. I have some links, gifs and pics for you guys and I was hoping you'd provide some feedback and maybe even suggestions if you like what you're seeing.

The first on the list is Intra Corpus. I just put up a new store page, it has a trailer, some screenshots and a description, but basically this will be a 3D game that explores the human body with the help of a drone. The main theme is exploration, so it's light on the number of mechanics, but the existing ones are quite deep. Check it out and let me know what you think or if you have any questions, post them on the community hub!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1359950/Intra_Corpus/

The second one on the list is a 2D game that doesn't have a name yet even though I've spent a few months working on it on and off. This one is basically a sort of RTS like They Are Billions, where you start off with a few workers and warriors, build up your base and units, all while searching for resources and fighting off literally 20'000 bad guys at the same time. The game is made with Unity, so if you're wondering how it can handle so many units at a time, it's because I'm using ECS, which is a very powerful and kind of complicated approach to programming. In the gifs below you can see some of that in action, as well as some of the rough UI, map design and resources. Note that the art for the units, buildings and UI is nowhere near final, but the environment will remain like that if this game ever sees the light of day. I tried adopting the art style of Rimworld and I think it looks pretty nice.

I apologize for the gif quality. Sadly Steam allows only a max of 3MB sized files on steam announcements and I tried to cram in as much as I could.

First GIF has the fog of war turned on and showcases a 'worker' constructing a foundry, which is basically a gathering point for all sorts of minerals such as diamonds, graystone, soapstone, diamonds and ramite.



Next 2 gifs have the fog of war turned off to showcase the thousands of units attacking the foundry. All these units have their own brain, pathfinding, etc etc, whatever it is you expect from a normal RTS bad guy. The only shortcut taken to help with computing power is that the bad guys are divided into groups. Each group has an invisible leader, in this case the orange square shown for debugging purposes, and the units inside that group won't be computing pathfinding as much if they're far away from any potential target. This way, your FPS will never have any spikes and will always be smooth.





And here are a bunch of resources, such as water and oil, with a whole bunch of bad guys roaming around. These pictures have a much higher quality than the gifs so you can see how the game actually looks like. For best results, you should open them in a new tab in your browser.





I started this project back in 2019 to learn ECS but it came farther than I expected. There's turrets, barracks, ranged and melee units and other typical RTS stuff in it now. What do you guys think about this one? Would you play something like this? I don't have any story or setting for this game yet, but I was thinking something along the lines where you're a commander who's in charge of establishing new colonies on planets to extract water and bring it back to Earth safely.

If you want to start a discussion on Intra Corpus, please use the community hub on its own store page. For anything else, we can use this announcement.

Small patch to fix a bunch of bugs. These are the 2 most important fixes:

* Decoding mosquito upgrades, saving then loading would delete the upgrade.

* Taking off with the Tempest used to be buggy sometimes due to an UI issue.

Happy gaming!

First of all, thank you everyone who has supported the game during Early Access. It has come a long, long way. This couldn't have happened without you guys. This was quite the journey for me. As some of you may know, this was largely a one man project that took 2 years to make.

I've updated the store page to give a glimpse of all the newly added content. I think the trailer gives a pretty good idea of what you can expect, but if that's not enough, there's also the description for some more extra info.

As promised, there won't ever be any DLC's. You'll get the full, premium game with your purchase.

I will continue patching the game, so please leave any feedback you have in the community hub! As for future updates, who knows? For now, I'll be taking the week off, self-isolate and celebrate my first ever Steam game. Remember to stay safe during these weird times!

Full 1.0 patch notes.


* Depth of maps now reach 1'000 meters, up from the previous 50 meters
* Several new resources added: hardshell, pavonica, skymush, ballflower, starfish and 6 types of harvestable fish, such as salmon, koi and goldfish. These are found at different depths and have their own spawn rule. For example, skymush will only appear in the underwater mushroom mini-biome
* Several new items added:
- Fishsoup: allows you to breathe longer underwater and decreases oxygen loss rate
- Mosquito: an upgradable submersible that can reach all the way down to the ocean floor. Just like the rover, it will lose its integrity if bumping into things.
- The cooked versions of the 6 fish mentioned above
- Raw gold and raw diamond. These can only be found deep underwater and turned into gold and diamond at the forge.
- Lots and lots of new objects that form the underwater environment, such as sponges, seashells, azure stone, andalusite, granite rock, cthulhu trees and mushrooms. These only serve as decoration
* New fish added. Some are harvestable, some are not. All are passive.

Koi
Salmon
Bass
Dolphin
Amberjack
Biomechanical whale
Blue whale
Anarhichas
Radioactive anarhichas
Chelidonichthys
Muranea
Radioactive muranea
Demon seahorse
Seahorse
Tetraodontidae
Radioactive tetraodontidae
Tropical fish
Molidae
Demon molidae
Reelfish
Ray
Cuttlefish
Jellyfish
Goldfish
Demon fish

* Underwater mini-biomes. Astral will give you the location of these places if you happen to swim within a certain range of them, but only once.
- Mushroom place.
- Red corridor

* There is no combat underwater. This aspect of the game is purely for exploration and not really a necessity to completing the game

* Added 3 new techs related to the Mosquito upgrades.


* Added 2 of each: desert, forest, grassland and arctic. The underwater of each new map is not affected by the biome.


The standard biomes of Gaia, the forest and grasslands maps contain every type of resource you need to thrive. The difference between them can be found in the number of trees present, as well as the kind of trees, and ground textures. The fauna also differs a bit. There are some animals you'll find in one map that you won't find in the other for example.


Deserts are mostly empty. You'll mostly find cactuses and ancient sites and some sparse rock formations. However, they do have oases, which contain a lot of life. You'll find bubbleroots, glowtubes and cucumbers, as well as lots of animal life. But that's about it. You'll have to do quite a bit of trading if you want to thrive in the desert.


The arctic is completely barren, with only one (very convenient) rock formation near your spawn point. You won't be able to grow stuff at all due to the low temperatures, and there's nothing to harvest. But you might run into some arctic animals and predators. Though let's be honest, you'll probably die of thirst before you have to start worrying about predators. However, as noted before, the underwater is not affected by the biome type, so this biome will force you to spend a lot of time underwater, gathering starfish, shells and fishing in order to trade for all the other materials you need. This is by far the hardest maps you can play, so it's recommended only for experienced players.


* There is a good chance that a trade ship could arrive in orbit every dozen or so minutes now, instead of every several hours. Trade ships now also have a higher chance of bringing items that you lack
* Raids will no longer trigger when you go far away from your base, unless the raid warning has already appeared.
* Made some adjustments to the stats of several items
* Made Astral a little more involved in the game
* You no longer need the multitool to harvest stuff, however, you'll be harvesting stuff 5 times slower than with a multitool
* Some items no longer drop on death. This includes the multitool, some ammo and clothing
* Caves have been removed from the game
* You can now click on your Tempest turrets to select them, instead of having to click and drag
* Made a few changes to the way fire spreads
* Vastly nerfed the wavy effect on far objects when temperatures are high
* Rain and overcast weather chances have been reduced
* Lots and lots of bug and glitch fixes. Thanks to everyone who reported them!

Gaia is finally coming out on April 3, 2020!

The 1.0 build is available on the Beta branch if you can't wait until then. Note that it may be a tiny little bit unstable though.

In other news, the store page has been updated with a new trailer and screenshots!

A couple more reminders:

1. The patch notes for 1.0 will be posted soon.
2. The price of the game will be set to $30.

Hey everyone, as promised, Gaia 1.0 is now in open beta. There was a small private beta going on for about 2 weeks now and most new bugs that appeared with all the new features have been fixed. But there needs to be more testing done before the final release.

If you want to enroll in the open beta right now, head on to your Steam library -> right click on the game -> Properties -> Betas and choose the beta branch. Your game should automatically start updating to the new, semi final version of Gaia.

As discussed in previous dev blogs, the final version comes with tons of content updates, ranging from underwater gameplay, to 3 new biomes, 8 new maps, tons of new items, a few new animals, Spanish translation and some game mechanic changes. One important mechanic change that old players of Gaia should know about is that gold and diamond has been split into the raw version, which can only be found underwater, and the normal version, which can only be crafted at the forge using the raw version. More info is displayed in the description on these items.

The planned full release date of the game is some time later this month or the next! Since a lot of new content has been added to the base game, the base price of the game will increase. Thank you to everyone who chose to support this game during the Early Access period!

So what's the plan until the full release? Well, there's some finishing touches left to do here and there and fix any potential new bugs reported by you guys participating in the open beta. There's also the matter of doing some administrative work, such as updating the storepage, updating other languages and whatnot. Also looking into having the game translated into simplified Chinese, seeing as there have been quite a few reviews from Chinese players. If you know anyone interested in this, please let me know.

Eager to see your feedback on the forums!

Why hello there.

So as some of you know, I've decided to not release Alpha 7 on its own, but rather integrate it with the full release of the game.

For the past few weeks, I've been working on polishing the game as well as adding in tons of new content. The biggest changes are 3 new biomes! There will be 2 new maps for each biome:

* Forest
* Grasslands
* Desert
* Arctic

Each biome comes with its own unique textures, wildlife and gameplay of course. Forest and grasslands biomes are very similar, with only a few changes here and there, such as less trees, different ground textures and slightly different animals (there will be ducks!). All maps have had their mountainous regions reduced greatly since mountains don't have any purpose in Gaia except to take up space.

The desert biome is challenging. It has a certain number of oases where you can find basic resources such as glowtubes and some food and animals. But most of it is quite barren, with the occasional cactus lying around, as well as a few rock formations and sand rompos. Temperatures are of course very high, rain almost non existent but at least the ocean has a cool, light blue Caribbean feel to it.

Arctic maps are extremely difficult and only meant to be played by veterans. There is literally nothing you can find on the surface, not even copper. The only thing you'll find are those immortal weevil and a few other predator creatures that don't care about the cold. Speaking of cold, temperatures can drop to below -50C (-58F for our american friends). So you won't be able to grow anything. However, there is one silver lining. Sea life is unaffected by the biome you choose. Therefore, you'll be able to find some resources underwater in the arctic, as well as fish. Lots of fish. The idea is to get what you can and trade for the rest, while suffering from a lack of... everything, all while always being threatened by space pirates and space rocks of course. So yeah, only for veterans.

Due to these new biome mechanics, I've made a few changes to some of the current mechanics in the game. Trade ships used to come every few hours of real life time and even then, they might not have what you need to buy. Now they'll come every few dozen minutes and they have a much higher chance of selling whatever you're lacking.

Raids will not trigger anymore when you go exploring or mining in somehow far lands because let's be realistic, you can't go explore beyond a few kilometers without having your base attacked and potentially losing all your stuff. So that has been fixed.


Those are the most notable changes. The game now contains all the content that's going to be delivered with the full release. I'm at the stage of polishing, balancing, filling in some blanks and fixing up the remaining bugs that survived Early Access (EA only kills about 99.99% of bugs).

In other news, Gaia just had its first fan art made! Many thanks to Lisa P. for her awesome work!

In this blog, we'll talk a bit about Alpha 7 Underwater update.

We've implemented fish schools and other fish behaviors. So far, there's nothing aggressive in the ocean, since we want ocean exploration to be all about exploration and not have to worry too much about bad fish. There will probably be one or two of them, but that's about it. The current types of fish there is in game:

* Salmon
* Koi
* Bass
* Amberjack



* Dolphins
* Blue whale
* Biomechanical whale



* Gold fish
* 3 types of seahorse
* Rays, jellyfish, cuttlefish, reel, molidae, chelidonichthys and other unpronounceable fish

There's also a new vehicle in the works. It's called 'The Mosquito' and looks like this:



If you've ever played Subnautica, then you'll find that the idea of the mosquito is based on the Seamoth.

Although this seems like a lot of stuff was done, there is still a lot of work. You can't interact with anything underwater, proper lighting hasn't been implemented yet, the new types of resources and fish don't serve any purpose yet and so on.

That's it for today's blog, hope you guys are having a great 2020 so far!