The December release brings you a little research revolution. As you can see we finally turned the research system into something that offers you freedom of choice on how to develop and enables strategic decisions.



You can now do cross research: Licensing one research option will unlock all its neighbors. We are about to install a simple system that delivers a function to highlight groups like upgrades, tools, improvements and special functions with different colors.


We are in the Top 100 on IndieDB and one of 4 finalists in Genre "Futuristic Sim". Please support Imagine Earth for indie of the year 2016. Just follow this link and click the vote button. Thx!

Upgrades that have been researched can now be selected in the development panel. When activated they are built together with the construct they belong to. This immediately rises the functionality of the building and spares you a lot of extra click-work.



The tech panel is now the perfect place to get and compare all information about the available constructs. You can click on developed buildings here to build them directly: The menu automatically closes and you place the chosen structure in your build radius.


The prices for installing researched upgrades on buildings are now massively discounted and rebalanced. We made it cheaper because the building space is much easier to obtain these days and it's less important that you can make one field unit produce more.

You can now play along on a campaign planet after finishing it's mission. Continue expanding your cities find all the Ideon around and finish some bonus mission goals or just go on to expand your colony as much as you like.

• Changed layout of research, tech and landing permit panels
• Ground type fertile now also visible in cold regions
• Cultivation unit does not longer depend on ground fertility
• Show production values of a building during build process

The December release brings you a little research revolution. As you can see we finally turned the research system into something that offers you freedom of choice on how to develop and enables strategic decisions.



You can now do cross research: Licensing one research option will unlock all its neighbors. We are about to install a simple system that delivers a function to highlight groups like upgrades, tools, improvements and special functions with different colors.


We are in the Top 100 on IndieDB and one of 4 finalists in Genre "Futuristic Sim". Please support Imagine Earth for indie of the year 2016. Just follow this link and click the vote button. Thx!

Upgrades that have been researched can now be selected in the development panel. When activated they are built together with the construct they belong to. This immediately rises the functionality of the building and spares you a lot of extra click-work.



The tech panel is now the perfect place to get and compare all information about the available constructs. You can click on developed buildings here to build them directly: The menu automatically closes and you place the chosen structure in your build radius.


The prices for installing researched upgrades on buildings are now massively discounted and rebalanced. We made it cheaper because the building space is much easier to obtain these days and it's less important that you can make one field unit produce more.

You can now play along on a campaign planet after finishing it's mission. Continue expanding your cities find all the Ideon around and finish some bonus mission goals or just go on to expand your colony as much as you like.

• Changed layout of research, tech and landing permit panels
• Ground type fertile now also visible in cold regions
• Cultivation unit does not longer depend on ground fertility
• Show production values of a building during build process

• 9 different biome types to classify different areas on each planet
• Planet texturing based on biomes
• Planet generator based on biomes
• Biome editor in sandbox mode
• New forest type Acacia
• New food producing building Cultivation Unit
• First version of Spanish community translation
• Balancing of forests and buildings

This is a fundamental new (and really awesome) gameplay element. Biomes classify the average temperature and fertility of a small planet area. Each comes with an individual type of forest and graphics for the ground, rocks and mountains.



Summed up: It's much easier to just see how well a certain area on the planet fits the needs of your colony. Here is a short description of all 9 biomes:

• Rainforest: Hot and very fertile area where palm trees grow.
• Savanna: Hot area of medium fertility where acacia grow.
• Desert: Hot and barren area where cacti grow.
• Subtrope: Fertile area where thick bamboo forests grow.
• Temperate zone: Area with moderate fertility and temperatures, in which a lot of deciduous forest grows.
• Drylands: Infertile area in the medium temperature range.
• Mires: Cold but fertile area in which mushroom forest grows.
• Taiga: Cold area of medium fertility with a lot of coniferous forest.
• Mountain: Cold area of high elevation, which is mostly barren. Thinly populated with coniferous forest.

In addition Illuminati temples and camps are placed in the hot biomes rainforest, savanna and desert. Other temples and native camps are used in the moderate temperature areas of the subtrope biome, temperate zone and drylands.

Since this is a completely new game element we still have to figure out a few details. Please let us know what you think about the biomes!

Those biomes are perfect to generate different types of planets.



As shown above the planet generator now allows you to define the biome distribution on the planet.

Each planet themes also come with a predefined configuration. E.g. Bora is a very fertile planet that mainly comes with the fertile biomes Rainforest, Subtrope and Mires, but also some areas of Savanna, Temperate zone and Taiga.

In the sandbox editor you can use the biomes to paint the planet with regions of different temperature, fertility, fossils, forests, rocks, rare resources and temples.



This new building is made available in the Joma mission. It breeds and harvests crops that thrive in symbiosis with the local flora. Therefore, each adjacent forest piece increases the yield of berries and herbs.



The upgrade "bio lab" reduces the costs of the cultivation program by genetic adaptation of the seedlings to local conditions.

The upgrade "external herb beds" enables the cultivation of valuable herbs and grasses on areas that can not be used for other plants.

A new type of forest that is very robust against drought and mainly spread in the savanna biome.



Alpha 28 comes with the first version of a Spanish translation that has been written by Purple Sister. THANKS A LOT! In addition a french translation is in progress.

If you are also working on a translation or would like to contribute, please let us know in the community translation thread in the forums.



We have updated the Imagine Earth fonts with a few new letters (for czech). In addition the many UI elements now automatically make sure the text fits into the available space.

The next big step here for us is to make missions translatable.

• Frontier tower is now available starting with the Joma mission
• Relocation tool now also relocated upgrades
• Explosive device now completely blasts rocks (instead of only 50%)
• Forest growth calculation has been updated based on the new biomes
• Mine produces more at lower cost
• Recycling factory produces more goods
• Sorting system no longer causes increased ground pollution
• Fishing port upgrades require less energy and money
• Cattle farm needs less energy and money
• Waterworks has greater dependence on fertility

Special thanks to Justice for writing a very detailed balancing feedback on this!

• Completely pause the game
• New ideon goal in Joma mission (5th bonus goal)
• Pulse cannon is available for defense against first Xrathul wave on Magni
• Orientation of particle effects for better engine exhaust graphics
• New animation for fishing port graphics
• New colorization and icons for rare resources
• Big Illuminati temple has now up to 8 gaian power slots
• Graphics setting "Shader quality" allows disabling normals maps for more performance
• New neutral smiley icon when when city is unpopulated
• Number of available items sold be the tech trader is now shown as bars

Help us win the Indie of the Year Award

• 9 different biome types to classify different areas on each planet
• Planet texturing based on biomes
• Planet generator based on biomes
• Biome editor in sandbox mode
• New forest type Acacia
• New food producing building Cultivation Unit
• First version of Spanish community translation
• Balancing of forests and buildings

This is a fundamental new (and really awesome) gameplay element. Biomes classify the average temperature and fertility of a small planet area. Each comes with an individual type of forest and graphics for the ground, rocks and mountains.



Summed up: It's much easier to just see how well a certain area on the planet fits the needs of your colony. Here is a short description of all 9 biomes:

• Rainforest: Hot and very fertile area where palm trees grow.
• Savanna: Hot area of medium fertility where acacia grow.
• Desert: Hot and barren area where cacti grow.
• Subtrope: Fertile area where thick bamboo forests grow.
• Temperate zone: Area with moderate fertility and temperatures, in which a lot of deciduous forest grows.
• Drylands: Infertile area in the medium temperature range.
• Mires: Cold but fertile area in which mushroom forest grows.
• Taiga: Cold area of medium fertility with a lot of coniferous forest.
• Mountain: Cold area of high elevation, which is mostly barren. Thinly populated with coniferous forest.

In addition Illuminati temples and camps are placed in the hot biomes rainforest, savanna and desert. Other temples and native camps are used in the moderate temperature areas of the subtrope biome, temperate zone and drylands.

Since this is a completely new game element we still have to figure out a few details. Please let us know what you think about the biomes!

Those biomes are perfect to generate different types of planets.



As shown above the planet generator now allows you to define the biome distribution on the planet.

Each planet themes also come with a predefined configuration. E.g. Bora is a very fertile planet that mainly comes with the fertile biomes Rainforest, Subtrope and Mires, but also some areas of Savanna, Temperate zone and Taiga.

In the sandbox editor you can use the biomes to paint the planet with regions of different temperature, fertility, fossils, forests, rocks, rare resources and temples.



This new building is made available in the Joma mission. It breeds and harvests crops that thrive in symbiosis with the local flora. Therefore, each adjacent forest piece increases the yield of berries and herbs.



The upgrade "bio lab" reduces the costs of the cultivation program by genetic adaptation of the seedlings to local conditions.

The upgrade "external herb beds" enables the cultivation of valuable herbs and grasses on areas that can not be used for other plants.

A new type of forest that is very robust against drought and mainly spread in the savanna biome.



Alpha 28 comes with the first version of a Spanish translation that has been written by Purple Sister. THANKS A LOT! In addition a french translation is in progress.

If you are also working on a translation or would like to contribute, please let us know in the community translation thread in the forums.



We have updated the Imagine Earth fonts with a few new letters (for czech). In addition the many UI elements now automatically make sure the text fits into the available space.

The next big step here for us is to make missions translatable.

• Frontier tower is now available starting with the Joma mission
• Relocation tool now also relocated upgrades
• Explosive device now completely blasts rocks (instead of only 50%)
• Forest growth calculation has been updated based on the new biomes
• Mine produces more at lower cost
• Recycling factory produces more goods
• Sorting system no longer causes increased ground pollution
• Fishing port upgrades require less energy and money
• Cattle farm needs less energy and money
• Waterworks has greater dependence on fertility

Special thanks to Justice for writing a very detailed balancing feedback on this!

• Completely pause the game
• New ideon goal in Joma mission (5th bonus goal)
• Pulse cannon is available for defense against first Xrathul wave on Magni
• Orientation of particle effects for better engine exhaust graphics
• New animation for fishing port graphics
• New colorization and icons for rare resources
• Big Illuminati temple has now up to 8 gaian power slots
• Graphics setting "Shader quality" allows disabling normals maps for more performance
• New neutral smiley icon when when city is unpopulated
• Number of available items sold be the tech trader is now shown as bars

Help us win the Indie of the Year Award

We are approaching the cold time of the year - at least here in Germany. This means we have even more time to build great stuff and here is the content of our latest release:

• Imagine Earth is ready for community translation
• New construct - Glassworks
• Tech trader
• 3 new items: City expansion kit, Land reclamation, Explosive device
• Sign treaty with natives
• Climate countdown
• Time based auto-save
• Spaceport upgrade: Rocket terminal

Imagine Earth is ready to be translated into other languages. The game now comes with a directory that contains the internationalization data. You can access it to translate Imagine Earth into your own language. Read all the details about this in the translation section of the forums.

The glassworks produces windows, lenses and glass containers. For this purpose particularly fine sand is used. So desert fields increase the productivity of the factory.



The glassworks is introduced in the Rounos mission.

A tech dealer sells special items to you. In addition, he also re-purchases unused ones and is buying rare resources.



The tech trader is introduced in the Joma mission - so this is worth being played again.

Alpha 27 comes with three new items that are sold by the Tech Trader. All items are introduced in the Joma mission.


This technology enables you to expand a city district that has not reached the necessary infrastructure level in surrounding districts.
Not applicable to city centers.
Let an ocean or coastal field will become land.
The field has to be adjacent to another land field.
Enables the blasting of buildings, forests and rocks in your area and on all fields directly adjacent to it. In buildings, the ruin can be removed with a second blast.



The interaction with native camps has been adjusted a bit:
You can now sign a treaty with the tribe. As the "diplomacy" tool did before, this allows you to trade with them and to use the surrounding land of all the camps of the tribe. In exchange, you provide all the camps with a small amount of goods.



Once the climate balance goes into negative you can hover the climate information area to see how much time remains to rescue the planet. This is calculated based on the current level of global warming and emissions.


The game now automatically saves your state of the game every 15 minutes. In the game options you can also disable this or set it to 30, 45 or 60 minutes.



In order to be able to build rockets to send resources into space you now have to research and build the spaceport upgrade "rocket terminal".

• The merchant is now part of the Tuto mission
• Destroy Xrtahul harvester ships with meteorites
• Ideon deposits contain either a lot of ideon or a very small amount
• Adjusted mission briefing layout
• Fixed orientation of huge mountains and volcanoes

That's it! And again: Please remember that you can take part in the community translation of Imagine Earth in the translation section of the forums.

We are approaching the cold time of the year - at least here in Germany. This means we have even more time to build great stuff and here is the content of our latest release:

• Imagine Earth is ready for community translation
• New construct - Glassworks
• Tech trader
• 3 new items: City expansion kit, Land reclamation, Explosive device
• Sign treaty with natives
• Climate countdown
• Time based auto-save
• Spaceport upgrade: Rocket terminal

Imagine Earth is ready to be translated into other languages. The game now comes with a directory that contains the internationalization data. You can access it to translate Imagine Earth into your own language. Read all the details about this in the translation section of the forums.

The glassworks produces windows, lenses and glass containers. For this purpose particularly fine sand is used. So desert fields increase the productivity of the factory.



The glassworks is introduced in the Rounos mission.

A tech dealer sells special items to you. In addition, he also re-purchases unused ones and is buying rare resources.



The tech trader is introduced in the Joma mission - so this is worth being played again.

Alpha 27 comes with three new items that are sold by the Tech Trader. All items are introduced in the Joma mission.


This technology enables you to expand a city district that has not reached the necessary infrastructure level in surrounding districts.
Not applicable to city centers.
Let an ocean or coastal field will become land.
The field has to be adjacent to another land field.
Enables the blasting of buildings, forests and rocks in your area and on all fields directly adjacent to it. In buildings, the ruin can be removed with a second blast.



The interaction with native camps has been adjusted a bit:
You can now sign a treaty with the tribe. As the "diplomacy" tool did before, this allows you to trade with them and to use the surrounding land of all the camps of the tribe. In exchange, you provide all the camps with a small amount of goods.



Once the climate balance goes into negative you can hover the climate information area to see how much time remains to rescue the planet. This is calculated based on the current level of global warming and emissions.


The game now automatically saves your state of the game every 15 minutes. In the game options you can also disable this or set it to 30, 45 or 60 minutes.



In order to be able to build rockets to send resources into space you now have to research and build the spaceport upgrade "rocket terminal".

• The merchant is now part of the Tuto mission
• Destroy Xrtahul harvester ships with meteorites
• Ideon deposits contain either a lot of ideon or a very small amount
• Adjusted mission briefing layout
• Fixed orientation of huge mountains and volcanoes

That's it! And again: Please remember that you can take part in the community translation of Imagine Earth in the translation section of the forums.

After a great holiday season we are back with a bunch of enhancements and a lot of fine-tuning:

• victory points panel for competition mode
• special offer: ideon scanner
• new item: super fertiliser
• population statistics panel
• Rounos & Magni missions improved
• optimized storage system
• "Sell all" trading feature
• New graphic models - especially for rocks and mountains
• ....

Let's get into the details.



From now on you'll find all factions in a competition game in the victory points panel to the lower right. Ranked and easily comparable! Click on any player to jump to it's next city.



We are starting to equip the space traders store with more interesting tactical items. After being bought they go into your inventory and can be used any time you need.

The Ideon scanner for example reveals the size of an Ideon deposit far away from your base. This is interesting as well in the context that rare resources will now be visible from the distance but it remains unclear how much of a special substance or mineral is actually in the pile of rocks and it will only be revealed by the scanner or by getting that deposit in your building range.



Fertilizer can be bought in the shop for 2.500 and raise the fertility by 25% on all fields but deserts. This of course is beneficial for farms and forests.



It took a long time but now they are ready: Statistics about the life quality of your colony's inhabitants and the overall housing space.

Both missions are now much better balanced in terms of money available, global climate and difficulty level of the goals. In addition we have replaced some lame goals with more interesting ones and we have done a ton of fine-tuning!



The storing of resources needed a make up. The system is now automatically configured to complete packages of certain resources and specially the ones which where prioritized by you. It even pauses the mining of rare resources to ensure there is enough place for prioritized ones. This way you will very likely end up with ready-to-sell resource packages when the traders is passing by.



Pretty clear what this function does, isn't it? If you're tired of selling your stuff one by one, you can stuff the trader with all you get by the click of one button or ring key shortcut.



...and so we added some big mountain models that meet the theme of planet Joma. The big deal about this is that we now got some sets of dependencies like woods fitting to rocks fitting to mountains fitting to big mountains. Themes that would work to create unique styled islands on greater generated planets an the type of rocks or mountains might even indicate which one of the fossils resources you find under them as we develop this further.

• You might as well enjoy the redesigned theme of Magni
• And the new cursor graphics for tools and items

• Sandbox: Terrain tools show values of each field (e.g. temperature, height, etc.)
• Sandbox: Temperature tool modifies whole region instead of single fields
• Balancing of emission values for goods producing buildings
• Free play Rules : Receive city centers for growing population
• Planet rotation in main menu
• Animation for quest icons
• Speaker icons over other player's cities
• Loads of UI fixes
• Loose game when all cities are taken or destroyed
• Firework goes on during end of mission slides

After a great holiday season we are back with a bunch of enhancements and a lot of fine-tuning:

• victory points panel for competition mode
• special offer: ideon scanner
• new item: super fertiliser
• population statistics panel
• Rounos & Magni missions improved
• optimized storage system
• "Sell all" trading feature
• New graphic models - especially for rocks and mountains
• ....

Let's get into the details.



From now on you'll find all factions in a competition game in the victory points panel to the lower right. Ranked and easily comparable! Click on any player to jump to it's next city.



We are starting to equip the space traders store with more interesting tactical items. After being bought they go into your inventory and can be used any time you need.

The Ideon scanner for example reveals the size of an Ideon deposit far away from your base. This is interesting as well in the context that rare resources will now be visible from the distance but it remains unclear how much of a special substance or mineral is actually in the pile of rocks and it will only be revealed by the scanner or by getting that deposit in your building range.



Fertilizer can be bought in the shop for 2.500 and raise the fertility by 25% on all fields but deserts. This of course is beneficial for farms and forests.



It took a long time but now they are ready: Statistics about the life quality of your colony's inhabitants and the overall housing space.

Both missions are now much better balanced in terms of money available, global climate and difficulty level of the goals. In addition we have replaced some lame goals with more interesting ones and we have done a ton of fine-tuning!



The storing of resources needed a make up. The system is now automatically configured to complete packages of certain resources and specially the ones which where prioritized by you. It even pauses the mining of rare resources to ensure there is enough place for prioritized ones. This way you will very likely end up with ready-to-sell resource packages when the traders is passing by.



Pretty clear what this function does, isn't it? If you're tired of selling your stuff one by one, you can stuff the trader with all you get by the click of one button or ring key shortcut.



...and so we added some big mountain models that meet the theme of planet Joma. The big deal about this is that we now got some sets of dependencies like woods fitting to rocks fitting to mountains fitting to big mountains. Themes that would work to create unique styled islands on greater generated planets an the type of rocks or mountains might even indicate which one of the fossils resources you find under them as we develop this further.

• You might as well enjoy the redesigned theme of Magni
• And the new cursor graphics for tools and items

• Sandbox: Terrain tools show values of each field (e.g. temperature, height, etc.)
• Sandbox: Temperature tool modifies whole region instead of single fields
• Balancing of emission values for goods producing buildings
• Free play Rules : Receive city centers for growing population
• Planet rotation in main menu
• Animation for quest icons
• Speaker icons over other player's cities
• Loads of UI fixes
• Loose game when all cities are taken or destroyed
• Firework goes on during end of mission slides

After the last release focused on the trading system, this one brings:

• Terrain tools - temperature, fertility and height
• Cragginess of terrain
• Research budget for expansions
• New UI for technology licenses
• New rare resource: Corals
• AI improvements
• Colony value
• High score revolution
• More (see end of post)

The one big thing of this release is the new stats and highscore system that calculates the colony value based on your population, city area, buildings and more.



With the tools shown in the image above you can apply regional modifications to the height, temperature, fertility and pollution of every field.

High terrain and areas around mountains are more craggy and less fertile. In addition we changed terrain texturing. Areas around fertile fields and desserts become more green or brown due to their actual fertility level.



We tried a messed up science point system and now replaced it with a simple district expansion logic that offers fresh research budgets in an easier way than ever before. You can still get these budgets from the space trader and it feels good to have these function sorted out of the mission goal system on the lower right of the UI.



Constantly repeating reward mechanisms, like those for technology licenses, have a new place in the upper left corner of the screen. The company is supporting the growth your colony if you manage to push up your colony value.



Another precious resource that you can harvest from the depth of the sea. Corals can be harvested for medical substances. This brings us closer to having a great variety of individual resources that are specially made for trade. Corals are the first rare resource that regrows.

• AI now puts more effort into building the cities in a way that allows to expand them as much as possible.
• AI is building a warehouse and harvests rare resources.
• AI opponents are building spaceports and sell resources to the space merchants.

Here's the inconspicuous big move of release 25 because the colony value is an all over indicator for the wealth of your colony.

This colony value now defines how much money you get if sell shares of your colony and how their price is going through the roof in further development. That's possible because every factor is directly converted into capital ( the official currency in all known space so far. )

It has integrate all mayor factors beginning with the population and the worth of your constructions and their productivity. It also includes the size of occupied land, the quality of life and the count of installed upgrades. And at least it substracts emissions and pollution.

The high score ( now colony score ) is also depending on your reached colony value. But you will only get as much score as you have kept your shares own colony shares. If you sold 50% of them for cheap credit you halved your final score as well...

Still worth noticing that reachable scores skyrocketed with this upgrade and your chance to reach one of the first places is better than ever.

• Meteorites take longer to drop (50 seconds). In addition lasers are now built 50% faster. Thisway, it should be much easier to deal with the meteorite shower on Lorian.
• It's possible to start building directly from the technology menu
• New Upgrade graphics for park district and financial district
• Planet generator makes sure there is enough space between volcanoes, huge mountains, temples and natives
• Fixed screenshot light problems
• Streets fade in and out while building or destructing

After the last release focused on the trading system, this one brings:

• Terrain tools - temperature, fertility and height
• Cragginess of terrain
• Research budget for expansions
• New UI for technology licenses
• New rare resource: Corals
• AI improvements
• Colony value
• High score revolution
• More (see end of post)

The one big thing of this release is the new stats and highscore system that calculates the colony value based on your population, city area, buildings and more.



With the tools shown in the image above you can apply regional modifications to the height, temperature, fertility and pollution of every field.

High terrain and areas around mountains are more craggy and less fertile. In addition we changed terrain texturing. Areas around fertile fields and desserts become more green or brown due to their actual fertility level.



We tried a messed up science point system and now replaced it with a simple district expansion logic that offers fresh research budgets in an easier way than ever before. You can still get these budgets from the space trader and it feels good to have these function sorted out of the mission goal system on the lower right of the UI.



Constantly repeating reward mechanisms, like those for technology licenses, have a new place in the upper left corner of the screen. The company is supporting the growth your colony if you manage to push up your colony value.



Another precious resource that you can harvest from the depth of the sea. Corals can be harvested for medical substances. This brings us closer to having a great variety of individual resources that are specially made for trade. Corals are the first rare resource that regrows.

• AI now puts more effort into building the cities in a way that allows to expand them as much as possible.
• AI is building a warehouse and harvests rare resources.
• AI opponents are building spaceports and sell resources to the space merchants.

Here's the inconspicuous big move of release 25 because the colony value is an all over indicator for the wealth of your colony.

This colony value now defines how much money you get if sell shares of your colony and how their price is going through the roof in further development. That's possible because every factor is directly converted into capital ( the official currency in all known space so far. )

It has integrate all mayor factors beginning with the population and the worth of your constructions and their productivity. It also includes the size of occupied land, the quality of life and the count of installed upgrades. And at least it substracts emissions and pollution.

The high score ( now colony score ) is also depending on your reached colony value. But you will only get as much score as you have kept your shares own colony shares. If you sold 50% of them for cheap credit you halved your final score as well...

Still worth noticing that reachable scores skyrocketed with this upgrade and your chance to reach one of the first places is better than ever.

• Meteorites take longer to drop (50 seconds). In addition lasers are now built 50% faster. Thisway, it should be much easier to deal with the meteorite shower on Lorian.
• It's possible to start building directly from the technology menu
• New Upgrade graphics for park district and financial district
• Planet generator makes sure there is enough space between volcanoes, huge mountains, temples and natives
• Fixed screenshot light problems
• Streets fade in and out while building or destructing