Greetings travelers, in this devblog you’ll read our insights on what we’ve been up to since the last update and some other gameplay/lore elements that we find interesting to share. Let’s get right into it.



TFM: The First Men has a very mod-friendly, open ended, “custom game” a-like mapping system. Including us, content creators will be able to generate empty maps and design it however they like.

There’s something that we think is important and exciting here. From the available Traditions, Constructions, Activities, Traits to Skills, one person’s map might not be the same with others’ in terms of progression, setting and content.

You might still wish to use the game’s base map content and everything, but it’s your choice to make something completely different, from art assets to the core content. Our builder is highly capable of providing you with tools that’ll make your life easier when creating new, original content.

Same makers and tools also allow you to create contents in small scale and publish them as you see fit. You want to add vampirism to the game? Sure, create its traits, skills, activities etc. and pack it up. You wish to add a whole new combat class to the game? Go ahead, create the proper traditions, paths etc. and let the people enjoy your Gunslinger when they decide to pick a class for their thoroughly invested characters.

This allows different maps to be able to feel very unique, both thematically and mechanically. Thus, creating a sense of a new “custom game” with each created map. For example, we’ve set out a goal for ourselves to create two types of maps for Early Access as a starter. A “sandbox” type map called Armonia, and a more linear, story-driven one that tells us a story about Adam and Eve’s alternate journey in a fantasy world.

TFM’s sandbox gameplay will be developed around the high fantasy continent of Armonia, a diverse landscape inhabited by numerous races, adventures, dungeons and cultures. It’ll be the ultimate fantasy experience with a lot of classic RPG elements sprinkled throughout its hand-crafted regions. The player will still have a main plot to chase if he likes to, but the map’s playtime and scale will be grand enough to allow you to play it as in an open-ended, chill structure. Or vice versa, if you’re into that.



Without throwing any spoilers and details at you, in an outline form, let’s talk about Armonia’s Backstory and the overall plot structure as it is now. As these are considered canon for the adventures that’ll be shaped around them for now, they may still be changed without hesitation for the good of the game. For those who’re mythical lore junkies like us, we’ll make sure to update you with details as we go.

Long ago, before the First Men’s arrival beneath the shades of their Gathering Tree in western Armonia, they were the tribal inhabitants of a plane called Ihfal-dun. In it, the whole tribe witnessed a world-wide armageddon called “the Calamity” that boiled seas, melted mountains and turned the cycle of life upside down in a matter of minutes.

Luckily, their ancestors saw the arrival of the Calamity eons ago and forged a prophecy to warn their offspring. The tribesmen who witnessed the Calamity used this sacred knowledge to successfully escape their plane and save themselves. It was a prophecy that foretold the reunion under a holy tree.

The mysterious departure from Ihfal-dun brought them to Enigma, also known as The Silver Sea, or the Astral Void. They found themselves aimlessly soaring between multiple systems like crackling meteors.

They traveled for ages in an unusual time-frame. During this process, most of the tribesmen went mad, some of them lost their ways and crashed into nearby stars or others got enslaved by the Gith, a race of marauders, consisting mostly of Astral pirate bands.

During their enslavement, the tribesmen traveled through multiple astral phenomenons in these strange pirate ships. Some got sold as slaves to planar settlements, other ships and their numbers started to dwindle as they were being scattered throughout the Enigma.

During one of their astral trips, two remaining slaves, a man and a woman of the tribe were caught between an Illithid assault on their Gith ship. While at the lower deck, inside arcane-locked cells, a mind-flayer hastily entered the room and attempted to break them out.

He started talking about “the Empyrean” and his dream, and an artifact called “Nightmare’s End” and how the race of “Humans” were binded with the fate of producing a “Dreamborn” child who’d carry the weight of entering the Empyrean’s fabled dream with it. The upcoming psyche-storm was not like the ones before, and had to be stopped.

When the figure provided the potential ancestors of a future civilization with essential information and a scroll that’d prove useful with imbuing this “Nightmare’s End”, a group of Gith scoundrels entered the room, as the boarding battle still ensued upstairs on the deck. A fight began inside the room.

While the mind-flayer was occupied with the fight, he used telekinesis to throw the dead Giths’ escape crystals to the First Men. Through one of the damaged hull’s cracks, they saw the vast Silver Sea, and a plane full of life in front of them. Specifically, the continent of Armonia.

Holding hands, they held onto the crystals and jumped out from the ship. The crystal encapsulated and shot them forward. After a long trip, they crashed inside a meadow and created a hole. When they crawled out of the tiny crater, they witnessed the wonders of a world full of mysteries, hardship and adventure, as they walked towards the Gathering Tree in the distance.

Armonia will be our main white-board in terms of new updates, as we’ll jam them up at it to test rather than other maps, if of course we decide to create a new one with a whole different setting and feeling. Maybe the First Men will find themselves in other mythical planes in the Empyrean’s Dream, who knows?

We’ll use it to test new core mechanics, balance existing ones and alike. Your creative criticisms are highly important in any of these decisions that we consider to implement in our maps.


One of the things that we were looking forward to was the easy implementation of character appearances by artists and the content designers’ communication with them.



In TFM, each character changes appearances based on their traits. Traits have the ability to alter a character’s body part, or multiple ones at the same time.

Characters are born with Race, Gender, Life Stage(Condition) and Elemental traits. One by one, each of these traits try to match themselves with what the content designers assigned them to in the Trait Maker database.

Based on this structure, all traits mingle with each other using a priority system to organize who goes on top what. Not just physical traits, but weapons and armors are also represented through traits in TFM, therefore, based on what are the character’s active Attack and Defensive skill sets, we’re able to observe a change in such a character’s hand-held and donned items.



Character’s who’re not in a combat party and are just minding their own worktime and downtime activities inside the settlement also use this system, constantly changing their garments and holding equipment coherently logical with what they’re doing. This incredibly component based system allows us to easily create jobs without thinking about the complications of implementing new aesthetics into the game, so both the designers’ and artists’ creativity flows uninterrupted by unnecessary software barriers.


Each character in TFM has a Defensive Skill Set, Attack Skill Set and Utility Skill Slots. Defensive and Attack sets are obtained by choosing an active Armor and Weapon type combat trait for the character. Each such trait holds a set of skills assigned to it from the Trait Maker, after its skills were designed and implemented to the Skill Maker by the content designer.



Apart from these two, a character’s maximum Utility Skill Slots are determined by modifiers from other traits. While a character is limited to this modifier for its active and currently usable skills, there are no limits on how many he can collect from his traits.

Since our previous blog, we’ve established the core progression system of Armonia’s combat traits for adventure-seeking characters. We also eliminated the idea of strict class-based railroading and separated all class mechanics to thematically appropriate individual traits, so it’s much easier to create multi-class (multi-colored) characters based on their primary and secondary stats.

Maybe there’s that one utility skill that matches perfectly to your build from the Vanguard class but you also wish to hold on to your Fighter’s Heroic Leap? If your character’s stats are eligible to obtain them all, go right ahead and experiment!



Based on your traditional decisions, the settlement will one by one unlock these individual combat traits which will be available for your characters to pick them up through Path activities, by your command.

Current progression uses a 5-tiered system for all individual armor and weapons. For example; if your settlement already has Woodcutter’s Hut, Crafting Table and Leatherworker’s Workshop unlocked; you’ll be able to come across a Tradition called Fighter’s Code, which unlocks a construction called Training Yard and three combat traits for your Path of the Warrior operation panel: Fighter’s Scrap Handaxe, Fighter’s Light Studded Leather and Training: Maneuvering.

These are your “Tier 1” fighter Attack Skill Set, Defensive Skill Set and Utility skills separated to three different traits. From now on, you can construct the Training Yard and if you’re able to afford and the character is eligible, you’ll be able to grant these to anyone through Path of the Warrior. These, with future tradition investments, will slowly upgrade and expand their modifiers and skills, even unlocking new skills to the set as they upgrade to higher tiers.

Fighter’s Scrap Handaxe will turn into copper, iron, steel and finally adamantine, reaching its final form. Same with Fighter’s Studded Leather; light, medium, heavy, thick, solid.

Considering each “class” will have more than one weapon and armor with multiple utility skills providing combat traits, there’ll be some decisions made when you look at how to build a potential combat character.



For example, a character with a Fighter’s Iron Shortsword, Scoundrel’s Thick Leather Armor and some utility skills from the Flamespeaker’s tradition will come out as a “Green/Black/Red” with lots of specific modifiers. This means that you actually worked and achieved to unlock all of this through traditions and then stitched them together as a build of your own creation.

You think your Fighter’s Steel Handaxe and the skills it provides will work better after slaughtering the denizens of their kennel? Nothing’s holding you back to change skill sets while you’re not in combat.

That’s all for this month’s update, see you on the next one. Stay safe and keep exploring!

Hey there folks, we’ve just put out a new alpha of the game on Steam and I thought I would just make a little update here to show you some of the things we’ve been working on for the last couple of months.

I said “new” alpha but this is the first playable alpha build of the actual TFM, the reason I said new is because last year, before the development of the game started, we had another alpha build for the design vision of the game on Steam, those who have been supporting us for a while knows that, back in the day we have been trying to discover what we wanna make, and just to see if it would work, we have been making different kinds of playable demos of different crazy ideas.



So to start off with; there has been a lot of infrastructure stuff, we had to beat our brains to make a solid backend system before going crazy with cooler ideas like dragons, magic, dimensions or all that kind of wild world design stuff. Otherwise, in a complicated list of possible features, it may be problematic for us in the future, adding cool stuff may take more time while problems pile up, and in game development, we get used to encountering unexpected problems a lot.



In the video above, the characters are collecting mushrooms, gathering berries, cutting trees, and all kinds of different things by themselves. They are using a system that we call Activities, which are AI behavior sets that a character can obtain when he or she is idle. Whenever a character is idle, he looks at the possible activities list that's provided by the settlement assets, which means the player is able to unlock more activities for the characters. By finishing activities, characters gain points for their settlements, as well as experience, traits, and several other types of rewards for themselves.

Our approach on how to deal with the design of settlement simulation is heavily oriented on how talented the characters who’re performing their activities are. In our Decision Maker tool, which we use to create new activities; we’ve lately experimented with the idea of success checks. The idea is; when a character performs a task with relative difficulty in any area related to the primary or secondary stats they have, they have to overcome a success check to determine whether they can do it as effectively or in as short time as possible. Everytime they fail at a success check, they potentially waste more of their time, energy and points in return for experience in a particular primary stat.

To be able to intensify the ability that our characters stats can affect an individual activity that’s going on is a huge step for us. This was a huge leap for us, because in our vision demo the whole concept of settlement point accumulation was revolving around organized timestamps, meaning a steady income. Of course, putting so much effort into shaping our characters from their infancy required a more realistic approach on how they behaved, rather than running around aimlessly while the indicator at the top of the screen increased by itself.



Now since we have a tool that has immense potential in terms of addable features, our action-based approach to how activities are resolving allows us to implement interesting ideas. Such as injuries while performing a difficult task for one’s low stat, psychological breakdowns during activities, inspirational eureka moments to perform exquisitely on a job, gaining new personality traits based on how high the success checks are, and the list goes on and on.

There’s also a task that comes along with the “success check” idea. How the character is progressing towards its goal while performing these checks should be presented with a fun-to-watch HUD as our poor characters break a sweat and struggle with what they’re doing.

We’re also experimenting with the idea of our heavily anticipated real-time combat with pause and how smooth user experience should be delivered without cutting any unnecessary edges. Most of the time, a perfect experience always begins with a well-made UI.



Since the last update, we’ve implemented a semi-functioning character information panel that includes all elements, experimented with area-of-effect skills such as cones, circles, lines, squares, ranges, radiuses, and their indicators. All of these are easily implementable and changeable through the in-game Skill Maker.

Characters in TFM use these skills via their traits. As we mentioned before, there are four skill categories and each character has a specific amount of slots for these skill categories, also determined by their traits.

So when a character gains a trait that provides multiple skills to multiple categories, they all land on their own category slots along with others. It’s sort of like having a spellbook full of spells and having to memorize only a handful of them. Which ones would you pick for your next adventure depending on what you might face along the way? In conclusion, a character does not have a limit on how many skills it can collect, but there’s a limit on how many of them are ready to use at once.

We’ve also worked on some HUD ideas to present very useful information without boggling the screen too much. Since we use Action Time as our in-between global cooldown for skills, characters have to show in their HUD, what they’re gonna execute next, their current endurance, etc.




As you see in the video above, characters are collecting points in real-time for the settlement. For the purpose of this alpha, we’ve put some simple actions on the operation panel buttons for the player to test future operations, like creating a new character, making a new construction, and adding combat traits to have more warriors.



Operations are basically our game panels, which you will be using to operate your settlement.

Like for example, Traditions and Bragging Rights are TFM’s tech-trees, Relations is gonna be the panel where you will be taking diplomatic actions against other settlements and dwellings.

Paths on the other hand, are super unique to TFM. There are seven path panels right now. These are the panels where you give activities to your characters. All of the path panels have different concepts and gameplay structures. In their current state, the list goes as follows:

The cozy comfort of a caring mother is the essence of all thriving civilizations. In TFM, Path of the Mother is utilized by the player to choose proper mother candidates and lead them through a difficult pregnancy path by spending necessary points. The result of such pregnancy will reward the settlement with a potential genius newborn (or maybe an imbecile) who’ll spread the settlement’s glory to the lands beyond the horizon.

Characters in TFM have two important and fillable resources as secondary stats; Inspiration and Zeal. Inspiration is connected to the Soul stat as Zeal is to Self. Over time and certain actions, characters will gain this resource similar to an experience bar and hold on to them so that the player can choose a candidate character and grant him/her a neat enhancement after spending it.

Certain traditions will unlock new construction and item possibilities for a settlement. The player will spend its settlement’s industry in this cluster to build new constructions or items. This will allow the settlement to open the way for new opportunities in terms of new activities and combat items, built by its own people.

Until adulthood, every newborn has a right to get a proper education and a lifestyle. This cluster will allow the player to invest in his infants and children so that they can be of use when they grow up. This is an immensely important part of a character’s life in TFM, as the “child is father of the man”.

Path of the Warrior is where the adventurous shines the most. This path allows the player to grant class traits to qualified characters, increase maximum party size, or develop already acquired warriors by tailoring their skills, feats, items, classes, etc. individually.

This is the cluster player uses to see the stories happening inside the settlement. These paths use a backend system to start various events written by content designers. Characters having difficulties on a life-matter choice, a big settlement-wise festival, an important ceremony, etc., so the player gets to be a part of their day-to-day choices.

What happens when a brigand hideout is rid of its filth? The answer to that question lies within this cluster, as it’ll allow the player to create new dwellings outside of its peaceful meadows. AI Dwellings created this way will always see their original settlement as a stable ally.

Most of the paths are under construction to be perfected until they’re ready to be implemented soon.

So yeah, I hope you guys liked it, that’s alpha one of TFM’s Heart of Battle update. Check the game out on our Steam page and I will see you next time.

Greetings fellow humanoids!

In this update, I’ll talk about what we've been working on for the last couple of months since the last dev blog. As you know, we now have a properly working editor for all our content creation shenanigans.

We wanted to expand on that with the emphasis on topics such as characters, combat, and activities. On top of that, we carved a path for our lore and the scenario map opening cutscene.



Individual characters of TFM prior to our vision demo already had their five distinct stats working; Body, Mind, Heart, Soul, and Self. This helped us figure out how to approach the design of what we call “secondary stats” in terms of distinct differentiation between each character in the game.

These secondary stats are used by the characters to determine their strengths and weaknesses in certain areas of interaction, whether it’s in combat, or during their worktime/downtime activities on their settlements. One big difference from primary stats is the fact that secondary stats do not have base values that can be developed by characters, rather they’re directly derived from Primary Stats and change constantly based on their corresponding Primary Stat. More detail on these will be provided in future updates, but for now, I’ll summarize them by name and their related Primary Stats.

Haste, Resistance, and Dominance are connected to Body.
Rigor, Foresight, and Focus are connected to Mind.
Power, Adrenaline, and Ferocity are connected to Heart.
Patience, Moira, and Inspiration are connected to Soul.
Prowess, Vigilance, and Zeal are connected to Self.



In addition to Secondary Stats, we now have two new database “makers” for our TFM Builder; Traits and Skills. This literally means within our in-game editor we’re now able to create content for these via spreadsheets and test them without having to leave the game. Secondary stats and content tools of traits and skills are constantly being developed with the real-time combat system in mind. Which I think is a great segway to talk a little bit about combat and class iterations.

Skills are active abilities of a character and they can provide advantages to a character in any way during combat. A character’s skills are determined by his traits (i.e class traits, item traits, feat traits, etc.) and can be seen as buttons in the character's actions panel. There are four types of skills: Mobility, Utility, Attack, and Elite.

Attack skills derive from a character’s item of choice. Each item holds multiple attack skills and these skills on the same item trait are coherent to each other. Whenever the player changes a character’s active item through UI, a newly chosen item’s attack skill set appears on its Attack Skills panel. Each weapon also has an auto-attack skill, which determines a character’s default skill that usually does not cost anything and deals damage.

Unlike attack skills, utility skills have individual selection options. Each character has a certain amount of utility skill slots. And the player may choose any of these utility skills to any slot. The thematic difference between an attack and utility skills is that utility skills do not require whatever the character is holding as a weapon in order to be used. A utility skill’s main output could be healing, reducing resistances, removing boons, applying afflictions, summoning, and many more.

A character may only have one mobility skill. Mobility skills are designed to give characters the ability to relocate themselves more easily during combat.

Elite skills are special, unique, powerful, and rare. A character can only use its Elite skill through his Empower ability, which unlocks when a character’s Zeal secondary stat is filled.



Another mighty addition to our editor is the Decision Maker, which is a node tool to let the user create simple, or complicated character behavior trees. Whether for combat AI roles or in settlement for worktime and downtime activities.

This is one of the biggest milestones for the team in terms of what we planned for settlement gameplay. Expanding its capabilities will let us (and you) create fun activities for characters to pick up in order to gain experience, energy, prosperity, industry, traits, etc.



Since the development of our new tools to amplify the strength of worldbuilding in our new Map Maker, we figured the elevation of terrain in the sense of turning regions into subregions and three-dimensional structures would make a lot of sense. It would, because it makes exploration and the currency of “fog of war” more appealing and satisfying to unravel.

But it’s a risky business in terms of developing a new editor. Before, only our “Mountain” region could be perceived as height, but now we’re even able to create entire regions out of different biomes as heightened terrains and put multiple layers in a single region where dwellings and parties can venture and climb to. In fantasy narrative, having a sense of height grants opportunities in terms of the distribution of races, their cultures, and homesteads and makes the world richer in a broad sense.




Systems and mechanics aside, we’ve been experimenting with the opening cinematic of our early access scenario map. As you might’ve guessed by now, the concept of the scenario will revolve around Adam, creation, and how they might blend with a fantasy world.



We have discovered a couple of styles and ideas about how to approach the storytelling and decided on in-game cutscenes with dialogue boxes instead.

We hope that focusing on this approach will also help the development of interior designs in the future since we’ve only focused on exteriors as of now.



We’ve also experimented and shaped archetypal humanoid races who’ll represent our worlds and color wheel, apart from the humans. Here are five distinct races that represent each color and a quick summary of their information. They will probably be dealt with in a whole new dev blog, but this should suffice for now.



Leaving those races here for your taste and wishing you all a great week! You all are always welcome to join our Discord and help us develop this beautiful game!



The Sylvan, also known as the Wood Elves are often described as wild and temperamental. This is true to the extent that these humanoids are a very emotional bunch. They live with their hearts, not their minds as some other races. Whatever they feel, they know it is the right answer. Logic plays little part in their lives, for logic cannot save one from the charging boar or the falling tree. Intuition, agility, and strength are all that counts in the wildwood.



Duregar, also known as Gray Dwarves, are a subterranean humanoid race. They carved out an existence for themselves in the Underdark, often near volcanic mountains in arctic regions. Duregar are, as a whole, generally cruel and malevolent creatures, but as in most races that are inclined towards evil, this is as much a cultural affection as a psychological trait.



Warfare infuses every aspect of orc society. When they are not out raiding and attacking their enemies (often other orc tribes), orcs train in fighting, build and repair weapons, and generally ready themselves for the next battle.



The Aasimar bear the legacy of a celestial being, holiness in their ancestry, and have incredible potential to do good in the world. They are dedicated like-minded individuals driven by religious zeal or a finely-honed sense of justice and honor. Friendship and camaraderie are important to members of The Aasimar.



Plagued by a dark and sinister heritage, cambions walk through the shadows of their race’s past, savoring the darkness. Cambions are scattered mainly throughout the blighted regions of TFM, littered geographically in a reminder of distant times when devils and demons exerted an active influence over the lands. As a race, cambions have occasionally prospered despite prejudice and preconceived notions of their evil nature among the other humanoid and civilized races. They have arisen from obscurity and darkness to become active participants in the affairs of a TFM world.

Hello everyone!

Today we’re going to talk a little bit about the first update of TFM; Ways of Life. And what we’ve been working on for the last couple of months.

This update’s main purpose was to provide us with editing tools that we call “Makers”. These makers will be implemented in and designed for the game application itself inside a scene called TFM Builder. This is done for the purpose of easier modding by our community. Our content designers will also use these in-game Makers for the game’s “Base” mod.



Let’s begin with the; Map Maker.

It allows us and modders to design maps, using our biome brushes and other helpful tools. Including our main scenario map, all maps will be painted with this maker. It is specifically designed to be able to work around the concept of “regions”. A new map with a specified width and length will be loaded with a single Ocean region. The user will be able to create new regions on top of this ocean by using the brush tool, slowly turning the world setting into an original TFM map.

We already had a Map Editor in our published Vision Demo, but we’ve decided to code everything from scratch in order to have a solid foundation for multiplayer and modding/editing tools since the whole thing was a bit of a mess because of all the iterations we’ve done attempting to perfect the game over the last years.



In all strategy games like The First Men, the terrain is an important game pillar.

The player will be able to control a settlement, create parties of trained warriors, explore the world and engage in strategic and tactical battles in uncharted regions.

Our objective is to have a detailed and stylized world that has various types of biomes; mountains, forests, rivers, and most of the aspects we see in the real world that makes sense. To make our world coherent with the real one and still hold a sense of fantasy, we want to give the players a strong shape of the world, divided into different kinds of regions. To make it more visually appealing and strategically interesting, we also added various constructions, like caves, caverns, and various other landmarks. Players and AI will be able to explore these constructions, exploit the precious loot inside them, and claim them as their home to fuel their economic as well as military strengths.

So this is our way of creating opportunities and challenges for exploration, diplomacy, and war. We want the terrain and regions to inform the players.

Our expectation from the unexplored terrains and regions of TFM is to create a spark of excitement in the player's heart and mind, to deliver a clear message that every piece of aesthetic detail they encounter can hint of what might be explored and who might be interacted with from distance, without even setting foot on its soil. Objects like handcrafted trees, environmental objects, critters, constructions, alternative biome brush heavily to support our regions to reinforce this feeling of mysterious exploration.

The regions will have special names and our tools have the strength to organize each one of them in case of a huge worldbuilding scenario. Keep in mind that the quantity and the quality of the content you see here is just to test the tools we’re making, nothing is finalized.



Next up is the; Map Objects.

These are Constructions and Doodads. They are considered tile-based objects unlike characters and items, which are not restricted to fit within a tile, or a tile group, but they’re part of future updates so let’s not get into them.

By using the specific “Makers”, the user will be able to create new map objects or edit existing ones by duplicating them to make their own versions of the Base game’s assets, thus creating new mods. We, of course, will be able to create new content for the Base database and consider it as our Mother Mod non-stop.

Through our organized and filterable tools, the content creator will have an easy time navigating through objects, but the biggest companion will be the “Database Maker”. From doodads to constructions or items to character traits, every inch of functioning data inside the game will be edited through what we aim to produce as our Database Makers. These will have a similar feel of a spreadsheet and will make seeing the huge amount of content much easier to handle, with their own field filters and search functionalities.

That’s it for now. Share your thoughts now below in the comments section!

See you on the next update.

Salutations, offspring of The First Men.

Much water has flown under Gathering Tree’s bridge, since the release of our vision demo. In this post, we’re going to be unraveling the current state of our game, and the plans we laid out for 2020 and the release of TFM: The First Men.

If you’re not aware of what TFM is by now, you can read our Game Overview Document, watch gameplay footage on YouTube or check out its Steam page. The document especially goes in detail about the stages we’ve been through during the discovery phase of the development, apart from useful gameplay information.



Alas, we’re here to finally talk about up-to-date affairs! We’re aware of the fact that our update section seems kind of deserted, but it’s mainly because of our perfectionist nature. We’ve been swamped by the overwhelming amount of re-iterations due to complicated design decisions, thus we didn’t want to talk about them before we were convinced enough of our baby’s condition.

After Overfall’s release, we’ve encountered a number of publishers and investors who were interested in what we can creatively bring to the table with our projects. While we were meddling with TFM’s design and progress during the discovery phase, there were a lot of negotiations and offers floating around. Finding a partner with good qualities and character is not an easy task, I assure you. The people you want to work with must be open-minded and willing to grow together as partners. They must share the same vision and value as yours. Things like trust, useful skills and productivity are the cornerstones of a good business relationship.

TFM: The First Men has been on Steam’s most wished games list for a long time now. This causes an unbelievable amount of attention if your Steam page says that you’re actually, literally independent of any partners as publishers.

Game development, even for small projects, is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Independent developers like us have to find ways to cover their expenses for a long, long time. This includes things like salary, rent, food, bills, etc.

While we were in the discovery phase, our latest project Overfall was paying most of these, but even that was not necessarily sufficient, because we were focusing our creative flow to TFM, not Overfall, so the sales were understandably, and simply not enough. When we finished the demo with four members, we immediately realized that the team had to grow in quantity in order to shape TFM into what we have envisioned it to be, as it deserved undoubtedly.

Like I said before, we had multiple publishers who were eager to pay for our costs, however, a healthy developer-publisher association is like a dreamy marriage. It requires attention, common interests, unconditional trust, and respectful communication. We just simply didn’t feel like these conditions were met with any possible partners at that time. Most companies see you as a cash-cow without respecting the fact that you wish to create art and then turn it into something that actually, organically deserves success. Companies like this usually spam offers to games like a berserk miner who strikes his pick blindly. The sad part is that people you interact with usually are not even familiar with the genres you’re interested in. Or worse, not even gamers themselves. It is difficult to describe the meaning of these two factors for us.



But then out of nowhere, something surprising occurred and a thought-provoking investment fund spotted us. Due to our previous experiences, our immediate reaction was skepticism. But this time our interlocutor’s professional approach intrigued us. From what we’ve understood, they both knew how to ensure a project’s financial success, and also understood the advantageous ideas of what makes a game fun and desirable. The interesting fact here is that these people were literally investing in games themselves, not the companies. This is a very underrated business decision and one that should be respected as a very logical move.

Our conversations with them fascinated me. Their energy and vision were bright as daylight, and they explained the idea that the functions of publishing and funding must be separated at the beginning. Their terms were clearly laid out, deliberately short and very straightforward. These guys knew what they were doing. We felt like they were here to actually fix painful parts of our old connections and negotiations. The deal was too good to be true. Even if we had projects in our hands that were generating absurd amounts of money, I would still work with these guys. Because the thing that they bring to the table is what’s called smart money. It causes you to share risks, focus on what you do best, gain access to a great family of game developers under their umbrella, reach connections and possible partners all around the globe and when the time arrives, share your success with them to make yourself and that family bigger, while keeping your IPs and sequel rights. I talked about how TFM is our baby, this last part is especially important for us in that regard.

We are finally super excited and happy to announce that TFM: The First Men is a part of a new lineup of games supported by Kowloon Nights. It is a video game investment fund to make sure we can give TFM all we have as it deserves. The amount of potential this game has in our eyes is of great importance, so this partnership is what we all needed to make TFM much better over a long period of time.

During TFM’s discovery, we worked in a wonderful, small office apartment. The problem was that if we were to bring our vision into life, we needed more people. That also means more space, a stout infrastructure, easier transportation options, and most importantly fresh air. Where we used to work was a mess with all the construction noises, water spillages, etc.

Finding a proper office in that regard is not an easy task in a city like Istanbul. All of these efforts naturally hindered the development of TFM, but we were confident that we’d find a good home for the Gathering Tree. After a brief time, we’ve found the perfect place.

It has four floors, a private garden near a pine forest, a super silent and safe neighborhood with traffic-free transit. Most importantly, an internet connection as fast as the speed of light.

We moved into our new office last November and began searching for new people, so we could invite them to our home and grow the team. Our goal was to have a 10-men squad working on TFM full-time. A producer, three designers, three artists, and three programmers. As of now, we have a family of nine, rallying around our literal Gathering Tree. Yeah, we have a real Gathering Tree!



I wish to offer my gratitude to our Discord community for supporting both us and a giant of a game; TFM. Their enthusiasm and input matched with our energy so fittingly that the idea of having an actual Gathering Tree inside the office was actually theirs! We’re enjoying it a lot, hope you’re excited about how tall this tree of ours can grow. If you end up in Istanbul one day, you’re very much welcome to join us for a cup of coffee (and maybe an inside look at what TFM is up to).

Enough backstory, now it’s time to talk about TFM. What has changed, blossomed, how and when we’re hoping to release the game through several distinct updates.

After what we entitled to “The Vision Demo”, or the Alpha update, we’ve decided to re-write all of the code from scratch, because we have been iterating and meddling with too many design variations. Naturally, this caused the code to not carry a healthy structure for our future plans of multi-player, procedural generation functionalities, modding tools, etc., which we think should be in the released version of TFM. Because we strictly established the design decisions of the game, we don’t need any of the discovery phase elements inside the game anymore.

Let’s talk about four main updates of TFM: The First Men and what they cover up in terms of gameplay and development tools.

This update’s main purpose is to provide us with editing tools that we call “Makers”. These makers will be implemented in, and designed for the game application itself, inside a scene called TFM Builder. This is done for the purpose of easier modding by our community. Our designers will also use these in-game Makers for the game’s “Base” mod.



There are four main features involved within this update that we expect to finish until the end of March. We’re already half-way done with these and are getting ready to start creating new and importing old content. These features are;

It allows us and users to design maps, using our biomes brushes and other helpful tools. Including our main scenario map, all maps will be made with this maker. It is specifically designed to be able to work around the concept of “regions”. A new map with a specified width and length will be loaded with a single Ocean region. The user will be able to create new regions on top of this ocean region, slowly turning his world setting into TFM. We already had a Map Editor in our Vision Demo, but this one’s getting a redesign too.

These are Constructions and Doodads. They are considered tile-based objects unlike characters and items, which are not restricted to fit within a tile, or a tile group. By using their specific Makers, the user will be able to create new ones or edit existing ones by duplicating them to make their own versions of the Base game’s assets. We, of course, will be able to create new content for the Base database and consider it as the Mother Mod.

Next to Map Maker, we’ll be able to interact with the Doodad Maker. It allows us to fill our world with decoratives, path-alterers, resources and findings as loot.

It follows the same pattern as the Doodad Maker and is used to place constructions on the map. These constructions could be natural, or unnatural. Outside of the player’s starting region (which is the only Grassland biome region), AI dwelling entities will use these constructions to obtain a home for their own.

From items to character traits, every inch of functioning data inside the game will be edited through what we aim to produce as our Database Makers. These will have a similar feel like a spreadsheet and will make seeing the huge amount of content much easier to handle.

This will be our node-based flow tool. It is mainly designed for the character AI activities and will grant designers the ability to create work time and downtime activity flows for the settlement’s characters. During our brain-storms in front of the whiteboard, we figured it would be a very useful tool to use for our combat behaviors, world events, etc.

At this point, our maps will be filled with immovable map objects. Heart of Battle’s main purpose is to create characters and items. Not just placing them, but their mechanical counterparts too. Everything a character needs to live and breathe in a TFM world will be implemented in this update. They’ll have primary stats, secondary stats, traits, skills, indicators, activities, etc.



As the name suggests, this update will also cover our real-time combat system after the characters are implemented with their stats and skills. Let’s examine what we wish to accomplish and play by the end of May.

A character in TFM is a mobile unit that can move around the map and perform various functions. Since we start the game with our so-called “Adam and Eve”, any character from that point on will be born, raise and serve their settlement as best as they can (if they’re not filthy traitors of course!). Since we have five primary stats for our characters, numerics of these stats will be determined by their traits. Traits determine primary stats, primary stats determine secondary stats, secondary stats determine how effective a character is both in or out of combat.

Each character’s main progress is through their Experience indicator, and their need is determined by their current Energy. Each primary stat (Body, Mind, Heart, Soul, and Self) has its own Experience and Energy indicator. Energies are depleted by natural needs through traits and must be fulfilled by gathering downtime activities when they become idle after finishing up a work time activity. Energy indicators are designed to reduce their respective stats one by one over time, causing an imminent death to a character whenever one of his stats reaches 0. Experiences are filled by finishing up worktime activities, increasing their related stat each time they’re filled.

Their uniquely generated (or given by hand) names, ages, appearances, etc. are always subject to time and activities. More detail on each subject individually will be provided in future updates.

By using our Decision Makers, we’re able to create a gigantic amount of AI activities that a character can receive when they’re idle. Since the personal progression of an individual character is dependent on how the player designs his settlement, our characters will be limited to their traits, surroundings, their settlement’s constructions, chosen traditions, stat numbers, indicators, etc. to choose a proper activity for themselves.

By the power of individual activity weights and how they’re modified by every inch of data in the game, a character will smartly be able to create a list of activities to pick from. And then he’ll roll for an activity to start. The nature of this “weight” system grants a character the ability to pick more appropriate activities with their increased weight while allowing other ones with lesser chances to occur too. This system will provide a seamless settlement flow as your characters will always find logical activities to complete. If you look at the big picture as a player, it is your responsibility to choose your characters’ destiny by placing constructions, choosing traditions as you deem fit for your people.

Completing these activities will allow characters to increase their individual stat experience indicators, fulfill their energies, earning new traits and granting points to their settlements so that the player can spend these to create new opportunities for their growing settlements.

While all characters pick activities when they’re idle, some of them will be the chosen ones to go out and explore, fight and return items, other loot, and glory to their settlement. Characters specifically tailored to obtain class traits and become adventurers will be the only candidates to become party members.

A party is a group of characters with class traits that can be raised as a controllable unit by the player. Party members can be picked and kicked individually. Once a party is “raised”, the characters will stop trying to obtain activities and obey their player master, waiting for orders. At that point, the player may control any of his parties by ordering them with the classic RTS unit actions. They’ll also ignore their energies, so it’s your job to proceed and choose wisely what you want to achieve with your party within a certain amount of time. In the future, we also want to establish the design of resting mechanics, but let’s not get into that at this point.

Using our Database Makers, we’ll be able to implement character traits. Even being a “Human” is a trait, a racial one. So every piece of appearance and stat altering data for an individual character will be used as a “trait”.

With the same structure, we’ll be implementing skills for both combat and non-combat situations. Our characters inside raised parties will use these skills through player input and try to get out of difficult situations because they’ve been training hard for it!

This is probably one of the most iterated parts of our game. With a lot of brainstorming over the discovery phase, we finally decided to ditch our turn-based iterations and turn TFM’s combat into a classic real-time one. Since we had the ability to pause the game prior to this decision, it fitted perfectly like a cRPG combat. Not just how it flows, but the depth of characters’ skills and items will be very familiar too. So we know exactly what we want from the combat right now. Also, our postponed project “Battle Commanders” (also on Steam) helped us a lot with this while considering this decision, because we have experience in real-time combats.

To give a brief introduction a “combat” actually means; whenever a character is issued an attack action against another character, two associated parties enter into a combat state as soon as their attack radius intersects with each other. This transforms two parties' characters into individually controlled characters for their controller, unlike their traveling state where they moved together as a cohesive unit, not individually.

Until this state ends without player input, each character automatically chooses a target according to the hardcoded combat AI behavior and starts using his Auto-Attack skills against him. Whenever he wants, the player can issue movement and active skill commands to his controlled party members.

This is the part where the high-level scope of TFM is focused on. Combined with everything prior, we’ll focus on creating logical “entities” as our controllers. An entity is a symbolic thing with independent existence, with a group of assets (Points, Constructions, Characters, and Operations) controlled by a single player. This player can also be AI.



These are the things we expect to finish before PAX West, 2020. Dates have not officially been announced yet, but if this year’s event follows the tradition, it will take place over Labor Day weekend, which is September 4 to 7 this year. The most exciting part about this milestone is the fact that we’ll be able to play our very first gameplay demo there!

Points are five collectible resources of an entity. A settlement or a dwelling's main point income source is its characters. Characters start and finish worktime activities (as we discussed before) and provide points to their entities. Then, the entity spends these points to invest in its settlement or dwelling's development through operations. There are five points in TFM: Prosperity, Industry, Influence, Unity & Amenity. Our approach to the “color wheel” helped us shape both our points and characters because each character stat is mainly related to one of these points, which helps determine a character’s ability to perform activities with such outcomes.

An operation in TFM is a process in which a number, quantity, expression, etc., is altered or manipulated according to game rules, such as those of addition, multiplication, and differentiation through a game panel. All operations are managed by entities to utilize their points for the purpose of providing minor and major progressions to their respective settlements and dwellings. These operation panels will be organized and designed uniquely with fluid user experiences in mind and each will have a specific purpose to organize a player’s settlement and its characters. A couple of examples would be; Path of the Warrior where the player trains characters to obtain class traits so that they can enter parties, Path of the Mother where the player causes female characters to become impregnated, and so on.

The interesting part about these operation panels is that whenever the character spends his points to give an order to their characters, they’ll still be using the activity system, but this time the activity will be forced to them by the player’s will. And their tailored nature will allow the player to develop each operation decision differently, with unlocked features through Traditions and Bragging rights (unlocks).

These can be taken on through spending Unity points. Although the traditions system is based on a familiar tech tree structure, it does away with its standard progression in favor of a shuffled approach. This injects a semi-random element into unlocks, making it somewhat less predictable as well as more non-linear. Whenever the player collects enough points to unlock something new for the settlement, they are presented with a set of possibilities to choose from.

By deciding which traditional path to take, the player naturally transforms his operation panels and thus, his characters at the end of the cycle.

We’ll be focusing on what unique mechanics and content database we can bring to the table with this system thoroughly.

Mechanically works similar to Traditions, but as you can tell by the name, these are the things that your settlement brag about inventing. The player will be presented with multiple choices tailored with an intelligent weight system (every asset of your settlement matters for the change of these outcomes), chose one and get a hold of that choice. Each choice will be unique to an entity, and no other entity will be able to obtain what others are bragging about.

Paths allow the player to invest the points they have collected in individual characters. They contain several choices, each resulting in different bonuses for characters. Investing in paths may result in stronger characters, as well as the potential for population growth and building new constructions.

From training children to decide which construction activity you might want to provoke on your characters, these path panels will work differently than each other to bring a unique feeling to them. They’ll have socket-able UI elements so that the player can tailor however he/she likes a path decision before ordering it.

Other operations like saving the game, utilizing the party panels, how the game timeline works, etc. will also be implemented in this update.

When the Bloodmoon is over, we’ll have a build-in our hands that’ll be the closest thing to our Early Access release. Polishing, balancing, bugs, core features, and mechanics will be done and tested here. Their final shapes will be given according to feedback. This feedbacks will mainly be from our community aside from internal team members and close friends. Because we don’t have the necessary budget for a proper in-house Q&A department, we surely must give our 120% on the matter.



We’ll have to work extra for our main scenario map of The First Men, which covers the story of the beginning of the human race and their struggle after arriving in the world as a foreign species with a divine purpose and background. (p.s; there will be a killer intro cinematic too!)

We hope to finalize these touches before November arrives, but the nature of game development may sometimes cause friction on your timeline. Let’s see what specific topics will be covered here in this update apart from all the matters I’ve mentioned above before Early Access knocks our door on Steam.

Our living, breathing, dynamic worlds will need a set of decision-making features that will determine the beginning of local and global events throughout the map. These features will partly be connected with our timeline mechanics, characters, spawns-timers, etc., and everything else related will be covered in our Kismet AIs.

While playing TFM, sooner or later, the player will have to meet other entities (both the dwellings of non-human races, and other human settlements) who will have reputation statuses every entity they meet with. These statuses and how we react to them in terms of game mechanics and roleplay will determine our trustworthy allies, undecided neutrals, and hated enemies.

All related panels, logics, and decisions will be covered and implemented here.

These entities will differ from each other according to their racial, territorial cultures and specific goals. They’ll have low-level, spontaneous goals and high-level, grand goals. Doesn’t matter if they’re a bunch of bandits in a cave, a dwarven mining company or a hill giant city. They will have desires, survival instincts (because every character on the map will also have energy and experience indicators), and dreams.

Done with our Decision Maker tools, well-constructed AI flows and diagrams will help us differentiate one Orc tribe from another or one human settlement from the other. Everything related to the decisions of the creatures of our maps will be covered and implemented here.

We’ll have our mock-ups for every piece of game panel implemented and tested at this point, but they’ll have to go through a revamp for a better user experience.

Soundtracks, sound effects, every piece of art, including icons, character appearances, weapons, how the skill effects look or ambient sounds, etc. will be polished here too.

You can always check our development progress by looking at our Trello development board. Please do not hesitate to write in Steam discussions or Discord server, we love comments and feedback a lot, it motivates us and helps us understand your expectations.

On behalf of the Gathering Tree team, I thank you for reading so far. Until the next update, stay safe!