Hey everyone!

One of the reasons Timberborn encourages vertical architecture – which we previewed yesterday – is the need for efficient space management. We kept that in mind while designing the Early Access maps. But what if you'd rather play on a map that’s as flat as a pancake? Or on an area completely covered with jagged cliffs? Well, fire up the map editor and find that out.



The in-game map editor is the same tool we use to create Timberborn maps. Over the course of the game’s development, we have prepared – and scrapped – many levels, and now so can you. The best thing is that once you’re done, sharing the map with others is a matter of copying a file.

The map editor is accessed via the main menu. You can create a new map – just pick a custom map size and you’ll be thrown onto an empty, rather depressing wasteland that needs your creative touch. Thanks to the magic of the terrain-altering brushes you will be able to shape it down to a voxel. Changing the map’s heights is the main job here but keep the future waterways in the back of your mind.

If you want your map’s denizens to survive, you will need to set up water source blocks and choose appropriate water strength. Then you can just run the simulation to see how water behaves, where it spills uncontrollably, etc. You can pick spots for natural barriers and think of possible ways the player will play with water during both wet and dry seasons.

Or you can go crazy and build a madman’s test scene that makes it barely possible for the beavers to survive. Your call.



Either way, your finishing touches involve sprinkling trees and berries around the map as well as placing the clusters of human ruins. You have complete control over what you put on the map but you don’t need to place each pine sapling by hand – simply increase the brush size and choose a mixture of resources. Then, you just place the starting location – and that’s it!

An alternative to creating a brand new map is to pick any of the existing maps included by us or a community creation. You can then edit it in a similar fashion.



Regarding the maps we have included in the game: when you download Timberborn’s early access version, it will come with 9 maps created by us. Each of them is designed to be a different challenge.

We want you to have an element of surprise when Early Access hits on the 15th, so we won’t show them all. But here’s a recap:

• Plains is the classic map some of you might already know, with a lot of flat spaces and a big river going into a lake.
  
• Thousand Islands is filled with water and the challenge comes with going through it or blocking it to acquire more farmland.
  
• Likewise, Lakes gives you a lot of small spaces to put water through, irrigating a lot of land.
  
• Terraces is a very vertical map that starts you on a plateau with a small stream nearby and makes you go down, instead of up.
  
• Mountain Range is the newest map and slightly smaller than Terraces, but is somewhat similar — the water going out of the mountain you start on quickly falls into a ravine and doesn't irrigate that much land.
  
• Even smaller than that is Meander which features a single twisted river going around an elevated terrain the beavers start on.
  
• Waterfalls is another older map with a few waterfalls and a fairly flat terrain near the river after the falls.
  
• Canyon is the same valley with a small river that you've seen in the demo, with some small tweaks to make it easier to place bridges here and there.
  
• And Diorama is a tiny challenge map that makes your settlement look like a model village.

What kind of map would YOU like to grow your colony on when Early Access begins?

Remember that our Discord has a section where Timberborn players share all their creations. We have art, music, even puzzles — and starting with the 15th, custom maps will be there too!

Heya, beaver engineers!

Yesterday’s countdown post was 90% playing with water and 10% blowing stuff up. Let’s get even more technical today and talk about timbertech. It’s a term we coined to describe technology that connects wood and metal as much as the beaver and human ideas.

Considering the vertical structures it allows you to build, it’s a perfect example of hi-tech.



When there’s no limit to your creativity and the length of play – and there are none in the early access’ endless mode – you will realize you need to consider efficient space management. It may be a tall order, and that’s where the vertical architecture of Timberborn comes into play.

As long as a building has a Solid keyword, you may place other buildings on its roof. Some buildings such as Campfire still need to be placed on the ground, but many don’t – and that allows you to construct multi-level structures. You can also use stairs and platforms of different heights to organize your multi-level settlements while beavers walk on them or underneath.



There are smaller, ordinary wooden platforms of three heights you already know. But we've also added metal platforms, perfect for building a city on top of another city. They’re expensive to build, sure, but consider the fact you can build BELOW them, and they’re much more attractive. Also, remember that another unique building Iron Teeth were supposed to have? Well, guess what – only they can construct the higher and larger variant of the metal platform.

We’re also introducing our first “Above-ground” buildings. If a structure has this tag, it means you can’t place it on the ground. For starters, we’ve got Rooftop Terrace, which is an above-ground variant of the Campfire, intended to showcase the verticality.



The sky (and the number of ruins on the map) are the limit here.



We know you enjoy playing with verticality, so that’s why we’re also adding suspension bridges to Early Access, with the most advanced ones using metal. You can build these bridges to span gaps and crevasses without reaching the bottom with platforms… but most importantly, to establish walking routes OVER other buildings. Correct, you can build over and below these bridges as long as there’s enough free space. To build a bridge, you only need access to one “attaching point” – and if that’s not enough to cross the gap, build another one on the other side.



Every beaver is a lumberjack at heart, allowing them to cut trees without tools, but processing timber is a different story. Logs need to be properly stored, then you can turn them into planks, which in turn become gears. You may also produce paper used to print books and craft dynamite. The production chains require you to set up sawmills and specialized workshops. As wood is used in all Timberborn buildings in one form or another, you need a lot of it. That’s where foresters come in. Currently, they can grow three types of trees.



The berries gathered at the beginning of the game satisfy beaver hunger only for so long – soon, your beavers will need something more nutritious. (Unless we're talking Iron Teeth, who use them to grow kits in breeding pods). Once you employ farmers, you will be able to plant carrots. Another step would be growing potatoes but that adds a need for a grill. In the early access version of Timberborn, we also have bread – there are even more steps between planting wheat and the end-product created by bakeries. Remember that Folktails are our expert farmers, and they can speed up crop growth with their unique beehives.



Numerous buildings require power to operate and your colony can generate energy in different ways, some of them faction-exclusive. While Iron Teeth do not mind using an engine, Folktails would rather use the whimsical force of the wind. Both factions can use water wheels, powered by river currents, and the (slightly reworked and smaller) power wheels, where it’s up to an employed beaver to generate power.

Connecting the power source to buildings can be done in two ways. You can either create clusters of buildings that transform energy when attached wall to wall or use modular power shafts. You may shape the latter to your needs, using intersections, placing them on platforms, or even connecting levels of different heights.



Human ruins scattered on Timberborn maps serve as a grim reminder of a long-gone civilization and a finite source of metal. Scrap metal is gathered by beavers employed at scavenger flags – which replaced scavenger huts. To use it in buildings, you need to turn the scrap into metal blocks. That’s where the shredder comes in – it’s a new, power-hungry building. Metal blocks it produces can then be used in advanced structures such as the longest bridges or the carousel.

The metal usage is still in the early stage of development, but you should plan around the fact that once all ruins on the map are depleted, you will no longer have access to it and the related structures.

So, what will YOU do with the timber-tech and vertical architecture when Timberborn launches in Early Access in just four days?

Let's hear in the comments or on our Discord!

BOOM, what’s up!

As we count days to Timberborn’s early access launch, we’re going over different aspects of the world’s one and only beaver city-builder. And what are beavers best known for? They transform the world as we know it with their water engineering skills.



Adding water physics to Timberborn was a major breakthrough and seeing how much the players enjoy it, we knew it would be the game’s defining feature. After all, the beaver master-race is known for its dam-building skills. And how do we approach that?

At launch, you will be able to construct modular dams using the following blocks: levees, dams, and floodgates. Levees block water completely and allow you to place other buildings on them. Dams allow some water to pass through at the top. Floodgates come in three heights and let you change how much (if anything) passes through – you can adjust each module if you wish.


Water that stays at a certain level and maintains a strong current will keep the water wheels operating – and that’s a good thing because they’re a very efficient source of energy for both beavers factions. To let you make better use of them, it will be possible to daisy-chain water wheels in Early Access.

Sufficient water levels also allow pumps to work, and the water you get from the pumps can be stored, used to quench the beavers’ thirst or to keep the Folktails’ irrigation towers running. We know that the pumps only operating on water one-tile deep could be frustrating at times, and that’s why we’ve increased their operating depth – with Iron Teeth pumps working deeper.


In early access, there will also be a new way to utilize water – beavers working at the Water Dump will grab buckets of water and carry them to spill it to the designated area. Not the most efficient way to transport water, yes, but it allows you to move water to higher levels.

Finally, by popular request, we’re adding the Water Marker. This little thing helps you monitor the water levels – both current and the (resettable) maximums.



The most explosive ways of having fun with water physics come with the use of dynamite. Produced in an Explosives Factory (that now has a new model by the way), dynamite allows you to blow up selected blocks of terrain. You manually choose when to detonate a stick of dynamite, just remember that chain reaction (and deaths) may occur.

With dynamite, you can level the terrain so that setting up the settlement is easier. Even more important use involves digging canals and reservoirs. Canals are a good way of redirecting water into otherwise dry areas – and a sufficiently deep and wide reservoir might help your colony survive the drought. With the Water Dump mentioned above, you can easily fill such an artificial basin during a wet season so that it’s easier to survive the upcoming drought.

How will YOU play with water when Timberborn launches on September 15?

Let us know and see you tomorrow with another preview!

Hi everyone!

Let’s continue counting down to the launch of our beaver city-builder with another daily preview! One of the Big Things coming with Early Access is the addition of truly unique playable beaver factions: Folktails and Iron Teeth.


These light-furred fellas respect Mother Nature and enjoy consuming her gifts. Their settlements are built among vast fields and have that cozy village feel thanks to golden thatchings, light wood and walls covered with mossy plaster.

Folktails’ adults and kits live together in Lodges of different sizes but may also choose to stay alone. They’ve mastered farming and gained access to several specialized buildings in the process. For example, they use Windmills big and small. These power sources don’t consume fuel nor require workers but their reliability depends on the wind’s direction and strength.



Folktails’ affinity for farming allows them to utilize Irrigation Towers that can turn even remote wasteland areas into fields and forests. They are also able to speed up the growth of crops thanks to another specialized building: the Beehives! And as their production increases, they are able to store the fruit of their labour in Underground Warehouses of increased capacity.

If you want to learn more about Folktails, please read this devlog. Please note that because of the last-minute addition of difficulty modes, we have ultimately decided against increasing Folkatails’ food consumption rate. We might bring that back at some point, though.


The Iron Teeth are hard-working beavers who put progress over anything else. They don’t care if you don’t like their smoking engines or how they breed.

Compared to Folktails, the Iron Teeth settlements are much different in terms of colour and atmosphere. The faction’s buildings match the naturally dark fur of their inhabitants, with gray-green-blue wooden roofs and more prominent metal elements adorning red brick walls.

Their bulky Barracks and tall Rowhouses allow them to build settlements in tighter, more vertical spaces. To help with that, they use Industrial Log Piles (which are stackable) as well as Deep Water Pumps that can reach water up to six tiles deep. There’s also another unique building only Iron Teeth can build but we’ll reveal it later, as part of the vertical architecture preview.



Some say that the most recognizable Iron Teeth building is the Engine – a smoke-emitting, log-burning monster with unrivalled power output. Others, however, point to the unconventional breeding ways. Iron Teeth turned reproduction into a production chain – all newborn kits are first grown in Breeding Pods which adults supply with water and berries.

We’ve covered Iron Teeth in greater detail last week. Similarly to Folktails, because of the last-minute addition of difficulty modes, we’ve decided against enforcing a higher water consumption rate upon them. If they’re too easy to play, we might rethink that. ;)



Playing Timberborn with each faction is a different experience. Folktails are generally easier to grasp and you will need to hit a certain wellbeing level with them before you unlock their more hardcore cousins. Are you Team Folktails or Team Iron Teeth?

Let us know below or on our Discord and check back this time tomorrow for another preview!
-Team Timberborn

Hey everyone,

on September 15 – exactly seven days from now – Timberborn Early Access begins. To keep you up to date with what to expect from the game in its new incarnation, we’ll be counting down to the release date with daily previews on different aspects of our beaver city-builder.

Today, let’s look at Timberborn’s core feature, droughts, and how they affect the game’s flow and difficulty. Because you know, we’ll have different difficulty modes at launch. We were planning to add that later, but since it was often requested, we moved it up on our priority list.


Timberborn Early Access comes with the infinite survival mode. When you begin a new game, it’s temperate weather (previously known as “wet season”). In most cases, a good portion of the map is a dry wasteland but some rivers, lakes, or a combination of the two surround the starting area. Water flows in from the sources and the ground near water bodies is green. Green areas can sustain the forests and fields your beavers grow as well as the already present flora.

During temperate weather, the water evaporates at a very slow rate, and you can distribute this life-giving resource as you see fit. Unless you go overboard with the canals or pumps in the area, the water should stay at a level high enough to keep water wheels operating, and your beavers will be fine. What exactly you can do with water is a subject of another preview but the gist here is to balance your city-building efforts with Timberborn’s focus on water and irrigation.


It’s post-apocalypse now, which means the drought (previously: “dry season”) eventually comes. The strength of water sources on the map begins to fade and after a while, the water sources “turn off” completely while the evaporation continues. The river beds gradually dry up and with them – the surrounding areas. Fields and forests turn yellow and will wither unless you have a way of preventing that with a clever combination of dams, floodgates, irrigation towers, canals, water dumps etc.

If you do not prepare for a drought properly, you will also end up with useless pumps and water wheels, so unless there's a lot of water in the tanks and you have alternative power sources, your population might wither too, if you catch our drift.

Here’s a note for our demo players – we’re evil and we made the second drought in the demo a little too severe on purpose. That’s not what will happen to you in the normal game. Sorry, not sorry.


Speaking of which, Early Access comes with different difficulty levels. In addition to picking a beaver faction and a map, you will now need to decide how much of a challenge you want.

• Easy difficulty is a relaxed experience with a focus on building a grand city rather than on surviving. Droughts are sparse and short, your colony starts with more resources and uses fewer of them.
  
• Normal is a standard Timberborn experience as we envisioned it. You start with some resources, and droughts – while short at the beginning – get longer and longer each time. It’s a good mix of having to survive and building cool settlements.
  
• Hard is a proper challenge. Expect small amounts of starting resources and droughts that get longer to a point where after a few times it’s dry more often than not.

Not only that, we’re giving you an option to create a custom difficulty. You can choose how many beavers you start with, how much water and food they need, how many resources they have at the beginning of the game and how long the droughts will be. If you want to, you can make it an ultimate sandbox experience, or an ultimate hardcore desert world.

Which difficulty level will YOU pick for your first Early Access playthrough?

Let us know in the comments or on our Discord and check back this time tomorrow for another preview!
-Team Timberborn

Hi there!

If you missed the memo, Timberborn Early Access launches September 15! There’s a lot of new stuff coming to the game, some of which we’re still keeping a surprise. But today, let’s talk about the second playable faction, the Iron Teeth beavers!

We have first revealed the faction in a trailer shown at Awesome Indies Show Gamescom by IGN. If you have missed it, here it is again, this time without our comms manager's cat tree and babbling.



Compared to Folktails, Iron Teeth are the busy beavers. They’re doing their best to harness the wasteland, viewing tormented Earth as timbertech testing grounds. They live to work, not the other way around. For them, technology is both a means and a goal. Take water, for example. For these beavers, it is a measurable power that keeps gears running rather than nature’s gift of life.



We wanted Iron Teeth to be more or less a counterpart to Folktails. Our idea for their colonies was to use that darker, industrial theme with blocks of tall, brick-like buildings. Engines are there too, emitting smoke and propelling Iron Teeth’s progress forward. Because of their reliance on power and higher water consumption, we envision the Iron Teeth settlements as tighter, more squeezed in and vertical compared to Folktails’ vast villages in the midst of golden fields.

The Iron Teeth are also a perfect example of how iterative our work on Timberborn has to be. We were looking for a way to make this faction feel very industrial and productivity-driven. Adding engines and other machines shows their affinity for timber-tech, sure, but we needed something special. So, we looked at the cozy lodges of the Folktail families, and we decided to give the Iron Teeth something entirely different by separating adults from kits. We wanted adults to live in cramped barracks – that perhaps wouldn’t even satisfy Comfort – while kits would grow up in kit-only nurseries.


Nurseries have been scrapped... but our beaver-eyed viewers might have spotted them in Timberborn's early access trailer, which was recorded while they were still a thing.

The idea looked good on paper, but Nurseriers turned out to be a balance problem (a few nurseries would be enough for a huge town) and hard to explain. So, even though we had a really nice 3D model, we had to scrap them and eventually replace. Breeding Pods work much better in both regards, but also feel more post-apocalyptic AND add a unique “production chain”. You'll read more about them in a moment.

The settlements built by the Iron Teeth might strike a Folktails fan with their different, Timberborn-e feel but that’s okay as Jakub Mathia, our Art Director, is ready to explain:

They were going to be the tough, hard-working guys, we knew that right from the start, and the name *Iron Teeth* came up early. No wonder their graphite-like, bluish fur resembles steel, while their buildings are covered with wooden roofs similar to patinated metal. The engineering feats of this faction pushed us to search for inspirations in the 19th-century industrial revolution. We matched that with the architectural shapes and colors influenced by the native communities of the Middle East and Latin America, resulting in the orange-and-indigo mix you can see.


It's the little things like subtle patterns on the fur.


An old screenshot showing older textures and models. The large building in the center was a "new" Builder's Hut before the idea of District Centers was born, and the Hut received yet another model.
Michal Zomerski, Timberborn’s 3D Artist, chimes in to talk about the design process behind the Iron Teeth buildings. Thanks for the spoilers ahead of the next paragraph, Michal. Sheesh.

The Iron Teeth live in the industrial barracks and the London-like rowhouses, and they get to stack their log piles, which means densely populated areas quickly turn into tall clusters of buildings. But we didn’t want to just give them cuboid blocks of flats, hence the slanted walls and a design that allows power shafts to connect “through” windows. On the other hand, we got to play with metal and, for example, redesign the engine. This one has a dedicated power connector which allowed us to play with the model and draw inspiration from DaVinci’s works.

Also, here’s a bit of beaver trivia. Beavers’ incisors (teeth) have an orange enamel because of a high amount of iron. Also, Timberborn’s working title was Iron Teeth. Makes sense, huh?

Faction trait

While Folktails' never-ending appetite results in higher food consumption, Iron Teeth use more water.
They work hard and need to quench their thirst often which results in 15% more water consumption.

The above has been removed with the addition of Difficulty Modes where you can customize the consumption rates regardless of faction.

Comfort is not that important to Iron Teeth – if you get a place to crash after a shift with a roof over your head, that’s enough. They grow their vertical settlements by squeezing their kin in the following buildings:

• Rowhouse – Tall and narrow building that houses five beavers.
  
• Large Rowhouse – Even taller, these rowhouses are for eight beavers.
  
• Barracks – A large, space-efficient dwelling for ten dwellers.
  
• Large Barracks – Perfect for groups of workers, this box of a house has a capacity of sixteen dwellers.

The work consumes so much of Iron Teeth life they have abandoned the traditional beaver ways. To ensure proper growth of the next generation, the Iron Teeth have invented breeding pods. All newborn kits begin their life in those, suspended in a nutritious liquid. To sustain growth, the “beaver juice” has to be refilled. All adults in the colony share that duty.

• Breeding Pods. This is Iron Teeth’s only way of bringing kits to the world. After a kit is born and placed here, all adult beavers will bring water and berries to sustain the growth. Once it's grown enough, the kit will leave the tank to live in a harsh environment and grow further, eventually becoming an adult. Other beavers argue that this process might be going too far.

Iron Teeth are industrious and their unique buildings are designed to increase their productivity and efficiency, even at a cost of fresh air in the neighbourhood.

• Industrial Log Pile. Wood is in constant demand and it’s easier to store it when you’ve got specialized warehouses. These are Solid which means they are stackable, and they don’t have to be placed on the ground.

• Deep Water Pump. In Early Access, water pumps are no longer limited to one tile of depth – and the Iron Teeth upgraded their pump even further so they work up to SIX levels deep.

• Engine. The pinnacle of timbertech is only available to the Iron Teeth, offering supreme energy output in exchange for fuel and the need for an employee. Other beavers wouldn’t approve of burning wood and the smoke that comes with it, but the Iron Teeth don’t mind.

While this is a global change – Folktails also profit from it – the work on Iron Teeth pushed us to change how metal works. Scavenger’s Hut was replaced with a Scavenger Flag. The beaver employed there is tasked with gathering scrap metal from ruins in range. Scrap metal is then processed into usable metal blocks in a brand new, powered building: a Shredder.



In Early Access, we’re adding new ways of utilizing metal such as the advanced Suspension Bridges. You might have spotted them in the Early Access trailer (or the Iron Teeth trailer, for that matter). You can build them in different sizes – and you can place new buildings below them. There will be more but you will need to wait until Wednesday for that. Why?

Timberborn releases at 5 PM CET, September 15, 2021.

A week before, we’re going to start a series of daily previews here on Steam. Every day, we’ll look at a different aspect of Timberborn’s gameplay and how it looks in Early Access. If you’ve just discovered the game, this will give you a more in-depth overview of Timberborn’s features. If you’ve been following the beavers for a while, expect quite a few surprises.

Until then!
Timberborn Team

Hi everyone.

We’ve spoiled the date already, but please watch the official trailer – which has just premiered at Future Games Show Gamescom – and act surprised.

That’s right! Your favourite lumberpunk city-builder is just three weeks away and will launch on September 15, 2021.

We’ve been hard at work for the past months, building on the great suggestions from our demo players. There’s A LOT of cool new stuff coming with the release, some of which you may see in the video. Most importantly, we’re adding the second playable beaver faction, the Iron Teeth.

If you want a closer look at their industrious beaver ways, we have another reveal for you. A little earlier today, the Iron Teeth segment aired during Gamescom’s Awesome Indies Show.



We’ll have more details about Iron Teeth in a devlog next week. Also, in the week leading up to launch, we’ll have a countdown with daily previews focused on different aspects of the game and what’s new. Full patch notes will go up on the release day (September 15, remember?).

We will also be inviting the media and content creators to Early Access so if you want your favourite streamer or YouTuber to check the game out, tell them about your beaver demands!

For now, here’s a non-exhaustive list of what to expect from Timberborn Early Access at launch:

• Two playable beavers factions. Folktails are the more nature- and farming-oriented of the two, while Iron Teeth favour rapid industrialization. Each faction looks and plays different, and has access to faction-exclusive buildings.
  
• Droughts. The post-apocalyptic world alternates between temperate and dry seasons, with droughts becoming more frequent and threatening over time. Any gameplay limits are gone so let’s see how long your beavers can last.
  
• Water-related gameplay. We know you like this one so we’ve expanded that quite a bit. We’ve added floodgates, a way to transport water to higher areas, depth markers, and more – oh, and the beavers are now able to swim, gather, and build underwater.
  
• Scalable settlements. Districts are the new way of growing your beaver colonies. They make beginnings easier and add another layer of fun to later stages thanks to trading routes and migrations.
  
• Timbertech and vertical architecture. There are many new buildings in the game, and with the new district system and the need to survive as long as possible, efficient space management is crucial. That’s why we’ve also implemented overhead bridges.
  
• UI and localizations. Timberborn has a brand new UI and the game will be available in all 11 planned languages. This includes the Simplified Chinese, Korean, and Japanese translations missing from the demo. Thank you for your patience!
  
• Map Editor. The game will come with a set of 7 new and updated maps built by us but you may create more. Our user-friendly map editor allows you to create new maps and edit existing ones. You can then share them with the community.
  
• And more! The game looks better, has a beautiful soundtrack by Zofia Domaradzka, plays at much higher framerates, and received a lot of other improvements.

Timberborn Early Access will be available for PC & Mac, will cost $24.99 (with regional pricing), and we’ll have a 10% launch week discount for early adopters.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090/Timberborn/
So yeah, September 15. It's finally happening! Please share the news and join us on our Discord if you have any questions!

Best,
The Very Excited Timberborn Team

PS Check out the updated Steam page for a bunch of new screenshots. There are some surprises.

Hi everyone!

Here’s a heads-up: this weekend marks your final chance to play Timberborn Demo, because we’re going to take it down on Monday, August 23, 2021.

But do not despair. We’ll make up for that just a few days later, on August 26, 2021. We’re coming to our first-ever Gamescom – with not one, but TWO announcements. Both are related to a certain big thing, and we hope you’ll find them Extra Amazing.

For the first major reveal, watch Gamescom’s Awesome Indies Show hosted by IGN. It starts on August 26, at 11.30 AM PDT (8.30 PM CEST) and you can watch it here.



The second big reveal will follow soon after as part of Future Games Show Gamescom hosted by GamesRadar. This event begins on August 26, at 1.00 PM PDT (10.00 PM CEST). You can watch it here.



You’re going to see something entirely different at each show and you probably don’t want to miss either of them. And if you want to speculate a little, remember to hop on our official Discord.

Cheers!
Timberborn Team

[[u]Update on August 23, 4 PM CEST[/u]] Aaand the demo is gone. Big thanks to the 150.000 people who have played it! We hope you enjoyed tackling the double drought and survived it more often than not.

We hope you’ll join us this Thursday at Gamescom for the TWO grand reveals we’ve prepared.

Hi everyone!

Time to announce the next big thing coming with the early access launch of Timberborn: the district system. Districts make growing your settlements easier to understand at the beginning and more fun later. They also improve the game’s performance. Oh, and they give your beavers a chance to swim. What is this sorcery, you ask? Keep on reading because there's a lot to unpack.

With districts, the previous range system is going away. There are multiple reasons for that, but here’s a sample from Jon Biegalski, one of our game designers:

The old system was quite simple but often left players confused. For example, if you wanted to build something with logs, the construction site needed to be in the range of both Builder's Hut and Log Pile. Also, some beavers would remain unemployed even though there were jobs available, as they lived too far away. These issues made the beavers less productive in the long run, and the districts fix that.

Add in some awkward situations where beavers starve with a full warehouse nearby or work in areas too far from their favourite carousel, and you get a picture. But that's in the past now!



In Early Access, you begin with a single, new building: District Center. It replaces the batch of starting buildings you know from the demo. All future buildings that have entrances need to be connected to a Center via paths – or just won’t work. That also means that you now need paths on roofs, dams, or platforms. Because of that, placing paths is now instant and no longer needs workers. Also, paths now work underwater. What?! Okay, okay, we’re getting there.



Under the new system, beavers diligently follow the paths you’ve built, moving between their homes, workplaces, attractions etc. but there are exceptions. Beavers who enjoy fieldwork such as cutting trees or working in ruins continue to do that within range of their workplaces. Builders construct buildings within the district. The district expands as you add paths.

Each District Center has a limited range (measured in the length of outgoing paths). After you select a building, coloured lines appear, making it easy to identify. Lines turning red and disappearing are a sign that the area is too far from the Center. In other words, you’ve expanded far enough to consider setting up another district. If a building is not connected to a Center, the game will remind you about that.



To set up a new district, you put a (free) micro building called Gate anywhere on a path, effectively setting up a district’s border. Then, you put a new (also free) District Center somewhere behind that gate.



Your initial District Center comes prefilled with starting resources and all District Centers also employ a few builders. As there's no starting warehouse now, we’ve made adjustments to some other buildings such as Lumberjack Flag or Gatherer Flag that now have some storage capacity.

Each additional district starts empty so it’s a good idea to send some of your beavers and goods there. Transferring colonists is easy. You select an origin District Center, pick a destination counterpart and choose how many adults and kits should be relocated – and off they go. You can rename your districts, just like you do with the beavers, so they’re easier to keep track of.

A new district could also use some resources, and that's where trading routes come in. You establish them using two new types of buildings: Distribution Centers and Drop-off Points. Distribution Center in District A allows you to choose a Drop-off Point in District B and which goods (e.g. Carrots or Flour) to ship there. Beavers from the Center will then pick up the selected goods from a warehouse and start moving them. You can set per-district minimums and maximums to control import and export.



On that note, you can now switch between Global and District views. In the Global view, you see total numbers for your population, goods, wellbeing etc. The District view – opened via a list or by selecting a building – displays values for the district only. This allows you to create specialized districts, helps running large cities, and adds another layer to the game in the form of transporting goods.

You keep reminding us that beavers can swim. We know, we even had swimming pools back in alpha! And now that the world alternates between wet and dry seasons, and you manipulate water levels with dams and floodgates, we're revisiting that. Sooner or later, some of your paths disappear underwater or you need a road in an area that hasn't dried up yet. You could use platforms but hey, beavers can swim!



In Early Access, when you place a path (on the ground or, as described above, on platforms, rooftops etc.) and it ends up underwater, it remains usable. In shallow waters, beavers are swimming on the surface. If the water is deeper, they dive. Flooding a building disables it and swimming is rather slow, so you will generally still want to build above water. But beavers are no longer afraid to get wet and they go about their day (carrying goods etc.) even when it involves swimming.

And YES, you can build underwater if you wish. There’s now even an additional toggle that makes the water transparent so you can see what your rodents are up to in the depths.



Districts solve problems often expressed by the newcomers but there’s more to that. The old range system made running large colonies calculation-heavy, resulting in bad framerates, especially after increasing the in-game speed. Districts helped us solve a lot of issues on the performance front. Let’s hear from Kamil Dawidow, one of Timberborn’s programmers:

With districts, obligatory paths and swimming, beavers have a much easier time navigating the settlement. They do not need to recalculate their routes all the time as water levels change or you put new buildings in their way. And since they now operate within districts and only follow paths (not all the terrain), less data is stored and processed. For example, a hungry beaver’s algorithm works faster when it simply needs to check if there’s food in the district’s warehouses or not – and then has less ground to cover, establishing an optimal, non-exhausting way there.

Finally, to help you use districts and the now-omnipresent paths, we’re adding a feature desired by all vertical architecture enthusiasts. You will be able to view your settlements layer by layer. This helps you create complicated multi-level megastructures, maintain hidden buildings, or check for missed unconnected paths. It works great paired with the water transparency toggle.



As you can see, districts are quite a chunky feature. They make running beaver colonies swimmingly fun – and dam, we can’t wait to see you go crazy with them in Early Access!

To make the wait easier, here's the final treat for today. Two talented members of our Discord community, Synthron and DerHouy, have written and recorded an awesome Timberborn song. We thought it deserved a proper BMV (beaver music video). Enjoy!

Hello!

If you played the beta of Timberborn, you might remember the three makeshift “races”. The beaver factions in Early Access and beyond are much more distinguishable – each will have unique looks and play differently. For launch, we’ll have two factions. Today, you get to meet Folktails.

Let’s begin with a preview video offering some interesting life advice.

Before we dig into the gameplay side of things, let's talk about our design choices.

While still putting progress over “primal” beaver ways, Folktails respect Mother Nature. They work to live and in doing so they try to make the post-apocalyptic world a better (read: greener) place. They enjoy working in the field and consuming the fruit of their labour. For them, water means life, and they grow their settlements in balanced, nature-friendly ways. There’s one exception: even they can't say no to the canal-digging power of dynamite.

Gameplay-wise, we envision the settlements of Folktails as sprawling villages with vast areas covered with fields and orchards needed to satisfy their huge appetites. That also means you need a proper way of stockpiling food and preparing for droughts. You get to customize their settlements with lodges of different types. Folktails are also the only faction that knows how to produce energy with no fuel and no access to rivers – they have harnessed the power of the wind.



We wanted Folktails to focus on the food, but not to the point where it'd be the only distinguishable feature. They use the resources that the earth gives them such as food or water and use them to their fullest, making sure that every beaver is cared for and has a place to sleep, with different sized lodges to create unique constructions. We also wanted to put windmills in the game for a while now, and this faction seemed like a perfect fit. Originally, we thought to keep Folktails even closer to the ground, but we decided against it in the end, as the vertical architecture is an important part of the experience. – says Jon Biegalski, a game designer at Mechanistry.

Folktails use thatchings and build their structures with light wood. White plaster covers the boards and there are bits of moss here and there but that’s okay! We wanted the faction’s towns to feel like havens in the middle of a harsh wasteland. At the same time, the faction was to become a refined variant of what players recognize from the earlier versions of the game. We had some thatchings in the alpha, for example. We’ve given Folktails’ architecture to the demo’s Beavers of Demoria so you should have a good idea of what to expect.

Before we sat down to create Folktails a few months ago, our environment received a visual pass – and the new faction had to work well with the new color palette. Right from the start, we knew we would go for a nature-friendly, “cozy village” feel – as much as you can get that in a post-apocalyptic setting. We’ve gone through concepts based on American, Italian and Greek villages. We’ve had these hobbitish cottages with entrances going underground. We even tried using wall ornaments and mosaics before deciding to go with something simpler – says Jakub Mathia, Timberborn’s Art Director.

We love experimenting with curious shapes but the game is a tile-based city-builder after all. You can stack buildings one atop another, which calls for flat roofs and floors. We have a power grid system that uses power shafts attached to different wall slots, and the buildings can themselves transfer the power when put next to each other. When that’s less prominent, for example in the case of farms, grills or the temple, we can go wild, but often it’s the “gameplay and clarity first” philosophy that applies – explains Michal Zomerski, Mechanistry’s 3D Artist.





Folktails are also a good example of trying to balance “beaverish” designs (and materials such as wood, clay, moss, thatches) and buildings that recognizable for human eyes. Speaking of which: let’s see what Folktails can build.

Please note that what we're showing below is still a work in progress.

Faction trait

Folktails enjoy good cuisine. Bon appétit!

• Because of their more relaxed, farming-oriented lifestyle, Folktails’ consumption is 20% higher.

The above has been removed with the addition of Difficulty Modes where you can customize the consumption rates regardless of faction.


Folktails allow their members to live however they want. No wonder there are many unique lodge variants available only to them! Four types, to be exact.

• Mini Lodge - housing a single beaver
  
• Lodge - for three beavers (yup, it is now a faction-exclusive building!)
  
• Double Lodge - for six beavers
  
• Triple Lodge - for nine beavers

(Remember that beaver slots in lodges are no longer split into “adult” and “kit” slots. In most situations the original 2:1 ratio will still occur, though.)

Folktails favor progress but stick to the more eco-friendly branch of timbertech.

• Windmills. All beavers need power to operate their factories, and Folktails have learned how to harness the power of the wind. Windmills come in two sizes, with the larger one providing you with higher power output. Just remember that the wind’s strength and direction change easily!

• Underground Warehouse. Increased production requires a place to store the goods, and that’s the solution! Underground warehouses beat even Large Warehouses in terms of capacity.

• Irrigation Tower. You already know this building, and it’s going to be exclusive to Folktails. Towers let the beavers water otherwise dry areas and turn them into future fields and forests. While an irrigation tower requires a continuous supply of water and a dedicated worker, it is a much easier and faster method than digging canals, especially in remote areas.

• Farmer's Special. We don’t want to spoil everything yet but Folktails will also have access to another special building suitable for a farming faction. You already know about the Farmhouse so that's going to be something different. Can you guess what?

Folktails are the first of the playable beaver factions we’re introducing to Timberborn. When the game launches in Early Access and you choose these gold-hearted farmers, your experience will be quite different from what Beavers of Demoria have taught you.

It will be even more unique compared to how Iron Teeth roll. Who exactly are the Iron Teeth? That, our friends, is another story… and a topic for another Developer’s Log!

Until next time!
Team Timberborn

PS Big thanks for the patience to everyone looking forward to the game's launch. We want to give you the Early Access release quickly – but not in a half-baked form. Folktails wouldn't approve it.

PSS This is our first-ever developer's log. Want to see more such behind-the-scenes content? Let us know in the comments or on our official Discord channel!