Surprise! We have added two new faction-specific decorations.

• New building: Wind Gauge (Folktails) helps you measure wind speed.
  
• New building: Bell (Iron Teeth) signals the start and end of the workday.

Having reviewed the player feedback, we realized that the experimental irrigation changes, while helpful, created a different set of issues. We’re working on another iteration of the fix but for now, we’ve reverted the irrigation mechanics to the pre-Experimental state.

• Reverted changes to irrigation mechanics.
  
• Reverted changes to Irrigation Tower. One Tile, One Dump is back on the menu, boys.

• Builders now use the Working Speed bonus to put up constructions faster.
  
• Added the names of new team members to in-game credits.

• Fixed the mismatched Harvesting and Planting icons.

Hello everyone!

This update is a little different. The war is raging in Ukraine – that’s right behind the borders of our studio’s country of Poland. Everyone deserves life in peace, and we’re still shocked by the horror happening right there, in the heart of 21st century Europe.

We’re just a studio making a game about beavers but we want to stress the fact that Ukraine is a sovereign country with its own rich culture. That’s why today, we’re adding Ukrainian to the pool of available in-game languages, along with a little nod to our neighbours’ beautiful folklore.

Ukraine needs more than gestures, though. To support victims of the Russian invasion, at the end of February we donated $50.000 to Polska Akcja Humanitarna (Polish Humanitarian Action). We encourage you to contribute too.



While this update is now live on the main branch, the new content such as the settlement panel and the new day/night cycle remains on Experimental Branch only as we continue iterating on it.

Timberborn is now officially supported in 12 languages. You can change the language in the game’s settings.

• Timberborn is now available in Ukrainian.

We’ve added an additional crop your farmers can grow.

• New crop: Sunflowers. Sunflowers yield seeds that are eaten raw.

• Updated the skybox to reduce banding.

• Removing trees (High priority) is now correctly prioritized over building (Low priority).
  
• Fixed a crash on macOS.

Hello everyone!

Timberborn comes with 9 maps (with two more already on the Experimental Branch) but with the magic of Map Editor, there’s always more to get. Until we add Steam Workshop support, it requires a few additional clicks but getting the new map is as simple as downloading a file.

Right now, the go-to place for all Timberborn cartographers is this player-made collection of maps big and small (and medium). Other than that, you can check the Map section of the mod repository you already know, browse our forums, subreddit, and/or the dedicated channel on Timberborn Discord.

Download the map file from the repository of your choice and copy it to the Maps folder located in C:\Documents\Timberborn\Maps. Start a new game and pick the map normally – it will have a [Custom] prefix in its name. You can use both new (.timber) and old (.json) custom map files.

For this showcase, we chose 10+1 amazing maps. Each uses a very different layout and was designed around a specific experience. All maps we picked were created or adjusted after the release of Update 1 in December, which means they feature Undergrounds Ruins and are Mine-compatible.




Mulien’s creation tasks the player with reaching the source of life-giving water located at the end of a very narrow map. This challenge is not for the faint of heart: your starving colony has to beat several “stages” before getting there. “Quest…” is one of the coolest challenge maps we’ve seen created for Timberborn, and Mulien has recently modified it to add Update 1 content.




Creating this map took Oombalol a lot of time – not just because of all the small details but also due to the carefully planned out water flow. Here, it changes direction back and forth over the course of the game, so account for it as you make plans for a drought. By the way, if you enjoy the intricate map design like this, check the author’s pre-Update 1 creation, Pinewood Hills.




At a first glance, surviving on this map may seem like an impossible task – your beavers begin trapped in a small area cut off by high walls. Can you get them out before the resources run out? And once you do, will it even get easier? The margin for error is small in the beginning but once your beavers put their paws on the upper level, you’ll find some relief… for a moment.




Timberborn’s water physics is put to a good test here as the map was designed to mimic how real-life ecosystems form. Water sources are located at higher elevations, surrounded by thick forests, and the cascading waters spread out, “eroding” the terrain to create a large riverbed in the map’s centre. Just be careful – the metal sources are scarce in the wilderness like this!




This is just one of the many maps our players have crafted based on real-life locations - in this case, a famous canyon on the Colorado River. For dramatization purposes, we took the screenshot during drought but when the river is there, the large flat areas make for well-irrigated future fields where early power management is easier thanks to strong water currents.




We love all these wacky, unpredictable maps… but why not create an in-game chessboard that serves as a training tool? This flat creation allows you to experiment with the concept of artificial rivers that can keep the drought at bay even in Hard Mode. When this unique setup is properly adapted, you get a bidirectional river that continuously powers up water wheels and even makes the water management semi-automatic. Now, that’s the clever use of game mechanics.




Wonderlust’s author calls it a beginner-friendly map, and having several water sources right behind the hill helps indeed. The challenge is still there, however, as you need to be careful about where you put your first fields and water wheels. The starting area’s elevation results in tighter green areas and limits the access to the riverbank, at least until Stairs™ are discovered.




Can you tell which rather popular game served as a base for this map? By the way, it was really difficult to pick a creation from sukunabikona to feature. This author’s other amazing maps include areas from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, renditions of real-life areas such as Hiroshima City and Taipei Basin, or even a “reversed” version of the basic Plains map. Respect!




Beavers who land on this walled-off map sit on a ticking time bomb – except that bomb is actually the ever-increasing water level. This leads to a great twist – you are actually looking forward to the upcoming droughts as they give you some breathing room. Just don’t even think of blowing up a hole in the outer wall to escape. We’re not in a certain critically acclaimed Jim Carrey movie.




The paradise in question is waiting at the hill looming above the town - and if you get your beavers up there, the reward will be grand. We love the simple premise behind this map – and even though the goal is clear, each player may come up with a different approach.




The final creation is more of a save-map hybrid because the area has some structures prebuilt. Your beavers (Folktails only!) begin stranded in a dry wasteland where the only water sources belong to the titular mad King Ludwig. While he’s chilling there in his mud bath behind the ruin-filled moat, your colony desperately searches the desert for leftover resources and abandoned workshops. If you’re quick enough, you’ll build bridges over the moat to put an end to Ludwig’s tyrannical reign.

As you can see, there’s a lot our players can do with the map editor and Timberborn’s mechanics – and there are so many maps deserving a spotlight. After you go through the entire repository, let us know about the best maps you’ve found… or made!

PS Don't miss out on the previous Community Showcase where we focused on player-made mods for the game!

Until next time!
~Team Timberborn

Hello everyone!

We’ve been keeping an eye on your feedback and today, we’ve got an update for the experimental branch to address that... and to change everyone's favourite Folktails building. Thank you for all the suggestions!


The new panel has received both functional and visual updates.

• Added a new tab that allows you to monitor the popularity of your settlement’s attractions. This data is also displayed in the attraction’s individual panel.
  
• Added workplace productivity indicators in the Workplaces tab.
  
• Updated and reorganized some of the panel’s buttons and icons.
  
• The panel now allows you to switch between districts and the global view.
  
• As part of panel related updates, we added clickable district indicators in individual building and beaver panels.
  
• Added a panel hotkey – G.

We think we’ve fixed the issue with drought being too hard on the eyes but please tell us how you find the new effects.

• Changed color of the “drought fog” to improve image clarity during drought, especially at dusk and dawn.
  
• Changed colors of the night during drought.

We’ve made some changes to make Irrigation Tower less of a meme. These changes also affect how irrigation works on the maps. While the built-in maps have been tested for that and work fine under the new behaviour, custom maps may be affected more.

• The evaporation rate now becomes faster depending on the number of tiles surrounding the water tile, maxing out at four tiles. This includes both the ground tiles and levees.
  
• The water consumption of the Irrigation Tower has been dramatically reduced.

We’re doing the below just for consistency’s sake. Totally.

• Updated all flag models with cute little lamps.

This actually went live with the initial experimental release but we’ve never mentioned that.

• Added missing flavor texts to buildings and resources.

• Fixed a bug with range lines disappearing at certain camera angles.
  
• Fixed a bug with water not being hidden after selecting a construction site.
  
• Fixed some panels not being visible in entity panel during the construction stage.

Let us know what you think!

• Fixed a bug with nasty beavers not assigning themselves to jobs properly and sometimes even crashing the game.
  
• Fixed a crash when trying to connect two districts.
  
• Beavers that die of old age no longer receive the "Stranded" status. Thank you for resuming your services, Charon.
  
• Fixed the "Pause" button not working properly in the population panel.

Big thanks to everyone who sent us the crash reports!

We appreciate all your feedback, so keep it coming. For example, please let us know how you find the new day/night visuals and the fog effects - both in the temperate weather and during the drought. Thanks!

Hello everyone!

The experimental branch is back today with some shiny new stuff. It is not Update 2 – you’ll find a status update on that at the bottom of this post. But today, we’re introducing two new maps, a brand new population panel with job prioritization, a day/night visual overhaul, and more!


If you need a refresher on how to play Experimental Branch, check this topic.


We’ve made a series of tweaks to the lighting to diversify how the game looks depending on the time of day, whether the drought is in progress, etc.

• Added dawn and dusk to the day/night cycle, each with unique lighting effects.
  
• Adjusted the lighting’s colors and intensity across the day.
  
• Added variable length to in-game shadows – it changes depending on the time of day.
  
• Added unique fog effects to droughts and temperate seasons, most visible during dusk and dawn.
  
• Updated the skybox.

Per popular request, we’ve added a panel that lists all beavers and buildings in one place (in five tabs). This allows you to control the colony, and that includes setting the newly added job priorities! You can browse global or, which probably makes more sense, district-based lists.

• Added population panel to the game. It contains data split into five tabs: Characters, Housing, Workplaces, Storage, and Power.
  
• Clicking an object on the list shows its location in the game. Each tab contains information about currently active status effects such as “Building paused”.
  
• Using the panel you can pause buildings, change their recipes, mark the building as a priority for the haulers etc. Most importantly, you can pick a job priority for the building.
  
• Added job prioritization. Similarly to building prioritization, there are five priority levels, which affect where your beavers go to work first.
  
• Added a new population panel button in the upper left corner. While the panel is open, the game is paused.
  
• Updated the upper left panel to contain only key information such as population count.

Beaverome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will be your settlement here. This brand new map challenges you to follow the steps of the beaver pioneers who transformed seven water-filled craters into the heart of the modern beaver civilization.

• Beaverome (192x192) is now a part of the built-in map roster.
  
• With this map, we’re trying a more challenge-like approach. The available areas are narrow and the slopes steep, and it’s not that easy to find a strong water current – but hey, at least there’s enough to drink for everyone, right?

The map co-created with the community and used in our city-building contest turned out to be so popular we wanted it permanently in the game! To ensure smooth gameplay, however, we made a series of changes to the map, including moving the mountain.

• Helix Mountain (256x256) is now a part of the built-in map roster.
  
• The map underwent significant changes, including moving the mountain closer to the map’s center. The mountain is also larger, which makes creating your settlements a bit harder, as the water takes longer to flow down.

We have realized that the number of gears needed to grow your colony is too dam high.

• Wood Workshop: Gears cost reduced from 50 to 40.
  
• Mud Bath: Gears cost reduced from 50 to 40.
  
• Mine: Gears cost reduced from 500 to 350.
  
• Efficient Mine: Gears cost reduced from 600 to 450.

• Windmill, Large Windmill: Shafts can be connected from any side now.
  
• Resources have received updated panels to better communicate what, when, and how they yield.
  
• Warehouse inventory panel is now available during the construction stage, so you can micro your warehouses right after placing them!

All models in the game have had their models updated to reduce the number of polygons and improve the game’s performance.

• Beehives no longer work underwater.
  
• Crops affected by the Beehive are now correctly highlighted.
  
• Fixed the torches not lighting up in the Temple.
  
• Fixed a bug with water becoming too bright at the deepest levels.
  
• Underwater buildings and plants are now correctly highlighted when selected.
  
• Fixed the collider in Mechanical Water Pump.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed building a Mine in the middle of two adjacent Underground Ruins.
  
• Fixed a bug that prevented beavers from using books directly from the Printing Press.
  
• Fixed a bug with stock counts in the district distribution panel calculated differently than in the top panel.
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed Farmers, Gatherers, Lumberjacks and Tappers to pick up goods not belonging to their workplace.
  
• Fixed a visual bug where Smelter’s worker would not sit in the door when there was nothing to do.
  
• Fixed the camera switching places when the game was paused or unpaused with a beaver selected inside the building. Uh-oh.
  
• Fixed a bug where moving a cursor slooowly over buttons broke their highlighting and the ability to click them.
  
• Fixed a bug with attractions not accounting for Power Efficiency.
  
• Fixed a bug with hot single beavers in your area not pairing with each other in Lodges.
  
• Fixed a bug forcing children to grow up only in the morning.

It is coming but we’d like to ask you for your patience. This year’s beginning has been very busy for us because Mechanistry is growing. Last month, we were joined by a new game designer, Adrian. As of March, the team also includes assistant Olga, 2D artist Tomek, and 3D artist Bartek – and a few more new faces are coming. Please give them all a warm welcome, for example on our Discord.

We’re still a small indie company, though. The hiring process is one of the reasons why we’re having a smaller patch today, and Update 2 needs more time in the oven. Another is that we want to make that “futuristic” feature really cool. This resulted in expanding its scope beyond what we originally planned – which we can only do because the studio is growing.

We’ll let you know as soon as we can share more details. For now, we hope you’ll enjoy what we’ve just pushed to the experimental branch. We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!

~Team Timberborn, Now Chonkier Than Ever

Hello everyone!

There are many ways to play Timberborn but for some crafty beavers, that’s not enough. Even though we don’t officially support mods (yet), quite a few have been made. Today, we want to showcase seven of our favourites – perfect to spice things up while you’re waiting for Update 2.

But first, some fine print. Right now, Timberborn Early Access is meant to be played without any mods. We appreciate all the hard work behind them but mods are 100% player-made and may break your game. Use them at your own risk and, at the very least, back up your regular saves.

Here are some cool mods to consider, ranging from nifty QoL features to true game-changers! To install a mod, follow the instructions available on its page. We suggest you take things slow and not install all interesting mods at once.




While regular Timberborn gameplay allows you to build truly great cities, fair progress takes time and even at the easiest difficulty, things may get out of hand. This mod unlocks all structures right away and makes building instant and free. It also copies some Map Editor features into the regular game, which allows you to spawn ruins and resources, and even re-shape the terrain.




The ability to prioritize jobs is, well, one of the priority player requests for us. This mod helps with that already. It allows you to control which jobs the beavers pick up (or switch to), for example when you need rapid redeployment ahead of the drought. It also integrates with the in-game building priority tool so you can select priorities for multiple buildings at once.




This one also assists in running large settlements, especially if you tend to group specialized buildings together. Draggable Utils adds a selection tool that pauses/unpauses buildings en masse. You can also use it to order emptying storage and to pick the top targets for your haulers.




When we were adding Platforms to the game, another option we considered was something similar to what Elec prepared here. With this mod, two unlockable variants of a new structure are added, allowing you to place Arch (4x1, 5x1). It is a bridge-like Solid building that can be built over other objects, which means you can create more condensed multi-level structures.




In-game districts have several advantages, one of them being the significant performance gain. However, if you’re confident in your rig’s capabilities (lucky you!), you may increase the district’s effective range with this mod. While changing numbers in the config file, you may also adjust pathfinding and resource gathering ranges. You can even cover the entire map with a single district.




Despite its name, this mod not only increases the maximum height available in the Map Editor but also allows you to make your creations larger. With the map measurements increased up to 1024x1024x64, you can craft king-sized lands with mighty mountains and green valleys where beavers thrive. Just know that such maps also require the mod to play.




This mod unlocks all available buildings, regardless of the faction picked. The eco-friendly Iron Teeth that use Windmills? Sure. Some unorthodox Folktails with Breeding Pods? Why not! With this mod, the initial faction choice mostly dictates which beavers will spawn because the author obviously favours Folktails here - by default, shared buildings use the Folktails variants.

There are more community mods to pick from so make sure you check the list from time to time. And if you want to break Timberborn open, make sure you join our Discord. The #modding-and-whatnot channel is there for you and it’s full of the beaver disruptors like yourself.

Until next time,
Team Timberborn

Hello, everyone!

We hope you’ve enjoyed your holidays and the new content from Update 1.

Before we head into 2022, we thought it was a good moment to look back at the most important (and wild) year for Timberborn so far… and maybe catch a cryptic glimpse into the future?

As weird as it sounds, twelve months ago Timberborn was still in the invite-only closed beta that began in June 2020. Exactly a year before Update 1, we added the last missing puzzle to the game’s core gameplay: irrigation mechanics and droughts.



With the patch well received, we officially entered the planned release window of Q1 2021 (heh). The final test and push for Timberborn’s pre-launch visibility were about to happen at Steam Game Festival, the indie-friendly Steam event now known as Steam Next Fest.

To participate, we replaced the closed beta with a publicly available Timberborn Demo. The player’s goal was to survive two droughts. Also, we finally updated the beaver models.



We were not prepared for what would happen at the Festival. Timberborn Demo stayed among the top three played demos, was downloaded close to 100.000 times, and at one point, about 28.000 viewers were watching the beavers on Twitch. Our Discord exploded, and so did our heads.

With the massive amount of feedback and the sudden spike of high profile coverage, we realized that Timberborn had a chance to become the Next Big Thing. We needed more time for that, though, so we decided to postpone the release to “later in 2021” as we wanted more good stuff in.



As the said “good stuff” grew behind the scenes, we updated the demo with better visuals, more music, improved performance, and some QoL features such as the build priorities.

We also added the first in-game translations - sadly, the Asian languages were blocked by a nasty bug in the engine. Back then, we hoped this would be a brief inconvenience. Little did we know - it wasn’t fixed until months later, almost jeopardizing the release.



In the demo, we only had a single temporary faction called Beavers of Demoria. However, unique factions were going to be among Timberborn's key features, and since we felt the game was nearing a shippable Early Access state, it was time to reveal the first faction. Hi, Folktails!



We also wanted to prepare our players for the addition of the districts system. Compared to the beta and demo, districts eliminated many problems often encountered in the early game, made managing large settlements easier, and brought Timberborn a huge performance boost.

By the way, we know that there are areas we can improve here. We’ll be gradually rolling out updates that should make district-wide operations smoother and require less micromanaging.



Bracing for more delays, we kept telling our players that Timberborn was coming “later in 2021”. This finally changed on one hot, crazy August night, at the peak of summer gaming festivals.

Within two hours, at two different Gamescom shows (Future Games Show by GamesRadar and Awesome Indies Show by IGN), we introduced the second playable beaver faction AND announced that the game was releasing… in three weeks. There was no turning back.



Mechanistry is a fully remote team but for the launch week, we all gathered in Gdansk, Poland, to work in one place for the first time. On September 15, at 5 PM, our lead designer Bartek hit the “release” button… and fifteen minutes of horror began. For some reason, the game didn’t go live as expected, and it wasn’t until 5:15 PM that it did (with Steam’s timely intervention). It was probably the most terrifying quarter of an hour in the game’s history.

What followed was a blurred mess of sleepless nights, reading feedback, and rapid hotfixing. Fortunately, players kept flowing in, and we closed the launch week with over 130.000 copies sold. The “Overwhelmingly Positive” rating came right after that. We couldn’t be happier.



After the launch madness and the initial surge of tweaks, we took turns taking some time off, but the work on Timberborn is now an ongoing process. We even squeezed in a little new content patch (yay, fences!) but we were mostly focused on preparing for the first large update.



This is where we are now. Having tested the new content on the newly launched Experimental Branch, we deployed our first major post-launch update. We added infinite metal production, mechanical water pumps, new resources, new attractions, and more - and your feedback made it all better.



The last-minute delay in February, Iron Teeth breeding woes, the bug with Asian localizations, multiple water physics tweaks - this year alone showed that in game development, things happen. Because of that, we’re hesitant to talk big, post roadmaps, and risk breaking promises.

But we understand that many of you came here for this, and we want to let you know that our current plan is to continue bundling changes into large patches that first land onto Experimental Branch, similarly to Update 1. We’re already working on Update 2 which will use Timberborn’s post-apocalyptic setting to make our beavers more futuristic. No spoilers yet but we’ve had this idea for a while now, and we believe it may also result in an interesting late game with a twist.

Other than that, we’re constantly keeping an eye on what the community desires (pro tip: our tracker helps your voices be heard). This applies both to new content ideas and quality of life requests, so keep them coming. We’ll evaluate them and do our best to include as much as possible as the game grows. Update 1 was just the beginning.

Alright, enough with the teasers. We thank you for your amazing support this year, and we’re looking forward to showing you what we have in store for 2022. It’s going to be awesome!



Happy New Year!
Team Timberborn

• Decreased Shrine's Working Speed bonus from 30% to 5% and Temple's Working Speed bonus from 30% to 25%.

• If the user previously denied access to the Documents folder on macOS, the game exits and opens privacy settings instead of crashing.