The update from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0 will be the biggest change to Colony Survival yet! It will add a lot of new content and change things you’re used to. It’s highly recommended to start a new colony in 0.4.0 – you’ll need new resources that will not spawn in areas that have already been generated before 0.4.0.

Expandable banner safe zone
Research technology to increase the area where monsters will not spawn. Currently, monsters will not spawn in an area around the banner the size of 22,500 square meter. (For the Americans; 1 block = 1 square meter) We are thinking of decreasing this area to 10,000 square meter. Then you can use the Scientist to research a bigger safe area. The max safe area will probably be somewhere between 40,000 and 90,000 square meter.

Day and night guards
When placing a guard in 0.4.0, you’ll have 8 options. Will the guard use a sling, bow, crossbow or musket, and will he work during the day or during the night? Colonies with long mazes or 24/7 monsters will certainly need guards during the day. In the future, ‘day guards’ will be useful when fighting other players as well.

Decreased maze effectiveness
A common strategy to defeat monsters is building long and winded mazes. Currently, most monsters will die because of the rising sun before they actually reach the castle. Stronger and faster monsters will make mazes less effective. But there is another big change we want to implement: the sun shouldn’t kill monsters anymore. Monsters will stop spawning earlier, so with a normal travel time they should still be dead when the day begins. But increasing their travel distance will not save you – you will have to kill each and every monster!

Different ore spawns
The first “orelayer” you encounter when digging down will only contain the first basic resources: tin and copper. To find iron and clay, you’ll have to dig deeper. Ores like galena (lead/silver) and saltpeter (gunpowder) will be hidden even deeper down. The depth of the ores will be determined based on the height of the world. This means it will actually become viable to build on top of a high hill or mountain.

More complex production chains
Bronze ingots require two different ores. Iron ingots will need charcoal as fuel, which will have to be produced in a kiln. Steel needs coal cokes as fuel. The cokes are created by burning coal in the kiln.

Items like crates, beds and workbenches will have more complex recipes and they’ll require items like copper nails, bronze plates and wrought iron. Those last two items will have to be crafted by a metalsmith, who is recruited by placing an anvil.

Use Sciencebags and scientists to unlock new weapons, new jobs, a more powerful banner and to increase the colonist limit and their recruitment cost!

More consistent guards
Currently, the guards actually have to hit approaching monsters. Monsters walking straight to the guard are easily hit, but guards often miss when monsters walk from the left to the right or vice versa. We’re working to make it more consistent by making the arrows pretty much ‘guided’. This allows us to determine the accuracy much more precisely.



Why one big update instead of multiple smaller updates?

A lot of the features in the new update are either interdependent or incompatible with older colonies. The new guards, technologies, jobs and items require the new ore system. The new ores don’t spawn in areas that have been generated before 0.4.0. The new guard system makes quivers obsolete.

We want to avoid breaking older worlds as much as possible. Sometimes it’s necessary, but we certainly don’t want to do it often. This means that the new update will take some time before it’s released, but it’s going to be a big improvement :)

Minor reassurance: nobody will be forced to abandon his or her beloved colonies. It will always be possible to switch back to the 0.3.0 branch and load old colonies. It’s even possible to continue playing older worlds in 0.4.0. It’s just going to be pretty inconvenient (ores not spawning in old areas, items becoming obsolete, job-blocks that have to be removed) and we recommend most players to just start a new colony once 0.4.0 has been released.

Thanks for reading this!

The update from 0.3.0 to 0.4.0 will be the biggest change to Colony Survival yet! It will add a lot of new content and change things you’re used to. It’s highly recommended to start a new colony in 0.4.0 – you’ll need new resources that will not spawn in areas that have already been generated before 0.4.0.

Expandable banner safe zone
Research technology to increase the area where monsters will not spawn. Currently, monsters will not spawn in an area around the banner the size of 22,500 square meter. (For the Americans; 1 block = 1 square meter) We are thinking of decreasing this area to 10,000 square meter. Then you can use the Scientist to research a bigger safe area. The max safe area will probably be somewhere between 40,000 and 90,000 square meter.

Day and night guards
When placing a guard in 0.4.0, you’ll have 8 options. Will the guard use a sling, bow, crossbow or musket, and will he work during the day or during the night? Colonies with long mazes or 24/7 monsters will certainly need guards during the day. In the future, ‘day guards’ will be useful when fighting other players as well.

Decreased maze effectiveness
A common strategy to defeat monsters is building long and winded mazes. Currently, most monsters will die because of the rising sun before they actually reach the castle. Stronger and faster monsters will make mazes less effective. But there is another big change we want to implement: the sun shouldn’t kill monsters anymore. Monsters will stop spawning earlier, so with a normal travel time they should still be dead when the day begins. But increasing their travel distance will not save you – you will have to kill each and every monster!

Different ore spawns
The first “orelayer” you encounter when digging down will only contain the first basic resources: tin and copper. To find iron and clay, you’ll have to dig deeper. Ores like galena (lead/silver) and saltpeter (gunpowder) will be hidden even deeper down. The depth of the ores will be determined based on the height of the world. This means it will actually become viable to build on top of a high hill or mountain.

More complex production chains
Bronze ingots require two different ores. Iron ingots will need charcoal as fuel, which will have to be produced in a kiln. Steel needs coal cokes as fuel. The cokes are created by burning coal in the kiln.

Items like crates, beds and workbenches will have more complex recipes and they’ll require items like copper nails, bronze plates and wrought iron. Those last two items will have to be crafted by a metalsmith, who is recruited by placing an anvil.

Use Sciencebags and scientists to unlock new weapons, new jobs, a more powerful banner and to increase the colonist limit and their recruitment cost!

More consistent guards
Currently, the guards actually have to hit approaching monsters. Monsters walking straight to the guard are easily hit, but guards often miss when monsters walk from the left to the right or vice versa. We’re working to make it more consistent by making the arrows pretty much ‘guided’. This allows us to determine the accuracy much more precisely.



Why one big update instead of multiple smaller updates?

A lot of the features in the new update are either interdependent or incompatible with older colonies. The new guards, technologies, jobs and items require the new ore system. The new ores don’t spawn in areas that have been generated before 0.4.0. The new guard system makes quivers obsolete.

We want to avoid breaking older worlds as much as possible. Sometimes it’s necessary, but we certainly don’t want to do it often. This means that the new update will take some time before it’s released, but it’s going to be a big improvement :)

Minor reassurance: nobody will be forced to abandon his or her beloved colonies. It will always be possible to switch back to the 0.3.0 branch and load old colonies. It’s even possible to continue playing older worlds in 0.4.0. It’s just going to be pretty inconvenient (ores not spawning in old areas, items becoming obsolete, job-blocks that have to be removed) and we recommend most players to just start a new colony once 0.4.0 has been released.

Thanks for reading this!

Apparently the creators of the Yogscast read this blog. Hello! They didn’t like the fact that we made it a bit harder to get to a thousand colonists. So we’ve thought about it… and we’re going to make it A LOT harder to recruit 1000 colonists! :)

Our idea to add copper, bronze and steel to the game received a very enthusiastic response. We wanted to use the new metals to add some small items like cups, plates and jewellery. But we didn’t want to make them just be cosmetic – they needed to serve some purpose. We’ve thought about adding “happiness” to the game but we couldn’t think of a way to make it fun and easily understandable.

What we’re probably going to do is add these new small items to the cost of recruiting colonists. To prevent the game from becoming too complicated in the first phase of the game, the cost will increase when you reach certain amounts of colonists. And to prepare people for the increasing costs, we will add new ‘researchables’ that increase the colonist limit. So imagine something like this:

Colonist Limit I – Increases colonist limit from 30 to 50, adds copper tools to the colonist recruitment cost
Items required to complete research: 30 copper tools

Colonist Limit II – Increases the limit to 75, adds tin tableware to the cost
Required items: 50 sets of tin tableware

Colonist Limit III – Increases the limit to 100, adds clothing to the cost
Required items: 75 pieces of clothing

Edit: These numbers for the researches are <very> much WIP - we haven't tested it yet so we have no proper idea of what would be balanced limits. It may be 30-50-100-200-infinite, it may be 80-250-500-infinite. There definitely will be a 'Remove limit' research.

Server hosts will be able to disable some of these researchables to limit the amount of colonists per player.

Currently, the game suffers from rapid exponential expansion. Setting up a colony can be slow in the beginning, but when people have lots of farmers and use new colonists as extra farmers, the growth can become very quick. The increasing recruitment costs should slow down this growth, increase the diversity of required jobs and add to the depth, content and complexity of the game.



How we choose what to work on

We’ve received a lot of suggestions, and we definitely want to implement a lot of them. But while people are asking us to add stairs, doors and PVP, we’re working on adding bronze and scientists. Why?!

When an emergency or a war happens, a concept called "triage" is used. There are often more injured persons than medical personnel and resources. Doctors have to decide who gets treated first and who will have to wait. They try to determine where their efforts get the most results. People who will probably live, whether they receive medical care or not, are not a high priority. But those who are very likely to die aren’t a priority either. Patients that have problems where quick medical assistance makes a huge positive difference are the highest priority.

While game development is very different from medical care, we do feel like we're using some kind of "triage". We’re just two developers, and only one of us can program. And there are way more things that would be good to add to the game than can be created by us in a couple of months. Steam Workshop support, a Mac port, improved multiplayer, new monsters, new cosmetic blocks, new guards, extra banners to extend the area where monsters don’t spawn, stairs, windows, doors, more jobs, more interesting biomes, controller support, splitscreen, console releases, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

We have to determine what features we will work on first. And like doctors, we start where we can have the biggest positive difference in the shortest time. There are four criteria that we use to choose which features have priority:

How much gameplay does it add?
Adding scientists and increasing the recruitment cost of colonists for big colonies adds a lot of things you will have to produce before you’ve seen all content. Adding doors will make a minor cosmetic difference, but doesn’t really extend gameplay.

How long will we have to work to add it?
Adding new metals requires me, the non-programmer, to make some extra textures and icons, and doesn’t require lots of effort from our programmer. Doors that can be properly opened by both players and colonists, making sure they work in multiplayer too and that they’re saved properly, requires a lot more effort.

How will it affect performance?
Stronger monsters will actually improve performance, because rendering a smaller amount of strong monsters is easier than rendering a bigger amount of weak monsters. Growing crops use a lot more resources than static ores.

How will it affect future updates?
The recent science-update might not mean much by itself, but it will be used a lot in other updates. It will be used to unlock new jobs, new options and new items. The gradual unlocking will also improve the experience for new players, by not overwhelming them with unnecessary options, and giving them a way to explore the game step by step.
Something like first person animations will actually make future game development slower. When all items and blocks have first person animations, players will expect them for new updates like crossbows and rifles as well.

If your suggestion is simple to add, provides a lot of extra gameplay, doesn’t negatively impact the performance and works well with future updates, we’re very likely to add it soon.

If your suggestion takes a lot of development time, has mainly cosmetic benefits, significantly hampers the performance and makes future development harder, it’s very low on our priority list…

Features that have been demanded by the community that we’re currently working on:

• New, stronger monsters
  
• Making mazes less effective
  
• New guards
  
• More content, depth and complexity

Features that are often demanded and that we definitely want to add in future updates:

• Secondary banners to extend the area where monsters don’t spawn
  
• Stairs
  
• A menu where players have more control over which jobs should be done and which shouldn’t
  
• PVP
  
• More advanced multiplayer / anti griefing measures
  
• Mac/console port

Now you know what we’re working on, what we’re going to work on, and why we’re doing it this way. Perhaps it has inspired you to think of new suggestions – we’d love to hear them!

Thanks for reading this – we think it’s the longest blog post until now!

Apparently the creators of the Yogscast read this blog. Hello! They didn’t like the fact that we made it a bit harder to get to a thousand colonists. So we’ve thought about it… and we’re going to make it A LOT harder to recruit 1000 colonists! :)

Our idea to add copper, bronze and steel to the game received a very enthusiastic response. We wanted to use the new metals to add some small items like cups, plates and jewellery. But we didn’t want to make them just be cosmetic – they needed to serve some purpose. We’ve thought about adding “happiness” to the game but we couldn’t think of a way to make it fun and easily understandable.

What we’re probably going to do is add these new small items to the cost of recruiting colonists. To prevent the game from becoming too complicated in the first phase of the game, the cost will increase when you reach certain amounts of colonists. And to prepare people for the increasing costs, we will add new ‘researchables’ that increase the colonist limit. So imagine something like this:

Colonist Limit I – Increases colonist limit from 30 to 50, adds copper tools to the colonist recruitment cost
Items required to complete research: 30 copper tools

Colonist Limit II – Increases the limit to 75, adds tin tableware to the cost
Required items: 50 sets of tin tableware

Colonist Limit III – Increases the limit to 100, adds clothing to the cost
Required items: 75 pieces of clothing

Edit: These numbers for the researches are <very> much WIP - we haven't tested it yet so we have no proper idea of what would be balanced limits. It may be 30-50-100-200-infinite, it may be 80-250-500-infinite. There definitely will be a 'Remove limit' research.

Server hosts will be able to disable some of these researchables to limit the amount of colonists per player.

Currently, the game suffers from rapid exponential expansion. Setting up a colony can be slow in the beginning, but when people have lots of farmers and use new colonists as extra farmers, the growth can become very quick. The increasing recruitment costs should slow down this growth, increase the diversity of required jobs and add to the depth, content and complexity of the game.



How we choose what to work on

We’ve received a lot of suggestions, and we definitely want to implement a lot of them. But while people are asking us to add stairs, doors and PVP, we’re working on adding bronze and scientists. Why?!

When an emergency or a war happens, a concept called "triage" is used. There are often more injured persons than medical personnel and resources. Doctors have to decide who gets treated first and who will have to wait. They try to determine where their efforts get the most results. People who will probably live, whether they receive medical care or not, are not a high priority. But those who are very likely to die aren’t a priority either. Patients that have problems where quick medical assistance makes a huge positive difference are the highest priority.

While game development is very different from medical care, we do feel like we're using some kind of "triage". We’re just two developers, and only one of us can program. And there are way more things that would be good to add to the game than can be created by us in a couple of months. Steam Workshop support, a Mac port, improved multiplayer, new monsters, new cosmetic blocks, new guards, extra banners to extend the area where monsters don’t spawn, stairs, windows, doors, more jobs, more interesting biomes, controller support, splitscreen, console releases, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

We have to determine what features we will work on first. And like doctors, we start where we can have the biggest positive difference in the shortest time. There are four criteria that we use to choose which features have priority:

How much gameplay does it add?
Adding scientists and increasing the recruitment cost of colonists for big colonies adds a lot of things you will have to produce before you’ve seen all content. Adding doors will make a minor cosmetic difference, but doesn’t really extend gameplay.

How long will we have to work to add it?
Adding new metals requires me, the non-programmer, to make some extra textures and icons, and doesn’t require lots of effort from our programmer. Doors that can be properly opened by both players and colonists, making sure they work in multiplayer too and that they’re saved properly, requires a lot more effort.

How will it affect performance?
Stronger monsters will actually improve performance, because rendering a smaller amount of strong monsters is easier than rendering a bigger amount of weak monsters. Growing crops use a lot more resources than static ores.

How will it affect future updates?
The recent science-update might not mean much by itself, but it will be used a lot in other updates. It will be used to unlock new jobs, new options and new items. The gradual unlocking will also improve the experience for new players, by not overwhelming them with unnecessary options, and giving them a way to explore the game step by step.
Something like first person animations will actually make future game development slower. When all items and blocks have first person animations, players will expect them for new updates like crossbows and rifles as well.

If your suggestion is simple to add, provides a lot of extra gameplay, doesn’t negatively impact the performance and works well with future updates, we’re very likely to add it soon.

If your suggestion takes a lot of development time, has mainly cosmetic benefits, significantly hampers the performance and makes future development harder, it’s very low on our priority list…

Features that have been demanded by the community that we’re currently working on:

• New, stronger monsters
  
• Making mazes less effective
  
• New guards
  
• More content, depth and complexity

Features that are often demanded and that we definitely want to add in future updates:

• Secondary banners to extend the area where monsters don’t spawn
  
• Stairs
  
• A menu where players have more control over which jobs should be done and which shouldn’t
  
• PVP
  
• More advanced multiplayer / anti griefing measures
  
• Mac/console port

Now you know what we’re working on, what we’re going to work on, and why we’re doing it this way. Perhaps it has inspired you to think of new suggestions – we’d love to hear them!

Thanks for reading this – we think it’s the longest blog post until now!

Update 0.3.0 led to a big increase in active players, which we love to see! Thousands of players have already crafted science labs and science bags. Only 0.7% of all players have finished the Health Regeneration IV research though, which means most of you still have some work to do ;)

Sadly, there was a wave of new bug reports too. There was a savegame problem that we quickly fixed in a small update last Saturday. Nearly all other problems were caused by mods getting outdated. You can fix these errors by removing the mod. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling the game, manually removing all files (you can keep the savegames and screenshots folders inside /gamedata) and reinstalling the game. This should fix all problems caused by mods.

We’ve spent this week optimizing the game and preparing for the next update. A pathfinding bug has been fixed and RAM usage by the server has been decreased 50%. We’ve also added the ability to research new recipes with the science lab. We want to make the recipes for the tailor, technologist and science bag locked by default and unlockable with the science lab.


The Colony Empire server with associated mods

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about the cluttered bottom layer of the world, and how we’re going to spread out ores over multiple layers to improve mining gameplay. This is something we definitely need to do before adding new ores. We want to use this period of reordering the ores to fundamentally change mining, metalworking and the weapons used by guards.

The game released with bread as the only source of food. Shortly after release, we made the production of bread more complex by requiring the grindstone as an intermediate step. We also added berries, to give people a quick and simple food source during the first phase of the game. We want to apply this same principle to mining, metals and guards. We’re going to make it more complex, and add a simpler method for the start of your colony.

We want to do this by adding a full copper>bronze>iron>steel chain. Our idea isn’t 100% definitive yet, but we’re considering to add something like this:

• Copper: doesn’t need to be smelted, can be crafted into nails and copper parts. The nails are necessary to craft for example beds and crates. Your first guard will be some kind of slinger, who can throw stone projectiles.
  
  
• Bronze: smelt copper and tin ore to produce bronze ingots. The furnace consumes planks as fuel. Bronze can be used by a blacksmith to craft for example (pick)axes and bronze arrowheads for guards with bows.
  
  
• Iron: iron ore needs to be smelted in a bloomery, which requires charcoal as fuel. Charcoal is made in a kiln by burning planks. A blacksmith can use them to craft crossbows and crossbow bolts.
  
  
• Steel: iron ingots need to be put into a special finery forge with cokes as fuel to produce steel. Cokes are made by putting coal ore and planks into the kiln. Steel is required for the production of muskets.

The crossbows and muskets will be released combined with stronger, faster monsters. You’ll need those more advanced weapons to kill them in one shot! The scientist will be required to develop ways of producing and using the new metals and weapons.

We believe that the new metals and weapons will add some much needed content and complexity to Colony Survival. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions!


Colony Empire + mods, again

Update 0.3.0 led to a big increase in active players, which we love to see! Thousands of players have already crafted science labs and science bags. Only 0.7% of all players have finished the Health Regeneration IV research though, which means most of you still have some work to do ;)

Sadly, there was a wave of new bug reports too. There was a savegame problem that we quickly fixed in a small update last Saturday. Nearly all other problems were caused by mods getting outdated. You can fix these errors by removing the mod. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling the game, manually removing all files (you can keep the savegames and screenshots folders inside /gamedata) and reinstalling the game. This should fix all problems caused by mods.

We’ve spent this week optimizing the game and preparing for the next update. A pathfinding bug has been fixed and RAM usage by the server has been decreased 50%. We’ve also added the ability to research new recipes with the science lab. We want to make the recipes for the tailor, technologist and science bag locked by default and unlockable with the science lab.


The Colony Empire server with associated mods

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about the cluttered bottom layer of the world, and how we’re going to spread out ores over multiple layers to improve mining gameplay. This is something we definitely need to do before adding new ores. We want to use this period of reordering the ores to fundamentally change mining, metalworking and the weapons used by guards.

The game released with bread as the only source of food. Shortly after release, we made the production of bread more complex by requiring the grindstone as an intermediate step. We also added berries, to give people a quick and simple food source during the first phase of the game. We want to apply this same principle to mining, metals and guards. We’re going to make it more complex, and add a simpler method for the start of your colony.

We want to do this by adding a full copper>bronze>iron>steel chain. Our idea isn’t 100% definitive yet, but we’re considering to add something like this:

• Copper: doesn’t need to be smelted, can be crafted into nails and copper parts. The nails are necessary to craft for example beds and crates. Your first guard will be some kind of slinger, who can throw stone projectiles.
  
  
• Bronze: smelt copper and tin ore to produce bronze ingots. The furnace consumes planks as fuel. Bronze can be used by a blacksmith to craft for example (pick)axes and bronze arrowheads for guards with bows.
  
  
• Iron: iron ore needs to be smelted in a bloomery, which requires charcoal as fuel. Charcoal is made in a kiln by burning planks. A blacksmith can use them to craft crossbows and crossbow bolts.
  
  
• Steel: iron ingots need to be put into a special finery forge with cokes as fuel to produce steel. Cokes are made by putting coal ore and planks into the kiln. Steel is required for the production of muskets.

The crossbows and muskets will be released combined with stronger, faster monsters. You’ll need those more advanced weapons to kill them in one shot! The scientist will be required to develop ways of producing and using the new metals and weapons.

We believe that the new metals and weapons will add some much needed content and complexity to Colony Survival. We’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions!


Colony Empire + mods, again

The new update is now live on the main branch! Version 0.3.0 adds three new jobs that cooperate to produce and consume thousands of items to do scientific research. Currently, the research unlocks only basic HP upgrades. We’re working to add new jobs, blocks and items that can be unlocked with the science system.

In previous versions, survival was the only goal in the game. A lot of items and blocks existed purely for cosmetic reasons. Many of them are now part of the recipes for Science Bags. This means that your colony will have to produce a lot of these items. Now there’s a good reason to greatly expand the size and production of your colony!

We didn’t want to make survival itself a lot more complicated – this would unnecessarily hinder new players, and those who are more focused on the creative side of things. A colony will not collapse without a science system, but it does exist to let players unlock new things and to stimulate them to expand their colony.



There are other important changes in 0.3.0. The production of some items has been slowed down, another way to encourage players to grow their colonies. Flax seeds were the previous “end game content”, requiring hundreds of coins to unlock. They are a lot cheaper now. Flax is an important item in 0.3.0. It’s necessary to craft coated planks, which are part of the recipe of both the Technologist’s Table and the Science Lab. It can also be used to craft linen. Linen is an important component of bags and clothing (both required for Science Bags) and carpet blocks.

The default amount of regenerated HP has been reduced from 50 to 30. The speed of regeneration has also been lowered. Both can be boosted to higher levels than before by unlocking new technologies. Five new achievements have been added, and they’re all related to the new content.

There has been a lot of cooperation with modders in the past couple of weeks. This is reflected in significantly expanded mod support. All those improvements have now been released to the main branch. Modders have had access to these changes in the [dev] branch, and they’ve already made a lot of content that only works in 0.3.0. One of the improvements by modders is a certain level of anti-griefing protection. Some servers have gone non-public, waiting for 0.3.0 to be released so they can include proper anti-griefing measures. Now that 0.3.0 has been released, those servers will become available again!



We’ve been plagued for months by a problem that causes savegames to become corrupted on quitting. We’ve recently found the cause, and this bug is gone from 0.3.0!

We want to thank everybody for all the encouragement, the mods, the playtesting, and other support! We appreciate it immensely. We hope you’ll have a lot of fun with the new content, and we’d love to hear your feedback! You’re welcome in the Official Colony Survival Discord!

The new update is now live on the main branch! Version 0.3.0 adds three new jobs that cooperate to produce and consume thousands of items to do scientific research. Currently, the research unlocks only basic HP upgrades. We’re working to add new jobs, blocks and items that can be unlocked with the science system.

In previous versions, survival was the only goal in the game. A lot of items and blocks existed purely for cosmetic reasons. Many of them are now part of the recipes for Science Bags. This means that your colony will have to produce a lot of these items. Now there’s a good reason to greatly expand the size and production of your colony!

We didn’t want to make survival itself a lot more complicated – this would unnecessarily hinder new players, and those who are more focused on the creative side of things. A colony will not collapse without a science system, but it does exist to let players unlock new things and to stimulate them to expand their colony.



There are other important changes in 0.3.0. The production of some items has been slowed down, another way to encourage players to grow their colonies. Flax seeds were the previous “end game content”, requiring hundreds of coins to unlock. They are a lot cheaper now. Flax is an important item in 0.3.0. It’s necessary to craft coated planks, which are part of the recipe of both the Technologist’s Table and the Science Lab. It can also be used to craft linen. Linen is an important component of bags and clothing (both required for Science Bags) and carpet blocks.

The default amount of regenerated HP has been reduced from 50 to 30. The speed of regeneration has also been lowered. Both can be boosted to higher levels than before by unlocking new technologies. Five new achievements have been added, and they’re all related to the new content.

There has been a lot of cooperation with modders in the past couple of weeks. This is reflected in significantly expanded mod support. All those improvements have now been released to the main branch. Modders have had access to these changes in the [dev] branch, and they’ve already made a lot of content that only works in 0.3.0. One of the improvements by modders is a certain level of anti-griefing protection. Some servers have gone non-public, waiting for 0.3.0 to be released so they can include proper anti-griefing measures. Now that 0.3.0 has been released, those servers will become available again!



We’ve been plagued for months by a problem that causes savegames to become corrupted on quitting. We’ve recently found the cause, and this bug is gone from 0.3.0!

We want to thank everybody for all the encouragement, the mods, the playtesting, and other support! We appreciate it immensely. We hope you’ll have a lot of fun with the new content, and we’d love to hear your feedback! You’re welcome in the Official Colony Survival Discord!

In the last couple of weeks, Colony Survival 0.3.0 has been open to the public on a separate beta branch. Multiple jobs, new blocks, new systems and a whole lot of mod support have been added to 0.3.0. Modders have mostly been working on 0.3.0. The main branch hasn’t seen any updates though. If the upcoming solar eclipse doesn’t destroy western civilization, we’re pretty certain we can update the main branch to 0.3.0 next week!

This update will add lots of new content to Colony Survival and will dramatically increase the amount of hours you need to play the game to discover all content. In the past, producing bread & arrows and unlocking flax described nearly all of the default gameplay. Many players decided to do lots of other things in Colony Survival: build huge cities and castles, set up awesome servers with great communities, develop innovative mods, etcetera. But others complained that they had seen most of the content after a couple of hours (hi RockPaperShotgun!). And they certainly weren’t wrong!


The Science Menu. Work in Progress.

The Science Update will add new goals to Colony Survival that will take plenty of hours to complete and it’ll stimulate players to expand their colony. It adds a lot more depth and complexity to the game. In Phase I, which will be released next Friday, we add at least twelve things that can be researched. You can increase your total HP, the amount of HP that gets regenerated, and the speed of regeneration. Each one of these three things is developed in four steps, and each step is more expensive than the last. You will have to produce more than thousand items to unlock the last step!

Science Phase II will add more dangerous monsters, and stronger weapons to fight them off. It’s our next priority. We aren’t 100% sure what we’re going to work on after Science Phase II, but here are our priorities:

1. Steam Workshop support. An easier way to add all the great mods that people have been developing.
   
2. Stockpile Management. No more virtual, infinite stockpile that items get magically teleported into from every crate in the map. Items will actually have to be brought from the wheat farmers to the grinders, from the grinders to the bakers, from the bakers to the technologists, and from the technologists to the scientists. Combined with Science Phase I and II, this will dramatically increase the depth of Colony Survival.
   
3. Mac Port. Because there’s a big group of people that want to play Colony Survival, but can’t.

At the moment, stairs and doors are not a high priority. They require a significant amount of development time to add properly, but don’t add hours of gameplay. The priorities above do add hours of gameplay, so we’re focusing on these first.


Both screenshots are from the Meta-Eco server. It will go public again when 0.3.0 is pushed to the main branch next week!

New content in 0.3.0:

• Three new jobs: tailor, technologist and scientist
  
• Seven new items: linen, clothing, multiple carpet blocks, multiple science bags
  
• Twelve things to research
  
• Countless mods that require the increased mod support available in 0.3.0!

Last but not least, there are three things we’d like to promote here.

Many mods have already been published on the Steam Forum, including helpful guides on how to use them. You can find them here!


New items in Xweert's unreleased mod

We’re closely working together with the people behind the 24/7 Colony Empire server. It’s a tightly moderated community server with a large team of admins, architects and modders, all working together to ensure everyone has a great time playing Colony Survival. Visit their website Colony Empire and join their Discord to get involved!


Finally, you’re all welcome in our own official Discord server! Thanks for reading this and we’d love to meet you on Discord!

In the last couple of weeks, Colony Survival 0.3.0 has been open to the public on a separate beta branch. Multiple jobs, new blocks, new systems and a whole lot of mod support have been added to 0.3.0. Modders have mostly been working on 0.3.0. The main branch hasn’t seen any updates though. If the upcoming solar eclipse doesn’t destroy western civilization, we’re pretty certain we can update the main branch to 0.3.0 next week!

This update will add lots of new content to Colony Survival and will dramatically increase the amount of hours you need to play the game to discover all content. In the past, producing bread & arrows and unlocking flax described nearly all of the default gameplay. Many players decided to do lots of other things in Colony Survival: build huge cities and castles, set up awesome servers with great communities, develop innovative mods, etcetera. But others complained that they had seen most of the content after a couple of hours (hi RockPaperShotgun!). And they certainly weren’t wrong!


The Science Menu. Work in Progress.

The Science Update will add new goals to Colony Survival that will take plenty of hours to complete and it’ll stimulate players to expand their colony. It adds a lot more depth and complexity to the game. In Phase I, which will be released next Friday, we add at least twelve things that can be researched. You can increase your total HP, the amount of HP that gets regenerated, and the speed of regeneration. Each one of these three things is developed in four steps, and each step is more expensive than the last. You will have to produce more than thousand items to unlock the last step!

Science Phase II will add more dangerous monsters, and stronger weapons to fight them off. It’s our next priority. We aren’t 100% sure what we’re going to work on after Science Phase II, but here are our priorities:

1. Steam Workshop support. An easier way to add all the great mods that people have been developing.
   
2. Stockpile Management. No more virtual, infinite stockpile that items get magically teleported into from every crate in the map. Items will actually have to be brought from the wheat farmers to the grinders, from the grinders to the bakers, from the bakers to the technologists, and from the technologists to the scientists. Combined with Science Phase I and II, this will dramatically increase the depth of Colony Survival.
   
3. Mac Port. Because there’s a big group of people that want to play Colony Survival, but can’t.

At the moment, stairs and doors are not a high priority. They require a significant amount of development time to add properly, but don’t add hours of gameplay. The priorities above do add hours of gameplay, so we’re focusing on these first.


Both screenshots are from the Meta-Eco server. It will go public again when 0.3.0 is pushed to the main branch next week!

New content in 0.3.0:

• Three new jobs: tailor, technologist and scientist
  
• Seven new items: linen, clothing, multiple carpet blocks, multiple science bags
  
• Twelve things to research
  
• Countless mods that require the increased mod support available in 0.3.0!

Last but not least, there are three things we’d like to promote here.

Many mods have already been published on the Steam Forum, including helpful guides on how to use them. You can find them here!


New items in Xweert's unreleased mod

We’re closely working together with the people behind the 24/7 Colony Empire server. It’s a tightly moderated community server with a large team of admins, architects and modders, all working together to ensure everyone has a great time playing Colony Survival. Visit their website Colony Empire and join their Discord to get involved!


Finally, you’re all welcome in our own official Discord server! Thanks for reading this and we’d love to meet you on Discord!