It’s time for us to report on our development progress since our last devlog.

If you’re watching our streams on Twitch, you might be familiar with some of these features. Nevertheless, we hope this devlog will give a better picture of the game’s current state.


We have implemented foundations into the building system. They come in various shapes. In the future, the system will be improved to allow building on those foundations.




Pop-up notifications have been added to many options in Main Menu and in tablet UI, with one of the most important ones being an additional window “Do you want to leave the game?” requiring final confirmation from the player. Moreover, with new features and new panels added to tablet UI, interface’s overall design has been polished to make sure it’s consistent across all panels. Main Menu has been rearranged and modified according to players and our testing team’s feedback to make it easier to navigate and more legible.




Information about missions and tutorials has been moved to the Tips panel for easier access. Tips panel will now feature tips along with your current tasks.


Arrows have been added to ghosts of various objects in building mode to indicate where the plug is and to help players place those objects with that in mind.



Tools upgrading system and plant models have been improved. We also continue polishing astronaut’s animations. A sorting mechanic has been added to better organize the contents of your inventory.



Special Tech Boards have been included in the game. They are spread all around Mars and give a boost to your Tech Tree abilities. Highlighting mechanic has been added to make it easier to locate them when you get close enough. After finding Tech Board and interacting with it, its data is automatically downloaded to Tablet, where you can find information about Tech Tree points you’re earned.




It’s now possible to build a cabinet inside the buildings. Various items can be safely put there. This cabinet’s purpose is to give you some place for storing your items. While it will definitely help with keeping your base tidy, you have to remember that it won’t prevent your food from spoiling.




Greenhouse Tutorial has made it back to the game and domes now come with soil management mechanic. It’s possible to build a composter which will allow you to make use of any leftover materials to improve the quality of your crops.




New music track has been added to let you know when your buildings have been damaged and require immediate attention. What’s more, flickering red lights inside the damaged buildings will alert you about the danger.



We are now working on improving tutorials. Electricity system tutorial in particular will require an overhaul to introduce players to functionality of circuit breakers.


Lastly, we have added the long awaited anti-meteor rocket launcher! If you’re fed up with sleeping through meteor storms and you don’t like the idea of fixing your base afterwards, this rocket launcher allows you to shoot down threatening meteors before they hit your home.




That would be all we have to show you for today. However, we are preparing a few big announcements for you. In just a few more hours, on October 20th at 2 PM PST our CEO will participate in the Mars Society Convention with a presentation about Occupy Mars development. Check out the event’s website if you’re looking forward to Occupy Mars: The Game, keep your eyes on our social media profiles and News tab here on Steam!

https://www.marssociety.org



Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

The European Rover Challenge is an international space & robotics event combining competition of Martian rovers with scientific and technological shows. The main part of the project is an international robotics competition, where academic teams from around the world present their mobile robot designs, competing in competitions based on real ESA and NASA missions. The competition takes place on the world’s largest artificial Martian track, that is directly derived from the surface of the Red Planet.



As we are very passionate about space & science, we were helping to organize this event for the last 4 years. Previously we were co-organizing the digital version of the competition called "Rover Mechanic Challenge" in special tournament version of our game Rover Mechanic Simulator.

This year we are an Official Partner and one of the Reward Sponsors of the event! On this occasion we are doing a special 3 Day Stream on Steam, Twitch and Youtube where we will play Occupy Mars Beta, and show highlights from ERC and interesting videos from the game.



Watch the ERC Streams here: https://roverchallenge.eu/en/erc2022-livestream/


- Official ERC Stream Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68MYYI5Qi30
- Official ERC Stream Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY9Fi0Ng99g
- Official ERC Stream Day 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAtWppoPWUw
- ERC + Occupy Mars 3 DayStream Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/pyramid_games
- ERC + Occupy Mars 3 DayStream YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRjEcOEXZLc

Occupy Mars Early Access is coming soon and over 2000 players are already playing the Beta helping us improve it before official release (more keys were sent today). If you didn't receive your beta yet but you are excited about Mars Rovers as much as we are then remember that you can play our previous game Rover Mechanic Simulator right now:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/864680/Rover_Mechanic_Simulator/

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

Big thank you to the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development for their assistance and support and for providing us a chance to show Occupy Mars: The Game at this great gaming event!



Our booth had a lot of visitors, who gave us a lot of valuable feedback. Of course, we receive plenty of feedback on a daily basis from our Beta playtesters and we’re very grateful for that. However, during Gamescom, we could meet our players live and see all their reactions and feelings that accompanied them during their playthrough. What we learned will help us greatly to prepare the game for its Early Access release.

Gamescom was also – or above all – a meeting for hundreds of gamedev companies. We’ve met a lot of great people and established contact with companies from various countries. Who knows? Maybe some of these friendships will create opportunities for Occupy Mars: The Game to reach even more people in the near future!

Our team members made sure to bring everything they’ve experienced back to Poland. What is left to apply all this experience to practice!



Gamescom is not everything we have to tell you about, though!


Let us start with the information that more people who registered for Beta have received access to the playtest version of the game! If you’re one of those people, an email should arrive at the email address associated with your Steam account and you should be able to access the game through your Steam library.

There are various ways to send us your feedback:
A separate Sub-Forum on Steam called Beta Discussions was created for those who have access: LINK
After playing please also remember to fill out our Beta Survey: LINK
If you’d like to hang out with other players outside of Steam forums, we have dedicated channels on our Discord server as well: LINK



Secondly, Beta Patch v0.87.2 is now LIVE!
A lot of fixes come with this patch. You can find the full changelog below.


Features:
- Added Storage Case - now you can build it inside your base for additional storage space
- Added Radio - It's one part of a two-part feature. Now you are able to add music into OccupyMars_Data\StreamingAssets\Music and play it instead of default music. Later we will add a possibility to place the radio inside your base, and play music at some distance from it.
- Added additional loot inside Abandoned Bases
- Reworked panels in Hangar
- Added minable rocks in Olympus Caves
- Added new animations to sleeping.
- Added emergency lights while your base building has low durability
- Added the possibility to hold all items in hands.
- Improved plants models

Bugfixes:
- explosions on Spotty robot and Jetpack now work properly
- explosions now properly deal damage to abandoned buildings
- Small Solar Panels now should properly rotate towards the sun.
- fixed text information while refilling suit in well
- fixed bugs related to the panel in Hangar
- rover drill now should be properly unlocked using techtree
- add support for more animations (mainly doors, drawers, and Irises)
- fixed problem with main menu panels not showing after exiting tutorials
- fixed problem with sleeping hours showing more than 24 hours.
- fixed problem when sometimes tourist mode not having all items
- fixed problem when sometimes unplugging cable was blocked
- fixed problems with finishing electricity, greenhouse, and tools tutorials
- fixed problems with color selection in the main menu profile section
- a fixed problem that occurs while combining items with 0 durability
- fixed problem with spamming achievements
- fixed problem with opening crates and waste tank
- fixed problems with main menu navigation using the gamepad
- fixed problems with destroyed buildings without texture
- changed visibility of withering plants
- fixed problem with a spamming log while enabling
- fixed inability to pick up and move plants by hand
- fixed player movement speed while crouching
- You will no longer need to crouch to enter airlocks in some destroyed bases
- fixed problem with unnaturally head rotation while pressing the middle mouse button
- fixed stucking items in the air while taking them out from Hotbar
- changed spectral detector lvl2/lvl3 range
- fixed UI problems in UI save/load panel
- fixed tools upgrading
- fixed holes in Olympus Mount
- fixed low resolution icon textures on low settings
- fixed problem with rover driving normally on low battery



We’re having a stream at 5 PM CEST today on our Twitch channel. If you haven’t received access to the Beta version yet and you’d like to see the current state of the game, feel invited to join us! Our team members Lukas and Conrad can’t wait to tell you all about their time at Gamescom, but of course, there will be plenty of time for Mars exploration as well!




As the end note, we’d like to show you what our team has been working on – aside from fixes prepared for Beta Patch v0.87 of course. :) New vehicles! These aren’t features present in the current Beta version, but they’re likely to appear at a later time.





Do you like them? It’s an interesting alternative to usual trips in a Heavy Rover, but you also have to keep in mind that neither Quad nor Truck are as well equipped for emergencies. No sleeping through a sudden sandstorm if it hits you on the way home. ;)

We hope you’ll be able to join us – be it on Beta forums or during our stream. We’re looking forward to our meeting!

We know it’s a long ride, but we truly believe that Occupy Mars: The Game is on a good way to its Early Access release and we can’t wait to arrive at the finish line.



Stay tuned for upcoming updates!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

Today is the last day of the Survival Festival. Now that more players have tried out Occupy Mars: Beta and Prologue, let’s talk about development progress of the upcoming Early Access release! We’d like to show you a few things we’ve been working on.

We mentioned a few times in the past that we were reworking the UI, adding new interfaces for many new features that weren’t in the game before and polishing the existing ones. In the previous devlog and during our streams, you could see the new Sleeping panel. This time, we’d like to show you:





And last but not least, menu of one of the more complex features in the game…


Now, you have even more options to adjust the game to your needs! To be more specific, there are many more options visible in the Graphics section right off the bat. Some of those could be accessed in the main Quality tab, but now they are split into more visible individual settings.

Here is what you’ll be able to set:



Let us tell you about the "Always render environment" option. Terrain rendering allows you to decide whether you’d like to have the terrain visible from inside your buildings or not. It mostly affects the buildings with windows – if the option is checked, you will see the view outside your window. If the option is not checked, scenery outside will be replaced with simulation – not necessarily accurate to your surroundings, but believable enough to not bother you much.

It’s a very useful feature optimization-wise as it allows you to reduce GPU’s usage and make the game run smoothly if you experience lag in the game. Losing that nice view from your window is a minor loss in comparison. :)

There were also some issues related to saving on specific devices – we have changed the way the game is saved and hopefully, that will solve those issues.

Time (and testing) will tell!

We continuously improve existing game mechanics. The controls of Seed Tool and the Air Pressure Tool have been slightly changed. After taking out the tool, you can now press Up and Down arrow keys to choose the magazine you want. Menu to the right gives you an overview of seeds you have.



We’ve been further improving mechanic of drilling and rock mining. Rock analysis with the upgraded Spectral Detector on 2nd and 3rd level has also been vastly improved.



We have also made changes to temperatures and adjusted damage player receives due to low temperature. In the past, player was receiving set amount of damage throughout time frame of 5 PM and 6 AM. Now, damage received is proportional to temperature. Time no longer matters. At -40 Celsius degree player starts receiving damage. The lower the temperature (usually at night but not necessarily), the higher the damage.

Another useful feature is a list that you can keep on your screen to help you keep track of materials you need for building. All you need to do is to go to Tablet menu, choose a building from a list of building and click on in with right mouse button. A list will appear to your left which will remain there even after leaving the tablet menu.



Alongside all of this, we have made some quality of life improvements – not as spectacular, minor additions and some readjustments, but with everything else, they should improve the gameplay experience. Mouse sensitivity has been corrected, as well as camera movement during sleeping animation. Full controller support has been included in the Main Menu. Moreover, during tutorial missions, you can view the gamepad controls. When choosing your landing location on Mars globe, you can manually rotate the globe.



We’re working on a certain feature which will allow you to listen to your own music in-game – a radio! It’s still a work in progress and a subject to change, but here is overview of how it works for now:

Before launching the game, just add your favourite songs to an appropriate folder. They will all appear in a menu on the Tablet, from where you can arrange them into playlists.



Once you’re done, all that’s left is to build a radio and place it in your preferred place. Music will play automatically whenever you’re in the radio’s range and if you’d like to stop the music, just click on the radio. You can destroy it and thus move it to your Inventory if you’d like to change its location later. All your playlists are saved, so you can come back to them anytime.



All these improvements are developed alongside fixes for the Beta version. Even more content is coming as a lot of these new features are work in progress. We have yet to tell you about the rocket launcher, but that’s a story for another devlog as we’re still working on it. :)

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

Occupy Mars: The Game will be featured among many other wonderful survival games. If you’re a fan of survival games, this is not an event to miss!

Occupy Mars: The Game is a highly technical, open-world sandbox game set on Mars. Your task is to build and upgrade your base, discover new regions, conduct mining operations, retrieve water, generate oxygen, grow crops, and fix broken parts – all in order to survive.

A free Prologue version – Occupy Mars: Prologue (2020) – is currently available on Steam, while the full Occupy Mars: The Game is currently undergoing Beta Playtests while we're preparing the game for its Early Access release.


Next batch of Beta keys will be sent out to players in the next couple of hours! Make sure to take a look at your email inbox if you signed up for the Beta! :)

Moreover, we’re working on a new devlog which will give you a fresh insight into the current state of the game. We hope to have it ready for you in the next few days!

Stay tuned and see you soon!
Occupy Mars Team

We have a bunch of good news for You. After releasing more than a thousand of keys almost two weeks ago and collecting feedback from hundreds of players we are moving to the next stage of beta tests.


We have fixed most urgent bugs and added several features players wanted to the beta version.
There are changes that made it to this version.

New features:
- Added possibility of resetting rover. The base keybind is “R”, you can change it in the controls settings.
- Added possibility to pin on UI resources needed for building, all you need to do is right-click on the building in the Building menu. And required resources should show on the right of the screen.
- Added possibility to unlock Sabatier Reactor using techtree.
- Added new screens after finishing tutorials, so the player is able to choose next tutorial without going back to the main menu.
- Added the possibility of drinking alcohol (since you can't create it on your own in beta we left some for you in the rover while starting new game).

Bug Fixes:
- fixed some problems that were blocking the possibility of saving the game
- rover now should properly take damage
- fixed problem with unlocking new rover crane ending
- fixed problem with disappearing transformer upgrade sockets
- fixed problem (at least most of it) of rover losing power
- fixed problem with invisible pickable items in player hands.
- fixed problems with some building sounds playing regardless of distance to the player
- flashlight now won’t turn off while managing building fuses
- boxes in destroyed bases should now properly open
- fixed problems with loading bigger rocks
- fixed problem with bug reporting tool (but it needs also web configuration update so it may take several extra hours)
- fixed possible problem with crashes on some setups.


With new features and many bugs fixed - we're releasing game to more beta testers. A few hundreds more keys has just been sent to randomly chosen players who had signed to beta tests before. We hope you you'll enyoy the game and we're waiting for your feedback.


A separate Sub-Forum on Steam called Beta Discussions was created for those who have access: LINK.
After playing please also remember to fill our Beta Survey: LINK after playing the Beta.

If you’d like to hang out with other players outside of Steam forums, we have dedicated channels on our Discord server!



Stay tuned for upcoming updates!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

It's good time to share first thoughts about current stage of beta tests with you. 72 hours of testing are behind us. We've released more than a thousand keys. We've received tons of feedback, reports and suggestions. We got very positive reviews about gameplay.


Last Thursday we launched our every Thursday stream with special surprise for regular viewers. We shared some thoughts about beta and feedback. Our regular and most active viewers have been rewarded with additional keys to the beta version.


To keep track of all your feedback we have created a separate Sub-Forum on Steam called Beta Discussions: LINK where it will be easier to keep track of the beta related issues.
Please also remember to fill our Survey: LINK after playing the Beta.
You can ask our devs on the discord channel too.


Please remember that participating in beta tests means that you accept the NDA. Please do not share footage, screens or streams from beta version.


We're processing the feedback and preparing hotfixes for most urgent problems. When we prepare new version with changes, we 'll release it for betatesters. We'll also invite more people for testing.

Stay tuned for future announcements and devlogs!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

As some of you may know, we’ve been busy with another game of ours that has just been released, Dinosaur Fossil Hunter, but that doesn’t mean development of Occupy Mars: The Game has stopped! Quite the opposite, we have a lot to talk about, so let’s get on with it!



Our dev team cooperates with a team of artists to further improve game UI and Tablet interfaces so it’s both intuitive to navigate and true to Occupy Mars technical spirit. Some of the screens we’re working on are:

• Sleep Panel
  
• Building / Blueprints menu
  
• New Map (Radar)
  
• Quest Panel
  
• Tech Tree Panel
  
• Character Creation Screen

Sleep Panel in particular went through some big changes and while it can still go through some changes, we’d like to show you its current look! Now you’ll be able to set the time with up/down arrows or use a slider to set the time even more accurately. You’ll no longer have to set time to full hours. Want to take a 30 minute nap? No problem! :)



The map you can access through the tablet menu is now also available in the rover, so during the long journeys, you won’t have to move away from rover controls in order to check your current location! Moreover, the map will allow you to control the electricity flow in your base. Other than that, you can also remotely activate and deactivate switches to control the flow of other substances, such as water in pump station.




We have also made some changes to the notification system. First of all, you’ll no longer have to read the same message over and over again every time you pick up a potato or routinely perform some other actions. Similar notifications will be grouped together to avoid spam. We also made some fixes to weather notifications.



Graphics of Occupy Mars: The Game keep getting better day by day! Of course, the most major changes are already past us – you don’t need to worry. :) What we’ve decided to work on further is lightning and postprocessing. Thanks to recent improvements, scenes look much more realistic, which you might have already seen on some of our more recent screenshots. Here is a little comparison:



To add more life to the game, we also want to make use of motion capture and include more animations. Our astronaut will have different animations while sleeping, sitting and much more!

Some tweaks were made to the rover lights and player’s flashlight. We noticed that at their previous state, lights were barely able to provide enough light for the player. Flashlight is now positioned a little bit differently and its light is much more intense, while rover lights should give you a good enough light to see the rover’s closest surroundings.

Weather effects have also been improved to blend in nicely with the current game’s graphics and lighting. New weather effect Solar Storm has been added which is even more vivid and beautiful with the new lighting system.





World of Occupy Mars: The Game keeps expanding and there are even more locations to explore!

Besides lava tubes you already know about, caves can be found at random places. You’ll be able to find items in some of them and they can also serve as a good hiding spot when weather unexpectedly worsens.



There are also more abandoned bases scattered throughout Mars. Contrary to the other ones, these will look differently and hide very useful equipment such as parts necessary for building a jetpack or your robot companion Spotty.







We are also working on numerous additional mechanics.

You’ll be able to charge up your rover in the hangar with the use of a special plug in the hangar.

Speaking of remote control, we have finished implementing mechanics related to antenna and their radio range – if you’re within the antenna's reach, you’ll be able to remotely control various devices.

We’re polishing the radiation mechanic.

Before, if your suit wasn’t charged and you found yourself in the radiation area, radiation level would increase and after passing a certain value, you would receive damage. It would stop only after you hid in a safe place and the radiation level decreased.

Now, this mechanic is closely connected to the aforementioned Solar Storm. If you enter the radiation area, you receive damage at once, and it will only cease after leaving the affected area. There are also specific areas where you can expect a high radiation level – for example, areas with uranium rocks nearby.

As for a brand new mechanic, there will also be a helpful system which will highlight the interactable objects in the area.



Our team is now working on a rocket launcher mechanic, which will allow you to shoot down meteors endangering you and your hub. This is a work in progress and we hope to tell you more about it in the future, as well as about many other things we have in store. :)



As the end note, we’d like to tell you about the status of the Beta and hopefully clear up some confusion that has arisen recently.

So far only small numbers of people got access to the beta since we wanted to iron-out some issues and also finish the above-mentioned content updates before we let more people in. The people who played so far also had an NDA to avoid spoiling the unfinished parts :)

Now the time has come and in the next few days we are going to let a few thousand more people in. This is an important milestone in preparation for the Early Access Release. To keep track of all your feedback we have also created a separate Sub-Forum on Steam called Beta Discussions where it will be easier to keep track of the beta related issues. Please also remember to fill our survey after playing the Beta.

Stay tuned for future announcements and devlogs!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

It's the last day of Steam SimFest Hobby Edition 2022! We’re celebrating simulation games – especially the ones that allow us to try new things and professions we wouldn’t dream of picking up otherwise.

For that reason, Occupy Mars: The Game is a part of this wonderful event! Here, you can start your life on the Red Planet and feel as if you were taking place in Mars colonization mission!



Today, we're restreaming the stream from 30 March. If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch it on the game’s Steam page!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team

As you know, it’s already past 20 March, which was our initial deadline for playtests registration.

We have sent invitations to first aspiring astronauts, who will start their adventure on Mars. ✉️

If you haven’t received an email, it means you weren’t chosen… yet. For now, we have invited a small group of players, but we want to invite more and more Martians over time. To make sure the process is clear, we’ll keep you updated via status updates like this one.

Important reminder for our playtesters: remember to fill out BETA SURVEY after finishing your playthrough and remember that you're not yet allowed to share any footage from the first Beta version.



With that, Request Access has been disabled – we hope that with that extra time between initial deadline and this announcement, all of you who want to participate have managed to sign up. 🙂 We’ve received a lot of applications and we thank you for such a big interest in the game!

If you’d like to hang out with other players outside of Steam forums, we have dedicated servers on our Discord channel!



Stay tuned for upcoming updates!

Best Regards,
Occupy Mars Team