• Fixed the Everything All At Once achievement.

• Added a delay for the News Event choice buttons (for those fast clickers) and extended the timer to 25 seconds from 20 seconds.

Thanks for the quick responses to bugs and being patient while I get these issues resolved. I appreciate all of you! Please practice safe vibe clicking.

Hey hey! ːsteamhappyː

This update:

• Improved performance on bad internet

• Remade some levels - now the onboarding makes more sense (core mechanics explained + more tweaks based on feedback)

• Bugfixes (bats would kill you even when protected by light, and more)

Thanks for in-game feedback!!!! ːsteamhappyː

Have fun!

Halloween in H.Z.T. Now you can fully immerse yourself in the holiday atmosphere in our game!

New props are located throughout all levels and will add a festive atmosphere to the gameplay.

Happy Halloween!

I've just added a little thank-you gift for all the game's fans: a Halloween story, appropriately spooky and spicy for this time of year!

The Second Stall on the Right

Enjoy!

Hey everyone! We’ve just rolled out a new update with several improvements to make your experience smoother and more enjoyable. Here’s what’s new:

✅ New Delivery System!
You can now hire couriers to transport orders across the city.

✅ Red Pendant Lamp Fixed
Sockets are now working correctly and can be used without any issues.

✅ Better Worker Behaviour
Workers now behave properly during the skip-night event, making transitions more seamless.

✅ Improved Customer Animations
Customers now feel more alive and natural in the environment.

When I first came up with the idea for Dragon Fodder, it was supposed to be a small game – just a few months of development before moving on to something bigger. I wanted to finish a smaller project before committing to a larger one. I sat down and designed the core mechanics in a few days. The first prototype was done over a weekend. That was back in February. The plan was to have the game on Steam by June and release it by the end of the year.

What could go wrong, right?

Well, nothing really went wrong. On the contrary – everything went amazing. Within a few months I had a playable game, and it was fun. So much fun. And thanks to my wonderful wife, Daniela, the art was looking fantastic.

I was very strict about scope creep – I stuck to the design, swapped a few mechanics, added a few features here and there, but nothing out of proportion. The game was on the right track.

Then one night in June, around two in the morning, I finished a test run. “Oh, that was fun!” I completely forgot what I’d meant to test – I was just enjoying the gameplay. That’s when I realized it would be a shame to rush this. Let’s put in the work and properly polish it before going to Steam.

It took two more months. I worked on making the game juicy – nice clicky, thumpy, ringy sounds, tons of tiny details, and small animations. I wanted the game not just to be fun, but to feel good to play.

When September came, I put the Steam page up. Made a trailer, prepared a few social posts, and sent out some press emails. I didn’t really expect much – the game looked good, but without putting a playable version into people’s hands, there wasn’t much to show.

Then, things suddenly started moving much faster than I expected. People seemed genuinely interested just from a few social posts, and Dragon Fodder got more wishlists in a month than my previous game did in a year. I invited a few friends to test it, and the next morning I woke up to a message on Discord from 3 AM:
“F*ck! I wanted to go to sleep and instead I keep playing this!”

But most importantly, just two days after announcing the game, I got a reply to one of the press emails I’d sent out – the guys at Indieformer reached out with a publishing proposal.

Wait, what?

At that point I wasn’t even looking for a publisher. But Indieformer was just starting up their publishing branch, and they wanted Dragon Fodder to be the first game they released. “This wasn’t an offer I thought I’d be making so soon,” they said, “but sometimes a game hits you in the gut and you just have to ask.”

I didn’t think I’d get an offer like that so early, so I’m glad we were on the same page. We talked for a few weeks, and it just clicked. We came to an agreement – and Dragon Fodder officially got its publisher.

And here we are – two months since the initial announcement and about eight months of focused development. Things are moving fast, and there’s a lot in the oven getting nice and crispy golden. Next year is going to be big!

October Accomplishments

• Irene has SO MUCH to say about love. Now there's a separate tree for if she doesn't think you're sleeping together, but is concerned that you're co-dependent.

• Updated Steam page with GIFs and punchier text.

• Redid nighttime conversations so that all possible conversations are visible from the start. Also made them better.

• Made it so that Holmes always interrupts your nightmare, even if he's annoyed with you.

• Added Holmes' relationship to Watson to the status screen so that you can always see it.

• Fixed some contrast issues and redid Books screen again to fix different screen resolutions/have Holmes' current mood.

• Wrote and implemented talking to Holmes about love. \[Romantic]

• Wrote and implemented talking to Holmes about love. \[Platonic]

• Made it possible for Holmes to look to the side. No power is beyond me.

• Wrote and implemented Chemistry scene. \[Romantic]

• Wrote and implemented Chemistry scene. \[Platonic]

• Updated the 'Talk With Holmes' downtime option to be an informative check-in about the nature of his current mood instead of just a rather boring way of slowing increasing your relationship.

• Updated nagging Holmes about his health to be more worth doing, though still probably not actually a good idea.

• Added extra reward for publishing Study in Scarlet while Holmes is Playful.

• Added a bunch of extra rewards for doing chore-projects and book-projects while Holmes is in particular moods.

• Updated Save/Load system to be more readable.

• Setup the game to autosave whenever time passes

• Redid TimePasses to be a CustomUI, giving me more control.

• Completely changed how alerts work. They're better now. I promise.

• Updated the H&H presskit to be more useful to streamers.

• Composed streamer email.

• Procrastinated wildly about actually researching/sending the demo to relevant streamers. I have a bit of a mental block about it. If anyone would be willing to help let me know. I think I just need help getting started.

• Below is the new copy for the steam page--

Sherlock Holmes.

Genius detective. Middling flatmate. Delightful disaster of a man.

He is one of the world's most beloved literary characters.

He is now your problem.

You are John Watson.

You are Sherlock's roommate and best friend.

You are worried about him. You are right to be worried. Left to his own devices Sherlock will destroy himself with overwork and cocaine. Don't let him do that.

Did you ever have a virtual pet?

Was your virtual pet responsible for solving mysteries in the cruel streets of Victorian London? Did your virtual pet forget to eat? Did he stay up to 3AM doing chemistry experiments?

If so, you are well prepared for this challenge.

If you succeed your reward is a fulfilling relationship with a cool detective and his friends: an opera singer whose house you tried to burn down but for fake, a perfectly normal college professor, and your landlady.

Hearth & Holmes is a mystery-solving life simulation about the importance of self-care and relationships.

It contains scenes of graphic violins.

We went quiet for two months to refocus and playtest. The result: a clearer, tighter game plan and a much friendlier loop. We cut features that weren’t pulling their weight, doubled down on what makes Hostile Mars sing, and fixed a bunch of “why is that enemy under the ramp again?” moments. Here’s the fast tour:

We put a lot of hours into hands-on testing and hard calls. The goal was simple: sharpen the core loop so you spend less time wrestling systems and more time building, defending, and expanding. We now have a locked-in direction for finishing: regions as the backbone, waves that stress your choices, building that scales without becoming a chore, and UI that tells you what matters.

*gameplay footage includes some block-out quality models/textures and placeholder UI

Regions are where the identity of the game shows up: different environments, enemy mixes, and pacing.

• Each region has a core and a wave structure that asks for different playstyles.

• Terrain and enemy types push you toward different solutions (tight corridors vs. open fields, fast bots vs. heavy haulers).

• Progression is about adapting, not just grinding. Expect to re-think traps, routing, and your combat loadout per region.

Building big structures piece by piece is certainly possible, but there's nothing like dragging to place a whole lot at once!
We're reintroducing group placement with the reworked build mode, allowing you to build at scale much faster without compromising on the new features.

We had disabled the drone camera when using the build mode due to a number of issues, like on HUD icons not updating properly or lighting artefacts when transitioning in and out of the camera.
We've brought it back with all issues resolved, and new features like a quick warp to the player!

We've wanted base destruction to happen during waves in various contexts, but every single time this brought a lot of frustration when playing, as it meant manually rebuilding everything.
The new building system supports different build stages, now including ghosts!
When a building is destroyed, it turns into a hologram that can be repaired outside of the wave.
Repairs cost fewer resources than fully dismantling and rebuilding something.

Paint mode, build priority, decoration pieces, "new unlock" icon, selection group actions, tooltips...
Many other invisible improvements were made to ensure other systems work as expected with the reworked buildings, such as properly refunding resources when dismantling buildings, setting up pathfinding colliders, optimizations for loading buildings from a save, and more.

As some of you may remember, physics-simulated enemies means they regularly get themselves in a pickle: stuck upside down in some crevice or shoved under something.
This has been long overdue, and finally, bots now add icons on screen when they get stuck or when they are lost! This is a first version, and the icon movement can be a bit jarring still, but it makes a world of difference when figuring out why a wave is not completing!
It even helped find a number of issues while testing.

The Hauler, which was only a concept in a previous devlog, appeared in the full glory of 3D!
It'll receive some more love to make the movement smoother in a later pass.

We’ve got a stack of sketches and blockouts to share: machine silhouettes, prop passes for conveyors and power hubs, and layout studies for region cores. Expect a more grounded, industrial vibe - “built to last until it didn’t.”

• Polish First: tighten what’s already in. Cleaner build flows, clearer HUD cues, fewer edge-case headaches.

• Player Controller: lock in a robust feel for movement, camera, and responsiveness across combat and build mode.

• Player Weapons: iterate on recoil, feedback, and upgrade paths so every shot feels purposeful.

• Enemy Behaviors: smarter pathing and role clarity (rushers, disruptors, heavies) to make fights readable and satisfying.

• Tuning & QA: short, frequent playtest loops to sand off rough edges and keep the core loop snappy.

– The Hostile Mars Team

You asked for it. You waited. Now it’s here: OG PG3D Season.

We took the spirit of classic PG3D, tuned it up, and wired it into everything—maps, weapons and avatars.

Dangerous Roads, Ant’s Life, Coliseum, Lab… Sound familiar?

Jump back in, hit the beloved maps, and bring the glory back.

Hello Officers,

With the recent launch of Season 5, we have just completed a seasonal reset of all Player Ranks.

As part of this process, your current rank has been reset to 0. You can now embark on the new season and battle your way up the ranks once more!

If you earned a Commander License in Season 4, it has been automatically carried over, allowing you full access to the Commander (RTS) role in online matches.

Note: Please be aware that any EXP earned in the past week will not be immediately reflected in your profile following the reset. Our team are looking into restoring all missing EXP to your account in next week's update. This will only affect players who played from 23rd October - 1st November.

See you on the Frontline!