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There’s a rhythm to building on Mars: some months are all show, others are about wiring up what’s underneath. This month was about connecting those wires - automation, regions, and enemy escalation - so that every new area feels distinct and every system supports the next.

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Much of this month was spent improving the backbone of the game’s automation. Machines and containers now automatically handle their own input and output, letting resources flow between systems with minimal player intervention. This is a big step toward the fully functioning, player-driven supply chains that make large-scale defenses possible.

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Sometimes the only way to be sure your code works is to try to break it. That’s why we decided to drop over 18,000 items in one spot, just to see what would happen. (Sorry, Mars.)

The result? A mountain of loot taller than most of our buildings, and a framerate that was still holding strong. Thanks to the pickup radius logic, items were instantly collected when running through it, leaving behind what can only be described as the world’s first player-carved tunnel of loot (no sources were checked while making this claim. No sunlight seen since the start of this project).

If you’ve ever wanted to clean up a mess so efficiently that you accidentally invent Martian mining, we’ve got you covered.

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The world of Hostile Mars is no longer one giant base; it’s a network of distinct regions, each with unique play spaces, threats, and progression:

• Regional storage means every region manages its own resources, pushing players to adapt their strategies and logistics.

• Unique spawn points and enemy types are assigned per region, so every new territory introduces a different defensive and automation puzzle.

• Region-specific setups now include their own spawn points, power systems, and storage, providing a fresh tactical challenge in every zone.

Regions aren’t just cosmetic; they shape gameplay from the ground up, forcing creative solutions as players expand across Mars.

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After months of iteration, the enemy spawn system has been fully reworked to give players more control and to tie enemy escalation directly to automation and regional progression:

• Manual activation: In some cases, players choose which spawn points to activate and when. Each is tied to a unique bot type and activates escalating waves as you progress.

• Waves and upgrades: Each spawn point ramps up over five waves, maxing out at a fixed output. After reaching the cap, you can upgrade the spawn for higher-tier, more rewarding (and challenging) enemies.

• Strategic diversity: The order and types of spawn points you activate define the enemy composition and flow, so every region, and every playthrough, feels different.

• Automation integration: Some late-game spawn points require item input (manual or automated) to trigger waves, integrating your supply chains directly with the combat loop.

• Player pacing: You control the rate of escalation, letting you prep defenses and automation at your own pace, before choosing to trigger the next wave.

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While much of the core systems work continued in the background, Hugo focused on updating the Build Mode UI to support all the new design changes. The goal is to make building more intuitive, responsive, and visually clear for players.

This month’s work centered on prototyping new interface elements and logic, still using programmer art, so the team can rapidly test different layouts and user flows. This hands-on approach is helping us define the player experience we want before finalizing the look and feel.

Hugo’s efforts are setting the stage for a smoother, more satisfying Build Mode, where players can construct and manage complex bases with confidence and clarity.

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With these changes, Hostile Mars is moving away from the old “one super-base” mindset. Instead, each region is a modular puzzle: its own power grid, automation backbone, and unique set of threats.

• Terrain, verticality, choke points, and hazards now push players to constantly rethink their builds.

• Facilities and points of interest reward exploration and clever engineering.

This approach keeps expansion fresh and meaningful, and gives every step across Mars a sense of progress and discovery.

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• New Enemy: The Sawhead Niclas Halvarsson created an in-game version of the new “Sawhead” enemy, a bot built to cut into Mars.

  

• Concepts: Old Mars Bases
  Daysh provided concept art for possible mining operations, showing everything from large industrial complexes to smaller, more intimate sites.

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The team is working toward a world where every region, every wave, and every upgrade feels deliberate and satisfying.
The systems put in place now are all about giving players more agency, more variety, and more reasons to keep exploring.

Thanks for being with us through these foundational months.

- The Hostile Mars Team

Hey everyone!

Its been three full years since the Early Access release of Planet S! Thank you all for following us on this journey and for all the great feedback over the years! As this update marks an anniversary we packed more stuff into this patch than usually. We focused on some key quaility of life features and a much improved introduction and tutorial experience for new players.

We added a system that will automatically reload / synchronize the game state after a desync was detected in multiplayer matches. Recovering from a desync is pretty much as quick as loading a savegame. The recovery will trigger automatically and you also still get a savegame for when the desync happened.

This update also introduces a new section in the main menu with new ways to learn and get into the game. It allows you to easily play or replay the tutorial but we also added links to our official Steam guides and most importantly four dedicated scenario style tutorials to introduce new players to research, trade routes, diplomacy and combat mechanics. Lucas will guide you through these scenarios.

We also thought that it would be time to revisit some of the oldest buildings in Planet S to give them a some touch ups and to adjust their detail level to the newer buildings from Tier 3 & 4.

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+ Added an option to choose a skybox when creating a new game
+ Added more main menu background planets (including a very special planet for anyone who completed the DLC story)

~ Improved creative mode tooltips
~ Improved Share & Diplomacy related localizations
~ Faction flags are now also displayed and used throughout the diplomacy menu
~ The creative mode building menu will now only allow you to place a spaceport if the planet you are on wasn't colonized yet

* Fixed some spelling errors & improved various translations in the Japanese localization
* Fixed multiple potential crashes that could occure when a bot loses its last planet
* Fixed a bug that caused mods in multiplayer lobbies with more than 2 players to crash the game
* Fixed a bug that caused the active dialog to not be saved correctly
* Fixed a display issue related to spaceship speed
* Fixed an issue that didn't allow you to place buildings in the creative mode without having the resources available in your planets inventory
* Fixed a bug that caused spaceships to not be positioned correctly after loading a savegame in creative mode
* Fixed a UI issue in the diplomacy menu that caused the status between player 2 & 3 to not be displayed
*Fixed a bug that allowed players to enforce war between to other players as a consequence through the diplomacy menu
* Fixed the shield technology being always unlocked for all factions in the creative mode
* The planet limit (24) will now also be enforced for mods

We also took this opportiunity to remake our main shop page. We updated all screenshots and all headers & capsules to better represent the current look of the game especially after the changes in lighting.

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Also if you haven't noticed yet, the DLC for Planet S is currently on a 20% sale! So this is a good opportunity to go and check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3448720/Planet_S__A_new_Horizon/

That's it for this slightly larger than usual patch!

Enjoy!
Glimmerlight Games

Join the Delivery Dash and ensure all deliverers are swiftly served across various farms! Your goal is to maintain an efficient farm-to-city supply chain. Serve quickly, secure the city's fresh grocery deliveries, and keep urban tables laden with farm produce. Are you ready to drive the deliveries?

Ready to take on a thrilling challenge? To the Rescue Events offer an adrenaline-filled experience that will test your skills and endurance. Conquer five challenging levels and you'll be rewarded with an exclusive prize – but if you fail, you'll have to try again! Get ready for an unforgettable adventure – it's time to put your skills to the test!

The time of the event is based on the time on your PC, and the duration may vary slightly from the duration of this announcement.

Get ready to start your 30-day trial at Doll INC — the factory behind the creepy world of Doll Impostor. The job begins July 18th. Will you obey... or break the system? Add it to your wishlist now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3722760/DOLL_INC/

Hi all, kupa_ here, one of the developers for Robot Rumble 2! Firstly, a quick apology for missing last months Dev Diary. The team has been hard at work on some major new features and the month just ended up flying by! What has the team been working on, I (don't) hear you ask? Well read on and find out!

The Golden fires Crumble Tumble up in to the air with a powerful hit in the community BH4 Arena! Both bots built by @iforgottofocus in the RR2 Discord.

The Dreaded Scaling Bug Fix!

The Scaling Bug has plagued RR2 since its inception, causing all Shapes (Custom or otherwise) to be the wrong weights compared to real life. The name comes from the fact that scaling a Shape up or down would dramatically increase and decrease its weight compared to its volume. This also resulted in oddities with hollow shapes being the same – or in some cases a higher – weight when compared to their solid counterparts, effectively making them decorative at best, and a downgrade at worst. This has been one of the biggest issues with building accurate robots in RR2 due to the massive effect it has on the weight of a bot, leading to the current state of vastly overpowered bots running armour and motors that real-life robotics teams could only dream of.

Luckily this has all come to a close, and we are happy to announce that the Scaling Bug has in fact been vanquished! We have been testing intensively with our Discord Community (link at the bottom of this post if you'd like to join us) and have found that this has breathed a whole new lease of life in to the meta, promoting more realistic, specialised bots and boosting up the use of motors and materials that are designed to fit certain niches that just weren't present in the older builds of the game.

Hornet triumphantly lifts Fire-blaze in the community Riverside Arena! Both bots built by @meikagreycloak in the RR2 Discord.

There is of course the flip side of this change: all existing bots have changed weight, some more extremely than others. On average we have seen peoples heavyweight bots balloon to around 1.5x their current weight. In some extreme cases we have had a couple of bots in testing end up at three times their current weight! This means that some bots may be beyond saving without major redesigns or even full rebuilds. Due to this - and the list of planned new features and changes we are still working on - we are branding the next Major Update as a sort of soft relaunch of the game. More information on this will be in future Dev Diaries.

However, to mitigate part of that pain and to ensure everyone at least has something to play with day one of the new update, please allow me to introduce another treat coming in the next Major Update:

Stock Bot Teams Part 1!

We are happy to announce that we are bringing the first full set of Stock Robots in to the game! The current Stock Heavyweights were only meant to be a placeholder for a much more full roster of stock bots however this project fell by the wayside a little, luckily we have an amazing community who were more than happy to help out! For the next Major Update we are planning on introducing EIGHT stock teams, each with FIVE bots across multiple weightclasses to play around with for a grand total of 40 new stock bots. Each team will have its own theme and specialisation to ensure that each one stands out and requires different strategies to defeat in the arena. Above you can see the bots of our first team - Meta Menaces - featuring futuristic designs and deadly vertical spinners!

That's not all, because there is one last bit of news we are happy to reveal that will make sharing and playing with our thousands of community bots even easier than ever:

That's right, we are in the final stages of getting Workshop support up and running! Watch this space for more information in future Dev Diaries.

As always, we have also been working on improving performance and fixing bugs whilst working on the above and cannot wait to share more information on our plans next month! Once again a massive thank you to all who have supported the game and the team!

kupa_

Robot Rumble 2

https://discord.gg/RobotRumble2

Huge sparks as Spoingus and MK III KiloNova go weapon to weapon! Bot bots built by @squawkingchickenrobotics in the RR2 Discord.

This updates header features Skarred built by yours truly.

Get ready to start your 30-day trial at Doll INC — the factory behind the creepy world of Doll Impostor. The job begins July 18th. Will you obey... or break the system? Add it to your wishlist now!

Alpha Net 7.4.7

1 Fixed the bug of platform falling

2 Fixed the bug of rope digging

3 Fixed the bug of platform digging

4 Fixed the bug of rope and platform without digging special effects

5 Synchronize platform placement

6 Synchronize rope placement

7 Fixed the bug of player landing detection error

8 Fixed the bug of enemy landing detection error

9 Fixed the bug of land type cannot be placed

Alpha Net 7.4.6

1 Fixed the bug of repeated generation of plants on the client

2 The bug of picking up dropped items and the client being hit

3 Fixed the bug of plant harvesting without displaying special effects

4 Modified the bug of foreground buildings not being deleted uniformly

5 Modified the bug of crystals not being deleted uniformly

6 Modified the bug of mid-ground furniture not being deleted uniformly

Alpha Net 7.4.5

1 Added rocket special effects

2 Added Broodmother Spider venom special effects

3 Updated the save structure of plants

4 Set plants to be digged by pickaxes only in seed state

5 Fixed a bug where plants did not grow immediately

6 Fixed a bug where plant harvesting was not synchronized

Commanders, a quick update on the Closed Beta!

We finally have a build we’re ready to share with you and get your feedback. There’s just one stubborn issue left - a memory leak that we’re still trying to fix. While we’re working on it, we realized the wait is getting too long… so here’s the plan:

We’ll first invite a small group of testers to help us evaluate how much this bug affects gameplay. If it turns out to be manageable, we’ll open the Closed Beta to a wider group shortly after. So, Closed Beta is nearly here...

On another note, there will be no NDA. Testers will have a dedicated (hidden) category on our Discord, but you’ll be free to share your honest thoughts and talk about your experience with others.Thank you again for your patience.

We’ll see you in the void - very soon.