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Timberborn is now in an open alpha. We are hoping to gather as much feedback as possible to direct the game's future development. There are two ways to download the alpha builds: 1. To play on Steam Fill out this form to request a key. Once you get the key, go to your Steam client and click Games > Activate a Product on Steam. The keys will expire when the alpha ends. 2. To play on Discord Join our Discord server at https://mechanistry.com/discord. For the duration of the alpha you can download the game directly in the Discord client.

The last few weeks have seen numerous updates to the game, here's a summary: New features and balancing: New, level 3 Monument - Flame of Progress! 🔥 Multiple buildings have been redesigned to match the new visual style of the game. Carpenter now requires power - but - Water wheel and basic shafts are now unlocked by default, without having to research them. Inventor's Hut no longer consumes paper. You can now invert mouse wheel direction in Settings. MMB now works similarly to dragging a map on a smartphone. You can restore the previous behavior in Settings. Camera moves faster if you hold Shift while panning or rotating. You can now swap RMB and MMB bindings in Settings. Edge scrolling - Once enabled in settings, you can move camera by touching an edge of your screen with a cursor. Added custom mouse cursors for panning / dragging camera. Carrot fields yield more carrots. Grill produces Grilled Potatoes more efficiently. Bakery produces fewer Breads per bag of wheat. Small warehouse's capacity has been increased from 150 to 200. Overall it is now easier to feed your beavers in the early stages of the game but satisfying Nutrition III has become harder. Drinking water in watering places is now faster - beavers can satisfy 100% thirst in one sitting. Previously, if a beaver got thirsty during working hours, he went to a watering place but returned to work immediately after drinking a minimal amount of water. Bug fixes: We have fixed a bug causing beavers to get stuck when trying to find a path to hard-to-reach areas. The game now correctly reports the average well-being required to unlock a race as well as your progress in reaching the goal. Multiple smaller issues. All of the above was done based on your feedback - thank you! As a reminder, you can now play Timberborn alpha on Steam and Discord.

You haven’t heard from us in a while but we have plenty of exciting announcements! 1. New build is now live! 2. Game name! The game finally has an official name: Timberborn. 3. Steam! You can now find us on Steam and add to your wishlist: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090/Timberborn/ 4. Teaser! Steam is also where you can watch our alpha teaser! 5. Forums! We have completely revamped our forums. 6. Newsletter! Join our newsletter at https://mechanistry.com/ The build brings a number of changes: 1. Style! We have redesigned a big part of the graphics. Most buildings now have new models and the rest will be replaced in the nearest future. Also, buildings are now surrounded by a narrow gap which allows beavers to navigate more freely around the settlement. 2. Audio! We have added the first batch of sounds. We will be adding more in subsequent updates. 3. Paths! You can now build paths which are faster to walk on than dirt... and they make your settlement look way cooler! 4. Water! Beavers now have a new need: thirst. And with it come three new buildings! 5. Deletion tool! You can now mass bulldoze buildings instead of deleting them one by one. 6. Improved tree cutting tool! One of the top requested features, it allows you to mark trees for cutting depending on their growth stage. That way you can spare those saplings until they grow and yield more wood. Below is a preview of the new graphics (still a work in progress):

This has been addressed in the update on October 18. The tree cutting tool has been revamped, allowing you to select trees depending on their growth stage.

As you can imagine we would like to build a map editor in the future. But at this point the game evolves so fast, that it does not make sense to create one. That however doesn't mean you cannot create your own maps. While this is semi-official, the map format is text-based and the game picks up custom maps if you place them in the right folder. As a starting point, download the default map: Beaverville 128x128.csv I suggest you rename it to something like "My map.csv", then place it in the Maps directory besides the savegames. The Maps directory probably does not exist, so you have to create it. On Windows it should be something like this: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\LocalLow\Mechanistry\Timberborn\Maps\My map.csv Whereas on macOS it should go here: ~/Library/Application Support/Mechanistry/Timberborn/Maps/My map.csv Once you place the map in the correct directory, open the game and click "New game". You should see "[Custom] My map" on the list. Map structure The next step is to open the map file in a text editor of your choice. The high-level structure of the file goes like this: map width,map height start x,start y water start x,water start y heightmap... desertmap... forestmap... Map size This is just two numbers separated by a comma. Both dimensions must be multiples of 32, the map can be rectangular. Starting point Again, this is just two coordinates. Water starting point Also just two coordinates, marking the beginning of a river. Remember! Water can flow only down-slope. Height map This is a grid of MapWidth + 1 x MapHeight + 1 numbers. Each cell represents a tile vertex. There are some restrictions. Mainly, you cannot go above level 5, and the game only supports slopes that are 1 or 2 levels tall. Also, not all slope shapes are supported. If you create a height map that the game does not support, an error will be logged in Player.log. Desert map Similar to the Height map. Deserts are the inaccessible, unbuildable areas of the map. A 0 means no desert, a 1 means desert. Forest map This one is slightly different. It's size is equal MapWidth x MapHeight (notice no +1). Each cell represents a tile. 0 means no tree, a 1 means tree. When the game is first started, a 1 is translated into a tree at a random growth stage. Errors The game crashes if you try to load a map which does not follow the above format or you do something that is not supported. If that happens, you should get a fairly sensible message in Player.log. Important! Note that the current map format is highly experimental. The game keeps evolving and we constantly change the format of a map file. Please treat it as such - you are very much encouraged to tinker with the maps but it's probably too early to create your own editor or map generator.

What happens in a Discord channel stays in a Discord channel. Mingle with the dev team and other players by joining our Discord server at https://mechanistry.com/discord.

As of August 2019, the only way to prioritize which buildings are finished first, is to place them in the desired order (in other words, beavers work on buildings in the same order that you placed them). You can also pause a building and resume its construction at a later point. Many of you asked for a more convenient tool to manage priorities. The purpose of thread is to acknowledge the problem and discuss smart ideas how such a tool could work.

Many of you noticed that a tree yields a different amount of wood depending on its growth stage. A seedling yields nothing A sapling yields 1x wood A fully grown tree yields 2x wood However, the tree cutting tool marks all trees indiscriminately. That makes little sense, because you effectively end up cutting trees that do not produce any resources, before they get a chance to grow into a mature tree. The only way to prevent that is hand pick fully grown trees. There is definitely room to improve how the tree cutting tool works (or the whole tree growth and cutting mechanic). Ideas are welcome.

It's one of the most requested features, so this is just to let you know that we're aware of the problem. In the current version of the game, if you delete a warehouse, you lose all of its contents. A typical solution would be to add a button for emptying storages / moving all resources to other warehouses before they are demolished.

That is something that many people brought up on Discord. The way crops work right now has a number of problems: They only grow when someone's working on the field. If there are more workers, or they work longer hours, the crops grow faster. It makes no sense. The size of the field is a fixed 5x5 square. We plan to allow placing crops of any shape, within some reasonable limits. That way you could fit them in some of those tight spots along hillsides and rivers. There is really nothing surprising about how they work. We discussed internally some ways to spice it up, for example winter, droughts or pests. Any ideas how to improve how crops work are welcome. We do not want to overcomplicate it but it is nevertheless one of the core mechanics, so a little bit more depth would not hurt.

This is to give you a glimpse into how the game evolved in its early stages. Below is a screenshot from August 2018. That was when we implemented the very basics such as camera controls, walking, tree cutting and such. And this is what it looked like in September with the first models by @Michał. This is also when beavers started to eat things and socialize at a campfire. The game was very bare-bones but already playable and so we started playtesting it with a group of friends. Their feedback drove the development of the game moving forward. December brought new terrain and trees. Not quite there yet but at that point we were still focusing on things such as keyboard/mouse controls or day and night cycle. Our beavers grew bored with the campfire and demanded a lido. That was also the first version with savegames (yes, those things must be coded by someone too, say thanks to @nsg). In February 2019 we revamped all of the 3D models and textures. The project started to take shape and finally turned into something resembling a game. @pmduda joined the team as a programmer-tester. 2981 code commits and some 400 bugs since the start of the project, that is where we were when we first showcased the game to a closed group of prealpha players on Discord. Thanks to their feedback the game evolved and matured into a more complete product in the following months. What happened next will be covered in a separate post.

When posting a bug: Make sure it has not been reported by somebody else. If it has, reply to the existing thread. If it might help to track down the problem, upload the most recent save game, Player.log and screenshots. If you know how to reproduce the error, please send us detailed steps. On Windows save games and log files are located here: C:\Users\[user]\AppData\LocalLow\Mechanistry\Timberborn On macOS save games are located here: ~/Library/Application Support/Mechanistry/Timberborn And log files are here: ~/Library/Logs/Mechanistry/Timberborn Note that the AppData (Windows) and Library (macOS) directories might be hidden in your file browser.