Dear Space Colony Managers,

A lot has been going on behind the scenes in the last few months, we’ve been working hard on console versions of the game, constantly improving it in many details and carefully fine-tuning proven features. At the end of this update post, there’s also a preview of new features that we plan to deliver with the next versions and DLCs in the first half of this year.

Ocean coloration

If the world is on the brink of a climate catastrophe, this is now also reflected in an unhealthy coloration of the oceans.

Land degradation

The reduction in fertility due to soil pollution and harmful environmental influences is visualized even more clearly by the change in soil texture.

What you can also see in this picture are piles of garbage that players can recycle to earn money. These will play a major role in another new game mode called Transformation. Here you are presented with a planet that is already built up with a civilization that is unfortunately already threatening to tip over into a climate catastrophe. You have to try to rebuild it in such a way that it lasts and climate change is stopped.

Moving instead of demolishing

You can now only demolish neighborhoods if you still have enough living space for the population in other parts of the city. This sharpens the perception that these are people and that their lives are something worth protecting. In inhabited districts, the demolition option is now called relocation and can only be triggered if you have built enough modern apartments for your residents to move to.

This will also be of great importance in the Transformation game mode, where you will find outdated and dilapidated slums with little space for people and high energy costs and pollution.

New button for complete campaign reset

To be able to start the campaign from scratch without having to create a new profile, there is now a new Reset Campaign button.

New space backgrounds

There are a number of new space backgrounds for the new Open Space game mode, as you start in a completely new, procedurally generated galaxy. Although this game mode will be released as DLC, the Competitive and Endless game modes will also benefit from this with fancy new start screens.

Improvements

• New more open look for the selection ring
• New info box style
• Prices for tech & research are now fixed instead of being dependent on trade on planets
• Population loss is no longer so blatant and fast when the mood is very bad
• City Center now only has living space for 50,000 colonists
• AI opponents no longer land right next to each other at the start of the game
• Xrathul: Damage to the ship also reduces resource hunger before departure
• In challenge mode, the ranking on the current challenge planet is now displayed instead of the eternally identical mission description.
• Automatic savegame name also shows last activated quest
• Back button no longer triggered by right mouse button
• No more icons in the pause screen
• Lousy performance of fireworks and GameOver explosions improved

New models of fishing boats optimized
We noticed the boats recently because we still had 3D models that really looked almost 10 years old, now they are adapted to the modern style of the game.

Gamepad control

• Right stick not only jumps to cities but also to events
• Show left shoulder button icon directly on research button if stock trading is not yet available
• Tab symbol is no longer displayed for Cities

Preview – Exentensions

For the Open Space DLC, we have been building extensions for some time that can be unlocked so that they are automatically added to every new city center. The whole thing works like a long-term meta-game with which you can improve the working conditions and technical progress in your colonies mission by mission.

Bugs fixed

• Trader landing animation hangs
• Help dialog hangs over the store menu in the campaign
• Streets are faded out too early
• Colony value is wrong directly after loading a savegame
• No more congress invitations after mission end
• Journal hotkey flicker

Update 1.15.1

The new game mechanic, which prevents the demolition and replacement of districts if there is not enough free living space for the population, has unfortunately led to problems, as population growth is often too fast.
We have therefore removed this aspect for the time being and will bring it back in a modified form as part of the next update.

Update 1.15.2

• Fixed “demolition” still being called “resettle” for districts
• Fixed city centers still having high tax revenue and resource consumption although population was halved with the update

Update 1.15.3

• Fixed unlimited tech licenses provided by supply capsules
• Fixed error in editor when trying to use functions without having the related high-tech constructs

Update 1.15.4

• Fixed missing ground texture for native camps
• Fixed icons hidden within fires and their smoke particles
• Fixed start animations of traders sometime not being shown
• Fixed right click no longer closing in-game panels like research
• Fixed active tool (e.g. repair) blocking game from ending
• Fixed error when starting another planet after leaving a planet that had fires
• Changed mixed colors of trader and native storage to a single color
• Make sure that players see landing animation for other factions arriving on the planet in most of the missions

The Open Space DLC is in production and will be released in Q2 2024. Here are all the details.

Serious Bros. proudly present the latest minor update for our building and simulation game, Imagine Earth. From now on, you can enjoy customizable keyboard controls! You can imagine how busy we two are keeping the global climate simulation up to date and adding new features. Nevertheless, we wanted to prioritize this feature due to interested inquiries from players.

We know how important control and precision are in gameplay. Every second counts when you’re building a thriving civilization and want to expand faster than your competitors. With this latest update, you now have the ability to fully customize your keyboard layout to suit your individual playstyle and preferences.

Efficient and intuitive navigation and management of your cities is the key to success. Above all, we look forward to seeing how you, our dedicated and creative player community, will use this feature.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you. Without your support, your feedback, and your passion for Imagine Earth, this update would not have been possible either.

Further Improvements

• The duration for the production of items through buildings and upgrades has been increased by 25%.
• Additionally, the influence of additional buildings has been reduced. Previously, the time was halved with 8 buildings, but now it’s only reduced by 25%.
• Rare resources are now immediately visible again after the blasting of mountains.
• Merchant Quest on Tuto and Joma is now triggered correctly again, even when a dialogue is still open.
• Merchant no longer sells Machinery on Tuto in order not to undermine the corresponding quest.
• We don’t show building menu details while hovering over the CityCenter panel.
• We made explosions a bit louder.
• No more warning to be played while a message to the player is active.

In this spirit, we wish you a lot of fun with the new update! Best regards, Jens & Martin.

From now on you can watch birds in Imagine Earth. Soon, more species will surely be sighted. And then we also assign them a central role in the ecosystem or global simulation of our planet. I’m still not sure if they are the right size or if it’s a pity that you never get them really close in front of your lens. For example, it was quite a challenge to take this one snapshot for the update.

Editor improvements

In the editor, the land grab button was overlaid by the purge tool, so you couldn’t expand your colony in that mode.
Also, when creating new planets, you can now again predefine the difficulty level a player must master of your planets!
Would be very interested in how accessible you find the editor as such, would it be more exciting for you if you could play multiple planets in a galaxy map or would it be more interesting for you to be able to script complex missions with a story told by voice actors in dialogues?

New building textures

We have created new roof textures for coal-fired power plants, industrial farm and organic farm. All buildings should create a better visual balancing act between post-industrial look and futuristic appearance. At the same time, the new textures of the roofs should visually connect them, so that they also fit with the quarry and the forestry farm. They now look more like you would build these buildings if you landed on a new planet in a capsule and wanted to provide basic supplies for your colony. I personally feel the style is a successful mix of steampunk and post-industrial age, what do you think?

Icons for tree species

The nine tree species of the third vegetation type, which we have affectionately christened Thicket, now have individual icons that make them more recognizable when planted. Thicket tree species grow on wasteland and frost type planets, these worlds offer the most exotic plant life next to mushrooms and terrestrial forests, check them out to see how appropriate they seem to you.

More Features & Fixes

• Pause and select button icons were still displayed in the build menu, but did not work.
• Display category and building icons/buttons in build menu with equal spacing at the same height
• Cars in cities do not jerk anymore
• Optimized build process makes updates easier

As always, thank you very much if you had the interest to read this far!
Jens & Martin

Thanks for clicking! We won this award! Category Best Indie!

Hi guys. Short time ago, our Steam deck was finally delivered, and we immediately tried out how Imagine Earth runs on it. Somehow, the folks at Steam noticed it right away and promptly tested IE. Except for some text that is displayed a bit too small in the game, it was perfectly playable. One player wrote us that Valve’s powerful handheld even runs our world simulator smoothly in 3K when he connects a monitor in desktop mode. Have fun with the latest changes and enjoy playing. Jens & Martin

Improved readability

We have immediately enlarged the texts. So you can look forward to improved readability on PC as well. Then we have directly resubmitted Imagine Earth for compatibility testing and has just been verified.

Proton compatibility

I’m no expert, but this should mean that the Windows version of Imagine Earth is smoothly playable on Linux systems thanks to Proton. Because this is something that players keep asking for, we’d be very interested in your feedback.

Vital life in the oceans

Along the way, four new species of fish have been discovered swimming around the planets and providing more hustle on it. Next time I think we’ll discover birds, I’m optimistic about that.

Meteor shower defense

Since the Xrathul Palace exists, meteor showers can also be targeted. At the same time, we had to increase the destructive power and then again make sure that defense lasers and pulses can shoot them.

Indiecade Everywhere

By the way, Imagine Earth is also in the Indiecade Sale right now and can be had for a hefty 50% off. Feel free to spread the word 😉

Optimizations & Fixes

• Button and control layout for Steam Deck integrated
• Buttons on popups enlarged so that font fits again
• improved placement of mountains in editor mode
• Victory Points in the faction panel are now clickable
• Dialogs to controls no longer play twice
• Trade menu overlap removed
• Fixed gamepad menu showing options that are not available

Update 1.9.5

• Fixed bug that lead to crash in cannon logic

Update 1.9.6

• Fixed laser cannons not destroying asteroids with one shot (e.g. on Lorian)
• Improved visibility of tooltip for traded items and resources

In the first half of June 2022 we participated in the Green Gam Jam organized by the UN initiative Playing 4 the Planet. Together with 42 partly big international game studios we tried to do our bit for reforestation and sustaining the world’s forests and raise players awareness for this issue. This is about all we achieved even though we did end up with slightly different solutions for the activation than originally planned.

Our first participation in this game jam among big studios was very exciting and accordingly let us come up with a very ambitious plan. One of four items we had in our activation plan was releasing a new free spin-off version of Imagine Earth on Steam. Unfortunately, the release of a whole new product on Steam turned out to be not so quickly feasible in terms of scheduling and might not even have been most effective activation strategy.

I still like the idea but as a 2 man studio have to concentrate first on finishing DLC and Playstation version. So we decided to alter the free version we already had on Steam – The demo of Imagine Earth which also offers a fully playable planet and since the Green Game Jam has an end screen where you can now choose to buy the soundtrack or the green planet bundle to plant trees with the proceeds. These donation options are now in the game to stay.

Activation Campaign Achievements

• We integrated a new Steam achievement – Players who plant twenty forests on one planet in the game from now on plant one tree in the real world.
• We organized a custom Steam Sale Event during the campaign time to raise awareness for game and demo with a discount and offered to plant ten trees for every copy sold.
• You can buy the official soundtrack and all proceeds will also donated to Eden Reforestation.
• On top of this we parallel participated in the Ocean Day Steam Sale in June 5-8 and donated another 10% of net income to Whales and Dolphins Conservation.

All this enabled us to plant 14,920 trees between 6/3-17 with our partner Eden Reforestation Project. A result that wasn’t possible without your help. As we started to sell the soundtrack for charity shortly after the release in May last year we could already plant a total of 48,940 trees. We’re actually really proud.