While we are working on the next mission that will take place on planet Rounos, we would like to introduce to you one of the new buildings that will be available:

The watchtower allows you to expand your territory. It’s the land version of the buoy station we added with Lorian.

Consumption: 15 money, 10 energy, 5 food, 5 goods
Pollution: 2 air, 2 ground

Obviously a lot of resources are necessary to keep it working – that’s the price you will have to pay for the expansion…

Riots

Currently we are discussing a possible new feature: Riots.
They occur in cities that have a bad mood for a serious amount of time. Riots can lead to nearby buildings being set on fire. Watchtowers could make sure that this doesn’t happen.

What do you think about the watchtower and about our riot idea?

There is something new we would like to show you:

How they work

Wildfires are caused by crashing meteorites, dry forests, exploding buildings or technical incidents.

They spread downwind and can be stopped by destructing affected buildings and cutting down forests. Additionally you can research a new tool to extinguish them.

Hopefully you will enjoy them as mush as we do! They will be released with the next update – probably at the end of July.

Jens & Martin

PS: In case you have some friends who would like to play the Imagine Earth Early Access:
20% on Steam Summer Sale until May 30th.

It’s crunch time! Only a few days until the release of our early access version on Steam. We are working hard to deliver as much new content as possible.

So I will have to keep this development update short and would like to focus on two of the many changes that will come with the early access version.

1. The End of Click to Pick

A LOT of people told us that they didn’t like to pick up money and coins from the planet by clicking on them. Some even hated it (maybe it remindeds too much of Farmville). We had some discussion around this, but finally decided to change it. Now there is only a few special events in the missions that keep this feature. All money dropped by harvesting woods or people with good mood is automatically collected and to be honest: It really feels good!

2. Enhanced Graphics

We decided to remove the black outlines around the buildings to have less of a comic look. Without these outlines it become pretty obvious that buildings really need to throw shadows on each other so we added this. In addition we have a new atmopshere shader that looks really nice. But take a look for yourself:

And as always: Have a great week and join the discussion in our forums.

During the last week there was a lot of stuff to do. The crowdfunding is over and we had a lot of organizational stuff to do. Nevertheless, we were able to continue development and here are some of the things we did:

• Day & Night: Enhanced light and shadow on the planet. When looking onto the day side of the planet the night side seems almost black. When turning the planet the night side becomes lighter to ensure that everything is well recognizable.

Day on Lorian

Night

• Created the first version of the new research menu in the game. Tools like “harvest forest” or “destruct buildings” will no longer be automatically made available. Instead you will be able to unlock the tools you want to have with the stars you receive from achieving big mission goals.

  

• Did a LOT of work on the new mission and small gameplay fixes that became obvious when playing on such a big planet like Lorian is.

Perk Fulfillment

• Invited all crowdfunding supporters to our forums at forum.imagineearth.info
• Created and assigned forum badges to our supporters. Here is a short list of all ranks.

We have started to distribute the wallpaper and font packs for our crowdfunders and today the steam keys for the early access version have been shipped!

Important: You won’t be able to activate Imagine Earth with this key right now. The Early Access version will be made available May 20th!

Here is a short FAQ that explains how to use the steam key.

Some Perks Left

There are still some city names, slots for the Time Trial Top 3 and almost all slots of the Mission and Time Trial Top 10 left. Additionally we had some requests by people who missed the crowdfunding. This is why we decided to continue to sell these things on our own site. There is one thing, though, that we are not going to sell anymore: Having your name in the credits will stay a crowdfunding exclusive thank-you.

We are currently preparing everything and will let you know when the “store” is available.

Have a great week and join the discussion in our forums.

Here is some graphics stuff that we have been working on lately.

The blueish building in the middle-left is a new city building called “Research District”. It will reduce the energy consumption of nearby buildings. Continue reading →

This is update #2 for our crowdfunding on IndieGoGo:

Over 20% funded! Thanks to all of our early backers!

Maybe you already asked yourself how we intend to finish Imagine Earth with only 10.000$ ? Good question. Here comes the answer:

In addition to the crowdfunding we will receive a funding, paying up to 50% of the development cost. This means that every dollar we receive from you will be doubled in the end!

The funding is given us by Nordmedia, the Cultural Media Fund of Lower-Saxony and Bremen. They fund promising and cultural valuable media projects without influencing the development and creative process (like many publishers do).

Continue reading →

A lot of time has passed since we started the development of our planetary colonization game Imagine Earth. We are happy to announce that we just startet the crowdfunding campaign on IndieGoGo.com and are offering the brand new demo version on Steam right now!

The crowdfunding will give you the opportunity to get early access to the game and a lot of other perks.

Click here to have a look at our crowdfunding and play the demo

Jooki & Martin

PS: The first 100 supporters will earn a special badge for the Imagine Earth forums and will stand out in an extra section of the game credits as “Space Pioneers”!

We have just released the Imagine Earth demo. It contains the full mission “Prolog:Tuto” and the mission “Episode I: Joma” until week 800.

If you experience any problems let us know (support@imagineearth.info) and please tell us on Facebook if you like the game.

Stay tuned for the crowdfunding in mid-March!

Download and play the Imagine Earth demo.