Category Archives: World News

Switch & Playstation Release

Ecological City Builder Imagine Earth Arriving on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation Consoles on May 9

Developer Serious Bros. Continues Real-World Environmental Support with Donations During Earth Appreciation Festival on Steam

Berlin, Germany (April 18, 2024) – Indie game developer Serious Bros. is delighted to announce that ecological sci-fi city builder Imagine Earth will be released on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles on May 2, 2024. Already available on PC via Steam, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S consoles, Imagine Earth’s combination of laidback strategy gameplay and sustainability themes has earned it critical acclaim and multiple awards.

Watch the Imagine Earth Nintendo Switch and PlayStation release date trailer:

As part of Steam’s Earth Appreciation Festival, from April 22 to April 29,  Imagine Earth will be on sale for 30% off. Serious Bros. will donate 100% of proceeds to reforestation around the globe on Earth Day and 10% for the remainder of the festival. This continues the company’s support of sustainability and environmental protection efforts, detailed in a yearly impact report.

Set in the not-so-distant future of 2084, Imagine Earth envisions a universe where the player, as a space colony manager, must head out into the cosmos to establish a new home for humans. After corporate greed and resource exploitation led their home planet to ruin, players will explore a variety of (initially) healthy planets throughout space, aiming to raise and grow great cities in a more sustainable way.

In the story-based campaign and competition game modes, Imagine Earth players can build up their civilizations on eleven diverse planets, with terrain dotted with rich blue waters, snow-capped peaks, and lush green expanses, all ready to be explored, populated, and mined for resources. 

Trade natural goods and resources with space traders for profit and satisfy the capitalist quest for expansion by building power plants, farms, and factories to keep both corporations and civilians happy. Turn technological and monetary gains into research and discover how to advance society in a sustainable way. Do it all while fending off the economic competition as battles for corporate dominance break out on discovered planets, forcing players to sell shares, outsize opponents, and perform hostile takeovers of competing colonies.

Corporate greed isn’t the only threat players face in Imagine Earth, though, as failure to balance expansion and ecology could result in climate disaster. With real-time planetary simulation, players can see the consequences of their own exploitative actions, as natural disasters — including wildfires, volcanoes, dying forests, radioactive contamination, pollution, and rising sea levels — see less sustainable civilizations (literally) go under, and citizens rallying and rioting against poor living conditions.

Key Gameplay Features of Imagine Earth:

  • Go Beyond: Complete the multi-mission story and embark on fresh space colony adventures, including a competition mode against up to five AI factions and a freeform mode with procedurally generated planets
  • It’s Not Easy Being Green: Face a range of ecological challenges, from chemical spills and oil slicks to melting polar ice caps and terribly destructive natural disasters caused by the player’s planetary exploitation
  • Space Invaders and Traders: Make friends with cooperative colonies and alien tribes inhabiting some discovered planets and fend off hostile alien invaders using shields and lasers in tower defense gameplay as they try to wipe puny human colonies off of the map
  • Sustainability Among the Stars: Successfully fight corporate greed and civilian demand for growth and resources by researching new technology and maintaining a healthy ecosystem to become a sustainable civilization

Imagine Earth will be released on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles, as well as a macOS version (via Steam), on May 9, 2024. It is currently available on Windows PC and Linux via Steam, as well as on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

For more information on Imagine Earth, follow the Serious Bros. team on X (Twitter), Facebook, and YouTube, and join the Discord community.

A full press kit, including logo, screenshots, key art, and trailers, can be found here: https://uberstrategist.link/Imagine-Earth-press-kit 

About Serious Bros.

Serious Bros. was founded in Germany in 2014 by good chums Martin Wahnschaffe and Jens Isensee with the ambition to make something special: a compelling strategic sim with a heartfelt environmentalist message. They’ve been working as a team to make Imagine Earth a game that turns the overwhelming threat of the climate crisis into a motivating challenge, with help along the way from the composers Tilo Alpermann, Zevik Perry, illustrator Marko Fiedler, and programmers Rico Possienka and Alex Leps.

World News

Best Expert Game 2022

We are grateful and happy about the recognition of Imagine Earth as Best Expert Game at Deutscher Computerspielpreis 2022!

Laudator Geoff Keighley , producer and host of
The Game Awards , digitally handed over the award to Martin and me. Thanks so much to the jury for these ususpected honors. The adress by the well known personality was the cherry on top of the unsuspected honors for our 14+ years lasting strategy game project about the climate crisis.

Live on stage Uke Bosse was hosting theevent in a quite charming and relaxed way and as he handed over the mic we used the occasion on stage to thank over 43.000 supporters who backed the project and made the development independent for over seven years in Early Access on Steam.

But more over we have to direct our thanks to a few folks in person. Imagine Earth wouldn’t be released yet without the amazing work by Rico Posienka and Alexander Leps for gamedesign and coding, Tilo Alpermann and Zevik Perry for soundtrack composition and Marko Fiedler for the new character illustrations.

Blog, World News

Reversed Game Festival Vienna

Hi there, what a pleasure for Serious Brothers to be at the Reversed Festival for Games in Museumsquartier MQ Vienna! Nice to meet so many interesting people and there latest creations and also some professionals from the industry.

 

 

MarZ Rising – Am dollsten gefiel mir Style und Atmosphäre bei diesem Tactical Tower Defense Game auf dem Mars. Vermutlich wäre es mir allerdings zu schwer.

Minty Pic – Eine ebenso witzige wie chaotischer App, die zwei gemeinsam vor der Kamera getroffene Propanden knippst und ihnen skurrile Sprechblasen unterschiebt. Free!

Der Preis für das beste Konzept wurde an Goliath VR. verliehen. Ein mit Kinect verfolgter Spieler miemt einen Giganten, auf dem ein zweiter Spieler Jump&Run mäßig von Plattform zu Plattform läuft.

Das Beste Spiel des Festivals beruht auf Erfahrungen von Abdullah Karam, der aufgrund des Bürgerkriegs Hama in Syrien verlassen musste. Path Out – Gratulation an Georg Hobmeier und Co. von Causa Creations.

I mochte besonders die Idee von “Somewhere” einem Textadventure, welches dir das Gefühl gibt einen Messenger zu bedienen und einer realen Person zu texten und zu helfen, die sich manchmal auch nur alle paar Tage meldet und der du dann mit Recherchen auf Maps und anderen Websiten helfen musst.

The Lion’s Song – Ein wunderbares Retro-Point&Click-Adventure im Jugendstil-Wien in 8 Farben und 4 Episoden der österreichischen Entwicklern Mi’pu’mi Games gibt es auf der

And so much more games like A Hole New World, Ablaze, Animal Ninja Masters (Kemono Heroes), Asymmetric, Baobabs Mausoleum, C.U.B.E.S., Celaria, Chickens, Close, Crest, Don’t Make Love, Elementary Minute,  End Cycle, Erin: The Last Aos Sí, Hushed Escape,  Imagine Earth, Ini, Last Days Of Tascaria, Late For Work,  LIGHTFIELD,  Lingotopia, Live TV Tycoon, Lost Words, Major League Gladiators, makenines, Nongünz, Phoenix, Phombie Flow, Pixel Soldiers,  Planetoid Pioneers, Prison: Warden’s Dilemma, Project KNOSSOS, Project L.L.A.M.A., Pushout was great fun. Seeds Of Sol was procedural and beautyful, Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun so good looking, Spaceguard80, SPACR, Spinnortality, Splinter Zone, STAY, Subwords, Tales of Tiélor, The Fallen, Tower57, Tscherno Tschump, VEmpire – The Kings Of Darkness, Vintage Story

World News

Mai 2014 was the hottest

.. month ever recorded by the us-american NOAA. And there’s an up to 80 % chance that an El-Niño will occure.

“Our understanding of El Niño and La Niña has increased dramatically in recent years and this knowledge has enabled us to develop very successful climate services for society. Advance warning has given governments around the world time to make contingency plans for the impact of this year’s expected El Niño on the agriculture, water management, health and other climate-sensitive sectors. (…) We remain vulnerable to this force of nature but we can protect ourselves by being better prepared. (…) El Niño leads to extreme events and has a pronounced warming effect. It is too early to assess the precise impact on global temperatures in 2014, but we expect the long-term warming trend to continue as a result of rising greenhouse gas concentrations.”
WMO-Generalsekretär Michel Jarraud ( via german source )

World News

Global Warming’s Terrifying Numbers

These days many people think keeping global warming under 2 degree would be okay to protect us from the worst climate change effects. In his article in the “Rolling Stone” Bill McKibben cites figures that the ready-or-planned-to-burn fossils of oil and gas companies are five times that much in gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions allready. Futhermore he quotes scientists saying that 2 degree Celsius is itself just a rotten political compromise and that and that allready 1 degree would barely mark the deadline of a climate balance (with having reached 0.8 allready). And he quotes Naomi Klein about “the fossil-fuel industry, wrecking the planet is their business model. It’s what they do.” but read it yourself, please!

World News