- Happy 5th Birthday Robots! - 30 January 2025
It's been 5 years since Terraforming Earth came out in Early Access. Since then, hundreds have played the game, including my two sons who came of age and started to appreciate the challenges and silliness packed in the game. I love the lazy Saturday afternoons when we grab the controllers and take the reigns of our favourite characters (I'm Opi, by the way). We still think the game's quality warrants the original $29.9 price, it is truly a hidden gem. However, we lowered the game's base price to $9.99. I don't really know why. The race to the bottom orchestrated by Valve has gotten to us too I guess. Moloch wins again but may we all win in the end. Cheers to 5 more years of happy players and happy devs!
- v1.4.13 fixes interaction with Drone vs Breakable Door - 24 January 2025
Phew long time no see but since the kids came of age we played a lot of Terraforming Earth these past few months. Found some bugs too! I dusted off the old dev environment, fixed the bug, reinvented how to push builds to steam and Voila! Drones can break down breakable doors more reliably now! Enjoy!
- v1.4.12 fixes missing box issue with XMAS edition - 18 December 2021
That's it :) Merry Christmas!
- Patch Notes - v1.4.10 - 6 October 2021
So my 6 yo is now old enough to save the planet and we've been playing together for a while now. He likes the game a lot: he's been running around the house carrying heavy things over his head, shouting "Opi STRONG". :) His favourite is Curi, though. Curi's ability to evade Mowers is really appealing to him. Sometimes he activated hover at the wrong moment, so that Curi hovered just barely above the ground, which lead to some unscheduled Mower-induced disassemblies. He's very prudent and mourns each lost robot with a groan. Seeing this, I implemented a change that makes sure that Curi always keeps a safe distance from the ground. With this change, you can also solve this obstacle without pressing a single button. Very convenient, and also maybe a bit more logical, no? My son likes to play Spiri, too! Teleportation is always fun. With Spiri, he's been bumping into doors while teleporting…
- Patch Notes, 1.4.9 - 18 May 2021
Hello there! I went for an other run, this time securing a victory via the plant-based strategy. I also got the Mr. Proper achievement for bringing back 100% of life. Only a single achievement to go until platinum, the dreaded Agoraphobe Run aka. Indoors Challange, in which you can only go outdoors if there are no indoors missions on the map, which makes it really hard to replenish TRUST. It took many weeks until I nailed it on stream, and there weren't even Drones and Turrets back then! Although there were no shields either, so I'm full of hope for this run. Anyway I'll try it with this brand new build, featuring: - ledge assist: sometimes I fell off of floating bridges with Curi, so I implemented a little assist feature that helps you land on them. - filtering out shared levels you've already played - our heroes now have little name-tags in dialogues. Have fun! Andras
- Tweaks, tweaks everywhere! - 6 May 2021
So I returned to the game after not playing for a while and had an amazing run! I lost the run on this crazy boss map but it was still awesome. I wish the game saved little GIFs when robots blow up, I had some pretty funny cases of the old total-party-kill-explosions 😈. I was amazed again by the sheer amount of details that our heroic visual artists put into the game, can't thank them enough for working with me on this game.
- Christmas Special - 19 December 2020
We would like to wish you a very happy Christmas with this small and final update. Opi, Curi and Spiri doesn't really know what's going on with all this frivolous decoration, however the Earth's northernmost location is currently at its highest tilt away from the Sun, and so this must be a perfect opportunity to wish everyone a giant heap of utility for the next roundtrip around the Solar System. Cosmic Love To Everyone
- Leaving Early Access - 28 August 2020
After seven good months in Early Access, it's time to graduate. The final version of Terraforming Earth is now available! 🚀 Levels All The Way Down Puzzle games teach you many new skills but they are finite, and you finish them, and then you can’t use those skills anymore. That's why we invented a puzzle designer AI which creates fresh levels for every run; you can use your problem-solving skills for as long as you like. Guaranteeing that all levels are solvable was relatively easy (you can claim $100 cash prize for finding an unsolvable level!). The hard part was to make sure the levels are interesting and provide enough variety to keep you going for a long time. We spent more than two years honing the algorithm and gave players the ability to upvote cool levels so that other players can enjoy the generator's best hits. A Transhuman Story There are infinite levels but that doesn't mea…
- Turret Trouble - OUT NOW! - 19 June 2020
After Mowers and Drones, the cast of anti-heroes is now complete: Turrets are finally here! Bullet Hell... Puzzles? The free Turret Trouble Update pits you against plasma-spewing enemies: you can't fight them directly, so you have to rely on your wit and planning abilities to make sure your quirky robots reach the objectives safely. Turret Trouble adds 20 new obstacle configurations to the existing 90 puzzle types, raising the number of unique Terraforming Earth levels to about 10^81, more than the number of atoms in the Universe. We played and playtested this update for a long time now and we hope you'll like the extra intensity as much as we do. Have fun! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1029220/Terraforming_Earth/
- Get Ready for Some Turret Trouble - 16 June 2020
We are proud to introduce the latest entry on the List of Things That Make Terraforming Difficult: Turrets! Be very afraid. Bullet Hell Puzzles Our latest expansion, Turret Trouble introduces a ton of new puzzles and hazards. In the spirit of the previous set of foes, Mobile Turrets and their stationary counterparts make the levels more challenging and require careful planning to make sure that our heroes safely get to objectives and reach the exit in one piece. Annoying as these enemy robots might be, you also really need them to solve certain obstacles. You need Mowers to get higher and you need the Drones to fly over things. Likewise, you'll need the Turrets to... well, you'll figure it out :) Quality of Life Turrets are the major attraction of this update, but we've also improved the experience in many different ways and polished the game in places we didn't even know could use some…
- Environment Update - 24 April 2020
We felt that environments didn't really convey that the story takes place on Earth, it could have been on any random barren planet since there weren't really any signs of civilization in the foreground. To create more immersive and genuine environments, Timi and Csabi (our environment designer and art director, respectively) have been busy with enriching the environments with countless props and objects, to really bring home the point that you are on the deserted Earth. Humans lived here not long ago. Dead trees and plants are scattered across outdoor levels since the Virus only killed organisms that were alive at the time. Various objects are left behind by the humans as well, such as boots and camping gear. Indoor levels are juiced up by countless colorful signs, graffiti and posters. The level designer AI also got a visual upgrade: it now decorates walls and ledges with little detail…
- 50% Off During Early Access - 22 April 2020
Dear Friends and Followers, In recent months we realized that since Terraforming Earth is the first roguelike puzzle platformer ever, it doesn’t have an established audience yet. As we were pondering in a recent update, careful thinking and planning while being chased is a very challenging and unique experience. This is made possible by our innovative level designer AI. We believe these kinds of dynamic experiences will be the future of gaming and we are ahead of the curve. We might also very well be mistaken: thinking in fight-or-flight mode might be a bad idea and only interesting to a very niche audience. At any rate, we would love to find out which one is the case and for that, we need to involve more players. Because of this, we are halving the base price of Terraforming Earth for the duration of Early Access. We still believe that we have assessed the value of the game correctly,…
- DRONE DANGER - Free DLC Out Now - 6 March 2020
Take a ride on Hermes Express The Hermes Express cargo drones are available to all players with today's update v1.1.0! Free DLC Drone Danger introduces cargo drones – flying robots that are dangerous to hang around but can be used to solve new types of puzzles. Drone Danger is bringing you the Dark Souls of puzzle platforming with even more tricky situations and hilarious ways to die. Yes, this is a thinking-heavy puzzle game where things are chasing you and so won’t let you think. It doesn’t make sense. You should try it. :) Drones are so hard, we made them optional We've been playtesting Drones for 3 months now and we love the complexity they introduce to the vanilla game. Since the levels are designed with an obstacle-based approach (instead of using pre-defined rooms), the 10 new puzzle types can now combine randomly with the 70 vanilla puzzles resulting in an exponential explosion…
- Cargo Drones Coming on March 6 - 21 February 2020
The first major update introducing Hermes Cargo Drones is coming out on March 6. HERMES GLOBAL CARGO DRONES By the end of the 21st century, Alfabeta Inc. has achieved its mission statement of organizing the world's matter and making it universally accessible and useful. Their algorithms have long figured out what everybody needs at any given time and so the vast majority of humans have signed up for Universal Matter Subscriptions, whereby Hermes Global Cargo Drones automatically fulfill every material need and desire 24/7. After the global extinction event of 2087, nobody's around to cancel their subscriptions so the drones are roaming the planet, fulfilling orders on autopilot. Like EPA's trusty landscaping robots, cargo drones are both your friends and foes at the same time. They are very dangerous to hang around and introduce many tricky situations that you can only overcome by posit…
- $100 Bounty for First Unsolvable Level - 12 February 2020
Terraforming Earth is the first game ever to feature puzzle-platform levels designed by an AI. The generator is aware of our heroes' current capabilities and guarantees that all levels are solvable. However, it is not inconceivable that the level designer AI makes a mistake and the player ends up with an unsolvable level. There have been a few examples of this in the past and we fixed these issues as they came up. To address more potential issues, we'd like to offer a $100 cash prize via PayPal for the first player who finds an unsolvable level. You can report levels by selecting the "Report Level" option on the mission debrief screen. Or just simply select "Copy Level Link" from the main menu or the debrief screen and paste the link in the appropriate Community Forum topic. If nobody can solve your level without losing robots within one week, you win the bounty! Happy hunting, pioneers…
- Terraforming Earth is Out Now! - 30 January 2020
Finally, your time has come to restore life on Earth! Terraforming Earth is out right now right here on Steam! Take control of Opi, Curi and Spiri, three specialized terraforming robots who find themselves in a bit of a situation as they witness all life suddenly disappearing from the Solar System. Their job is to unravel the mystery by working together, combining their different skills to overcome infinite generated levels. Focusing on problem-solving and planning instead of rote memorization, Terraforming Earth creates unique situations every time you play – even the boss fights and the music are procedurally generated! As of today, Terraforming Earth is launched in Early Access containing solo and local co-op modes and it should be treated as a full release in terms of polish and functionality. The full version of the game will be available in 6 months approximately and it will inclu…
- Generating Levels Without Pre-defined Rooms - 29 January 2020
Terraforming Earth is coming out tomorrow, so we thought we should share how we tackled the problem of generating infinite platform-puzzle levels. So this is it, the details behind Terraforming Earth's innovative level generator AI! First, let's take a look at how most procedural platformers tackle level generation, a method that I call Room-based level generation Terraforming Earth is a roguelike puzzle platformer, a first of its kind. The closest thing I can compare it to is Spelunky. Spelunky, while not strictly a puzzle platformer, does create unique levels every time you play, using pre-defined room templates. Many roguelikes do level generation using this technique, which we are going to call room-based level generation. The advantage of this approach is that the individual parts are separated, you only have to think about how you connect the rooms to their immediate neighbors, no…
- Two Weeks Until Launch! (Also, Announcing Drone DLC) - 16 January 2020
Terraforming Earth launches in two weeks, and we are excited beyond words. Let me try to say something anyway! :) So... After 2 years of full-time development, the game is fully polished and complete and stable and also, yeah, incredibly fun too! I've been playing this game every week for more than half a year now, and it still puzzles and surprises me every time. Check out the devstream archives to see for yourself. Never in my life have I played a platform puzzler with such high replay value. I think this is mainly because our level generator doesn't use predefined rooms (as roguelikes usually do). Instead, it combines more than 70 predefined obstacles randomly with a high interdependence between them. This results in a lot of unexpected situations that we wouldn't have thought of even if we had spent 10 years on level design. To demonstrate the power of this approach, let me tell you…
- Creator Co-op! - 28 November 2019
Every Thursday from 7AM PST, I am streaming runs of my game right here on Steam Broadcast. This week, my co-creators, Loci and Csabi will be joining me for a co-op run! Meet the minds behind the unique graphics of the game and let's have some fun together while we restore life on Earth with our robotic superheroes, Opi, Curi and Spiri! EDIT: Yesterday's stream is archived on Youtube! Starting from 52:00 I'm introducing the team and we go on a few nice Patient Zero and Terraforming levels in a row, so if you can only watch for 10, 20 or 30 minutes, start here: Thanks for watching, everyone, we had a great time. Can't wait to see other players fool around on our desolate Earth, too. :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/1029220/Terraforming_Earth/
- Terraforming Earth Launches on January 30, 2020 - 20 November 2019
Terraforming Earth is shaping up nicely and we can now confirm that it will be available for purchase on January 30, 2020. The gameplay is now complete, generally bug-free and balanced. The game features many different obstacles and environments, infinite procedurally generated levels and over 6 days of background music composed with Google's Deep Learning technology. You can play for a week straight without hearing the same tune twice! (Please don't, though, that's clearly unhealthy.) Terraforming Earth is the first game ever to apply procedural generation in platform puzzle level design. It is highly replayable as it puts you in unique situations every time you play. The focus is on creative problem-solving and planning instead of rote memorization. We implemented a curation system similar to Mario Maker's to help you find the greatest hits of the automatic level designer. On the worl…
