- Major Trade Update & New Ships - 2 August 2026
Playtest and demo have been updated with a major update:Two new alien ship types, a fast courier and a medium-sized all-purpose ship.New trade goodsLots of bugfixes and balance updates to the economy, this should make prices in general less "flat" and provide more trade opportunities.More trade information in the UI such as where to find certain resources.Trade good interdependencies - tech goods now require specific resources as input, which can trigger temporary shortages and other interesting trade chances.lots of bugfixes.In short: This update should make the game actually playable, not just testable. :-)
- Playtest is Live ! - 16 July 2026
You can now join the playtest and enjoy the full game, with load/save, no time limit, etc.Please, please do provide feedback and report any bugs you encounter. The purpose of the playtest is exactly that - so I can learn what you players experience.The game is still incomplete and might have bugs, hence playtest and not release. The more feedback I get during this playtest, the better and faster I can get the whole game ready. :-)Please note that due to the many changes and features, the playtest will not let you continue saved games from the demo.
- Demo Update - testing now - 14 July 2026
I'm preparing a huge update for the demo, and for those of you adventurous enough, daring enough, to venture into the unknown and be the first to encounter the bugs I probably created, well, you can find it on the testing branch.Among the things added in this update:freighter condition and repairstaxesbuying price info on your cargoprocedural trade missionsand countless bug fixesPlease post any bugs you find to the bug forum, so I can fix them and update the demo for the main branch for those less daring, less courageous.
- DevLog: Procedural Missions - 23 June 2026
I've posted another devlog to my website at https://lemuria.org/devlogs/ta-10/ with a few details on the procedurally generated missions that I am currently working on.In parallel, I'm updating the game's Steam integration, and working towards a playtest - time-limited but without the demo restrictions.
- Demo Update: New Trade System and Major UI Overhaul - 7 May 2026
This is the update I have been working toward for a while, and it is now live.Two things in this update are bigger than anything in any previous demo release: a completely rebuilt trade system, and a thorough overhaul of the UI.The Trade SystemThe old trade goods never felt right. Water, raw metals, biomass -- things like that make sense for local trade within a solar system, but not for interstellar FTL commerce. Any system worth colonizing will have everything it needs to build a civilization. So what actually gets traded across the galaxy?Three things: rare materials that most systems simply don't have, high-tech goods that only advanced civilizations can produce, and exotic goods -- food, art, textiles, flora and fauna -- that have value precisely because they come from somewhere else. Authentic human music made by actual humans will always have a market with the right alien buyer,…
- Progress and Stress-Test - 21 April 2026
The header image to this post is a screenshot of the largest galaxy that I have ever created. It has a bit over 20,000 star systems. It took a couple minutes to generate and it lagged to the point of being unplayable. But - it worked. And someone with a more powerful machine may be able to actually play at that size.Aside from that I've been working on the save/load mechanics and I've fixed bugs. So many bugs. Most of them quite small, some of them not. I have the new economy simulation close to complete, and the new in-system UI is getting there.In other words: Progress all around. I'll see that I can push out an update of the demo soon.
- Progress Update - 2 April 2026
It's been a month and the demo update is not yet ready. I have been working on both the UI and the save/load system and both are making progress, though some bugs took forever to find and fix. And saving/loading an entire galaxy with tons of dynamic data is anything but trivial.Plus real life, etc. - I am a solo indie develope with a day job that has nothing to do with game development, so there is that.The progress I made over the past weeks has me hopeful that an update will be coming soon. Save/load is not important for the demo, but vital for the Early Access release that I want to make soon.So keep watching this space for more updates and a new version soon.
- Preview: UI Update - 2 March 2026
Here is a preview of the upcoming UI update. As you can see, it's quite considerable.When I started, the system overlay was simple, so I made it a popup-window. Then more details and features came and it grew and got drawers and other elements and then it became unwieldy.When the UI doesn't work anymore, it's no use tacking on even more hacks. So I moved it all into an entirely new layout. This is a fullscreen UI that opens when you click a new "open details" button on the (reduced back to its original) system window. It has everything in one place instead of six different windows.I have also considerably increased the font sizes everywhere so it should all be much easier to read.About half of the tabs are done now, and I want to improve the planet list and the local map before releasing an updated demo to you guys. Possibly later this month. We are getting there and I'm quite excited!…
- DevLog: Aliens should be alien - 4 February 2026
IntroductionOne of the driving forces behind my novel “Intergalactic” was that I had grown tired of science fiction featuring aliens that are less diverse than your average inner-city shopping mall.In the game as well as the book one of my goals is to make aliens really alien, and to consider what that all means. This includes a lot more than just making them look not like humans with make-up.Habitable EnvironmentsIn “Intergalactic” there is a scene where a delegation of Felindar visits a human planet. The Felindar are a bird-like species. But that is not what makes them alien. The scene plays in a meeting room that is split into two parts by a glass wall - because the Felindar breathe a different atmosphere, are used to different gravity, their native environment is quite different from Earth.The logical consequence is that the movie image of a bustling space station with all kinds of…
- DevLog: Refining Trade - 23 November 2025
A new devlog has been posted to my website: https://lemuria.org/devlogs/ta-08here is the content, with slightly worse formatting: Introduction Core elements of a game deserve the most attention and thought. So for a trading game, I have of course been thinking a lot about trade and economy. In this devlog, I will elaborate on the complete re-design of trade in Trade Anchor, the why and what it means for gameplay and players. Interstellar Trade Something felt wrong with the goods that I have had in the demo this far. Not that they were bad by themselves, but they didn't give the game the "this is the far future and FTL travel is real" feeling. Plus there is something called the the Single Biome Planet Trope. Looking at the scale in the game, it makes no sense that things like water, biomass or raw metals are traded in interstellar FTL trade. Solar systems in the galaxy will fall fairly n…
- Major Demo Update - 25 October 2025
This is a fairly substantial update, including an improved intro, many UI improvements and a lot more visibility into all the things going on in the game, like a legend for the map modes, or the display of empire cultural values.Together with the extension to 2 years, the demo should now give you a fairly good piece of gameplay.And it's an important step towards the full game release.I am also adding a "testing" branch. If you want to get updates like this early, go to the properties of the game in Steam and look at "betas". You should be able to simply subscribe to the testing branch.This update is going live on the testing branch first, because it still lacks a few translations that I need to add (for new texts). If you play in English anyway, everything should work. Otherwise, wait until the next update and everything will be localized.
- Thank You - Update and Dev Words - 21 October 2025
Thank you all for trying out Trade Anchor during Steam NextFest, and for soundly beating my goal of 2000 wishlists - as I write this the count stands at 2100. Amazing.In this update, the length of the demo has been doubled to 2 years instead of 1. In celebration of 2000 wishlists. The on-screen texts still say 1 year, because I want to wait for your feedback. If you want still more, than let's make it a challenge - I'll raise it to 3 years if we reach 3000 wishlists. :-)There is also a new feature, the ledger, record of all transactions. No good merchant would leave home without it.And finally there's a number of bugfixes and general improvements.I read everything in the forum, so if you have any bugs, feedback or questions, see you there.
- Final Next Fest Update - 20 October 2025
Thank you all for your interest during Next Fest. Here is one more update, including:bugfixesimproved settings handling and loadinga few small UI improvementsalien races now have different habitability values - meaning that some aliens thrive on planets humans find hard to settle and vice versaslightly increased availability of new freighters to buyKnown issue in this build: The progress display is messed up during alien empires creation, but don't worry, it just takes a while and then continues.
- Demo Bugfixes - 18 October 2025
I've uploaded a new update for the demo including mostly bugfixes. Many of them are thanks to people reporting bugs on the forum. So if you spot something in the game that shouldn't be like that - don't hesitate to join us in the forum.
- Demo bugfixes and QoL - 14 October 2025
Pushed out two small updates today to address issues posted to the forum.
- DevLog #6 - Information & Diplomacy - 8 October 2025
Posted another devlog to my website here:https://lemuria.org/devlogs/ta-06/This time, I'm talking about information and diplomacy, the two key non-trading aspects of the game.
- Updated Demo - 3 October 2025
I've updated the demo build with some bugfixes and improvements to the economy.If you experience any problems, please come to the forum and let me know so I can fix it. Thanks !
- DevLog - Space Ships - 25 September 2025
IntroIntroducing: Space freighters.In Trade Anchor, your main “characters” of a kind are the space ships that you fly through the galaxy. You start with one, but you can buy additional ships as you accumulate money.More freighters means not just more trade, but also more information. Many empires in the game make information about their markets, prices, etc. only available to those within the empire, or even only to nearby star systems. So having freighters flying through different empires can give you a huge benefit when it comes to identifying lucrative trades.The Star HopperThe very first ship that you start the game with is the Star Hopper which you can see in the header image.A small, inefficient but cheap and reasonably fast cargo hauler. The Star Hopper is most beloved for being easy to maintain and can be repaired at even the most backwater outpost.This is an excellent starter s…
- DevLog - Economy Simulation - 11 September 2025
I've just posted another devlog to my website.read the full text hereIn this devlog I explain the economy simulation that is the heart of the game.
- DevLog - Stars and Planets - 18 August 2025
In this second devlog, I'm talking about the solar systems of the game, its stars and planets and how the affect gameplay:
