Hello, everyone!
The full version of our beaver city-builder launches in exactly two days - at 5 PM CET on March 12, 2026. Today, we’re continuing our little countdown with another preview, following up on yesterday’s post on the two playable factions. Let’s dive into the unique beaver city-building mechanics in Timberborn!
But first: have YOU wishlisted Timberborn?
Water and Water Physics
We’re very proud of the progress our hallmark feature made. In the early Timberborn days, water was just a flat blue surface. In Timberborn 1.0, it irrigates the soil, allowing plant growth, and uses full-on 3D water physics. It forms waterfalls, spills over in a natural way, mixes with another fluid (badwater), builds up pressure, can be run over multiple vertical layers (think: aqueducts!), has a variable flow rate affecting power output of the Water Wheels, and may be cleverly manipulated by the player with Dams, Floodgates, two types of Valves, and more.
Our beavers may be a little different from the ones you know from internet videos, but their affinity for water is similar. They can swim and build dams (duh), but also pump water with Water Pumps, store it in Tanks, and move it to huge beaver-made reservoirs. Aquatic crops and trees need to be partially submerged to grow, but, most importantly, the land near water turns green, becoming arable. While growing fields and forests is not unique to the city-building genre, here, you really need to take irrigation - and the risk of contamination when badwater becomes involved - seriously.
On top of that, providing a steady water supply is one of the most important tasks in the game. It might seem silly at first - why won’t they just drink from the river? Well, Timberborn beavers are evolved, intelligent creatures. They understand the importance of healthy habits. And drinking polluted water that has passed through the unknown wasteland is anything but healthy - hence the use of Water Pumps to draw and filter water. Water then goes into tanks for beavers to drink and use in the production chains.
In Timberborn 1.0, water and its dangerous counterpart, badwater, appear on the maps in many ways. On top of the regular Water & Badwater Sources of varying strength, Water & Badwater Seeps produce it to the height of one tile, and you may unlock additional water sources by attaching Drills to the Aquifers scattered around. You can treat the fluids’ position as temporary, because our crafty beavers have plenty of ways of redirecting it - be it to irrigate another area, fill up a reservoir for emergency use, redirect it when badwater starts flowing in, and so on.
A simple Dam block allows water to spill above half a tile; Levees block it completely; Floodgates have a regulated height; with Fill and Throttling Valves, you can regulate water flow. As water flows at different speeds and is affected by pressure, you can use this to your advantage when placing Water Wheels for optimal power output. And you’re not even limited to using pre-existing riverbeds - use Impermeable Floor blocks and the powerful Mechanical Water Pumps, and you may run a river in an artificial aqueduct way above over the city center - or right on its rooftops if you’re so inclined.
Terraforming
Playing with water is really fun, and so is shaping the terrain, which the fluids on the map dynamically adapt to. Whether you want to remove land or create new terrain, Timberborn has you covered… in all dimensions. Gone are the days of in-game terrain being just a wavy blanket - thanks to the changes implemented in Early Access, it is now possible to overhang terrain, create caves, and carve out tunnels. This applies to the map editor, but our beaver engineers are given similar tools.
The most exciting (and the loudest) method is to use dynamite, coming at three different variants - exploding up one, two, or three tiles deep. Ever wished the river next to the settlement was deeper? Sure, a layer of explosives should help. Is that small hill blocking your town from expanding? Flatten it with a bang!
While no beaver says no to an occasional explosion, building is as - if not more - fun. Put up a Dirt Excavator and Piles will soon fill with dirt that can be used to create new Terrain Blocks. They behave just like regular blocks, transferring moisture and contamination (also vertically!). You can fill an unused riverbed to expand the beaver housing complex, build an artificial cave when the sun never shines, or overhang a few layers of terrain on platforms (why not!) to form your own version of hanging gardens.
Verticality
In Timberborn, we allow stacking structures on top of one another. This feature, while originally imagined as a simple addition, was so liked by the early players, we turned it into a huge deal - not just for the Iron Teeth. Every building marked as Solid - such as Warehouses or Lodges - can serve as a foundation for another, which, paired with Platforms and Overhangs of different sizes, may be used to form multi-layered megastructures that reach for the skies and are a dam nightmare to navigate for a hooman.
Of course, a layered structure wouldn’t work without ways to traverse it comfortably. Stairs and their Spiral counterpart - a long-awaited addition finally implemented in 1.0 - allow beavers to move up and down, while bridges help them quickly cross gaps between complexes. And if your settlement grows too large - both horizontally and vertically - just use Ziplines or Tubeways to help the beavers travel from one end of the settlement to the other in no time. Thanks to the adaptive Power Shafts we now have in the game, running energy lines is also easy. And speaking of easy - with the Layer tool, you can hide layers of terrain, making creation of even the most convoluted setups much more convenient.
Maps
All those features would not mean much without a proper map to play on. That’s why Timberborn comes with a healthy mix of seventeen built-in maps. We’ve prepared the beginner-friendly maps - Lakes, Plains, and Waterfalls - to ease you into the game and allow you to explore everything Timberborn has to offer at your own pace. At the other end, we have the five unconventional maps - Beaverome, Diorama, Oasis, Pressure, and Spillage - which require mastering every beaver skill to create a thriving beaver settlement. Is that not enough? You can create a new map - or edit an existing one - using the built-in map editor. That's the very same tool we use to create new maps - and it also received some extra love in 1.0, such as the long overdue addition of the Undo / Redo.
If you don't feel like making maps on your own, but still want to try something beyond the included selection, you can check Steam Workshop or Mod.io for THOUSANDS of maps created by our community. As 1.0 adds multiple new interactive map objects - our players have more map-making tools than ever before - and it shows, with more amazing maps coming each day. And there’s no better place to interact with the rest of the map-creating crowd than our bustling Discord server!