Hello there, adventurers! We have some news to share.
Intro
So far we've had two major updates that were developed each in a couple months without delays, excusing the 1 day delay recurring joke (we just don't think It's a good idea to release on Fridays). These updates contained a lot of new additions: full content islands, modding, rune system, pets, PVP, NPC friendship, mounts, weather, roof system, etc. We are now nearly the point of doubling the content we had on release, just 6 months after the early access was launched.
But while we love what we do from the bottom of our hearts, this pace is taking a toll on the team. We are just a small team, with a lot of passion that wants to do a lot of things, but It's time to slowdown a little, so we can keep delivering content up to the quality that we are happy with.
The current 3 month(ish) development schedule for each update just isn't enough. While we've been hitting the deadlines, after releasing an update there's an extra month (at least) that we can't work on the next update at full steam because we are still fixing issues, addressing community's feedback from the latest update and updating the modding tools. With this in mind, we've prepared the new Tinkerlands Roadmap 2026-2027, which includes quite a few changes in both content and schedule.
v0.4 | 'Seas of Fortune' | Summer–Fall 2026
First of all, we've merged the (previously) v0.4 and v0.5 updates, and pushed the Endless Tower to v1.0. The reasoning behind this is that the Endless Tower is meant to be post-game content so it makes sense that we push it until we have the actual ending of the game. At the same time, it makes sense to move the shipbuilding and sailing reworks earlier, since this is a quite unique feature we want to have the community feedback on and address any possible concerns or issues before we hit v1.0.
The new v0.4 update, now called 'Seas of Fortune' is now scheduled for Summer/Fall 2026. This extra time gives us some headroom for developing it without burning out, and also allows us to be a bit more ambitious with the content and systems. Having extra time also allows us to revisit previous systems like the Codex, which has been asking for a rework for a long time by now.
With all that said, let's take a look at the 'Seas of Fortune' content:
Shipbuilding & Sailing
This is going to be a big one. In 'Seas of Fortune' players will be able to build their own ships piece by piece, and use it to navigate to other islands while avoiding obstacles, defending against enemies and other events.
Contracts
Players will be able to visit the new Pirate Island and accept different kind of contracts that they can go and complete to get a special kind of currency as rewards. These contracts could be anything, from gathering resources or defeating enemies to finding a hidden treasure by using a treasure map.
What's the currency for you say? Well that takes us to the next point.
Pirate Outpost
The new Pirate island will have a few pirate outposts where you'll be able to spend your rewards from the Contracts you complete for some goodies, upgrades and more!
Codex Rework
We are still on the designing phase for this feature, but we've been wanting to fully rework the Codex for a long time now. It's tight and hard to navigate and doesn't contain all the info that we wanted to include due to the lack of space. We'll hopefully have more news to share soon about it.
And there's much more to come:
New Classes
New Systems
QOL improvements
Multiplayer Improvements
There's a lot more stuff that we are going to include in this update but are not ready to share yet. We'll share more about it in our next devlogs. Stay tuned especially for the new Musician class, it's also quite unique!
v1.0 | 'Beyond the Horizon' | Early 2027
This will be the end of the Early Access and will include the ending (but not the end) of Tinkerlands. Since we deleted the intermediate v0.5 update we've moved the Endless Tower to this update.
Let's see what 'Beyond the Horizon' includes:
Endless Tower
The Endless Tower will be a new place included in the 'Beyond the Horizon' update where the player will be able to climb procedurally generated floors gathering equipment, materials and new items while defeating enemies and bosses.
The Endless Tower is a post-game content, this means that it's meant to be a fun activity to do after completing the game and that it's not directly tied to the game's progression.
We are still working on the concept since we have a few different ideas that sound viable (you only know how viable they are when you test them out) so we can't dive too much into the details right now, but stay tuned for future updates!
Miasma Island
Miasma Island will be the last progression island. Again we don't want to enter into spoiling territory, but the island will have It's own unique mechanics and theme just like the previous progression islands.
Cursed Islands
After defeating the evil that lurks below Miasma Island corruption spreads to other islands, transforming them with new structures, items, enemies and new bosses. We won't spoil it, but you might want to take a second look to islands that you have already visited!
And much more:
Final Boss
Expanded NPC Content
New Systems
Steam Workshop Modding
Multiplayer Improvements
Once again, there's a lot more stuff that we plan to include in this update (we haven't even talked about the final boss encounter). We've heard the community feedback and plan to expand our NPCs to be more likable (more about this really soon!).
We also don't forget about modders! While we are still in the beta-phase for modding, the v1.0 release will include support for mods from the Steam Workshop.
Other Features
I'd like to say a few words about other features that worry the community, and while they are probably not worth of a feature in the roadmap, we really care about them and are continuously working on them.
We are aware that players from the Asian region are more likely to have issues while playing multiplayer. There's sadly not much that we can do with the system we currently use (Steamworks Networking), since the issues happen outside Tinkerlands. But we are actively working to improve it:
Right now we have the options to play through Steam or via TCP-IP connection and we are currently working on a few things to improve the multiplayer experience. First of all, we are currently working on implemented a new protocol, still based on Steamworks Networking but that might improve the connection stability in the Asian regions. We'll soon share more about this and will publish an experimental branch so the community can test it and share their feedback about it. We are also working on adding a third option to play multiplayer through Epic Online Services which from the few tests we've already done, seems a lot more stable and could potentially fix the issues players from the Asian region are facing. Just know that we are working on it and that we don't forget about you.
Another thing that I want to talk about is QoL (Quality of Life) features. We are constantly checking the Discord community and forums for suggestions and feedback about QoL, and we are working on implementing them along with the updates. We have quite a few changes on our backlog, so please keep them coming. As an example, many times we've received the suggestion to make some recipes work with multiple different ingredients, so we've implemented a system to use a group of items as an ingredient.
This will allow crafting coal, torches and other similar items using any kind of wood, and we are looking to integrate this system with other recipes where it could make sense.
That's all for now!
And that should be all for now, we sincerely hope that you understand that we cannot keep the pace we currently have with the updates, and that having more time to work on each update will help us making them beefier and better.
Thank you for being there with us during this journey, and thank you If you made it this far into the post. It was a really long read! So long that you can actually use the TLDR code inside the game to get a few goodies.
Can't wait on what's coming next,
The Tinkerlands Team