Tomorrow, it's June 16th, meaning Colony Survival has been available on Steam for one full year! It has been an amazing year. In 12 months, we went from a handful to more than 100,000 players. We want to thank all of you for making this possible! In this blog, I want to give a summary of the progress we've made in the last year.
0.1.0 - before June 2017
We've used Steam to share builds of the game internally since 2015. Because there was no large group of testers, the build version was always "0.1.0". June 1 2017 was the first time we updated that version number. 0.1.1 contained a number of new items and jobs that added a bare-bones end-game. It added gold ingots, the minter, the merchant, flax farmers, linseed oil and coated planks. It also contained a long list of other tweaks: a sprint function, a delete button in the world load menu, a better tooltip and much more.
From then to the release date, there was a new build nearly every day. For example, in 0.1.0, you had to place crates to increase the size of the stockpile. This feature was removed in 0.1.3. Update 0.1.4 added more achievements. 0.1.6 added the "no-path-indicator". In 0.1.7, players gained the ability to temporarily remove the banner. Two days before the release, update 0.1.11 added Japanese localization. One day later, we're already in version 0.1.14, which added among other things a German and Lithuanian localization. On June 16th, the game was publicly released as version 0.1.15! Later that same day, we already released 0.1.16.
0.2.0 - June 22
Version 0.2 contained a long list of bug fixes and tweaks, and also a couple of new jobs and items. In 0.1, many players destroyed their early colony by spending all their food on colonists. The only way to get food was by farming wheat and baking bread, which required multiple days and multiple colonists. This caused many starvations. In 0.2, we added berry farmers to give players an easier way to gain food. Making bread was made harder, it also required a grinder to turn wheat into flour now.
0.2.3 was released June 30th. It added a couple of new cosmetic items: cherry trees, red planks and black planks. We kept releasing fixes and tweaks up to version number 0.2.7, released July 21th.
0.3.0 - August 25
0.3.0 was our first attempt to expand the end-game. It added the tailor, the technologist and the scientist. The only science that could be unlocked in 0.3.0 were basic HP upgrades, but it did give colonies some purpose and was a necessary stepping stone for future updates. And, I'll probably have to stop mentioning this for every update, this update also contained a long list of fixes and tweaks. You can read them all in the in-game changelog :)
0.4.0 - October 31
There was no 0.3.1. We took two months to focus on overhauling the entire game. We added much more content. Three new guards, new monsters, new ores, new metals, new crafting jobs and many new items.
In previous versions, all jobs and recipes were available from the start. In 0.4.0, most content was locked behind science. This contributed a lot to the longevity of the game. The amount of simultaneous players since 0.4.0 has been released has never dropped below the lowest numbers reached right before the release of 0.4.0.
We noticed that the extra content made the game too complicated for some people. We fixed this by hiding even more features behind research. Since 0.4.3, released November 22, wheat, flax seeds and other items are locked behind science. The science interface also received a makeover.
0.5.0 - December 22
Many players wanted more building blocks, so the Christmas Update added them! It added three new herb farmers, a stonemason and a dyer. It also added lanterns, which can be used to emit many shades of colored light.
0.5.2 (January 19) added another common request: stairs! Well, they aren't true stairs, they're quarter blocks which can be placed and used pretty much like stairs. Still very useful :)
0.6.0 - March 23 2018
This update contains probably the most complex new jobs we've added since the public release: builders & diggers. The update also contained many other significant changes. Performance for large colonies was vastly improved. It added the option to change your draw distance. Last but not least, 0.6.0 also contained a port for macOS!
Since 0.6.0, we've started working with a fourth digit in our version numbers. So we've later released a 0.6.0.1, 0.6.0.2 and 0.6.0.3 followed by 0.6.1.0. Our current logic:
X.0.0.0: 0 = Early Access, 1 = Definitive release
0.X.0.0: Major updates with a significant amount of new items, jobs and research
0.0.X.0: Significant updates with noticeable changes to the interface, performance or other parts of the game
0.0.0.X: Small hotfixes to pressing issues or minor changes for modders, will probably not be noticed by a majority of players
The most significant change in 0.6.1 (May 5) is the new server browser menu. The old one was very basic and limited, the new one adds a lot of new features. There were 5 hotfixes, up to 0.6.1.5.
Update 0.6.2 (June 1) contained a significant overhaul to the monster spawning, and added a world settings menu in the banner tool which can be used to change the settings for both day and night monsters.
The list above is just a summary of the most notable changes. The full changelog contains literally thousands of other tweaks and fixes. Recipes had to be rebalanced, obscure bugs had to be found and performance has been optimized. It has been a busy year :D
0.6.3
We're now working on 0.6.3. There are already some awesome changes we can show to you.
There's now a decent search bar in the stockpile. It won't merely find specific items, it can also find entire categories like "food", "weapon" and "ammo"! Combined with the enhanced tooltip, it should make the game more understandable for new players. And once we release 0.7.0, you'll all feel like new players ;)
Here's our new in-game loading screen:
They say taste is subjective, but we're pretty sure the new loading screen looks a lot better than the old one! Hints and backgrounds are chosen randomly.
There's one important thing we still want to add to 0.6.3: arrow trails. Currently, there's barely any visible interaction between guards and monsters. Monsters just seem to randomly deactivate. We want to test what the game looks like if projectiles leave trails behind them. We'll have to add some kind of 2D sprites to the game for the trails, and we might be able to use the same technology to add some kind of "impact sprites" to the monsters, to visualize them being hit. We'll probably share screenshots on Discord!
Once again, thank you all for making Colony Survival a success. Thanks for purchasing it, thanks for modding it, thanks for playing it and leaving feedback, thanks for reading the blog and writing comments, thanks for translating it, thanks for hosting servers and thanks for joining our community on Discord!
Here's to a great Year 2 for Colony Survival!