Hi everyone! Valen here.
I'm making this announcement to tell what are the current plans and goals for the project, what Colony 37 can offer at the early access release, and the most important one, the date when Early Access version will be released.
Release Reschedule
Due to the new stuff that I'm currently working on unfortunately I'll have to delay the release of the game for at least two weeks and it will be releasing in the time period of 6th of September (06.09.2025) to 15 of September (15.09.2025) (Updated) It's not ideal, I know, but I'm trying my best working day and night to make this game not just another digging game, but a game that puts exploration and feeling of discovery in the first place. I just need more time to accomplish this so people will experience first launch with my intended plans. So, since I decided to write the reschedule message, I also decided to share some information about the game's current state.
What Early Access launch will have?
I've been working on a lot of new things lately to spice things up as well as polishing the existing mechanics (balancing the game, cost of items and overall game feel). Apart from the basics (Oxygen consumption, radiation eating away your health if you gathered a lot of it, fall damage that... well... hurts) Colony 37 already has features that you can see down below.
Biomes
I decided to scrap the idea of having just a mundane depth progression where the only thing that changes in the process is the cost of resources you gain and decided to implement a "Biome" feature. Each biome has it's own set of blocks and minerals to mine as well as crates that contain biome-specific loot. Currently biomes are different in visual style, generation and resources, all though I will add individual biome-specific threats in the future.
Dialogues
Even though, I'll be completely honest, it's not my main goal to create a vast amount of story telling dialogues (at the current state of game development), there are a couple of people that have a thing or two to say as well as reward you for your progression.
Trinkets and Instruments
I've added a lot of trinkets and a couple of instruments that players can buy for credits (or find it in caves). Majority of them provide both positive and negative buffs, so plan accordingly what you equip and what other items might counteract the negative effects.
Placeables
Some of the instruments will provide you with an ability to place them in caves, some of them grant you an ability to jump really high (so you can go back to base easier), provide oxygen, or negate fall damage.
Laboratories
Honestly this is the number one thing that delays the project release. A game will have a couple (3 at the time of the release of early access) laboratories for story progression. All of the laboratories are generated randomly every time player opens them. They have loot, some of them have huge amounts of radiation, some of them... contain something worse.
There are a couple more things I can show you, but at this state I'd rather save them until they are finished. Really huge thanks to everyone who wishlisted the game on Steam, sorry again about the delay of release, I'm a single developer of this project and sometimes it's really hard to calculate how much time do I need to finish one thing or the other. I'll continue working hard to provide you with just the right experience I possibly can! Just need a bit more time :)