Terraformers is an expansive turn-based colony builder and resource management game with roguelike elements. It was developed by Asteroid Lab and published by Goblinz Publishing. While the game was available to play in its early access since April, 2022, it is now out on GOG in its full 1.0 glory!
We’re incredibly excited about this news and because of that we’ve prepared something special to celebrate it. Get ready for our interview with both Goblinz Publishing and the developers of Terraformers, where we had absolute pleasure to talk to them about what makes it special, why they chose this specific setting, how early access development influenced the final outcome and more!Enjoy the read!
Expansive turn-based colony builder and resource management game with roguelike elements – that’s probably one of the best ways to describe Terraformers. Goblinz do not shy from publishing excellent titles based on those mechanics and you are always providing us with something new and fun when it comes to their gameplay. What can we expect to stand out this time?At Goblinz, we have a strict editorial line that focuses mainly on turn-based strategy games. We are proud to have Terraformers in our publishing catalog because we know our community loves this type of game.The gameplay is rich, with many major additions added during the early access phase. With numerous scenarios, leaders, events, and more, the replayability is super interesting. Each run is unique, and both the exploration and terraforming process are enjoyable.The developers at Asteroid Lab also made an effort to stay within the limits of realism, which adds to the game's overall appeal. Additionally, the theme of climate change is highlighted in many of our games, making Terraformers even more interesting for us.
Space, Mars, sci-fi – the setting of Terraformers is at the center of the game. What inspired you to go into the direction of humankind’s interplanetary conquest?The idea for the game was inspired after reading the Mars Trilogy by Kim S. Robinson which narrates humanity’s settling of Mars in a realistic near-future. In the book, humanity is facing a lot of challenges (social unrest, ecological collapse on Earth, hostile new world…) but always has a positive undertone that if we work together in the end we will surmount them.This is a theme and a feeling we wanted to bring through the game. We believe space exploration is a fantastic and hopeful possibility which can inspire future generations to work both on Earth and space towards a brighter future. I think life is beautiful and as we (humanity) have the material capacity to change our environment, we should act as “gardeners of life” and help it spread, grow and blossom. All the way to other worlds.Today we know every square-inch of our planet Earth and the age of adventurous travels and wondrous discoveries is hard to come by for most people. The prospect of exploring a new world where no-one has gone before and starting everything from scratch is also a very exciting prospect which we wanted to bring out in a game.
Right now we can enjoy the game in its full glory, but it has been available in its early access since April, 2022. What did you manage to improve thanks to the community feedback?Upon the launch of Early Access, we noticed that the difficulty was too high and was preventing a group of players from enjoying the game, so we’ve gradually lowered the overall difficulty of the game.Players also requested a custom mode in which they can play games as long as they want, and can tweak the difficulty however they wish. So we added that as well. We’ve also added the option to continue a normal game once you’ve won it, so you can achieve whatever goals you set for yourself.Players also requested various improvements to the UI: we’ve added lenses when spreading life on the planet to indicate clearly in which climate zone you can and in which climate zone you can’t spread the selected lifeform. Also, the greener the climate zone, the faster it will spread there. Upon many player requests, we’ve also added an “overview popup” in which you can get a clean overview of all your cities and climate zones, so you have to navigate less over the planet.The players also requested a “compendium” of some sorts, in which they can see all the projects, leaders and lifeforms they have unlocked. We’ve added that too.Besides this, the players also gave feedback on the balancing of the game. It was already in a pretty good state, but we managed to improve it and make sure that multiple strategies are viable for winning the game. Also the difficulty was a bit too high in the early game and too low in the late game, and now it matches the player’s progression better.Finally, we’ve added some new buildings, leader skills and some other projects that were suggested by the players and we thought fitted the game well.
What are you the most proud of when looking at Terraformers and its very favorable reviews gathered during its development?Terraformers being our first game as a studio, it makes us very proud to see so many players enjoying it. I think what we are the most proud of is that it provides a very replayable experience for most players, and that there are multiple strategies to winning the game. When designing, we’ve always hoped to achieve this “one more turn” feeling that other famous 4X games possess, and it seems that we’ve succeeded at this. We are also very proud of the way the music and UI has evolved. Our music partner has recently recorded the game with a small orchestra, and we can’t wait to let the players hear the new versions of the songs in the 1.0 release. Finally, across a big part of Early Access there was a single bug that was causing the game to freeze for a good chunk of players, and after banging our heads against the wall for months as we couldn’t find the source of the issue, we finally managed to solve it a few weeks ago. So on a technical level we are also very relieved that we managed to fix that and now have the game in a solid state.
Is there anything you’d like to say to our community before they start their amazing journey of discovering and terraforming Mars?To have fun learning all the different strategies, encountering all the events, meeting the leaders and exploring the Red Planet! Don’t be discouraged if the situation looks dire or if you lose a game: with every playthrough you’ll get better. And if you have any questions or feedback, we are happy to hear it!
We’d like to thank Goblinz Publishing and Asteroid Lab for speaking with us and shedding more light on Terraformers. If you haven’t picked it up yet, make sure to do so – many hours of amazing fun are a given. Speaking of which, we got some rare minerals to mine, see you in space! 