Welcome, Groundbreakers! This week’s post is a little on the lighter side compared to our usual, but we hope you find it illuminating. I can’t promise that those will be the last of the horrible puns in this update, but I will apologize for them. I’m sorry. As we march towards the Early Access launch of Techtoni...

Wake up, Groundbreaker. While you were sleeping, we completely changed your cryo pod. In fact, we’ve changed a ton about Techtonica since the demo, especially where you wake up. Lots of this happened after we took a good look at the player feedback from in-person demos and across places like the Steam Forums and our D...

One of Techtonica’s core (pun intended) gameplay pillars is unlocking and upgrading tech. You do that through scanning and research. Research Cores are the research currency in Techtonica. In order to unlock tech on your tech tree, you’ll need the right count and color of Research Cores. They must be built and placed ...

Say hello to your ModPack! This modular backpack is worn by all Groundbreakers on Calyx, and you’ll be able to enhance it with upgrades like the Hover Mod. In today’s post, we’ll share screenshots and GIFs of the ModPack. We’ll talk a bit about how it functions and fits into the universe of Techtonica. And, of ...

Building the User Interface in a game like Techtonica is its own unique challenge. There’s so much information happening all at once in a factory automation game as players explore, research, build, and upgrade their factories. Add in multiplayer? Well, that introduces a whole host of fresh challenges for how a...

Factory automation games like Techtonica are about making things work as well as they possibly can. Efficiency. How do you eke out more efficiency? These games are also about on-the-fly solving of logistics puzzles that you, the player, create. You create these puzzles as you plan and build your factories. As m...

Power production in factory automation games is critical to scaling your factory. How do you meet shifting power demands as your factory grows? What new tech can help? The power system in Techtonica will evolve throughout Early Access, but at launch, we’ll have several tools for players to harness and obstacles for th...

Techtonica is a factory automation game, in case this wasn’t abundantly clear yet. This growing genre is relatively fresh, and one bit of fairly untrodden ground is narrative. That is, factory automation games don’t typically have stories at their center, letting players pull at plot threads as they expand their facto...

World-building in games is tough! Establishing a sense of visual, aural, artistic, and narrative consistency can really help make a game feel alive, a world fleshed out, and accomplishments more rewarding. As you can probably tell based on past updates about Techtonica, we’re working hard to establish that sense of “l...

A few weeks back, we offered a look at Butterfly Cove, PT VICTOR, and a little of what our studio goes through when we name an area in a game for internal reference. Today, we’ll show and explain a little of the process of iterating on a space in Techtonica's map in response to new flora, expanding art, and winding te...

The first few moments of a game matter, don’t they?What are you doing? How does it feel? What sounds do you hear? How’s the view?In the Techtonica demo, there’s this moment when you break out of the buried facility and make your way into a small, open floor in front of a big machine. This whole place was temporary, a pro...

Have you ever wondered how developers talk about unnamed spaces in larger video game worlds? That is, how do teams talk about a single location on a map that never really gets a formal name?It’s like callouts in a competitive multiplayer title back before games started naming specific areas in the UI. We pick one or two ...

In the demo for Techtonica, the Echosketch is a functional mapping system that lets you know where you are in Calyx’s network of twisting caverns.In a game design sense, getting the Echosketch is a big part of how players in the demo move from Production Terminal Lima to the more open Production Terminal Victor area. You...

Techtonica will have four-player co-op when it launches into Early Access next year.We’re still in active development, and that means lots of what we’re sharing and showcasing should be labeled “work in progress.” Some of you eagle-eyed Groundbreakers even noticed a multiplayer clip from a couple of months ago on TikTok ...

Hello Groundbreakers.We’ve heard you. We’re bringing the Techtonica demo back.Here are the key details before we get into the meat of what we’re doing. First, the demo will go live in the next week-ish; we’ll be sure to update you here and on Discord. Second, the demo will not be updated as we focus on the main game.Okay...

We’ve talked about this before in our Discord AMAs and across a few interviews, but we’re going for something special with Techtonica. Internally, we refer to it as flow or flow state.It’s not something we made up! Flow is a real thing, it even has its own Wikipedia page, which is the standard for when a thing becomes re...

The Containers you’ve grown used to in Techtonica feature four ports, one on each side of a 3x3x3 box. Containers with ports are super helpful for factory automation games. Coupled with the right combination of Inserters and belts, Containers can serve as hubs for complex layouts or temporary sinks for starter spaces.But...

If you follow Techtonica on Steam, this likely won’t come as a surprise. Factory automation games like Techtonica have a narrow, dedicated following, especially when compared to other marquee genres like the typical action, adventure, or FPS fare. That’s why we were pleasantly surprised to see such a positive reaction f...