Characters and alien wildlife are brought to life through a rigorous simulation and the game plays out as a tug-of-war between humans and nature on a planet full of opportunities and dangers.
Features
Indirect control -- the colonists are free and have a democratic society. Dissatisfied people can either leave or vote for improving their colony: Only if you have ambitious inhabitants will you access better technology and develop a camp into a comfortable town.
-Realistic sci-fi, pioneer setting
-Simulation of alien nature, human needs and frontier community
-Detailed, flexible crafting
...We draw inspiration from ?The Settlers?, ?Dwarf Fortress? and Paradox games.
Setting
The game takes place in a realistic sci-fi setting, in a plausible future without Faster-than-Light travel. Humans landed on a Tau Ceti planet in 2238 after a 100 year journey. Over the generations, the Tau Ceti colonists lost the advanced equipment which was brought to the planet and the descendants formed simple frontier societies based on farming, fishing and trade.
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Open-ended maps and scenarios
In various scenarios and maps we explore the history of the planet's colonization. The tutorials and scenarios introduce you to the game's setting and mechanics and make you ready to tackle the open-ended maps where you build up a colony from scratch.
Fields of Tau Ceti are open-ended maps that take place in a primitive future centuries after planetfall. You begin with a community equipped for either hunting, farming or fishing and work off the land. Apart from an old robot, the people use simple technology such as smithing, small scale farming and black powder.
Fields of Tau Ceti currently has 2 maps + 1 large map version for powerful PCs.
Muckroot Mining Site is an open-ended map where a mining crew is extracting metals in a dangerous biome: They use advanced weapons for protection against the wildlife. They can start a settlement, mixing advanced and primitive tech.
Twinkler Island is a scenario with a team of planet explorers that have crash-landed on an island and must wait for rescue. There will be attacks by pack predators, the so-called ?twinklers? which emerge from the caves littering the island.
Making Headway is an open-ended scenario where you grow a small farm community by expanding into rubber production, extracting sap from a dangerous swamp.
The Clay Pit is an open-ended tutorial where a scruffy crew of laborers make mudbricks for sale. See if you can turn the camp into a permanent settlement.
Castaways is a tutorial scenario that teaches you the game as you guide a group of stranded sailors to find food, fight 'bush dragons' and build a signal pyre on top of an island.
-The maps and scenarios are hand-made but we ensure replayability by randomizing starting location, number of resources, colonists, trade goods, animals etc.
CONTENT:
As of release, the game includes
94 structures
31 animals
~450 items (ingredients, materials, tools, gadgets, weapons, upgrades etc.)
17 plant species
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