Timberborn News

Thank you for all your reports and feedback! Please keep it coming, and good things will happen to you.


The optimizations will continue until the morale improves.

• Updated the animation system for buildings. This should slightly improve the game’s performance. (A similar update for character animations was already included in the original Update 4 release).
  

We’ve realized Hydroponic Garden could use a little more variation in its recipes.

• Mushroom: cost reduced to 40 water (from 50), growth time reduced to 8 days (from 10), yield reduced to 45 (from 60).
  
• Algae: cost increased to 60 water (from 50), growth time increased to 12 days (from 10), yield increased to 70 (from 60).
  
• Food Factory: output for Algae rations increased to 6 from 3 (production time and cost remain unchanged).
  

• Added new sounds for Fermenter and Wood Workshop.
  
• Water-requiring buildings will no longer play their water-ish sounds even when placed in water-free areas. Muh immersion!

• Platforms can once again be placed on top of Medical Beds - now with 94,3% less clipping!
  
• Natural resources such as trees no longer aggressively self-spread onto higher tiles and threaten the beavers with “The Last of Us” scenario.
  

• Fixed a crash caused by deleting Rubble right as it was to be picked up.
  
• Fixed a bug with lazy distributors that wouldn’t care enough to pick up single leftover pieces of goods.
  
• Fixed a bug with corner-cutting distributors that would just rush to their destination, ignoring the paths carefully placed by the player.
  
• Fixed the broken custom goods recovery rate available as part of the custom difficulty setup.
  
• Fixed Fermenters and Coffee Breweries using up energy even when not working.
  
• Fixed some visual bugs with backpacks and carried goods.
  
• The settlement panel will no longer crash when the player interacts with a dead beaver.
  
• Fixed a weirdly specific visual issue with Tapper’s Shack doorstep interfering with decorations’ AoE indicators.
  

World Earth Day is upon us (April 22, remember)! And to celebrate, Earth Appreciation Festival is back to Steam, with our studio as its (co-)organizers!

Until April 24, 2023, check the festival’s page to see the selection of ~150 awesome games, both released and upcoming. The titles we have either help us appreciate nature’s beauty, or show the bleak fate the Blue Planet may meet if we do not change our ways.

Obviously, Timberborn is available with a 20% discount and, just like last year, we will donate 15% of the revenue during festival to the Viva! foundation, and its charity efforts such as the Fox Asylum in Korabiewice, Poland. Thanks to your generosity last year, we helped renovate the Asylum and built a dedicated hospital for our furry friends. Let’s see what we can do this year!



This year’s Earth Appreciation Festival is coorganized by Slug Disco (makers of Empires of the Undergrowth) and Stray Fawn (creators of The Wandering Village).

Speaking of The Wandering Village, we’ve just launched a bundle with this fantastic, colorful (and yet post-apocalyptic) city builder set on the back of a humongous beast. If you’re a Timberborn fan, we’re sure you’ll enjoy this one too, especially if the extra discount. Get it below!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/31818/Timberborn_and_The_Wandering_Village/

Hello everyone!

Thank you for your feedback on the first experimental build of Update 4 - we’re as hyped as you are! After your initial reports, we’ve identified and fixed several issues.

NOTE: If your game crashes or shows a blank screen after updating to U4, please check if you have any mods enabled. If yes, try turning them off.

• Fixed the bug that caused icons to be replaced with cute gray squares.
  
• Fixed the flickering status icons for units traversing the stairs.
  
• Fixed a bug with the save list not refreshing after deleting a settlement on the Load Game screen.
  
• Fixed a bug with need tooltips saying that everything affects walking speed.
  
• Fixed a bug with selection sounds playing multiple times.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by separating a District Crossing from a district.
  
• Fixed a crash on MacOS.
  

Hello everyone!

This time, we won’t tease you with what’s coming in the next big update because it’s right here (part one, at least - we will be making further changes as needed). And guess what, Update 4 is all about addressing your, the players’, feedback!

You will probably be happy to hear that we’ve removed district limits entirely, reworked the distribution to make it truly automatic, and massively boosted the game’s performance.

On the content side, we’ve got a new map (Craters) and multiple faction-specific changes. This includes an entirely new Iron Teeth food production chain, complete with many new crops and buildings. We have also replaced all monuments and updated several other buildings to make each faction more unique. On top of that, we have quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes.

Switch to the experimental branch as explained here, try all that out - preferably by starting a new game - and let us know what you think!


The “making factions more unique” project began with Update 3 but today, we’ve got a heavy hitter. In Update 4, the Iron Teeth receive a new, exclusive food production chain, with most of the existing crops becoming exclusive to Folktails. We designed the new Iron Teeth crops and buildings to reflect the faction’s industrial nature. For them, food is all but another cog in the great lumberpunk machine. They want their eatables produced efficiently and on a large scale and now have the tools for that. Let Folktails keep their tasty organic food nonsense!

Please note: if you load an old IT save on an Update 4 build it should work but things won’t be the same anymore - as detailed below. As all Iron Teeth know, progress sometimes requires sacrifice. If possible, please start a new game.

• New crop: Kohlrabi (can be eaten raw; Iron Teeth only) - this starting food keeps the belly full, but that’s about it.
  
• New crop: Canola (Iron Teeth only) - used to produce a new good, Canola oil.
  
• New crop: Cassava (Iron Teeth only) - fermented in the Fermenter.
  
• New crop: Soybean (Iron Teeth only) - fermented in the Fermenter.
  
• New crop: Corn (Iron Teeth only) - turned into rations in the Food Factory.
  
• New crop: Eggplant (Iron Teeth only) - turned into rations in the Food Factory.
  
• New tree: Mangrove Tree (grown in shallow waters; Iron Teeth only) - yields tasty fruit, and in an emergency, can be cut for some logs.
  
• New crop: Coffee Bush (grown by Forester; Iron Teeth only) - yields beans that are then roasted to make coffee, duh.
  

• New building: Fermenter (Logs x 25; Iron Teeth only) - with the unique process known only to the Iron Teeth, it produces Fermented Cassava, Soybean, and Mushrooms.
  
• New building: Oil Press (120 SP; Logs x 20, Planks x 20, Gears x 20; Iron Teeth only) - squeezes oil out of Canola seeds.
  
• New building: Hydroponic Garden (200 SP; Planks x 20, Gears x 10, Metal blocks x 5; stackable; Iron Teeth only) - with a steady supply of water and over the course of a long period, this stackable garden grows algae and mushrooms, used to create highly nutritious rations and fermented food.
  
• New building: Food Factory (300 SP; Planks x 40, Gears x 15, Metal blocks x 10; Iron Teeth only) - produces nutritious rations from corn, eggplants, and algae.
  
• New Building: Coffee Brewery (500 SP; Treated planks x 25, Gears x 10, Metal blocks x 15; Iron Teeth only) - brews coffee from gathered coffee beans.
  
• New tree: Oak (takes 30 days to fully grow, yields 8 logs). These mighty trees may take a while to grow but the reward is grand!
  
• Wheat, Carrots, Potatoes, Sunflowers, Cattail, and Spadderdock are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, ground crops are replaced with Kohlrabi, and aquatic crops are gone.
  
• Chestnut Tree and Maple are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, these trees are replaced with Pines and Oaks, respectively.
  
• Lowered Maple’s log yield.
  
• Aquatic Farmhouse, Grill, Gristmill, and Bakery are now Folktails-exclusive. On existing Iron Teeth saves, these buildings are gone, with related goods replaced with various new goods. For example, Bread is replaced with Fermented Soybean.
  

In addition to the above, we’re updating several other buildings to make Folktails and Iron Teeth playthroughs feel different, both in terms of gameplay and visuals. Notably, all six monuments were replaced and are now faction-specific.

• New building: Farmer Monument (1000 SP, 200x Logs; Folktails only). Folktails salute the workers who ensure they have something to put in the oven.
  
• New building: Brazier of Bonding (3000 SP, 400x Planks; Folktails only). Because in these trying times, family is all that matters.
  
• New building: Fountain of Joy (12000 SP, 400x Planks, 100x Treated Planks, 300 Metal blocks; needs to be placed in water to operate; Folktails only). Having an abundance of water is definitely a reason to rejoice.
  
• New building: Laborer Monument (1000 SP, 200x Logs; Iron Teeth only). Work hard, work hard!
  
• New building: Flame of Unity (3000 SP, 300x Planks, 50xMetal blocks; Iron Teeth only). How many Iron Teeth do you need to change the lightbulb refuel a brazier? Four, apparently.
  
• New building: Tribute to Ingenuity (12000 SP, 400x Gears, 100x Treated Planks, 300x Metal blocks; needs power to operate; Iron Teeth only). The burden of the world lies heavy on an Iron Teeth’s shoulders.
  
• On existing saves, most old monuments are replaced with new versions. The only exception is Tribute to Ingenuity (Folktails) which simply disappears. It’s huge, and a fountain built a hundred feet above ground would be weird even by beaver standards.
  

• Updated building: Farmhouse was renamed Efficient Farmhouse (Logs x 25). It is now exclusive to Folktails and has three workers.
  
• New building: Farmhouse (Logs x 20; Iron Teeth only; 2 workers). It is a smaller (2x2) version of the building previously known under that name.
  
• New building: Industrial Lumbermill (Logs x 20). This Lumbermill variant is exclusive to the Iron Teeth and has a new, twice as sawwy model. Also, has two workers.
  
• Updated building: Lumbermill (Logs x 15; Folktails). It is now Folktails-exclusive.
  
• Updated models for the following buildings, with different variants for each faction: Campfire, Forester, and Tapper’s Shack.
  

The introduction of districts solved many problems Timberborn had in the past, including but not limited to, original performance woes. However, we heard a lot of feedback about this feature and specifically, district range limits. Over time, we’ve optimized the game’s code to make the range less of a performance hog, and in Update 4, we’re removing range limits entirely. If you want to cover the entire map with a single district, you can! Just remember that if a worker spends half their day commuting, their efficiency and well-being take a hit. You still may optimize and specialize your colonies with districts, but it’s now optional and way more straightforward.

• Districts no longer have range limits.
  
• Colored range lines remain on paths to inform you that a building might be too far from the District Center to operate efficiently.
  
• Added a colored heatmap to better communicate ranges across the district. The heatmap is visible after clicking any path tile within the district.
  
• Added colored numerical range indicators to the Settlement Panel and individual building panels to further help you identify buildings that might be too remote.
  

Here’s another reason to continue using districts - we’ve completely reworked the distribution mechanics to make it (truly) automatic. By default, your workers will distribute goods to districts with a warehouse for a particular good, or a factory that consumes it. Some basic goods such as water, food, and logs are always imported, even if the district does not have dedicated storage for them. While those default settings should work for most cases, you can customize the rules for import and export in the new Distribution tab added to the Settlement Panel.

• New building: District Crossing (1000 SP; Logs x 30, Planks x 15). This two-sided building replaces the District Gate. Each side of the building connects to a different district and has dedicated workers responsible for moving goods between the Crossing and the rest of their district.
  
• Removed Distribution Post and Drop-off Point from the game.
  
• Added an additional toggle (“Supply”) to all storage buildings. When set to “Supply”, it employs haulers and District Crossing workers to pick up the goods from the storage and redistribute them to other warehouses, while continuing to accept new goods.
  
• Goods are distributed across districts proportionally to the capacity of storage and factory inputs for a particular good. Warehouses set to “Empty” or “Supply” are excluded from the import demand calculations.
  
• Added the “Distribution” tab to the Settlement Panel. Use it to set per-district, per-resource export thresholds and enable or disable import from outside. If the import is enabled, you can also choose whether the good should be imported even if the district does not have any warehouses that store it or factories that need it. That’s the default setting for key goods such as water.
  
• “Labor” category on the bottom toolbar received a new icon and was renamed “District Management”. It also houses District Center (and District Crossing) now.
  

If the excellent selection of player-made contest maps is not enough, it’s finally time for a new built-in map - Craters (192x192)! Fire up this medium-difficulty map and find your way across three treacherous craters, starting next to the map’s border. We also made some tweaks to older maps (which will only apply when starting a new game).

• New map: Craters (192x192).
  
• Tweaked the layout for Plains, Meander, Waterfalls, and Lakes so that these maps are not too easy play better after the removal of district limits.
  
• Since Maple and Chestnut Tree are now faction-specific for Folktails, all built-in maps have been updated to replace the faction-specific trees with other plants.
  
• Removed a misplaced berry bush in the Thousand Islands starting area.
  

Making optimizations that help rather than break something is a lengthy process. We needed to thoroughly test different approaches and today, we’re proud to publish a batch of changes that greatly improve the game’s performance. We aimed to reduce lag spikes, cut loading times, and increase the framerates, especially on larger maps and settlements with hundreds of units. Your mileage may vary depending on a save and your configuration but based on our benchmarks, Update 4 increases the average FPS by up to 80% on Windows and 60% on macOS. Let us know your results!

• Made multiple CPU and GPU optimizations that greatly improved framerates.
  
• Decreased loading times by 15% on average.
  
• Selecting large numbers of objects (for example when marking tree-cutting areas) should no longer cause frame drops.
  

• It is now possible to select goods for warehouses using dropdowns available in the storage overlay view.
  
• “Hanging” buildings (Water Pumps, Showers, Gravity Batteries, Bridges, and Lidos) are now easier to correctly place on the grid.
  
• Tooltips for several buildings such as Water Pumps and Lidos now inform you that the building needs water access.
  
• Added new information to crop tooltips to indicate whether a crop can be eaten raw.
  
• Farmhouses, Flags, and other gathering buildings now adjust their inventory capacity based on resources in range so they no longer skew the fill-rate indicators.
  
• Ruins now display a number of goods “in stock” in a way similar to other places.
  
• Added progress bars for Engines, Irrigation Towers, and Medical Beds to indicate how long their supply will last.
  
• Tweaked all in-game progress bars to be consistent across the UI.
  
• Made the font sizes more consistent across the UI.
  
• The scroll bar is now highlighted when hovering a cursor over it.
  
• Tweaked the tooltip position relative to the cursor position.
  
• Fixed click sounds and highlights that were not aligned with the actual clickable areas on the toolbar.
  
• Added good icons to dropdowns.
  
• Reordered needs in beaver panels to align them with how the game usually progresses.
  
• Names for goods across the UI should now correctly use the plural form.
  

• Default difficulty settings have been rebalanced in tune with Update 4 changes.
  
• Ruins can no longer be demolished, making them an obstacle map creators can use to pace the player’s progress.
  
• Power Wheel’s power output is now affected by the worker’s Walking Speed. That makes sense, right?
  
• Dandelion is known to be an unwelcome party guest so we’ve lowered the speed at which it self-spreads.
  

• Added new sound sets for the following buildings and objects: Water Source, Ruins, Underground Ruins, Inventor, and Forester.
  
• Added a new sound effect for the dynamite explosion.
  
• Added a missing click sound for Barriers.
  

• Some crops’ models are now randomly rotated on spawn.
  
• Particle effects are now only turned on for working buildings (rather than having a minor particle effect for idle buildings).
  
• Added the antialiasing checkbox to Settings.
  
• Tweaked preview models for Dandelions and Blueberries.
  
• Tweaked models for Teeth Grindstone, Refinery, and Sunflowers.
  
• Added the “Update 4” bar to the main menu so you can’t miss what you’ve just launched.
  
• The lights at Campfires, Rooftop Terraces, and other self-lighted buildings are now less prone to bugging out.
  

• Tweaked the save validation mechanism. The game now recognizes “soft” and “hard” incompatibility. When trying to load a save with a “soft” incompatibility, you will be warned about possible issues but the game will still let you load the save. When the save is too old and the “hard” incompatibility is detected, the game refuses to load it.
  
• Goods recovered from deleted buildings are now split more evenly across rubble piles.
  
• Added new studio employees, Eager Beavers, and Masterful Architects to the credits section.
  
• Removed the “Empty storage” toggle from Engines and Irrigation Towers.
  
• Resources used by factories are now consumed right at the start of production.
  
• Fixed rounding errors, for example for tree growth, displayed as 100% despite being slightly lower.
  
• It is no longer possible to build a platform over a Medical Bed.
  
• Fixed the Breeding Pod’s collider.
  
• Fixed the Small Industrial Pile’s collider.
  
• Whenever a new beaver is born, something special may or may not happen.
  

• Fixed “path not available” prompts appearing on construction previews when the path itself is at the construction stage (for example to be built on platforms).
  
• Fixed a bug with Gatherer displaying the “Nothing to do in range” error.
  
• Fixed blurred status icons.
  
• Fixed blinking status icons on Scavenger flags.
  
• Fixed a bug with incorrect range indicators on stairs.
  
• Fixed beaver/bot toggles that sometimes would be displayed incorrectly.
  
• Fixed range lines on paths messing up with buildings’ blueish range indicators.
  
• Fixed a game crash caused by setting priorities for numbers of objects that were dam too high.
  
• Fixed beavers so thirsty they would break through water tanks’ back walls.
  
• Fixed overzealous farmers and foresters that would sometimes try to plant something on an already occupied slot.
  
• Fixed a bug with warehouses being emptied to make room for a new good that wouldn’t be added to the storage count for that new good.
  
• Fixed a bug with selfish beavers that called dibs on a stocked good and wouldn’t let anyone touch it.
  
• Fixed tutorial highlights not disappearing in certain situations.
  
• Tweaked the model for the Beaver Statue (Iron Teeth) so that it no longers boops itself with the hammer. Ouch!
  

Hello everyone!

We announced our first map-building contest to launch the Timberborn hub on Mod.io with a bang. And it worked! The 300 entries we received exceeded all our expectations!

Picking the three winners - one per each map size category - was a tough nut to crack. After the preliminary back and forth with our game designer Adrian, we narrowed the list to 36 submissions. After that, the entire team voted to help us choose the maps we believed were the most original, visually appealing, and valuable gameplay-wise.

It was a tough race, with each team member having personal favorites, but after the dust settled, we selected three winners who would each get 1000 EUR and be added to the game's credits. The competition was so fierce we also felt obligated to mention several other maps that scored high.



[h2]Maps 128x128 and below[/h2]

Winner (1000 EUR prize): Sinker (128x128) by Flor3nce2456



Using a clever map editor trick with water sources set to negative strength, this challenge map puts your colony at the bottom of a hole that’s about to be flooded… or is it?

Adrian’s comment: This map gives you plenty of green room to manage the early game. However, to build larger water reservoirs for later or harder scenarios or effectively use water flows to generate the power, you will need to use some beaver ingenuity and construct your own contraptions. At the same time, you must ensure you don’t accidentally drown your colony stuck at the bottom of the sinkhole.

Honorable mention: Hidden Valley (60x60) by Aniqua88



It’s hard to do a lot of verticality on a Diorama-sized map, all while maintaining a good level of detail and having a gimmick significant to the gameplay. Hidden Valley stood out here!

Honorable mention: Thousand Needles (96x160) by Walliie



There may be no Great Lift here but we really like the idea behind a map composed of high cliffs and tall rocky columns, with water spiraling down below. You have two main ways to go: you can send beavers down after constructing a big staircase, or you can try to stay above by bridging the pillars.

Honorable mention: Gentle Canyon (128x128) by jwbjerk



We like the author’s take on the built-in map. Here, the straightforward design was twisted by adding an additional water reservoir high up the hills and a narrow spring, ruins sprinkled around, and a conveniently placed deeper pond that helps during initial droughts.

[h2]Maps 129x129 through 255x255[/h2]

Winner (1000 EUR prize): Green Peak Valley (192x192) by Oombalol



We were very impressed with the great amount of detail found on Oombalol’s map, down to the single tiles positioned to keep select areas green after water withdraws during a drought.

Adrian’s comment: You start in a relatively limited space, but if you look around you can see some prime expansion locations to give you short-term goals to work towards. This map already gives you a pretty-looking frame to work with, now it’s a matter of filling in the blank spaces.

Honorable mention: High Coast (150x150) by KnatteAnka



This map uses height differences to great effect, with the jagged, rocky coastline facing a not-so-distant, metal-rich island separated by ocean depths. The simple idea is well executed, resulting in naturally looking scenery.

Honorable mention: Utopia (256x128) by ValentineEverlight



You won’t miss out on water on this rectangular map, with large chunks of the land flooded or on the brink of flooding - thanks to elevated springs constantly pouring out water. When the drought hits, the terrain normally hidden below the ground appears, so you can use that time to reclaim the land for tree cultivation.

Honorable mention: Tatalia (200x200) by GinFuyou



This is one of several submissions that used the map editor to create an image of ruin-like, post-hooman (?) structures using terrain. Here, it was paired with a mostly flat but intricate design we really enjoyed.

[h2]Maps 256x256 and above[/h2]

Winner (1000 EUR prize): Chip Island (256x256) by JumperFK



Compared by its author to a crushed cookie, the island in question was carefully designed to allow for expansion in different directions, all the while scaling nearby walls.

Adrian’s comment: Many mapmakers in this category struggled to use the available space fully. There were a lot of maps that had a decent amount of detail and effort put into the direct starting area, with the rest of the map left in a much simpler state. We found that Chip Island has maintained a consistent level of detail and offers an interesting and good-looking layout, all while allowing for creative expansion across the map.

Honorable mention: Nuclear Spring (256x256) by Kaynaki



Definitely one of the most visually stunning maps in the contest (thanks to an abundance of Slopes), it makes beginnings truly a challenge - but we wouldn’t expect anything less from a nuclear test site.

Honorable mention: Dry River (256x256) by RAVEN_AON



Making good use of the map’s size, Dry River gives the player plenty of opportunities to build settlements, play with elevation and water physics, and expand the colony to your heart’s content.

Honorable mention: Lost Atlantis (324x322) by Helianthemum



Zoomed out, this vast map looks like real-life landscape, with a river cutting into the landmass and the once-submerged city looming in the distance. It makes for a perfect travel destination - if you can get there, that is.

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

We can safely say that the submissions we received were excellent. Carefully designed, featuring cleverly implemented ideas, often tested and improved to perfection, they made it really difficult to pick the winners. If you didn’t win, don’t worry - another competition is a matter of time! And if you did win, congratulations from everyone on the team! Expect to hear from us shortly.

The custom maps you see above are just a taste of what our community creates. You can find all custom maps (as well as many crazy mods for the game) on Timberborn's hub on Mod.io.


Speaking of community creations, we have recently moved our Wiki to a new home. It's an ongoing work-in-progress but thanks to the contributions of our players, you can already find plenty of in-depth information about Timberborn there! And with the help of the amazing community admin Karmaworks, the front page has a brand new layout. Check it out!




Finally, we have partnered with fellow Polish indie devs Eremite Games to launch a limited-time bundle with Against the Storm! It is is a very well received city builder with a roguelike flair. Among the playable races, there are beavers, so picking it up should be a no-brainer for Timberborn players!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The Beaver Builder Bundle is available until April 9 - with a 10% discount no less. Get it below!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/30766/Beaver_Builder_Bundle/