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This update introduces a much requested and anticipated addition: Helicopters! I hope this update will enable many creative designs and make new creative solutions possible in the campaign.
Helicopters require functioning vertical flight physics and controls, a system that has been completely reworked. This rework benefits all aircraft with vertical flight capabilities, not just helicopters. Designs featuring vertical takeoff, balloons, and other vertical flight mechanics should now perform significantly better. My hope is that this will enable much more creative designs.
I added 5 helicopter parts, including 2 helicopter cockpits and 3 helicopter engines. They all prioritize being lightweight, which is essential for helicopters.
To make helicopters valuable in the campaign, I added 4 boats to the map that you can land on and complete missions. These landing strips are so small that they are only practical with a helicopter. Currently, these missions are optional because I don't want to force people to build helicopters. However, this is subject to change, and I am open to suggestions for how to incorporate helicopters into the gameplay in interesting ways. Important note: the new airports are only available when starting a new game.
Propeller engines did not have collision detection, but with the giant rotors of a helicopter, this completely broke believability and balance. So I introduced propeller collisions. They will now explode when they collide with objects. Each blade can explode on its own and reduce the total thrust the engine can generate. Currently this is not added to existing propeller engines, but this will probably change in the future.
With vertical flight reworked, balloons also deserved an overhaul. I rebalanced them to be more viable and improved their physics to be more forgiving. Hopefully this further enables creative designs.
I reworked and rebalanced parts of the tech tree. Electric engines are now available much earlier, and helicopter engines require unlocking balloons first. During testing, I found that balloons and helicopter engines make for an interesting combination, so this is something I want to encourage players to experiment with.
Let me know if you have any feedback or find any issues on the steam forums or on discord!After a long wait, the 3rd update to Aviassembly is finally here! I hope to release updates more quickly from now on.
This update finally adds Steam achievements to the game. There are 11 achievements now, but I plan to add more in later updates. Let me know if you have any ideas or feedback!
The feedback I received most often was that the game is too short. I wanted to address this, but the tools for editing the campaign were very limiting, especially if I wanted to keep old saves compatible. I decided to completely rework those tools, but it ended up being quite a lot of work. However, I now have much more flexibility when editing the campaign, and I can also maintain multiple versions, which is useful for backward compatibility.
I used these tools to add 3 new small islands you can find in the map. One island is a shipwreck, another a hermit island, and a prison island. I plan to make many more edits to the campaign.
I also made the last mission of the campaign harder. This called for a new biggest cockpit, which I Also added to the game.
Aviassembly was developed using the Unity game engine. Unity recently announced a security vulnerability affecting some versions of the engine. This patch should address the issue.
You can read more about it here: https://unity.com/security/sept-2025-01
To quote the blog above: "There is no evidence of any exploitation of the vulnerability nor has there been any impact on users or customers." So as far as I know, there is no need to worry, But: Please update your game to the latest version!
Hi everyone,
It’s been a few months since my last update, and I had planned to release a new one today, as I mentioned on Discord and the Steam forums.Unfortunately, I encountered some unexpected issues that need more time to resolve. Rather than releasing an unstable build, I’ve decided to delay the update. It may take a few weeks before the full update is ready. I realize this delay is longer than hoped, and I want to sincerely apologize.In the meantime, you can still try the latest changes by switching to the experimental branch on Steam. To do this, right-click the game in your Steam library, select Properties, go to the Betas tab, and choose the experimental branch from the dropdown menu.What I’ve been working onThe most requested feature was adding more missions to extend the campaign and playtime. But unfortunately, this was difficult to do with the tools I had, especially if I want to keep old saves backward compatible.I built a tool that simplifies adding missions and supports multiple campaign versions for different save files, solving the compatibility issue. This was all quite time consuming. I’ve added 3 new satellite islands, now available on the experimental branch.I’m also working on achievements, but since they can’t be limited to certain branches, they’re not on the experimental branch yet.I will keep you updated! JelleCustomizing your plane with painted parts and decals is a key feature, but color options were limited. With the new color picker tool, you can choose from an unlimited range of colors to bring your design to life.
I added a few new parts in this update:
Small retractable wheel
3 Cosmetic air Intake / outlet parts
Ram jet
With the ramjets being added, I felt that it was a good time to introduce a long requested feature: afterburners. Currently, the two turbojet engines in the game have afterburners. You can activate them by pushing the throttle past 80%, but be careful, they consume a lot of fuel.
I added more decals, mostly text and number decals, but also wings and a new star decal.
This is a relatively small change. Previously, it wasn't really possible to taper the end of your fuselage to a point, but you should now be able to make it a lot more pointy.
Improved decal move tool
Decal scaling on both axis at once now possible
Better decal layering calculations
Decals recalculating better
Fixed parts becoming unselectable after selecting engine settings
Fixed decals not disappearing when wing explodes
This is the first Aviassembly content update! I’ve been easing back into things after launch, so this update isn’t the biggest one, but I hope that it still contains some exciting features!
The biggest change is that you can now put decals on your plane. It turned out to be a bit of a headache to get this working, but I think it is in a decent state now. Some more iteration might be needed to make the feature reach it's potential, so let me know if you have any suggestions or encounter any issues!
I also added tools to layer multiple decals on top of each other. This should make it possible to combine decals and create much more complex shapes.
Some people really seemed to dislike the timed challenges, so I made a new campaign mode in which they are disabled.
Air Brakes
Small cockpit
Bell x1 inspired cockpit
Small wing
Propfan engine
Main menu rework
Improved base airport selection
Added scrap and advanced scrap indicator when at airport
Fixed discord link not working
Fixed controller cursor not working
Fixed camera start position on starting new game
I’m still not entirely sure how I want to schedule the updates, but I have decided that the next update will be on the 21st of July!
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This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Aviassembly, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Aviassembly statistics page.
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