Skyformer news & patch notes

• Fix bug that caused older saves to not load.
• Fix bug where the keybind to switch planting/deconstruct modes wasn't working.
• Fix UI issue where the pinned item display was overlapping other things.

Notable updates from Early Access to 1.0

• Up to 4 player multiplayer co-op.
• Highly customizable game settings with presets such as creative, casual, and hardcore.
• Jetpack (allowing you to build/manage things from above).
• Jump upgrades (e.g. double/triple jump).
• Planting system automation features (e.g. harvesters).
• Ability to place and remove plants manually anywhere in the world.
• Improved item recipe balance to accelerate progression, especially around iron and copper recipes.
• Accelerated early game progression and smoother tutorial.
• Improved world map design to make exploration smoother.
• Ability to drop and pickup items.
• Scrap Processor allowing you to turn excess items into scrap to exchange for upgrades and cosmetics.
• Various new inventory management features.
• New languages: Spanish, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese.
• Helpful visualizations to make drone routes feel more like conveyor belts.
• Significantly improved charge drain mechanics to make things more fun and prevent unexpected deaths.
• Improved drone route editing, with much longer ranges and ability to edit the routes from any location.
• Ability to build factory and storage buildings as part of the base.
• Many new base building pieces.
• Weather map functionality improvements with new tooltips.
• Bulk Constructor item, which allows crafting things in bulk.
• Revamped many UIs to be easier to use.
• Emotes.
• Cosmetics.
• Visual displays on all computer screens in game.
• Easier to use resource detector.
• Additional Steam Achievements.
• Countless bug fixes and sources of crashes fixed.

What's next?

• 1.0/Co-op Launch Date Announcement Trailer is days away.
• Official soundtrack by Marty Meinerz will be available for purchase soon.

• Add visual displays to all the computer screens in the game. The rocket platform display shows the status now.
• Add new game setting to control max number of miners per resource node (up to 4, default is 2).
• Increase fuel cell capacity in DNA Processors to 64 and make interface easier to use.
• Fix various bugs with the sound system that caused crashes/sounds to not work.
• Fix a very rare bug where the game crashed randomly during a storm when you have a very large base.
• Fix bug where unset output factory showed no label above it in text label mode.
• Various tiny tutorial/text improvements.
• Add new early game achievement for mining a super charged gem.

• Simplified jetpack controls. Just holding space will activate it.
• Fix bug where jetpack fuel bar was shown permanently in unlimited jetpack mode.
• Fix bug where usernames weren't shown above players.
• Fix bug where sounds wouldn't load on startup.

• Added a few new early game achievements.
• Skip the mine radiant gem tutorial step if the player has already mined one.

• Make Silicon and a couple other resources more visible so they aren't accidentally missed.
• Make descend be a separate action that's bound to left control by default instead of shift to make the jetpack controls feel better. Also gridsnapping is switched from left control to C by default to not conflict with descend.
• Add a notification when the first rocket mission is complete to guide player to pick up the obtained terraform materials.

• Fix cause of a crash involving Factories that have unset output items.
• In the Bulk Constructor, show the computed x16 crafting recipes instead of the single item recipes.
• Rename the "Relaxed" mode to "Normal" mode and improve wording of game modes.
• Show the outside temperature on the HQ display when a storm warning is not active.
• Fix a UI alignment bug with alerts.
• Simplified text in a few places.

• Jet pack + jump upgrades

• Robo Tokens

• Scrap Processor (process excess items for Robo Tokens)

• Robo Hub (use Robo Tokens to purchase things)

• Cosmetics

For now, you can have up to 4 people online at a time in a server. In other news, I'm currently targeting the 1.0 release to be in July or August. There's also a new patch (v130):

• Factory outputs now default to "not set" rather than Iron Bars.

• Smoother collisions with a few buildings.

• Mutated plants spawn in more scenarios.

• Improved UI spacing / text formatting in various places.

• Add ability to scroll wheel zoom when doing an emote.

• Add idle emote.

• Fix bug where "do not show this window again" setting was not working.

• Move the base Factory/Storage to the Buildings category of the Construction Station.

• Drone routes can now go to and from harvesters.

• Allow various base pieces to be built into the ocean.

• Smoother terrain in a few places.

• Add a vertical pole base building piece.

• Added the ability to drop and pickup items. Note that you can drop items from any transport method including aircraft.
• Increased music track frequency.
• Fix bug where predicted terraform rating was wrong for acid operations.
• Added more emotes and the ability to freely rotate the camera during an emote.
• Show ice melting progress better while terraforming.
• Improved bounding volumes for some buildings.
• Fix bug with repair helicopter building selection logic.

• The resource detector now finds the nearest unmined deposits, and notifies if all deposits for a resource are already being mined.
• Improved text and look of various UIs, especially objectives.
• Fix bug where storages with item icon labels didn't display correctly in drone route edit mode.
• Fix bug where a flashing marker was missing for one of the objectives (collect initial terraform materials task).
• Improved crash log system.

• Fix issue where items weren't being listed correctly in the Construction Station.
• Fix issue where wall pieces weren't rotating correctly.
• Merge the descend and sprint actions back into one key that maps to left shift by default.

• You can now control the build range of base building pieces with the scroll wheel.
• You can now access building interfaces even while an item in the hot bar is equipped.
• New thin sloped rail item for base building.
• There is now a distinct Descend action that's bound to Left Control by default, instead of being the same action as Sprint. To prepare for the jet pack update.
• Because of the Descend action, the grid snapping toggle action will be bound to Left Alt by default.

• Make the data center capacity objective be earlier on in the game to show how to build more weather stations earlier.
• Increase the accessible range of the Drone Control Tower. The max radius the drone can reach is the same but you can access a wider range of buildings.
• Increase the maximum distance of a drone route.
• Increase the accessible range of the Drone View Constructor.
• Make the Relaxed game mode have a 0.75x charge drain rate instead of 1x.
• Make health/charge bars turn blue when not draining.
• Trim down some of the text in the tutorial.
• Slightly increase default UI scale.

Hey everyone! The v124 update has arrived along with a big new 35% off sale. Been working mostly on co-op features and testing, but here are updates that I've been working on alongside that! Patch notes:

• The default game mode now has a simpler automation challenge with a quicker early game. A new setting provides the option for simpler production recipes to make iron and copper progression easier.
• There is now a mandatory game mode selection screen with descriptions when creating a new world. There are now 5 separate modes: Creative, Relaxed, Moderate, Hardcore, and Custom.
• Add a new type of sloped floor piece for basebuilding.
• FPS limit setting in graphics settings.
• Some improvements to the feel of the game (e.g. camera height adjustments, physics adjustments).
• Emotes and player animations (part of the co-op development - much more to come that's being tested)
• Fix bug with effect visuals when deconstructing certain base pieces.

Some upcoming features to look forward to with co-op:

Fix bug where Steam Achievements stopped working. Launching the game again will retroactively unlock any missing achievements.

The Spring Sale is about to go live! Just wanted to provide an update on the latest development progress and roadmap for the year. The last month I've been focused on co-op. Development is running way ahead of schedule and is fully playable at the moment, just finishing up various bug fixes before opening up opt-in testing. After that, I'll be adding some new content to the game and preparing for the 1.0 release!

Here's what's left of the roadmap:

March 2026:

• Co-op opt-in testing to begin.

April 2026:

• Some remaining game updates including double jump, ability to repurpose excess resources, and cosmetics.

May-?? 2026:

• Final polishes for co-op / 1.0 release.

Ongoing:

• Improved early game and faster progression to first terraform operation.

• Balance / bug fixes / QoL features to core game.

1.0 Release estimate:

• Q2 2026 at the earliest, Q3 2026 at the latest.

Gamepad support:

Gamepad support is complicated for this game because of the number of different controls and UIs and the fact that the engine is made from scratch. I had initially dropped plans for gamepad support in the initial 1.0 due to this, but because I'm running ahead of schedule with co-op, I'm going to make an attempt at finishing gamepad support for the 1.0! We'll see how it goes.

Patch notes since last major update (v119-v122):

• Add ability to select item icons as storage unit labels.

• Player animation system. Mainly for co-op but you'll be able to see a bit of it in singleplayer.

• Enable drone queue size displays by default (most players don't know it exists and it's useful).

• Reduce Miner iron bar requirement from 12 to 8, along with various other early game iron bar requirements.

• Make freezing fog weaker.

• Prevent terrain plant removal mode from removing planter plants.

• Improve planter mouse picking behavior.

• Make terrain planting mode vs normal planting mode more obvious.

• Fix issue where harvester animations glitched when manually removing a plant.

• Make the repair helicopter faster and reduce the requirements to build one.

• The repair helicopter can now reset probe health.

• Fix issue where game can crash while terraforming due to floating point inaccuracies.

• Fix bug where game crashed when you don't have an audio device.

• Fix bug where game crashed when removing an audio device.

• More informative text about charge mechanics (also mentioning that charge drain can be removed or reduced in world settings).

• Improved descriptions of a few items and several typos in translations.

• Display building output rates in drone route editing mode.

• Make the level 1 Miner animation look better.

• Fixed some graphical issues with the harvester animations.

• Some accuracy improvements to weather forecasts in certain cases.

• Make Miners a little less tall.

Thanks again for supporting the game, it means a lot!

Patch Notes (v121):

• Reduce Miner iron bar requirement from 12 to 8.

• Reduce various other early game iron bar requirements.

• Make freezing fog weaker.

• Prevent terrain plant removal mode from removing planter plants.

• Improve planter mouse picking behavior.

• Make terrain planting mode vs normal planting mode more obvious.

• Fix issue where harvester animations glitched when manually removing a plant.

• Make Miners a little less tall.

• Some accuracy improvements to weather forecasts in certain cases.

v120 Patch Notes:

• Make the repair helicopter faster and reduce the requirements to build one.

• The repair helicopter can now reset probe health.

• Fix issue where game can crash while terraforming due to floating point inaccuracies.

• Fix bug where game crashed when you don't have an audio device.

• Fix bug where game crashed when removing an audio device.

• More informative text about charge mechanics (also mentioning that charge drain can be removed or reduced in world settings).

• Improved descriptions of a few items.

v119 Patch Notes

• Display building output rates in drone route editing mode

• Fix several typos in translations

• Make the level 1 Miner animation look better

• Fixed some graphical issues with the harvester animations

Hello everyone,

The first big update of the year is live!

It includes Spanish language support, a highly requested feature to add automation to the planting system (through new Harvester items), the ability to plant and destroy plants in the world manually for fun, an accelerated early game to get to the initial terraforming steps quicker (more work to be done here), and a new shortcut on the map to make the world a bit more open and allow some more creative gameplay.

Also, I'm in the middle of implementing co-op! There will be co-op playtests coordinated on the Discord soon.

Full patch notes:

• Spanish language support (translated by Francisco De Salvo Sanz).

• New items: Small and Large Harvesters, which allow automating planters.

• Ability to plant and destroy plants on terrain for fun. You can press CTRL while holding a plant to switch to terrain planting mode, and the same key to switch to plant removal mode in the deconstruct mode.

• New "Bulk Constructor" base piece to assemble Construction Station items faster.

• Prevent game from crashing when rendering user submitted text that isn't supported (e.g. Japanese text inputted when language is French).

• Fix some lighting bugs involving base-building, and some general lighting improvements.

• New early game terrain shortcut to accelerate initial terraform progression and make the world feel more open.

• A couple extra items provided to accelerate initial terraform progression.

• Improved inventory management behavior in several interfaces.

• Increased number of each plants needed for terraform engine from 10 to 16.

• More natural interface controls (less key presses to do certain things).

• Some improved item icons.

It was a rough new year - took a couple weeks off during the holidays to rest and recover from the kneecap fracture, but I'm back to full productivity now!

Thanks so much for following the development and being part of the community and talk to you again soon!

Hello!

It's been a while, took a couple weeks off for the holidays and have been recovering from a kneecap fracture. Here's the first big update of the year! It's in the public opt-in experimental beta branch in Steam for a few days for testing. It's a good idea to back-up your save files before opting in.

• Spanish language support (translated by Francisco De Salvo Sanz).

• New items: Small and Large Harvesters, which allow automating planters.

• Ability to plant and destroy plants on terrain for fun.

• New "Bulk Constructor" base piece to make Construction Station items faster.

• Prevent game from crashing when rendering user submitted text that isn't supported (e.g. Japanese text inputted when language is French).

• Fix some lighting bugs involving base-building.

• New early game terrain shortcut to accelerate initial terraform progression and make the world feel more open.

• A couple extra items provided to accelerate initial terraform progression.

• Improved inventory management behavior in several interfaces.

• Increased number of each plants needed for terraform engine from 10 to 16.

• More natural interface controls.

• Some improved item icons.

Thanks so much for following the development and being part of the community.

Hello!

The time has come for the Steam Winter Sale. I've been hard at work since Early Access release day polishing the game from player feedback (while staying in line with my vision!). I greatly appreciate everyone's feedback and support. It's been a tough release with many other survival/automation/crafting games that came out at the same time. On top of that I just broke my kneecap this past week, so it's been quite a year!

We have new languages supported!

• Brazilian Portuguese (by Paulo Abe)

• French (by JB Bernical)

• German (by Michael Kufner)

Spanish will be next - likely by February 2026. There may be some remaining mistranslations, feel free to report them and they'll get fixed right away.

There are also customizable world settings, with preset modes such as hardcore and creative!

Combined patch notes from v108-116:

Features

• Game mode customization (there is a "World Settings" button when creating a world, includes presets for creative and hardcore mode).

• Weather map improvements: various useful tooltips when hovering over things e.g. active defense module tier on defense systems, probe health + IDs.

• Drones will attempt delivery regardless of whether the destination is full in order to increase throughput, because the destination could have available slots along the way. Because of this, drones can commonly get queued up at the destination if it does become full, and queued drones will be visualized. There is an interface setting where you can enable showing these queue sizes. By default, the queue sizes will not display. This logic doesn't apply if the destination is a factory.

• Support pausing the game at any time.

• Inventory and weather map can be accessed while moving around or on the zipline.

• Consolidated help/debug/unstuck menu in the game settings, also displays current world settings and save name.

• Shield station effects and movement pack effect now stack.

• Improve inventory logic when withdrawing things from DNA Processors / Rocket Platforms / Supply Drop so that you can choose slots properly and withdraw all of type.

• Add deposit all buttons for both power cells and DNA mutations in the DNA Processor.

• Tornadoes now last longer, do a bit more damage, and have better positioning logic.

• Add radioactive gems to the possible restricted items for drone routes.

• Add an emergency reset building HPs button if 20 or more of your buildings get destroyed in an abnormal situation.

• Support for rebinding controls to various extra mouse buttons for mice that have them.

• Add additional keys to bindable inputs (e.g. right control, right alt, and numpad 0->9).

• Tutorial alert to show how to repair buildings when they are damaged.

• Tutorial alert to show how to rebuild things when they reach 0 hp.

Bugs

• Fix issue where walls couldn't be built partially underground

• Fix issue where building a Sloped Rail in the skybase would crash the game

• Fix lighting bug with Sloped Rails and Walls

• Fix issue where the Logistical Storage (Base) would display "N/A" when editing drone routes.

• Fix issue where the game crashes on launch if you both have a really high FOV set and very high altitude base factories.

• Fix bug where "Super Robo" achievement did not trigger.

• Fix encoding issue that broke saves when default system encoding is not UTF-8.

• Fix bug where highlighting effect on iron in tutorial had a graphical glitch.

• Fix bug where reloading a different save crashed.

• Fix bug that rarely crashed game while terraforming.

• Fix bug where buildings can stay highlighted after modifying drone routes.

• Fix a few text formatting issues.

• Fix an issue that caused corrupt saves in rare situations.

• Fix bug where rain and snow particles would pass through ceilings in some cases + better rain/snow transitions.

• Fix loophole where player could bypass superstorms entirely.

• Fix buggy gas drone animation smoke.

• Fix issue where drones were not delivering the full 40 items per minute at max load.

• Fix sound bug that causes game to crash randomly.

• Fix bugs that caused crashes when changing languages.

Other

• Make the Resource Detector use Charged Gems instead of Super Charged Gems.

• Make more areas have shallow water which you can basebuild on top of.

• When editing drone routes, make storages with custom labels show the label name in the window.

• Include server power cost in the server monitor UI.

• Accurate threat rating calculations to account for the world settings

• Increase requirement to rebuild buildings from 1 to 2 radiant gems.

• Smooth out terrain in various mountainous areas.

• Item recipe balance changes to make lightning towers more necessary towards the end of the game.

• Various balance changes for storms e.g. acid storms and acid fog are now stronger.

• Improve factory deposit logic for drones.

• Make the building placement algorithm be less strict on the slope of the terrain and nearby object collisions.

• Forecasting and weather simulator accuracy improvements and bug fixes.

• Prevent certain highly destructive terraform operations from being done.

• Increase inventory item count limits a bit.

• Mid-end game storm balance changes - make storms more consistent and a bit stronger in general.

• Split some objectives into smaller objectives.

• More accurate building damage calculations.

• Narrower bounding volume for the Lightning Tower.

• Increase max height that you can build base factories from 5 to 10 units above ground.

• Prevent destroying the charging platform if it's your last one.

• Make main game achievements earned from a demo save unlock retroactively.

• Adjust end game cutscene so you don't accidentally skip it.

• Make base doors require silicon instead of steel.

• Highlight selected buildings in orange instead of green to match selected drone route color.

• Play music more prominently at the start of a new save.

• Smoother looking mining animation up close.

• Make the red effect on the screen when low on charge less intense and appear at a lower charge level.

• Some extra buffer time before death when out of charge.

• Reduced glow amounts on various visualizations.

• Change the default FOV to 102 instead of 96.

• Make drone route editing visuals clearer.

• Make item icons on top of factories bigger.

• Smooth out some terrain.

• Improve construction station item arrangement.

• Improve some terraforming/simulation parameters to make progression smoother.

• Slightly darken background of various UIs.

• Improve wording of some objectives / fix typos.

• Various small UI polishes and bug fixes.

Thanks so much again, happy holidays, and see you in 2026!

Hello again!

Here's the v115 patch notes. Next week, there will be another big update before the Steam Winter Sale - including new supported languages! Thanks again for following the development.

• Game mode customization (there is a "World Settings" button when creating a world, includes presets for creative and hardcore mode). There is likely more balance changes needed especially for the hardcore mode. There will be an achievement for beating the game in hardcore mode.

• Consolidated help/debug/unstuck menu in the game settings, also displays current world settings and save name.

• Shield station effects and movement pack effect now stack.

• Inventory and weather map can be accessed while moving around or on the zipline.

• Increase max height that you can build base factories from 5 to 10 units above ground.

• Support for rebinding controls to various extra mouse buttons for mice that have them.

• Increase requirement to rebuild buildings from 1 to 2 radiant gems.

• Fix issue where the game crashes on launch if you both have a really high FOV set and very high altitude base factories.

• Tutorial alert to show how to repair buildings when they are damaged.

• Tutorial alert to show how to rebuild things when they reach 0 hp.

• Tornadoes now last longer, do a bit more damage, and have better positioning logic.

• Add radioactive gems to the possible restricted items for drone routes.

• Smooth out terrain in various mountainous areas.

• Various balance changes for storms e.g. acid storms and acid fog are now stronger.

• Improve factory deposit logic for drones.

• Various small UI polishes.

• Slightly darken background of various UIs.

• Smoother looking mining animation up close.

• Include server power cost in the server monitor UI.

• Drones will attempt delivery regardless of whether the destination is full in order to increase throughput, because the destination could become not full along the way. Because of this, drones can commonly get queued up at the destination if it does become full, and queued drones will be visualized. There is an interface setting where you can enable showing these queue sizes. By default, the queue sizes will not display. This logic doesn't apply if the destination is a factory.

• Weather map improvements: various useful tooltips when hovering over things e.g. active defense module tier on defense systems, probe health + IDs.

• Improve inventory logic when withdrawing things from DNA Processors / Rocket Platforms / Supply Drop so that you can choose slots properly and withdraw all of type.

• Fix bug where "Super Robo" achievement did not trigger.

• Fix encoding issue that broke saves when default system encoding is not UTF-8.

• Improve wording for a few objectives and split some into smaller objectives.

• Fix issues that caused crashes when changing languages.

• Reduced glow amounts on various visualizations.

• Adjust end game cutscene so you don't accidentally skip it.

Coming soon: world settings adjustment (various multipliers such as damage amounts, charge drain rate). Preset modes such as sandbox/creative, normal, hard.

• Make the Resource Detector use Charged Gems instead of Super Charged Gems.

• Make the building placement algorithm be less strict on the slope of the terrain and nearby object collisions.

• Make base doors require silicon instead of steel.

• Fix bug where buildings can stay highlighted after modifying drone routes.

• Smooth out some terrain.

• Make the red effect on the screen when low on charge less intense and appear at a lower charge level.

• Some extra buffer time before death when out of charge.

• Change the default FOV to 102 instead of 96.

• Fix bug where highlighting effect on iron in tutorial had a graphical glitch.

• Fix bug where reloading a different save crashed.

• Fix bug that rarely crashed game while terraforming.

• Make drone route editing visuals clearer.
• Add deposit all buttons for both power cells and DNA mutations in the DNA Processor.
• Prevent destroying the charging platform if it's your last one.
• Make more areas have shallow water which you can basebuild on top of.
• Increase inventory item count limits a bit.
• Make item icons on top of factories bigger.
• Add an emergency reset building HPs button if 20 or more of your buildings get destroyed in an abnormal situation.
• Fix a few text formatting issues.

• When editing drone routes, fix bug where the Logistical Storage (Base) would display "N/A".

• When editing drone routes, make storages with custom labels show the label name in the window.

• Fix an issue that caused corrupt saves in rare situations.

• Fix bug where rain and snow particles would pass through ceilings in some cases + better rain/snow transitions.

• Make main game achievements earned from a demo save unlock retroactively.

• More accurate building damage calculations and storm balance updates (metal/acid/superstorms).

• Fix loophole where player could bypass superstorms entirely.

• Add additional keys to bindable inputs (right control, right alt, and numpad 0->9).

• Fix buggy gas drone animation smoke.

• Highlight selected buildings in orange instead of green to match selected drone route color.

• Narrower bounding volume for the Lightning Tower.

• Item recipe balance changes to make lightning towers more necessary towards the end of the game.

• Mid-end game storm balance changes - mostly for acid storms to make them more consistent. Sometimes they would deal very little damage.

• Fix issue where drones were not delivering the full 40 items per minute at max load.

• Forecasting and weather simulator accuracy improvements and bug fixes.

• Fix sound bug that causes game to crash randomly.

• Improve construction station item arrangement.

• Attempt to fix rare issue where game could crash when terraforming.

• Play music more prominently at the start of a new save.

• Improve some terraforming/simulation parameters to make progression smoother.

• Improve wording of some objectives / fix typos.

• Fix various tiny UI bugs.

Hello!

Want to highlight the latest status of things + recent and upcoming patches now that the Early Access has begun.

Proton: The game is currently working smoothly on Windows and Steam Deck, and most Linux Proton users, but a minority of Linux Proton users have reported startup issues. I'm actively working on fixing this. Created an experimental branch for the game in the Betas for testing out the Proton fixes right now. If you are also experiencing this issue, please reach out to me with your GPU details. Latest patch (v107) since November 10th:

• Fix bugs with drone delivery logic when stacking is disabled in storage units.

• Fix multithreading issue that caused game to randomly crash on startup, which was more likely on computers with more cores.

• Allow saves to create successfully if there's extra spaces at the end of the save name accidentally.

• Less thick dust fog, small map adjustments, and objective clarifications to make it easier to find graphite.

• Charge system revamp

  • Charge drains at half the rate when on ziplines.

  • Charge no longer drains in the skybase, and also when inside a "base" (which means that you have a floor above and below you).

• Various objective text clarifications and add extra tips to make progress better.

• Fix bug with skybase server compute calculations.

• Fix issue where game did not startup due to clashing Java environmental variables on the system.

Upcoming improvements:

• Difficulty customization (anything from very casual/sandbox to hardcore)

• Additional charge system enhancements

• Drone route modification QoL improvements

• Plant system enhancement

• Inventory management adjustments

• Skybase data center objective, UI, and text clarity improvements

• And more!

Thank you, and again if you run into any technical issues with the game please contact me, I'm determined to fix them!