“Kindergarten still lives in my memory.” Timberborn devs on cut features, mod support, and… platypuses

Timberborn launched in Early Access back in 2021… and wow, does that make me feel old. Over the years, the game has evolved dramatically. Now, after all this time, our favorite beaver-powered city builder is getting closer and closer to its full 1.0 release. That makes it the perfect moment to sit down with the developers at Mechanistry. We spoke with Michal Amielanczyk, Communication Manager at the studio. We asked him about cut content, modding, and even learned that the beavers weren’t always beavers. Enjoy!

Damian Gacek (DG): Over these four years, Timberborn has introduced many interesting features. The bots (golems) and the badwater mechanic were complete surprises for me. Not to mention when I first saw the ziplines! Are you running out of ideas for what to add next, or quite the opposite - do you have so many that you have to postpone some to finish others?

Michal Amielanczyk (MA): Oh, we always have an excess of ideas. At our annual company meetings, we discuss the development of individual aspects of the game and create long lists of features, but we know that only a portion of them will be realized. It quickly becomes clear, for instance, that some ideas are too time-consuming for our small team, while others don't adequately address the problems with the game that our players are currently focusing on. However, whenever we have the opportunity, we dig up old ideas and try to implement them. The new objects we are adding to the maps in version 1.0 are a good example – the topic has been coming up for a long time, and we finally managed to do it.

Source: Timberborn, developer: Mechanistry

DG: Was there anything during the work on the game that you ultimately abandoned because you decided it wasn't fun enough, or you encountered some implementation difficulties?

MA: Yes, and more than once. The kindergarten where little Iron Teeth were supposed to mature still lives in my memory – unfortunately, the building ultimately proved to be a balancing nightmare, and we gave up on it. On the other hand, in the first versions, bots used to wear out and explode, poisoning all the surrounding beavers. The idea seemed good to us at the design stage, as did recycling bots, but it turned out that during actual gameplay, both mechanics were mostly irritating. There were also technical problems – like adding foam to waterfalls, which we simply had to abandon after many attempts. However, that is the nature of gamedev and the advantage of developing a title in Early Access – sometimes it just turns out that something doesn't work.

DG: You have gathered a great community around your game, and it definitely provides a lot of valuable feedback. Do you also pay attention to players' ideas for new features? Forums are full of various suggestions. When you see such proposals, do you actually consider them, or is it more a situation of: "that's cool, but we're working on something else right now"?

MA: We constantly monitor suggestions from the community and try to implement them. Sometimes it takes us a while, but a lot of features end up in Timberborn precisely because the community asks for them. Players like vertical architecture? We make it one of the main features of the game. Are there questions about a clearer goal? We add end-game wonders. Repeated requests for automation? We introduce sluices. There are tons of examples – in fact, version 1.0 is another proof, as we are finally adding the copying of building settings, banners with custom graphics, and Steam achievements – all of which were requested by players.

Source: Timberborn, developer: Mechanistry

DG: The introduction of official mod support certainly pleased many players. Did you have any problems implementing it?

MA: Yes, quite a few. Our programmers worked on the first version of official modding, added in Update 6, for many long months. Since then, modding has undergone more changes because we wanted it to be as simple as possible for the average user – in version 1.0, you just need to copy the template, and the mod is ready. To enable this, a huge amount of work was needed to overcome engine limitations and adapt the game's code. We also had to migrate our own assets – of which there are hundreds – to a new format. This was not a waste of time because it allows mods to work correctly regardless of what their author comes up with – even if they want to change the sandbox nature of the game, modify the 3D terrain, or the water physics.

DG: The community gathered around the game is very creative. Mods offer a full range of variety – from new buildings to factions. Do you install them sometimes? Do you ever talk about mods in the studio? Or has a mod inspired you?

MA: Not everyone is aware of this, but some of the most popular mods for the game were prepared after hours by two of our programmers. We constantly share the creations of our community on our internal chat and are often amazed by the ingenuity and the amount of work put into their preparation – sometimes we even show our favorite mods publicly on our channels. Many people in the studio privately play with mods – and yes, inevitably, some of the mods inspire us.

DG: How do you feel about the upcoming 1.0 release? Is it a relief, or perhaps sadness due to the end of an era?

MA: We feel similarly to how we did before the Early Access release in 2021. We leave Early Access for the first time, and we don't exactly know what to expect. On one hand, we are happy with how much we have managed to do, and we are proud of the game's shape – we believe that on the day of the full release, it will truly be worthy of the "1.0" label. On the other hand, we are an independent studio, and there are so many unknowns in the game industry today that we won't be sure until the very end whether the release will go as we hope.

DG: Time for the last question. It's probably been asked many times, but what came first – beavers or dams? Did you first come up with the idea of creating a game about beavers, and the mechanics fell into place, or was it the other way around – did you already have the mechanics, and then decided that beavers fit them best?

MA: The original idea for Timberborn assumed the creation of an ambitious post-apocalyptic city-builder with unusual protagonists. After our brief affair with humanoid platypuses, we settled on beavers – animals known for their diligence and engineering skills, making them perfectly suited for the game genre. The presence of beavers meant there also had to be dams, although these, along with water physics, were added relatively late – before that, water flowed in a pre-established channel, and you could, at most, build water wheels. Incidentally, our beavers couldn't swim for a long time, and to this day, there are players who discover with considerable astonishment that a beaver is not afraid of water.

Timberborn

September 15, 2021

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