Acris Software

Colony

Status: in development, closed test builds. No release date. Early access sign-up open.

Colony is a colony survival game on a spherical voxel planet. You land with a wagon of supplies and a few colonists, edit the terrain directly, build from sticks to mud brick to stone, and keep the colony alive. Play in first person, or manage from a layered colony view.

Design goal: colony management and hands-on survival in one world. Colony games usually run on a flat map you never stand in; survival games give you a world you cannot delegate. Here the same planet, the same tools and the same rules serve both.

For players of colony sims like RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress who want to work the ground themselves, and voxel builders who want a colony to manage.

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Art direction

Painted concept art. It is the target the game is being built toward, not a picture of it running.

Painted concept art of a green country seen from a rise: a lake with wooded islands, a settlement on a headland, mountains along the horizon and a moon in the daytime sky.Concept art
The country a colony lands in.
Painted concept art of a covered wagon beside a tent and a workbench, with crates unloaded onto the grass and a fire lit.Concept art
The wagon you arrive with, unpacked.
Painted concept art of a small settlement on a bluff above water: cottages, tilled fields, a track winding up to a walled hall, and a waterfall falling to a river.Concept art
What a colony might grow into.

Systems in the current build

World generation

Each world is a full sphere generated from a seed at one of four sizes, 4 to 120 km across. Biomes are regions on the sphere: forest, grassland, desert, mountain, tundra, wetland, boreal. Caves, ore and seas sit in the same voxel volume.

Terrain editing

Dig, pour, level and pack with hand tools in continuous strokes. Edits apply the frame they are made and are stored in the save as a diff against the seed.

Colonists

Colonists take orders from the colony view: cut, fill, pack, haul, build. Each has needs, a mood, skills and an inventory. Any colonist can be taken over and played directly.

Views

First and third person for direct work. A colony view that steps through the terrain one layer at a time for zones, orders, priorities and job assignment.

Construction

Stick shelters, then fired mud brick, then stone. Foundations carry load or fail, buildings show what supports them, and tools and buildings wear and are repaired.

Star system

A star, planets, moons and belts are generated with each world. Every body is a world of the same kind and can be visited as a spectator from the system map.

Technical approach

Volumetric terrain

No heightmap and no skybox. The planet is one voxel lattice to the core, surfaced from a density field, so overhangs, caves and tunnels are ordinary terrain.

One rule set

Every job a colonist can be ordered to do, the player can do by hand, and the world responds the same way. There are no colonist-only paths and no player-only shortcuts.

Numbered test builds

Each test build carries a number, a written test plan and a change log. Testers report against the plan; the next build records what was fixed.

Independent

Built by a 100% veteran-owned company in Houston, Texas, on its own engine. No publisher.

Concept to model

The art is drawn first, then it is modelled, then it goes in the game. Nothing below is a screenshot and each one says which it is.

A concept sheet of nine hand tools and a workbench drawn from several angles, with a material and colour palette beneath them.Concept art
The tools and the workbench, before they were modelled.
Nine low-poly tools laid out on a plain background: axe, pickaxe, shovel, hammer, sword, hoe, saw, chisel and tamper.Model render
The nine tools, modelled from the sheet.
A low-poly carpenter's workbench with a vice, a lantern, a saw and a rack of chisels, on a plain background.Model render
The workbench, modelled.
A low-poly supplies wagon with a hooped canvas tilt over a plank bed, on spoked wheels, on a plain background.Model render
The supplies wagon, modelled.
A material direction sheet: six spheres showing light wood, dark wood, leather, forged iron, worn steel and rough stone, each with its albedo, metallic, roughness, normal and occlusion maps.Concept art
Six materials, and the maps that make them.
Six faceted spheres showing the wood, metal and stone materials as the engine shades them.Model render
The same six materials, as the engine shades them.

Questions

What is Colony?

Colony is a colony survival game on whole planets. You land, dig, build, and keep a small colony alive, in first person or from a colony view above. It is in early development and runs today as numbered test builds. Colony is the working title.

What does it run on?

Windows 10 and 11, and Linux: Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Mint 21 or newer from the .deb, and Arch from the archive. Any graphics driver with Vulkan will do (every current NVIDIA, AMD and Intel driver). NixOS is not a supported platform but does run the archive through steam-run or nix-ld — the Download page has the two lines. It is built on Lustre, our own engine, in Rust.

Is it multiplayer?

Not yet. One person plays a world today. The game already runs as a server and a client even in single player, which is the groundwork multiplayer would need.

When can I play it?

Early access is run by us, directly. Numbered test builds go to a small group of testers now, and there is no release date. Apply to test at www.acrissoftware.io/register: confirm your email and we review your application, or join our Discord for an instant invitation. Discord is optional. A Steam beta comes later.

What does it cost?

Nothing is for sale yet and the price is not set. The Connect page is how to reach us in the meantime.

Is Colony like RimWorld?

It shares the heart of a colony sim like RimWorld: a few colonists, the supplies you landed with, and keeping them fed, housed and alive. The difference is the world. It is a whole round planet in 3D that you can dig into, and you can play in first person yourself as well as give orders from a colony view above.

Is it like Dwarf Fortress?

In one way: you dig down into the ground and build, and the colony view shows the world layer by layer. Every edit you make to the ground is kept. It is in early development, so it is not a simulation of anything like Dwarf Fortress's depth.

Is it like Minecraft?

You dig and build in a voxel world, in first person. But the ground is not made of cubes: it is a smooth surface marched from a density field. And the world is a round planet you can walk all the way around, not a flat map that goes on for ever.

Is it like Kerbal Space Program?

Partly, and more so later. The planets are real and round: today you can leave yours as a spectator and visit the other bodies in the system. Vehicles built from parts with mass are planned for 0.1.7, engines and programmable controllers for 0.1.8, and a first rocket to orbit on an orbital flight model for 0.2.

RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program, Unity, Unreal Engine and Godot are trademarks of their respective owners. Acris Software is not affiliated with them; they are named only to say how our work compares.