We’re very excited to announce that we’ll have a public play test starting on March 27. This will be the first time Gateworlds is fully publicly available and we’re very excited to share our progress and get your feedback. For those that are new to Gateworlds, I’ll start with an overview of why our game might interest you and then I’ll provide a brief update of some of the new features coming to this play test.

🔮 Why would you want to try Gateworlds?

Gateworlds is a colony sim about exploring and surviving a fantasy wilderness. Find your way in a world of floating islands, strange creatures, and fickle gods.

You begin with a small band of villagers, stranded on a hostile world. You will need to lead your people as they survive, build, craft, hunt, explore, and vie for the favour of the gods. To get what you need to survive, you’ll have to journey across floating worlds connected by mystical portals with each world bearing the influence of a god’s power.

If you enjoy survival crafting games and colony sims, then Gateworlds offers a unique blend of these two genres. You’ll need to explore, craft, fight bosses, and grow stronger much like a survival crafting game (e.g. Don’t Starve, Valheim). At the same time, much like a colony sim (RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress), you’ll be managing the needs of your villagers as each one has their own personality, traits, skills, and even the ability to form relationships.

Unlike other games in the colony sim genre, we’ve placed a heavy emphasis on exploration and so we’ve designed our base building to allow for nomadic play styles. What this means is that you are able to quickly pack up your buildings and move them to an entirely new location. This is an essential part of our gameplay loop as you are incentivised to explore new worlds and search for a perfect spot to call home.

Pack up your house

and move it!

Lastly, Gateworlds offers a high level of replay-ability as each play through is shaped and influenced by a pantheon of five fickle gods. These gods have their own domains of influence, and each one seeks your worship. In the upcoming play test, the first of these gods will be available for worship: Balatoc, the god of blood. Balatoc revels in the glory of combat and conquest.

If you seek his favour, then you will need to endlessly fight powerful enemies as a demonstration of your strength. If you do gain his favour, then he will provide strong combat bonuses and, if you’re lucky enough, rare artefacts like Balatoc’s Great-cleaver.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the concept work we’ve been doing for Balatoc, god of blood:

🔮 What’s in this update?

The upcoming play test is intended to test our tutorial experience. We’re mindful that this genre is fairly complex, especially when it comes to the controls necessary to manage multiple characters without too much micromanagement and intensive clicking. As such, we’ve been prioritising the curated tutorial experience so that players who are new to the genre can get introduced more easily. This means the current play test build will have a much more linear gameplay experience then the intended experience for full release, but hopefully it provides an intuitive introduction to Gateworlds.

We’ve also added a lot of new systems, quality of life, and visuals updates. Of note is the “backpack” system that allows players to convert rooms into backpacks that the characters can equip and then place down again in a different location. The backpacks are the first step for creating the nomadic gameplay style that Gateworlds intends to offer.

After a lot of feedback, we’ve also been making a pretty significant update of our visuals, to help improve visual clarity and to make our visual style a bit more distinct and cohesive. We’re still part way through this process but so far we feel it’s been working well. As always, any and all comments are welcome!

Before:

After:

That’s all for now, we look forward to seeing you in game on March 27! If you want more updates then please make sure to follow us on our socials @Gateworlds and @Hydrarch or join our Discord (especially if you want to try the game sooner than March 27).https://discord.gg/zXEU7D67T4

We’re excited to announce that Gateworlds’ first public playtest is now live and running through to April 10.

This is the first time Gateworlds will be available to the public online, and we’re looking forward to getting your feedback.

For those new to the game, Gateworlds is a survival colony sim set in a fantasy wilderness shaped by five fickle gods. You’ll lead a small group of villagers as they build, explore, and survive across floating worlds connected by unstable gates each world bringing new challenges, opportunities, and difficult decisions.

One particular challenge you might find is the big guy in the image below:

This playtest is focused on introducing players to Gateworlds’ core systems through a more involved tutorialised experience.

You’ll be able to:

• Manage your villagers by taking care of their needs so they don't have mental breakdowns

• Explore a variety of fantasy worlds through the world gate

• Experiment with our nomadic base building

• Worship Balatoc, god of blood by endlessly fighting stuff

We’ve also included a range of improvements to visuals, UI usability, and overall clarity to make it easier to jump in, especially if you’re new to the genre.

This playtest is a critical next step for us, and your feedback will directly shape the future of Gateworlds.

We’ll be actively reading:

• Steam discussions

• Discord feedback

• Bug reports and suggestions from the in game feedback button

If something feels great (or terrible), we want to hear about it.

Here are some visuals to get a sense of what's to come:

We look forward to everyone's feedback!

All the best,

Hydrarch.