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Empluna

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Empluna

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Sandbox city building meets automation: Design unique buildings, create vibrant cities, and perfect production chains. Create a civilization that suits your style. Perfect for anyone who loves creativity and strategy!

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ModernEra – One world, many possibilities: The vision behind Empluna

Jan 25

When we started Empluna, one question came up very early on:

Why should a city-building game be limited to a single world or era?

The answer was clear: it shouldn’t.

Empluna is designed from the ground up to be playable across a wide range of settings and eras. Each era comes with its own rules, challenges, and opportunities and that’s exactly what makes it so exciting. Empluna begins with the Modern Era, the present-day world of the 21st century.

Here’s a brief look into the background story:

The Beginning: A Discovery No One Expected

An expedition encounters something unknown. A land that should not exist. Since the 19th century, the world was considered nearly fully mapped, and yet suddenly an island appears, hidden in the fog, untouched and seemingly forgotten.

What is discovered there quickly exceeds all expectations:

Dense forests, astonishing biodiversity, and nature that appears to have been left entirely to itself for centuries.

But with the discovery inevitably comes the next question:

What happens to this place now?

And this is precisely where the mood shifts.

What began as hope threatens to be shattered once again. Because as soon as the extent of the discovery becomes clear, old patterns return. Discussions become more heated, interests clash, mistrust grows.

Overburdened cities, crumbling infrastructure, social tensions. None of this is a distant vision of the future, but rather the result of earlier decisions. Another hesitation, another clinging to the familiar, and the newly discovered world would be just the next arena for old conflicts.

A proposal that changes everything

Instead of division, exploitation, and competition, a new idea emerges:

A joint research and development project.

A place where knowledge, planning, and responsibility come together. A city that grows not out of necessity, but out of a conscious decision. A new beginning! Not perfect, not risk-free, but driven by the will to do better than before.

After endless debates, the decision is finally made. Approval.

The world agrees on a goal.

And this is where you come in

Because a vision alone is not enough.

Now we need someone to implement it. Someone who makes decisions when things get uncomfortable. Someone who takes responsibility when there are no easy answers.

You are not just an observer of this project, you are part of it. Together with experienced planners and new allies, you will turn an idea into a functioning society.

How will you develop this place?
What priorities will you set?
And which mistakes from the past will you avoid, or repeat?

If this idea piques your curiosity and you feel like accompanying Empluna on its journey, We would be delighted if you kept an eye on the project.

A wishlist on Steam helps the project enormously and motivates us to continue on this path.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know Empluna. 🌍

Empluna

Crowds And Demo

Dec 8, 2025

Hello everyone!

If you write devlogs regularly irregularly, that’s still a form of regularity, right? 🙂

Okay. What is definitely not irregular is the steady development of Empluna.

And to bring you right up to speed: In June we want to release the demo for the next Steam Next Fest!

Hurray! 🎉

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What’s on the roadmap until then?

Contentwise, we already have more than enough for a solid demo.

But on the technical side we still need to rework and optimize a few things, some of it mandatory, some simply because we want it to be better.

🧍‍♂️ Overhaul of the Population / NPCs

The last two weeks were all about the NPC population.

Our old, fully custom-built system did work, but it was difficult to maintain and hard to adapt to future engine versions.

On top of that, we wanted better performance.

So we threw out the entire rendering logic and replaced it with a new system that’s much closer to the engine and far better at parallelizing work.

The result:

Since yesterday the new system is up and running and delivers very good performance in stress tests with 40,000 NPCs. (Hardware dependent, of course, but that was the goal)

Here’s a little impression in front of the main station:

(Characters and behavior emulated for the stress test. Balancing comes later.)

We did the same for the wildlife, by the way: Initially with bears, beavers, wild boars, buffalo, capybaras, deer, roe deer, eagles, seagulls, foxes, geese, rats, and squirrels.

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🚦 Next big steps: Demo Mode & Procedural Intersections

Procedural Intersections

Up until now, intersections in the road system are placed and connected manually, with some convenience features, but still fairly time-consuming.

The plan is that roads will automatically generate intersections as soon as they overlap.

This should make the system much more intuitive.

More on that once we’ve worked on it further.

Demo Mode

For the demo we already have a few ideas on how to get you into Empluna as quickly as possible, without requiring much prior knowledge.

More details will come once the mode takes clearer shape.

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💬 Your thoughts?

Do you have ideas or wishes, maybe for the road system or something you think absolutely needs to be in the demo?

Let us know! See you next time! 👋

Empluna

A first sign of life

Oct 6, 2025

Hello dear community,

Finally, we're back with a sign of life! From now on, we would like to give you regular insights into the development and progress of Empluna via the Steam devlogs.

These devlogs are intended to be a kind of milestone blog where we show you what we are currently working on, how we are incorporating your feedback, and which features have already been implemented. This way, you can participate directly in the development and help shape the game.

So let's get started and take a look at what has happened so far and what new features there are. Just writing it down:

Level Content

We are currently in the development phase of working out the content of the game. All features are complete and need to be filled with content.
We are currently planning 8 levels, which will be playable seamlessly and without a linear structure. You will be accompanied by 5 social groups, whose opinions and demands will influence the development of your city.

An example:

- The topic of fire safety. Since last week, the fire brigade is automatically alerted in the event of a fire, and they then drive to the scene and extinguish the fire.

Shader and design optimisations

In recent weeks, we have also been working intensively on the graphics style. Our goal: to improve the look of Empluna with new toon shaders while increasing performance.
This includes many light and colour adjustments.

To do this, we illuminated all scenes using ray tracing and found the best settings for the new shaders under ideal conditions. Based on this optimal image, we then derived the new quality levels without having to compromise on graphics.

Here is a photo comparison. Was the work worth it?

Old

New

Then we'll have to adjust the visuals in the trailer and on the Steam page in the future. ;)

Your feedbackFinally, the most important question:

- Would you like us to report regularly on the development status?
- Should we present the game concept in detail again in the next devlog?
- And how can we involve you even more?

In addition to the devlogs, we are also active on Reddit, where we regularly post new insights. http://‘https://www.reddit.com/user/BigCodersPlanet/’

Thank you very much for your feedback and support! We look forward to the next exchange.

Team BigCodersPlanet

Empluna

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