In this update5
Full notes
Full Brave New Wonders update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
Repeated intro
Hello Pioneers,
What changed
- Performance
- Gameplay
- Store
- UI and audio
- Compatibility
Brave New Wonders changes
Steam Next Fest wrapped on June 22nd and we have spent the last few days going through everything: every feedback submission, every review, every bug report, every comment thread, every stream, and more.
First, and without any performance behind it: thank you. To everyone who downloaded the demo, played it, filed feedback, wrote a review, wishlisted, or shared the game with someone who had not seen it yet. This community is why we are still making games, and it is the reason Brave New Wonders will be better than it would have been if we had built it in isolation.
By the Numbers…
Over 6,274 of you downloaded the demo
Thanks to those of you who played the demo, Brave New Wonders was in the Top 8 games under “Automation” during Next Fest!
Over 5,000 of you wishlisted the game
26 positive reviews were shared with us, with only a handful of constructive ones that we took note of for future improvements
Tens of thousands of you watched our fan-favourite creator streams and YouTube review videos
The numbers matter less than what they represent: the time people chose to spend with the game.
Moments from the Community Worth Highlighting
This section is for the genuinely good things that came out of Next Fest: how the game’s art reminded someone of a core memory, a factory layout that made our engineers stop and look twice (check out JDPlays’ finely tuned factory below), and pioneers who told us they genuinely enjoyed the game, even if it wasn’t a genre they’ve played before.
Here are some of the wonderful things you shared with us:
I’ve never really played factory automation games before, but this demo was a lot of fun. I think this finally made me understand the appeal of the genre with building out systems and constantly finding ways to optimize my setup which was surprisingly satisfying. At the same time, the exploration kept things interesting and prevented it from JUST feeling like I was playing a factory sim. I also really liked steampunk aesthetic. Really solid demo overall, surprisingly satisfying especially for a first timer in the genre.
Honestly the best logic system I have personally played.
Promising game with a fun mechanic being the automatons. Story so far is a fun introduction to the game and the teasers of later tech seem promising.
Just wanted to say good work on the game, just finished the demo at 8h of playtime, added to wishlist!
This was a nice demo! It plays a lot like Factorio and Autonauts where you can modify the logic and how much your workers can do. Your logic creation is tested by various puzzles (the wonders) in the environment, where you need to either be reactive to what the wonder want or maintain a status within an allowance range.
It's interesting, the style of the art is cute, and I think several of the tools you can get to speed up production and rearrange your factory are really nice for quality of life. I greatly enjoyed my army of little mover bots.
You can easily use the preset automation tasks, or you can write your own, one of my favourite parts of the game. I'm definitely going to spend more time on this game to see what else it has in store.
I can use movers to make more movers?! Hot dog!
An automation game where you program a conveyor bot is one of my ideals. Several games have already achieved this, but they required writing program code and node graphs. This game allows you to write programs using text prompts. It's a fully playable game. It's definitely worth trying.
This game makes you feel REAL clever!
But we know you are curious about some of the constructive feedback you shared, so here’s some of what you told us:
| Feedback or Suggestion | Dev Notes |
|---|---|
| I like complex games that favor intuitive exploration. It's fine to have a tutorial, but please let me skip it. | We can make the tutorials optional in the future builds, but we wouldn't recommend it for beginners! We do eventually have plans for a sandbox mode where you aren't provided with specific objective. Stay tuned! |
| It crashed three times within two hours when I tried the Demo. | We hear you! It can be very frustrating to experience this when you just want to sit down and play. We have collected a few log files thanks to our kind community, and we will continue working on it. |
| Every time I typed a command, the system would suggest changes to it. It would end up working in the end, but it would be nice if it would get one or two right without changes when I am playing. | That would definitely be nice! While there are plenty of tips, hints, and tutorials in the game to help players improve along the way (quick access to some of these are in the Codex), we’re going to keep collecting as much player feedback as possible while we’re in development and continue our testing so we can make improvements to the system. |
| The factory building, great. The forced defense/attack, not really my cup of tea. Hope there's an easy mode or files that are easy to edit (to make indestructible walls). | A passive mode is planned for the game’s full release to tackle exactly that :) |
| Now what I would really like to see is signals on our own unit, so we can use that to call for mover bots to resupply us with building materials dynamically when we run low. (I haven't completed the tech tree, so who knows, it might be in there) | Interesting thought! We will definitely consider adding this to the game. |
| How are you balancing the high level difficulty while implementing a large scale game system that feeds resources from multiple smaller gameplay regions? I love it when each "mission" area I've built out stays relevant, but the big picture balance usually gets quickly way out of whack, where things either become supremely easy or nearly impossible. | We designed each continent to be truly distinct. It’s not just the biomes and visuals that change; every continent introduces its own restrictions, resource distributions, mechanics, and challenges. The ultimate goal will be bringing it all together, making it compatible with airships, and uniting everything under one massive goal! |
| I wish that the mining bots had more storage capacity. | Optimizing how your factory is set-up will help your automatons complete their tasks faster (e.g. placing a warehouse within a shorter distance of a resource node and having multiple miner automatons working in tandem to deliver the resource to the warehouse, then use movers to do the actual delivery to final destination) can help speed up the process. We designed different types of automatons to do different tasks. The key is to utilize their advantages and let them coordinate smoothly. And of course, there are trucks too that have more capacity, and move fast! |
| I wish that the UI can be improved a little bit, it makes the screen too busy at times and the same goes for the commands. I understand that it feels like looking at code, but for beginners it might feel overwhelming. | There is indeed a lot of information to convey when playing, like with most factory automation games! We’re definitely keeping beginners in mind while we are still in development to try and optimize what you see on-screen. In the meantime, we recommend checking out the Interface and Accessibility tabs in the Options to make adjustments anytime. |
| When I played through the demo, I had to mute the sounds. The constant noise drove me (more) insane. Blueprint mode is nice and quiet, though. | Try adjusting the audio sliders in the Options menu - you can adjust music, SFX, UI, and dialogue to your liking! |
We take all of the above (and more) seriously: some feedback confirmed what we already knew needed work, some came from directions we did not anticipate. All of it is considered in the development plan, and could not be possible without your comments and suggestions.
What Comes Next?
Here’s what’s on the roadmap between now and the full release of Brave New Wonders:
The demo will stay up on Steam for players to enjoy. Download it for free and consider leaving a review on the demo page!
Additional playtests are coming: if you submitted detailed feedback and want an invite to the next test build, make sure you are on the mailing list or join Discord.
Future development updates will continue to be posted here on Steam when we hit meaningful milestones: new automaton types, new continents, system changes based on Next Fest feedback.
The feedback loop stays open: the in-game feedback button and the main menu survey remain active between now and full release, so please keep using them.
The full 1.0 release will have seven Wonders, four fully realized continents, over 40 hours of gameplay per run, and a complete version of everything the demo pointed toward. With a clear development path, we are going to continue building.
If you Submitted Detailed Feedback
Your name will be added to our game credits if it helps improve the game! We are tracking this manually and will reach out if you left us your contact details. Here is a new list of pioneers who contributed during the past couple months!
| yeah之城 | Balalaxiaomoxian |
| Syed "Ali" Gelani | Corey Taché |
| Matthew | Infernoart |
| Christian | Moisés H. R. |
| Nick (Nork) | GameWithJubby |
| Akrypos | SupplyBot345 |
| Donald Malone | Nota |
| Sohnjer | Eyrina |
| Stephen | DOW2 |
| Jack Vesper | :-) |
| Thazer | 幻昼H |
| LukKarras | yYyJT |
| Andrew | Dissolved3003 |
| Jona Marklund | Kosh |
| 狂羊捕狼 |
Stay in the Loop
Wishlist on Steam: still the strongest signal you can send
Discord: where the factory optimization discussions happen
Mailing list: direct updates, beta invites, and announcements
Shout-Out to Czardus
Last but not least, we're giving a big thank you to our friend Czardus for playing Brave New Wonders! You can watch their review video here.
If you like cozy farming sims and crafting games, you'll want to wishlist Czardus' upcoming game Timber Life.
See you in the next playtests!
Sala @ City From Naught
Source
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