Full notes
Full Substructure update
Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.
What changed
- Gameplay
- Maps
- Store
Welcome to the first dev diary for Substructure.
With this series, we want to give you a closer look at how Substructure is being built, what we are working on, and how we are thinking about the game as it develops.
Future posts will cover different parts of development, from engineering and art to puzzles, systems, and the broader ideas behind the game. After each post, we will also be available on Discord to answer questions and talk through anything you want to discuss.
For this first diary, we wanted to start with the bigger picture: how we think about games, how that inspired the world of Substructure, and where things are heading as we move toward Early Access.
Who We Are
The ethereal question.
At heart we are gamers. Our two founders have spent thousands of hours playing a range of games together (of the video and board variety). Automation (of course), roguelikes, and survival, mostly. Some of our favourite games include Factorio, Elden Ring, Valheim, and Gloomhaven. Recently, Slay the Spire has been high on the play list.
Beyond that, we are fascinated by puzzles, and the intrinsic desire to find the right answer that comes from a good puzzle.
At our team offsites we have often found ourselves debating and getting frustrated at deep mathematical and logic puzzles. For example:
“One person is dealt 5 random cards out of a standard playing deck. Design a scheme such that the person can reveal four of the playing cards of their choice, in some order, so that another person can always determine the fifth card.”
Or
“Ten prisoners stand in a line, each wearing either a red or blue hat chosen at random. Starting from the back, they must each guess their own hat color in sequence. They can only see the hats in front of them, not their own. A correct guess means freedom; a wrong guess means death. Beforehand, they may agree on a strategy. Is there a strategy that guarantees at least nine prisoners survive?”
These types of questions consume our evenings together and ultimately serve as a small window into how and what we want to create. This is who we are.
The Kind of Game We Want to Make
There is a phrase we use internally when thinking about the kind of games we want to make: All Game.
For us, All Game means building games around the player’s decisions and letting the systems carry as much of the experience as possible. We want the player to be doing, testing, choosing, and adapting, rather than being pushed through a path we have already solved for them, and without interruptions or cinematics.
Substructure is being built with that in mind. We want players to have room to experiment, make their own plans, and solve problems through the tools the game gives them. The goal is to avoid busywork and unnecessary guidance, while still making the world and its systems clear enough to learn through play.
Automation games depend on agency. The player needs to understand the rules, test ideas, fail, adjust, and build something that feels like their own solution. The more we can support that without taking control away from the player, the closer we get to the kind of game we want to make.
Worldbuilding
As we started thinking about the setting for Substructure, we needed the world to support the game’s mechanics instead of sitting behind them as decoration.
There were a few constraints we knew had to be true:
The player had to be somewhere unknown and unexplored.
The player could not have easy access to outside support or supplies, since that isolation helps drive the technology and automation mechanics.
There had to be a reason for the player to be there.
The universe could not be post-scarcity sci-fi. Resources still needed to matter.
The planet’s layers had to be more than a visual idea. They needed to be part of the premise of the game.
To help us think through those constraints properly, we worked with Dr. Joe Bright, a researcher in radio astronomy who studies the variable radio sky. He is also the Breakthrough Listen project scientist for the 64m Murriyang radio telescope at Parkes Observatory, regularly observes with the Allen Telescope Array, and is involved in developing its observing capabilities.
Joe wrote a science background paper for us that explored how Substructure’s setting could work within those boundaries: a near-future setting, a strange planetary body appearing in the home system, a reason to visit beyond simple resource mining, a lone explorer, a problem discovered on the planet, and planetary layers as a core gameplay hook.
For anyone interested in the astrophysics and worldbuilding research behind Substructure, we’ve linked Joe’s full paper here.
That work became a major influence on our rogue planet setting.
“It is estimated that 1 in 100 solar systems will have an encounter with a Rogue Planet.”
The idea gave us a strong base for Daedalus: a world that is isolated, unexplored, resource-constrained, and strange enough to justify digging deeper. It also gave us room to think about things like unusual atmospheres, internal heat, biosignatures, technosignatures, subsurface oceans, and what might exist beneath the surface without necessarily turning the game into a hard science simulation.
Note: If you’d like to check out the stories written about Daedalus, you can read them here. Use the password Daedalus1.
What’s Next
In an upcoming dev diary, we’ll look at how we build the planetary layers of Substructure, from concept art to the final in-game environments.
We’ll walk through the layered approach we use for each environment: base terrain, decals, and decoratives. The goal is to create places that feel visually distinct, while still giving players a clear and functional space to build structures and automation networks.
We’ll also show some of the tools and generation logic behind that process, including how we use terrain tiles, organic surface detail, plants, rocks, and other elements to bring each layer of the planet into the game.
Thanks for reading!
~Dubious Design
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