Changelog.ggBeta
HomeGamesUpdatesPricingMethodology
Steam News5 February 20264mo ago

Development Summary - January 2026

Hi The Monthly Summary for January is here! Welcome to the new year. It will be a quite exciting one for TFE, thats for sure 🙂 TFE Development Summary - January 2026 Topbar UI Rework 🛠️ Refactoring of PlayerState clas

Full notes

Full The First Explorers® update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

1 fix4 additions0 changes0 removals
  • Gameplay
  • UI and audio
  • Performance
  • Maps
addedHi The Monthly Summary for January is here! Welcome to the new year. It will be a quite exciting one for TFE, thats for sure 🙂
addedTopbar UI Rework🛠️ Refactoring of PlayerState class to support new topbar functionalities 🪟 Restructure topbar to show the most crucial info in one row 🪟 Carrier Icon now shows the total carrier count and the busy count together 🪟 Bed Icon now shows the total bed count and the used bed count together 🪟 Added a new trend indicator on good counts to see whether goods are highly requested, so a future shortage can be forseen
addedCharacter Optimization🛠️ Refactoring of builders to use new spatial movement system and state trees 🛠️ Refactoring of diggers to use new spatial movement system and state trees 🛠️ Refactoring of workers to use new spatial movement system (state tree integration yet to come) 🛠️ Async moving is now way more robust 🛠️ Ongoing optimization & refactoring of the character system in general
fixedMore Stuff🛠️ Engine Upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.7 🛠️ Fixed a bunch of bugs (e.g. goods hanging in the air after being dropped by a carrier, collision proxies problems, etc...) 🛠️ First exploration (BaDumTss) of save system integration 🎨 Added randomly scattered smaller stone deposits on the LakeFalls map 🔁 Shared how the new Terrain Coloring & new Building Placement Indication works (vip) ✨ Secrets
addedMore StuffIn January I managed to increase the overall game performance by almost 50% ! This was achieved by many ongoing optimizations + the new character system is showing off its potential and engine updates contribute as well. I treat optimization as a core feature and every month I dedicate a certain amount of my time to make the game run even smoother. It pays off more and more

Hi The Monthly Summary for January is here! Welcome to the new year. It will be a quite exciting one for TFE, thats for sure 🙂

TFE Development Summary - January 2026

Topbar UI Rework

🛠️ Refactoring of PlayerState class to support new topbar functionalities 🪟 Restructure topbar to show the most crucial info in one row 🪟 Carrier Icon now shows the total carrier count and the busy count together 🪟 Bed Icon now shows the total bed count and the used bed count together 🪟 Added a new trend indicator on good counts to see whether goods are highly requested, so a future shortage can be forseen

Character Optimization

🛠️ Refactoring of builders to use new spatial movement system and state trees 🛠️ Refactoring of diggers to use new spatial movement system and state trees 🛠️ Refactoring of workers to use new spatial movement system (state tree integration yet to come) 🛠️ Async moving is now way more robust 🛠️ Ongoing optimization & refactoring of the character system in general

More Stuff

🛠️ Engine Upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.7 🛠️ Fixed a bunch of bugs (e.g. goods hanging in the air after being dropped by a carrier, collision proxies problems, etc...) 🛠️ First exploration (BaDumTss) of save system integration 🎨 Added randomly scattered smaller stone deposits on the LakeFalls map 🔁 Shared how the new Terrain Coloring & new Building Placement Indication works (vip) ✨ Secrets

In January I managed to increase the overall game performance by almost 50%! This was achieved by many ongoing optimizations + the new character system is showing off its potential and engine updates contribute as well. I treat optimization as a core feature and every month I dedicate a certain amount of my time to make the game run even smoother. It pays off more and more

See you next time!

Best, Sebastian 🙂

Source

Steam News / 5 February 2026

Open original post

Changelog.gg summarizes and formats this update. How we read updates.