How it works

Systems

Build structures, not snap pieces. Then build the robots that build the rest.

01Parametric construction

Build it brick by brick

Foundations that follow the slope, walls laid in real bonds, timber frames, windows, doors, roofs and skylights. Anything can be taken down again.

Build mode interface with component lists and a timber shelter under construction.

Foundations that follow the slope

Foundations are dragged to any size and angle that fits the ground, and step with the terrain.

The corner of a red-brick cottage with white-framed windows and a shingled gable roof, standing in long grass.

Walls in real bonds

Brick walls are laid in real bonds, course by course. Where walls meet, the joint is mortared and the corner is bonded.

Close view along a brick wall in stretcher bond, mortar joints between every brick, a white window frame at the right.

One brick at a time

Single bricks slot into a wall's bond: whole, three-quarter, half or a queen closer, cut to leave a proper joint.

A long brick wall on a dirt pad with a lintelled opening, its courses stepping down at one end, pines behind.

Openings that belong to the wall

Windows and doors with proper joinery, or openings left rough with no frame and bricked up again later.

A timber frame gazebo beside a brick wall on a grassy plain.

Timber frames

Posts and beams, raised by hand. A frame shows where it is carried and where it is not.

A brick house with a pitched slate roof and skylight on grassland.

Roofs and skylights

Gable, lean-to or flat, in slate, shingle, boards or membrane, with skylights. Anything can be dismantled, and everything is saved.

Build mode: a blue hologram of a prefab shelter lined up end to end with a standing shelter, an arrow showing its door side. — A new building lines up with its neighbour; the arrow shows which way its door will face.

Placing buildings

Build in good order

Set a new building down beside another and it lines up square, a walkway apart; an arrow shows which way its door will face.

The hologram lines up with what already stands nearby: centred on it or flush with its end, so a settlement goes up in tidy rows.
Hold Alt to set a building down anywhere.

Elevation of a brick wall built in running-bond courses on a stepped foundation that follows sloping ground. A window and a door opening have bricks removed and lintels above them. The top course is being drag-placed, shown as outlined ghost bricks. — Masonry courses, openings and lintels

Axonometric view of a timber post-and-beam frame on a foundation slab. One post and the beam it carries are highlighted with a load path arrow. A ghosted beam projecting past the frame is marked with a red cross as unsupported. Dashed rafters suggest a future roof. — Timber frame and support validation

02The First Industry

An industry that runs itself

Forester to construction: the robots do the work, and the settlement runs whether or not you are watching. If a sawmill runs out of logs, it is because nobody delivered any.

A robot planting saplings near a forester station on a coastal slope.

In development

Work building · 01 of 09

Forester

Foresters plant the trees the woodcutters will fell.

Foresters plant.

The colony panel

Every slowdown has a visible cause

01Each robot's task, battery and condition
02Each building's input and output
03The settlement's stocks
04The power balance

Colony panel, Robots tab: five robots listed with role, task and battery; the selected woodcutter shows its battery, load, condition, current task, work statistics and a row of roles to give it. — Every robot, at a glance.

Three side elevations. Tier 1 is an open timber lean-to with a tool rack of axes, a sharpening bench, a log pile and a charging post. Tier 2 is a brick building with a timber roof, lintels and a covered log store. Tier 3 is a clad industrial unit with integrated lighting, a roller door, enclosed equipment and a service arm. — Woodcutter station, three tiers

Building tiers

From shack to workshop

Every work building grows from a timber shack to brick to polymer and metal, and keeps working while it is upgraded.

ITimber shackOpen timber, a tool rack, a log pile and a charging post.
IIBrickBrick walls, a timber roof, lintels and lighting.
IIIPolymer and metalClad, enclosed and lit. Buildings keep working while they are upgraded.

The work buildings

Woodcutter
Forester
Sawmill
Storage
Quarry
Clay pit
Brickworks
Cement works
Glass kiln
Smelter
Mine
Machine shop
Electronics works
Chemical works
Panel press
Fabricator

03The workforce

Robots you can talk to

Walk up to any worker and ask what it's doing, what's wrong or where something is. Change its job with a few words.

100+

robots tested in one simulation

200

robots in the conversation benchmark

conversations in the tutorial chain

Walk up to any robot and press E. It stops, turns to face you and answers from its real state: battery, condition, current task, and what is blocking it.
Give it a new role or workplace, send it to recharge, have it stand by or resume work, or ask it the way. A waypoint appears on your visor.
End the conversation and the robot carries on with what you told it. Robots speak in a synthetic voice.

A robot reporting its battery, condition and task in a subtitle. — A status report from the robot itself.

A conversation menu of questions and orders for a robot. — Ask, or give orders.

The fabricator

Printed from parts

Every robot is printed from parts in a fabricator chamber. The fabricator also makes tools, such as spare felling axes.

A robot being printed inside a glowing fabricator chamber. — Every robot is fabricated from parts.

Four views of the humanoid worker robot design. — The worker robot, an original design.

04Underneath

Technology

Unreal Engine 5.8.3

Lumen global illumination and reflections, hardware ray tracing, Nanite, virtual shadow maps, and World Partition streaming for the 16 km surface.

MetaHuman

Faces and bodies for your character and for Melanie, with strand-based hair, hair simulation and lip sync baked from each recording.

Narrative Pro 2

Quests, dialogue, inventory and interaction. The story is authored as data and imported headlessly.

Colony simulation

Its own C++ module: a deterministic economy, planning and logistics, energy and power. It needs no world to run and is covered by automated tests.

190+ automated tests

Including full playthroughs of the ship and the landing that reach every interaction the way a player would, and real two-player network sessions.

Co-op networking

A listen server: one player hosts, and the host's game is the authority. Up to four players.

Bug reports from inside the game

F8 saves a zip with logs, crash reports, saves, a screenshot and system details.

Measured, not promised

Performance in the 16 km world

Packaged build on a development laptop with an RTX 4080 Laptop GPU. Memory use is 3–4 GB wherever you stand.

Frame rates by graphics setting
Setting	Resolution	Frames per second
Epic	1440p	45–61
High	1080p	88
Medium	1080p	114–117
Low	1080p	165

Final system requirements have not been set.

Private testing · Steam page later

Follow the expedition

A private beta for a small group of testers is being set up, and the store page will follow. Until then, every change is written up in the development log, with an RSS feed so you never miss one.

Read the devlog RSS feed

Nova Eridani is in development. Showcase 01 — “Arrival” is in private testing. Screenshots are from the in-development build.