Planetiles Windows, Mac, Linux game

Planetiles

MythicOwl | The Iterative Collective | Released Apr 3, 2024

Planetiles is a serene city builder with roguelike elements. Create natural habitats on remote planets as you satisfy quests and earn bonuses with strategically placed ecosystems.

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Planetiles Devlog #1: The Basics

Oct 4 2023 News

Hi everyone 👋

We're starting a series of developer logs to help you understand the most basic rules and mechanics behind our upcoming space citybuilder, Planetiles. The game features a tile-based gameplay similar to the likes of Dorfromantik or Tetris, but there are lots of other aspects that influence the gameplay and we decided to split into 4 pillars:

Moving and placing tiles
Completing missions
Upgrading structures
Using special actions

Moving and placing tiles

At the beginning of each run, players are presented with a barren planet and the goal to populate it with different kinds of tiles and blocks. The Pioneers Oasis is always the starting point of each new settlement and the first block we get has to always be adjacent to The Pioneers Oasis. The stellar adventure starts here!

With your first block at hand, you can move it, rotate it and place it near any adjacent tile available. For every placed tile, players get 1 point and for every tile adjacent to the same type (forest placed near a forest), players get 5 points. This is where completing missions comes into play.

Completing missions

On the right size of the screen, you can spot missions that are crucial to your success. We currently distinguish 3 types of missions that are:

to create an area with the exact number of chosen tiles
to create an area with at least the number of chosen tiles
to create an enclave with the exact number of chosen tiles

The points given for any completed mission is - contrary to just placing tiles - fixed. Each mission is valued at 100 points. At every moment, players are given 2 missions and can pick the order freely.

Evolving structures

Now that players are familiar with moving tiles and solving missions, evolving structures comes into play. It is a very important part of the gameplay - once we build 3x3 square consisting of the same tile type, the field can be evolved as shown on the screenshot below:

Above are the examples of 3 types of basic tiles - forests, plains and mountains - that are evolved to form a much bigger versions of themselves like The Forest Colony, The Mountain Observatory and The Chunks-Reloading Village. Each of these evolved structures also serve a much greater cause as they provide additional actions (perks) that are communicated on the left side:

Using special actions

With each upgraded/evolved structure, players are enabling additional actions that also heavily influence the gameplay and may be the make or break when it comes to beating your best score. These actions provide different game-changing mechanics, such as reloading chunks, producing 1x1 tiles or placing them remotely in different spots - among other, more in-depth mechanics that will be explained deeper in the next Planetiles announcements.

These gameplay elements should help players in their first runs and getting to know Planetiles better. We're always happy to see your feedback and suggestions so feel free to post them on our Discord channel or via Steam Discussions section.

We'd also like to encourage everyone to wishlist Planetiles and stay tuned to our upcoming, very exciting announcements that are right around the corner! 🚀