Devlog #10: Biome Variations

Explorers, Map-makers and Spark-Wanderers

We’re counting the days! Our August update is at the moment going through some final tests and bug fixing so that you can play it on the 26th! We’re really looking forward to sharing it with you and seeing all of your amazing bases.

We do have room to quickly talk about one of our new features before it’s out. It’s… Biome Variations!

Although, Spoiler Alert. It’s not a very big feature and we will end up basically spoiling almost everything about this feature. But if you want a non-spoilery quick version, we’re adding a little more land after the mountains for you to use in three ways:

1. Flat land for base building that has both Ancient Bases and Ancient Supports.
2. Combat areas so you don’t have to chase enemies and wait for them to respawn.
3. Big resource-dense areas that encourages using the train.

Now, of course, we will add new biomes later in development, but our focus for this update was on filling out the existing tiers and biomes. Alright, let’s get into the details!

So for our first big update, we wanted to focus on adding the new features in but without necessarily adding more progression tiers. We knew that some of the features, like the Train, had to be implemented into the current progression – if you had to wait until you’re done with the Mountain to get access to the Trains (read our previous devlog about it), it would take too long!

But we know that the space that we have in the game at the moment isn’t that exciting to play around with stuff like the trains, so that’s what this feature is about.

Basically, we wanted to prepare you for what’s going to be in our future updates, give you more space for you to play around with and provide some distinct play areas.

It’s not a huge amount of new land, but we think it’s enough for you to play around with and get a better feel for what the gameplay is “post-mountain”. In general, we’re planning to have it more open and really give you the space to manage exploring and building in a huge area. With tools coming in August like the Trains and Buildable Waypoints, you have a lot more ways to transport yourself and items through places.

But let’s talk about what will be in the update!
Here’s an example so you can see exactly how much space has been added.

We’ve internally called these new areas Woodland 2 and Mountain 2 and they take what’s in Woodland and Mountains and shuffle them up a bit. There’s three specific use cases that we’ve made them for.

So while you can finish Oddsparks with only small bases and production lines, we know that people will want to make absolutely sprawling megabases with tens of thousands of Sparks. At the moment this pretty difficult with Ancient Bases and Ancient Supports in very separate areas, but we’ll have some mostly flat land which both of these so you can easily make the Sparks you want.

It’s not quite enough for you to put everything there, but as we add new biomes in future updates and expand this central area a bit more, you’ll have the space to create a sprawling base if that’s what you desire.

When you need to do a little grinding to get enemy drops to expand your base, it can be a little annoying to go from spawn point to spawn point. That’s why part of the biome variation is also combat areas!

These areas are absolutely filled with creatures. You’re going to not just find two Mantis Stags, but more like six or even eight in a small area. These aren’t just for the woodland enemies but also mountain enemies. Instead of needing to chase Squilicans or Pengi when you need to build a few alchemy labs or a few looms, the combat areas are there to help you while giving you a bit of a new challenge.

We also squeezed in one enemy variant, the Juvenile Beelephant. These young beelephants are still growing and their softer shells mean that they have fewer hit points. However, to make up for it, they are aggressive and can swing their trunks to hit multiple targets at the same time. They also stick together in herds to protect each other!

In general, the idea is to provide “riskier” fights where you might lose more Sparks but you’ll get rewarded with more from a single fight.

Last but not least, we heard a few times that there could be more giant trees, especially from a few of you that are building huge bases. There’s actually a new way in the update to create infinite wood sources (but you’ll have to figure that one out yourself!) but we wanted to make it easy for you to get more wood by creating these dense forests with lots of giant trees.

This also makes it a little easier for you to transport wood to areas that are more at the far end of the mountains and a nice place for a train stop!

Hope this clears up the new play areas! Maybe you’re already planning for how you want to expand your new base or how you want to tackle your new base in a new save.

Also did you know that we have a new singleplayer console demo out on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S? We won’t be doing Early Access on there, but we have always had in mind that Oddsparks was going to be on consoles. If you have a friend who only plays on consoles, you can pass the news along and maybe after enjoying the demo, they won’t be able to wait and play it on Steam with you!

You can also tell them that they can join our Discord for more news. See you very soon for our August update!