Biomes have been released!

After a lot of work, biomes have finally been released into the game! All versions from Version 1.7.0 Beta (V1.7.0B) onwards are now implementing this new system!

Biomes are designed to make the game more interesting, by making the world into more than just an endless flowery meadow. Now, you can explore the strange planet you find yourself on, which now features snow, tundra, plains, swamp, savannah and desert! Additionally, biomes add a new reason to explore - specific ores can only be obtained in certain biomes, so you will need to travel around and visit all the biomes in order to win the game. More information about what materials can be found in which biomes can be found in the in-game help menu, accessible by pressing 'H'. Screenshots of the new biomes can be found at the bottom of this article!

The crafting system has also been overhauled, making it much easier to craft items. Previously, the crafting menu was a jumbled mess of recipes. Now, recipes are sorted into categories, making it much easier to find the item you are looking for. Additionally, we have also added a visual way of finding out what you can craft - the button to craft an item will only turn green if you currently have all of the required items to make it!

The end-game goal has been changed a little, too! Previously, building a rocket required a mix of a few metals; now, it requires all of them, plus a new set of items - gemstones. There are six types of gemstone, each of which is unique to a particular biome. If you combine a gemstone with one of each type of metal bar from that biome, you can craft a biome ingot for that biome. Take all six types of biome ingot and craft them together, and you will have SuperAlloy. This new recipe replaces the old one, as the new way adds more challenge and more reasons to explore.

Finally, game saving and loading is currently being worked on. You can save your game by opening the developer console and calling 'saveToFile()'. This will download a file that will act as your save file. To load a game, simply drag and drop a save file onto the screen. In a future update, the saving process will become a lot more streamlined, and we may add the ability to save to the cloud, allowing you to store your world on our servers rather than having to download a world file all the time! With automatic backups, autosaves, and cross-device access, this may be a difficult goal to set ourselves, but I think we're up for the challenge. After all, if working on the biomes system has taught me one thing, it's this: Never give up, no matter how impossible something may seem. There will be a solution out there - you just have to find it.