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Dream Engines: Nomad Cities News

Dream Engines 1.0 has been released!

Citizens and overseers,

After a very long journey, the nomad cities are ready to spread their wings (so to speak) and fly! Six years in the making, out of which 3 years were in Early Access, the full release of Dream Engines: Nomad Cities is now available to everyone.

The full version comes with the largerst update that Dream Engines received to date. The update includes plenty of new content, mechanics, a narrative that explores some of the game world's lore, and several other improvements.

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Read on below about some of the larger changes in the 1.0 update. You can find the full list of changes on the patch notes page.

Story-based campaign

Dream Engines now has a campaign. As you advance in the game and complete the campaign missions, the story will unfold and you will learn about some of the lore and history of Twyst.

For the most part, the story is presented in the form of a dialogue with three city officials - your advisor, the archeologist and the chief scientist.

Please keep in mind that Dream Engines is not a story heavy game, the campaign was added to make the game a bit more interesting as you pursue greatness for your city. You can continue playing after you complete the campaign, and you can also ignore the story missions and just play the game like a sandbox if you prefer.

Steam achievements

I've added about 60 achievements that you can obtain. Some achievements are simple enough, and some will really challenge your skills. Will you try to get them all?

In these achievements I implemented lessons learned from the achievements in our previous game and made sure there are no achievements that required unique circumstances that depended too much on random number generators and that are very rare.



Archeologist

The Archeologist is a new building that you can build, and then use it to complete archeology projects. These projects, that can be unlocked by scavenging ancient ruins in the game map, will provide you with significant bonuses once completed. Completing these projects, however, will require a substantial amount of time and resources.



New tribes - Lore Keepers & The Doomed Tribe

Two new tribes were added that you can unlock and play with.

The Lore Keepers are historians, experts in anything related ot the old-world. As such, they are more nomadic than other tribes as they travel often in search for new ruins and places of interest. They perfected more efficient travel and can easily locate ancient ruins. Their frequent meddling with ancient Dreamtek devices causes them to attract more Dream Plagues.



The Doomed Tribe is very different from all other tribes. Usually, I try to make new tribes somewhat unique but overall balanced, so they don't make the game much easier or harder than normal (that's what the difficulty settings are for). The Doomed Tribe, however, are considered as an "expert" tribe.

They are a cursed people, that more often find themselves in locations that are more hostile, with less resources, and generally with more negative traits than positive ones. The early game is especially hard, since they start with a global infestation rating of 2 (but the time it takes to reach 3 is more or less like it would take if they started from 1). They do have a bonus to the scoring in the end of the game.

Will you be up to the challenge? Will you be able to lead these poor, cursed people to peace and prosperity?



The Toxic Moors

A new biome was added - the Toxic Moors. This toxic environment filled with poison mushrooms and noxious fog is the only place you can find the rare Candyshroom resource.

This is a tier 5 biome, and it requires a special upgrade to the city core before you can fly to it (I also added such a requirement to the Ashfall Range - the ash biome). Explore these beautiful and dangerous landscapes at your own peril.



Plenty of new content

The new content resolves for the most part around the late-game era. Two new map-resources (Sulfur and Candyshroom) can be found in 4-skull and 5-skull maps. New weapons and armor were added, and all of them now have an "Elite" variant which is stronger than anything we had in the game before this update.

New enemies that will challenge even the most well defended city, as well as new stronger walls and a new "Trumpet" turret that emits powerful sonic-based attacks were added to the game. There are new types of ranged weapon for Tiny that fire piercing projectiles that can hit many enemies at once.



There are also lots of new produced resources, alternative recipes, equipment, traps, and much more, some of which are also available earlier in the game.

More ruin types

Additional types of ancient ruins were added. Some ruins will now let you convert between different resources, so you can boost your supply of specific resources that you are missing at the expense of others. Some will let you produce resources from Flux. Others will grant you passive income of specific resources that will be regularly deposited in your storage.

There are now 8 different types of ruins, and you can see which ones will spawn in each map when you choose your next destination.

Balancing, bugfixes, performance and UX improvements

As in every update, there's also a multitude of smaller changes that include fixing bugs, tweaking and balancing different game elements, performance improvements and user experience improvements to make the game more seamless and intuitive to play.

Saves from previous builds

With considerable effort, I did manage to make sure that this new build is able to load older saves from the last EA build. That said, I highly recommend starting a new game, or if you prefer to finish your old game, then opt in to download the latest EA version using Steam's beta branches feature.

While the 1.0 build will be able to load and continue old games, a lot of things might get messed up. This was only tested for basic compatibility, and I may not be able to support issues that arise from playing these games. There won't be any story missions, which means that you will not be able to win the game, and a lot of the balancing changes may make the game too easy or too hard when continuing one that started during the EA.

Future Plans

It's been more than 3 years since Dream Engines released in Early Access. Over this time, Dream Engines received 13 major updates as well as some smaller ones.

So now, after the 1.0 release, I'll spend the next few weeks monitoring Steam forums and our support email as well as the in-game "leave feedback" forms, to support the game and fix any issues as necessary. After that I'll probably get some much needed rest, and then start planning Suncrash's next project (Sign up here to get updates).

Perhaps when I need a break from that new project, I'll release a new content update for Dream Engines like I recently did with our first game, Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation's 5th anniversary.

Here's a small reminder of some of the major changes and additions to Dream Engines during the Early Access phase.



This is a big moment for me. I hope you all enjoy the full version of Dream Engines. I've said it before, but now more than ever, I want to thank everyone who supported Dream Engines and Suncrash during the development, alpha and Early Access phases of the game, thank you for all your support and feedback. I couldn't have done it without your support.

If you want to chat, you can find me in our discord server. I'll probably be swamped in the next few days, but I try to make time for it whenever I can.

Tomer @ Suncrash

Dream Engines will leave early access on May 9th

Hey everyone,

I have exciting news! We have a release date for Dream Engines 1.0. On May 9th we'll release the full version of the game. The release will include a big update with lots of new content, new mechanics and other changes. You can also expect a launch discount.

Once again, a big thank you to all our Early Access players for your patience and support over the years.

Tomer @ Suncrash

Announcement: the next update will be Dream Engines 1.0

Hey everyone,

I'm writing this to let you know that after releasing 12 updates during the alpha & early access phases, Dream Engines is almost reade for its full release - the next version will be 1.0, marking the end of the Early Access phase. I'm planning for this update to be larger than normal with plenty of new content, and wanted to let you know that it will take longer to complete compared to my usual updates. There's a lot of work to be done on the game itself, and also a lot of extra logistics around the 1.0 launch including extra work on marketing and PR.

The release is planned for the first half of 2024. I can't give a more accurate estimation at the moment because I still haven't decided on the exact scope of the update, and there are also other considerations such as finding a time that is not too busy with other events and game launches and finding a time that works both for us at Suncrash and our publishing partners in Asia - GameraGame.

Thank you all for your patience and your support during the long Early Access period.

Tomer @ Suncrash

Update 12 patch 1

Build 496 - fixed a major issue and a smaller bug

  • Fixed a game-breaking bug that happened when disabling the take-off / landing animation displays, after loading a new map it wouldn't create enemy spawners which in turn broke the construction feature making the game unplayable. The fix is retroactive, so if you have a save that was broken because of this issue, it should automatically repair the save when you load it.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented the connections between tesla towers to be displayed after showing the landing animation.

Update 12 - City Council Update

Hey everyone, major update #12 is now live. The City Council update adds a few new mechanics, some of which are random in nature to increase replayability and add some more interest to the game. It's been longer than usual since update #11, and as you know, that's mainly because I released a new update and free DLC to Suncrash's 5-year-old debut title - Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation.

Read on below about some of the larger changes in this update. You can find the full list of changes on the patch notes page.

City Council

Once your population is high enough, your people will start electing a city council. Every time an election takes place, you, as overseer, will get the chance to select a Head of Council from within the councilmen that were elected by your people. In terms of gameplay, this means that whenever elections take place you will be able to choose one out of several randomly generated options to head your council, and every option has different bonuses and penalties.

These bonuses and penalties will often have a significant impact on our choices, economy and military, so choose wisely. The bonuses, however, only last until the next elections, so even if you regret your choice it's not forever.



Political Factions

Three political factions were added to the game. Your interaction with these factions is through the council elections. When you select a head of council, your options will include members of different factions, and your choice will influence your relationships with these factions.

If your relationship with a faction becomes high enough, or low enough, you will start enjoying (or suffering) bonuses/penalties specific to that faction. This adds another variable, that will have a longer-lasting impact, to your choice of councilmen.

Traps & Mines

You can now defend your city by building traps & mines! Once you unlock the relevant research, there are three types of traps - high damage / low area of effect, low damage / higher area of effect, and a slowing trap.

Mixing up traps with your regular defenses can make a big difference. You can place them inside or outside your city (within your construction area), and they only activate when enemies are nearby, neither Tiny nor your resource carts take any damage from these traps.

For me, balancing these traps can be a tricky thing because they don't have any upkeep costs. You can theoretically fill the whole map with traps which will turn the defense game to something too easy. Finding the correct sweet point of price to build them vs their impact may take some tweaking, so please do let me know if you have any feedback.



New Tribe - Plague Hunters

A new tribe option was added when starting a new game. The Plague Hunters are an ancient military organization, from when civilization was at it's peak, and the dream plagues just started appearing in the world. Today, they live a lowly nomadic life just like the other tribes, except that they maintain the old traditions of hunting and exploiting the Dream Plagues.

This tribe excels at fighting with Tiny, they get more drops from enemies they kill, and they have some unique crafting recipes to generate resources from Drep remains. Their industry, however, is somewhat lacking.



Status effects on enemies

I've implemented the ability to apply status effects (such as slow, reduced damage, etc) on enemy units. These open up some interesting possibilities for the future. At the moment, this is only being used by the slow trap, but more content around this like consumables and abilities are in the works.

Those of you who enjoy playing around with mods can already use this new system to create interesting new content.

Landing Sequence

I've added a new landing sequence animation that will take place after you make your daring escape and choose a new safe zone to land in. No more teleporting directly to the ground.



New Content

While this is not primarily a content update, I did add some new equipment (a sniper weapon, advanced version of the snipe bow), and some new alternative recipes such as producing Acidstone without actually needing access to acid shards.

Saves from previous builds

Saves from the previous version are supported and should work without any issues. If your population is high enough, you can expect to see an elections as soon as you load your game.

Future Plans

Here's our latest roadmap as work continues towards Dream Engines 1.0. There's not a lot left before 1.0, I'll share more information about this when I know for sure.



As always, I'm listening to all feedback channels, and your feedback is very much appreciated. A lot of the changes in this update originated from your suggestions. I invite you to hop onto our discord server and chat with us directly, leave your feedback in the Steam discussion forums, or in-game feedback form.

Lastly, a reminder to check out my previous game, if you enjoy Dream Engines you may enjoy it as well and it recently got a new update.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/455980/Judgment_Apocalypse_Survival_Simulation/

I hope you enjoy all these latest changes, and once again thank you all for your support. I couldn't have done any of this without you all.

Tomer @ Suncrash