Iron Village News

[p]Project OY development continues (I'll have another update on Patreon soon), and there's an Iron Village update in the works (!), but for now, we're going to continue with my 2025 games recap.[/p][h2]Paradise Killer[/h2][p][/p][p]I barely know how to describe Paradise Killer. To put it dryly, you play "Lady Love Dies", summoned from exile to investigate the murder of the island's council. You go around and gather evidence to provide in trial at the end of the game.[/p][p]Describing it like that would do the game a huge injustice though. It's a completely surreal experience, from the setting (a regenerating island meant to eventually resurrect fallen deities, but gets corrupted by demons every time - except this time it was supposed to be perfect) to the characters (all with interesting stories and relationships... and possible motives). I don't know how else to explain it apart from it being a unique experience, in the true sense of the word "unique".[/p][h2]Cities: Skylines II[/h2][p][/p][p]Cities: Skylines II, there's so much to say about the cursed sequel to Cities: Skylines. I don't think you can truly tell its story without telling the full story of city builder games, from the original SimCity (and the game that spawned it, Raid on Bungeling Bay). That retelling will have to wait for another day. As for where Cities: Skylines fits in, in my opinion: an existing transit-focused city builder studio was in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the failure of SimCity (2013) with a solid game, one that had none of SimCity's fundamental problems. A bunch of updates and DLC later, and although some were a bit inconsistent, it became a great game, establishing itself as the standard city builder in the genre. I've got over 1500 hours in it according to Steam, it's my most played game of all time.[/p][p]Cities: Skylines II, however, does not live up to that achievement. There's a lot of speculation as to how and why that happened, but my oversimplified theory: it's the story of Icarus. Colossal Order flew too close to the sun. The list of features was incredibly ambitious, and although they might have been able to pull it off, CS2 was nowhere near ready when it released. There were some omissions that they could've gotten away with, but there were two that stand out the most to me: no map editor, and no custom assets. Despite the obscene amount of mods and assets I had for the original game (enough that I opted for 128 GB of RAM on my current PC, which apparently makes me filthy rich in today's economy), I think the biggest omission was the lack of custom maps. You were stuck with a handful of maps made by Colossal Order, each of which had different climate stats that you couldn't alter. Without a way to make or get additional maps, you were ultimately limited in the worlds you could create, limiting the longevity of the game.[/p][p]The lack of custom assets for so long after release severely limited longevity as well. The biggest games in the city building genre are there because of custom content - dedicated players can expand on the platform the original game built, and if these creators are nurtured and supported, can turn it into an entirely new game. After all, SimCity 4 still has active players because of its modding scene, over 20 years after its initial release. Cities: Skylines owes its extended life to modders and "content" creators.[/p][p]Cities: Skylines II shows up in my Steam Replay thanks to the release of several building packs, made by many of the building creators who were active on the previous title. The asset creation tools weren't even open to the public yet (that would happen later in 2025), this was just a curated selection. With all the new buildings (which are gorgeous, to be fair), I gave CS2 another go. Without the prior context, I think I would love playing. And maybe it'll get to a point where I play again, after some time with more custom content and a new studio working on it. But for whatever reason, it just didn't have the "magic".[/p][h2]The Planet Crafter[/h2][p][/p][p](The) Planet Crafter is really fun, it's a survival and base builder game where you land on a barren planet and have to terraform it to support humans. The backstory is that this is an alternative to capital punishment, although the story is much more of a plot justification than an active part of the story. There's something really neat about exploring a new world, building your base, and seeing how your work changes the whole environment. I've been playing it co-op with my oldest son too, which has just been a great time.[/p][h2]Teardown[/h2][p][/p][p]Ostensibly you're running a "totally legit" demolition company in the municipality of Löckelle, going to different places and carrying out controlled destruction in a voxel sandbox. You get up to so many different types of activities though, including setting up elaborate heists, working for clients who are sabotaging each other in revenge, and racing cars as well! (There's even a DLC that's an entire self-contained racing game.) It's just way too much fun blowing shit up.[/p][h2]Dustland Delivery[/h2][p][/p][p]I'm a little tired of post-apocalyptic zombie settings, but otherwise this was a really neat game where you drive around the wasteland, make money by trading goods, and complete quests. While you do that, you upgrade your truck to handle the different terrain and weather, plus there's a base-building mechanic for some of the towns you encounter. IMO it did a good job of making inventory limits a challenge rather than a frustration, along with an interesting aspect where money itself (represented as "scrap") has a weight - selling some goods will actually fill your inventory up rather than clear it out![/p][h2]Imperator: Rome[/h2][p][/p][p]A classic Paradox map game, except active development ended on this earlier than typical for modern Paradox games. Much like with their other titles though, modders have taken over to build on top of the game. The biggest one, Invictus, fleshes out the world and gives flavor to every corner of the world - not just the main Mediterranean powers. Is it my favorite Paradox game? No, but with continued modding it's a really solid game IMO.[/p][h2]Two Point Hospital[/h2][p][/p][p]The first of the Two Point Trilogy, Two Point Hospital got the modern series rolling. Somehow they make patients dying from medical malpractice feel like a light-hearted "oops". It's still got just the right amount of complexity to make gameplay engaging and fun. There's definitely some parts where the engine has been improved in Two Point Campus (for example, the hallway areas don't have customizable walls or floors in Hospital), but the fun and creativity is all there. I'm sure this is all even better in Two Point Museum, but I haven't played that one yet.[/p][h2]Anoxia Station[/h2][p][/p][p]Anoxia Station is a kind of horror strategy game, you're deep underground exploring and mining, whilst defending yourself from the creepy monsters below. The art is beautiful, in a horrific way, while being 2D. Especially early on, every single person and resource matters, so there's a lot of actually important choices to make in such a tense environment. All-in-all, a creepy, engaging experience, and it didn't take forever to finish either.[/p][hr][/hr][p]Anyway, that's all for Part 2, there'll be one more part, and then... more Iron Village release notes! I'll leave you all with a teaser image:[/p][p][/p]

[p]With Project OY development fully underway (and still unannounced), there's not really so much actual game development for me to talk about in these dev diaries. After the Steam Replay for 2025, I did think of an idea: why not write a little bit about it and make that a dev diary post?[/p][p]So, why post this almost a month after 2025 is done? Well, (1) I was busy during the holiday season, including everyone getting sick, (2) there's something about leaving out 2 weeks of data in December that really bugs me, and (3) the start of this year has been... a lot.[/p][p]I'll be going through my own Steam Replay semi-chronologically and giving a few of my thoughts. I'm skipping over a fair number of games - either my play time was miniscule, or I just didn't like the game. I'm not here to put down other people's games, every game below gets my personal recommendation. (None of these are ads, and I guess there is a conflict of interest here as another game developer, but also what's the point of making games if you can't still play them?)[/p][h2]The Crush House[/h2][p][/p][p]This was a really neat game - it's ostensibly a game about producing and filming a 90s reality TV show, but there's a dystopic subplot beneath the surface. It's not the longest game, but it's a concept I personally haven't seen before, and I enjoyed it.[/p][h2]SteamWorld Build[/h2][p][/p][p]SteamWorld Build was recommended by Iron Village's QA tester Bea, and has a lot of surface similarities with Iron Village. Like, it's a city builder with railroad tracks in the middle and trains that come for trade. The train is much less central to the game, however: you can trade for extra money, and get useful items, but it's not really vital to your gameplay.[/p][p]SteamWorld Build kind of has two games going on in parallel: a city builder on the surface that plays like a "casual" Anno (I don't think it's all that "casual" outside of the aesthetics though), and a dungeon delving/tower defense game below ground, which supplies some resources to the city above, as well as rocket parts to help meet the final goal. Combining different games like that is a bold move, but I think they pulled it off![/p][h2]Balatro[/h2][p][/p][p]So I had to put Balatro here, I was a little late to the party with playing this. It's an amazingly well done game, and I definitely binged on it and stayed up too late once or twice. Once I finally won though, I have to admit... it didn't really stay attached. I know it was game of the year for so many people, and so many people obsessed over making the best combos and card strategies, but it ended up not quite being my cup of tea.[/p][h2]Iron Village[/h2][p][/p][p]Iron Village is a really neat city builder with cute pixel art, where you build a town centered on a railway... wait a second![/p][p]Steam Replay is pretty funny as a game developer, because you get to see your own work pop up in the middle of everything else. Once you set up the Steam SDK, it counts as a game just as much as any other game, even before it's published. In 2025 it was "only" my third most played game at 7% of all play time, but a whopping 1666 sessions played - and that's just the ones that Steam counted. Plenty of play time was before the Steam SDK was put in, and of course other platforms had to be tested, so that number is probably even higher.[/p][h2]What the Car?[/h2][p][/p][p]I don't even where to start with this insanity. Its absurdity actually made me laugh, but the game also has quite a bit of challenge to it. Just go play it if you haven't already, it's a wild ride.[/p][h2]Baldur's Gate 3[/h2][p][/p][p]After hearing so much good about BG3, I ended up grabbing it from PAX East in March 2024. Like with so many big RPGs, I ended up spending so much time messing around with mods and creating new characters that I only ended up beating it on June 9th, 2025 😅. Anyway, I've got 378.3 hours on record, so hopefully that's enough of an endorsement.[/p][h2]Two Point Campus[/h2][p][/p][p]The sequel to Two Point Hospital (which comes up later), and very much in the spirit of Theme Hospital & Sim Theme Park, it's Two Point Campus! I played a bit closer to when it came out, but I ended up playing a bunch more this year. It's got a great quirky sense of humo(u)r, and it's really neat getting to play in so many different settings. There's so much customization too - I'm a real sucker for customization options in games, but I guess that shouldn't be surprising with how heavily I mod some of them...[/p][h2]Fields of Mistria[/h2][p][/p][p]So there's a lot of comparisons to be made with Stardew Valley, and rightly so, but that's not a bad thing IMO. I mostly played around the early access release and after the first main update, so I'm quite a bit behind, but I really enjoyed it. I really appreciated some of the quality of life features (for instance, actually saving what people's favorite things are!), and I liked how a huge part of the story is fixing and improving the town.[/p][h2]And More...[/h2][p]At a certain point while writing this, I realized this is going to become waaay too long. I've only made it through February on the Replay, so instead of making this dev diary my full time job, I'm taking a break here. At this rate, there'll be two more parts to follow.[/p]

[p]Surprise, it's another update for Iron Village! Iron Village got a big bump in sales recently, which initially looked like an end-of-sale spike, but turned out to be driven by this video by the Geek Cupboard:[/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]It's awesome to see Iron Village popping up still, but of course more players means more opportunities for bug reports! There were two bugs reported last week:[/p]

1. [p]On Android, the foundation for the Magick Transformer was missing, so the player couldn't build it.[/p]
2. [p]On the Steam Deck (but also PC), the controller would stop responding when going back to the menu, even though the menu was in focus.[/p]

[p]I'm still not 100% sure what happened for #1, especially since I couldn't reproduce it, but it did highlight the difficulty of debugging on someone else's Android device. Actually accessing saves isn't possible right now (each app's storage is kept secure from any other app accessing it, but that apparently includes the user too), and in order to get any logs you have to ask the user to install adb, plug their phone in, reproduce the bug, and copy/paste the relevant logs. (Hope the player understands what's relevant!) As you'll see below, the changes made here are mainly band-aid fixes, UI to better surface issues, and unrelated bugs I encountered.[/p][p]For #2, the issue was specific to how I implemented the Steam Input API. Whenever an action came in, it would let the [c]ControllerHintManager [/c]know - that way, the controls get shown when the player is actively using a controller. I have [c]ControllerHintManager [/c]implemented as a singleton: it's a type of object in the game, but it's designed so that only one exists at a time. This singleton "pattern" can be implemented a few different ways, but in Iron Village I just use a static variable Instance, and set that when the first instance gets created. The singleton is an unfairly maligned pattern IMO - for a lot of software it does end up encouraging bad design, but there are quite a few places where it can be done more responsibly in game development, especially in smaller projects. Is it a good idea in this instance? IDK, it's not great, but not terrible.[/p][p]Anyway, the issue here is that [c]ControllerHintManager [/c]only exists in the game itself, not the main menu. The first time you load the menu, this is fine - there is code that checks if Instance is null, and skips talking to the [c]ControllerHintManager[/c]. It works fine within the game of course, since the manager actually exists there. When you go back to the main menu though, that deletes the [c]ControllerHintManager[/c], and that's where the problem starts.[/p][p]Warning, discussing about programming languages and other details ahead![/p][p]The follow up question is this: what does it mean to delete something? In most cases, you're not actually changing anything about the data in memory or on a hard drive, you just tell the operating system that you don't need to reserve that space anymore. Eventually something else will probably use that space, but the underlying bits don't immediately change. That's the basis of how a lot of data recovery tools work - the "empty" part of the hard drive can still hold data that was previously written.[/p][p]If Iron Village were using a "lower level" language like C or C++, we might get away with this issue for a little bit: the Instance variable would be pointing to a "deleted" [c]ControllerHintManager[/c], but as long as it hasn't been overwritten in memory yet, it might work. (This is bad code because it's undefined behaviour, and could end with the game fully crashing out instead.)[/p][p]In C# (and a lot of other "higher level" languages), there's an added layer of memory management and garbage collection. It's keeping track of what's been deleted, so if you try and access deleted memory, it throws an error that you're trying to access a disposed object. Crucially though, our Instance variable isn't null - it's pointing to that deleted object! So now when input comes in from the Steam Input API, it tries to talk to the [c]ControllerHintManager[/c], and throws an error. Because of how error throwing works, it skips a lot of code that comes later - including that part that actually acts on that input. (Without any additional code, this would crash the whole game, but the Godot engine tends to catch most exceptions once it's no longer your code. Sometimes this isolates the problem and lets the rest of the game continue working, other times it just makes things weird.) So every time you try and scroll down, the code tries to contact [c]ControllerHintManager[/c], fails, and gives up.[/p][p]The solution was just to set the variable back to null whenever the [c]ControllerHintManager[/c] gets deleted (i.e. in Godot's [c]_ExitTree()[/c] method), a small change that probably should've been done from the beginning. 🙃[/p][p]Anyway, if you've made it this far, here's the full release notes:[/p]

• [p]Fixed an issue where corn fields (and only corn fields) were being drawn above buildings in front of them.[/p]
• [p]Added an error dialog to the game to display errors that would normally only be seen in the logs. (Note that it doesn't capture all errors, only those in select sensitive areas of the code, like loading.)[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where the Maximum Production Rate button wouldn't appear in the Railway Status Window immediately after building the Railway HQ.[/p]
• [p]Added code to build the Magick Transformer Site on loading a game if it should be there.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where Steam Input would no longer respond after exiting to the main menu.[/p]

[p]I know, I know, you’re looking at that title and thinking, why on earth would I want to look back on this year?! And yes, the world is uh, not doing so well, but we’re at least going to take a look back at the year from the perspective of Lunar Chippy Games.[/p][p]But first, if you’re reading this and haven’t bought Iron Village yet – it’s 30% off for the rest of the year![/p][p][/p][p]Iron Village at BostonFIG back in December 2024[/p][p][/p][p]The biggest date of course was March 24th, but I’ll backtrack a little bit first. Iron Village was at BostonFIG on December 15th, so after that and holiday shenanigans, the year started off with implementing the crazy amount of feedback from then. (Not all of it of course, feedback is super useful but not 100% correct.) Levels 4 & 5 hadn’t even been fully implemented yet, so there was still a big chunk of work to cram into two and a half months.[/p][p]Somehow I pulled it off, all while holding a full time day job at the same time, launching to mostly positive reviews. Was it a huge launch? No, but Iron Village was well received, contrary to what part of my brain had tricked itself into believing, and it turns out I could in fact make and finish a game![/p][p][/p][p]An image from Iron Village 1.1, showing off some of the (then) new features.[/p][p][/p][p]A lot of initial feedback from the game came to make the basis of version 1.1: Additional rotations of buildings, a Royal Ceremony to give the game a soft ending, as well as some other goodies and quality of life fixes. 1.1 released in June, and along with the corresponding sale, another big boost of sales came along.[/p][p]Meanwhile, at some point during the early summer, the “Voluntary Exit Program” was announced at my day job (at least for the department which I worked in). I signed up for that so fast lol, the only delay was me getting lunch and calling my wife to double check. (She was more excited than I was!) Based on what other big tech companies were doing, getting to actually voluntary leave with severance was huge, and most likely thanks to our union. (If you can, join a union!) I’m tempted to rant about my manager here as well, buuut that can wait for another time, if ever.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]The theme for update 1.2. Original logo ©3Division.[/p][p][/p][p]After signing up for that, but before actually ending my job, the 1.2 release came out, a.k.a. the Workers and Resources update. This was another hefty update, and included some charts for deeper analysis, some new buildings, and a bunch of other improvements.[/p][p]Since then it’s been full speed ahead on Project OY, the unannounced new game I’m working on. It is a wee bit terrifying going full time right now (in this economy?!), and it’ll be awhile until anything actually comes out, but the way things are planned it should work for at least the duration of development. (If you’re interested, there is a Patreon that gets you some sneak peeks, but at this early stage I also totally get not wanting to drop cash on that!)[/p][p][/p][p]Another sneak peek at Project OY.[/p][p][/p][h2]Some Stats[/h2][p]Finally, I wanted to drop some unsorted statistics, some of which I found pretty interesting:[/p][p]Net Sales on Steam: 1,643[/p][p]Users on Google Play: 113[/p][p]Of 1679 total units on Steam, 72 are from Mac and 46 from Linux (I’m not sure how precise the OS assignment is though)[/p][p]5,608 outstanding wishlists[/p][p]Median time played: 1 hour 23 minutes[/p][p]56 reviews on Steam, 91% Positive[/p][p]Top Countries:[/p]

• [p]438 units (26%) in the US[/p]
• [p]347 (21%) in Germany[/p]
• [p]102 (6%) in the UK[/p]
• [p]89 (5%) in China (PRC)[/p]
• [p]83 (5%) in Japan[/p]
• [p]58 (3%) in Canada[/p]
• [p]57 (3%) in France[/p]
• [p]55 (3%) in Taiwan[/p]
• [p]50 (3%) in Australia[/p]
• [p]44 (3%) in Russia[/p]
• [p]356 (21%) Other[/p]

[h2]In Closing[/h2][p]That just about sums up 2025 for Lunar Chippy Games, hope you all have a Happy New Year! At the very least, I hope that 2026 ends up being at least slightly better? 🤞[/p]

[p]So thanks to a bug report on some missing achievements, we have a new release of Iron Village coming your way! There are two main fixes here:[/p][p]#1: Achievement Synchronization: When you load a save file, the game will manually check everything and unlock achievements as appropriate. For some reason somebody’s game didn’t unlock the Artificer’s Guild and Deep Mine achievements when they built them, and prior to 1.2.09 the game would never go back and try to unlock them again. This fixes that problem by adding a redundant layer to catch these sorts of missing achievements on a regular basis. (In fact, this logic was already in use for a few achievements, I’ve just expanded it to cover nearly all of them. The only one that isn’t covered is the “all resources” achievement, but that checks the conditions every time your resource counts change, so it’ll generally update within a few seconds.[/p][p]#2: Save File Size Bloat Reduction: When I asked the bug reporter to send in their save, they couldn’t actually attach it because it was too big. I thought that was weird, all my saves have been a couple hundred KB. This save was a whopping 19 MB. That wasn’t too big for Notepad++ to open thankfully, so I took a look and… it was the [c]EventLogManager[/c]. (You may remember this from Diary #54 – Workers and Resources: Iron Village.) Basically it would record events for approval events and resource production/consumption, but I never actually got around to adding the code to cap the size. Anyway, that’s in now, hopefully it should be a good compromise between save size and production statistic accuracy.[/p]