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Dev Diary 4 – Surviving Cold Waves By Stirling

What can we expect when hit by a Cold Wave? While we don’t want to completely ‘spoil the surprise’ by talking in-depth about all of the disasters that could decimate your beautiful colony, you may safely assume that the environment on Mars is a harsh mistress. Sure, them rocks and that red sand may be looking pretty peaceful, beautiful even. But don’t be fooled. All of a sudden your Sensor Towers may be reporting an incoming Cold Wave that freezes...
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Dev Diary 3 – Dome, Sweet Dome!

I am back with the final dev diary for you this year, this time focusing on the human habitats and the lives of the colonists in Surviving Mars. While setting up an automated colony staffed by the little drone guys can be a fun experience by itself, it also serves a larger purpose – paving the road for the first human settlements on the red planet. But why would you need humans in your colony at all? Thank you for...
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The Case for Steam Early Access

Steam Early Access gets a lot of bad rap at times. Gamers are certainly justified to criticize incomplete or abandoned titles and developers who don’t deliver what they promised. Still, our experience with Steam Early Access as developers has been nothing but positive and I am certain that it helped us make a better game. Victor Vran was in Early Access from February 2015 till July 2015. Five months may not sound like a lot of time for a project...
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Starting From Scratch: Haemimont Games’ Tropico 5 Postmortem

This article was originally published on Gamasutra on March 17, 2015 Tropico 5 is a city-builder/political simulation game in which the player assumes the role of the authoritarian leader of a small island country. We’ve already created two other Tropico titles, but this one was our most ambitious addition to the franchise, both in terms of budget and development time. By the decree of the glorious leader of Tropico, El Presidente himself, this installment was supposed to be the perfect,...
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