Your journey begins on a remote island with a small crew of workers and a ship full of supplies. Mine raw materials, reshape the fully dynamic terrain, grow crops, build factories, and research new technologies. Expand across the island, lay rail networks, trade with distant settlements, and work your way up to nuclear power and space flight.
The entire terrain is fully dynamic. Every mountain can be flattened, every valley filled, and even the ocean can be reclaimed to expand the available land. Create open-pit mines to reach deep ore deposits, or dump excess rock into the ocean to expand your shoreline. Build ramps and slopes so your vehicles can reach any elevation.
Start simple with iron smelting, concrete mixing, and food processing. As you research new technologies, expand into oil refining, electronics, computing, and eventually rocket and space station components. Manage waste and pollution before they affect your people's health.
Trucks handle general logistics automatically, delivering products where they are needed most. Lay conveyor belts and pipes for high-throughput direct connections between machines. Build a rail network to move bulk cargo across long distances. Use amphibious vehicles and bridges to reach other islands.
Grow crops on farms and process them into food or industrial products. Supply fertilizers to boost yields and build greenhouses to grow more advanced crops. Your population needs housing, clean water, electricity, healthcare, and household goods. Keep them happy and healthy, and they will reward you with Unity, a resource that lets you speed up construction, enact powerful edicts, and claim resources on the world map. Neglect waste management or let pollution build up, and diseases will spread.
Send your ship out to explore the world map. Discover new islands with resources to import, refugees to rescue, and allied settlements to trade with. Establish shipping contracts for recurring exchanges, or negotiate quick trades when you need something fast. Your ultimate goal is full self-sufficiency: launch rockets, build a space station, and mine asteroids for rare resources that make your colony independent indefinitely.
Copy and paste parts of your factory, or save entire layouts as blueprints to reuse and share. Use planning mode to lay out designs before committing resources. Design your own island in the map editor and play it or share it with others. Or switch to sandbox mode where all buildings and resources are free, perfect for experimenting and learning.