City-building god sim 'The Universim' enters Beta, full release this year

After a long road since the Kickstarter in 2014, Crytivo's city-builder that mixes in some god sim elements The Universim is now considered to be in Beta with a huge update.

Not only that, they've also said that all the systems they need for the full game are in, although plenty of content is not in the current build while they finish it all up. So it will be releasing in full and out of Early Access later this year.

This update is massive too, the biggest to the game yet which brings in the full revamp of their planet generation system. Planets can be a lot bigger, bumpier and more feature-filled than before and honestly it's looks a huge amount better. Pathfinding was reworked, planets load faster and you should see better performance due to all the work on it.

Also included is a new pollution system, expanding the actual simulation even further. This will affect seasons, the behaviour of your people and it will slowly change your planet over time. Buildings can affect it, both for positive and negative.

The Universim gameplay is also more accessible now, you don't need to zoom right in and study tiny little flags on buildings to show they have a problem. That was replaced with icons, making you able to see at a glance what's going on.

The beginnings of a new civilization…

On top of that the HUD was updated to be cleaner, the Twitch integration was expanded, modern-age buildings have lights that glow at night, Guards/Police/Hunters will defend the city from wolf attacks or Exile attacks, you now see the water level reduce as your civilization drains oceans and lakes and that's only some basic highlights from eyeballing over the vast changelog. It's just massive.

Still quite a long way to go, it's nowhere near finished and we've yet to get the icing on the cake with travelling to other planets which I am seriously excited about. The Universim has gradually turned into a very lovely city-builder with god sim elements as you have a few powers.

You can find The Universim on Humble Store, GOG and Steam.