Welcome! Arborlands is a habitat-building game currently in development for the PC. In Arborlands, you develop a home for a species of tree-dwelling animals called Arborins.
Latest Post
- Lobby!
I’ve been holding back on sharing the lobby functionality because it’s still pretty raw and because it’s not as interesting as “in-game” interactions. But here’s a quick video, showing the lobby flow.Continue reading “Lobby!”
The Game (in a nutshell)
Inhabit
Find a forest and make it your home. Grow your community and train professional bands of Arborins called troops.
Explore
Send your troops to Roam far and wide in a vibrant 2D environment. Encounter other species, investigate natural oddities, and research new advancements to improve the lives of your Arborins.
Survive
Nature is a dangerous place. Parasites, predators, and opportunists stand ready to take advantage of your every misfortune! Use vigilance, planning, force, and cooperation to ensure your community’s future.
Thrive
Upgrade your troops, research new advancements, and find new lands to inhabit. Add habitat improvements that increase your community’s health, happiness, and size. Live in balance with your ecosystem or dominate nature for your own benefit.
Features
Single Player | Multiplayer co-op
All the features below will be available in both solo play and multiplayer co-op modes. You can master the game on your own, or call-in your friends to triumph together!
Labor based economy
Arborlands has no inventory, farming, or resource stockpiles – the forest provides everything you need. Instead, all advancement relies upon your well-trained and organized force of professional Arborins. Your management of this workforce will determine your success!
Habitat Management
You cannot train troops without a forest for them to live in! Each forest you inhabit has its own population, level of happiness, health, and biodiversity. Forests of sufficient size will be able to train their own troop. Larger and more sophisticated habitats are harder to find and maintain.
Training and Research
By investigating the environment around you and assigning tasks to your Troops, you gain the most important resource of all – Knowledge!
Through training, troops can level up to increase their speed, health, and skill level. Through research you can develop new skills to teach your troops
Forest add-ons can be research and built by troops to improve forest stats.
What is a habitat building game?
At its heart, Arborlands is very similar to a city building game (think Sim-City, the Caesar series, or Frost Punk). In a city building game you build, maintain, and manage a settlement for a community.
But in Arblorlands, instead of cutting down trees and replacing nature with a city, you grow trees and enhance an existing habitat. Your forest’s health and diversity have a positive effect on your resident population, so it is in your interest to work with nature, not against it.
Of course, not all aspects of your habitat are friendly. Parasites, predators, and other natural threats must still be dealt with!
Latest News
Lobby!
I’ve been holding back on sharing the lobby functionality because it’s still pretty raw and because it’s not as interesting as “in-game” interactions. But here’s a quick video, showing the lobby flow. I edited the video to remove out time lapses and loading time. Current functionality allows players to join, leave, change their color and…
Dev Sketchbook: Rocks and Such
Sharing a quick entry from my sketchbook. I’m practicing what small corners of the environment might look like. I want to make sure when I draw a rock, that it looks like it’s made of rock. Straight corners make rocks look harder and “newer”. I use smoother lines and a layering effect to imply older,…
September Roundup
What a frenzied month of development this has been for me! I got a lot of work done and you may have noticed more updates on this site as well. I have stepped up work and blogging in the hopes of gauging what my baseline output can be when I dedicate regular amounts of time…
Arborlands 