You can now play the demo for our next game Captain Contraption's Chocolate Factory by visiting the store page using the link below. Its an open ended factory, automation style puzzle game.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2166920/Captain_Contraptions_Chocolate_Factory/

Using a simple set of tools youll need to automate production of a variety of sweet treats like chocolate covered toasted almonds. The game plays sort of like a mix between a programming game like Opus Magnum, a factory game like factorio and a contraption maker game like The Incredible Machine.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

Did you hear? Did you see? Pill Bugs next game Making it Home launches today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/

Whether you enjoyed the bare-knuckle lo-fi thrills of Cycle 28, or the chilled joy of watching something of yours grow in Intelligent Design, we think Making it Home has something for you.

And it starts with testing your vehicle building skills against the full range of twisty routes, tricky obstacles, and fiendish boss encounters that Sean and I have come up with. In doing so, youll unlock brand new achievements and challenge modes.

Were finally letting everyone loose on the games full branching narrative too. Will you uncover the truth behind whats happening to this ladybug and her animal family? And what relationships will you make or break along the way?

Sean and I cant quite believe weve made it this far. Its been three amazing but challenging years developing this game. We couldnt be prouder of what the whole team has achieved. And we couldnt have done it without the help and support of our amazing community here on Steam.

Thats you, that is. Thank you.

I hope you enjoy Making it Home as much as we have.

In our most recent update to our next game Making it Home we added local co-op. That gave us the chance to be part of the remote play together event Valve has been running the past few days.

If you haven't checked it out yet, Making it Home is a vehicle building game where your vehicle is your base. Design it, drive it, automate it and defend it as you travel from one side of America to the other.

As part of the remote play together event the game is on sale, plus we ran a developer stream which you can currently watch a replay of over on the store page.

Check it out below!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/

Good News Everyone! All our games are on sale for Winter

Making it Home - A vehicle building game currently in early access. You're a lady bug building a rube goldberg style machine to take you across America! Think Banjo Kazooie - Nuts and Bolts but in 2D.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/
[previewyoutube=3WAaAjy-go4;full][/previewyoutube]

Cycle 28 - A fast paced asteroids style arcade shooter which was nominated for a Cymru BAFTA. If you like old school score attack games this should be your cup of tea.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/749560/Cycle_28/
[previewyoutube=PyocLr6qTSE;full][/previewyoutube]

Take a look at the links above and add one to your collection today!

Thanks for all the support youve given us and other indie game developers - it means a lot to all of us.

Im super excited to announce that our vehicle building game Making it Home is now available in Early Access on Steam (currently 15% off!)

Weve been working on it for a while now and are super proud of it. Its something we had the idea for 3 years ago. In Making it Home you are a ladybug building a marvellous contraption to travel from one side of America to the other. As you travel youll unlock new components to build your vehicle and discover ways of making them work together. Youll meet lots of different characters and face different challenges to push your design skills. Then when you just want to chill out and optimise some designs weve added some challenge modes with leaderboards for that.

Its the biggest game weve made and it would be great if you check it out today and join us for the Early Access journey!

Our next game Making it Home is currently part of the steam festival. For the next week you will be able to play the demo.

Be sure to check it out! Click here and download.

Making it Home is a vehicle building game. Youre a ladybug building a marvellous contraption to travel from one side of America to the other. Bounce around your vehicle, hoisting sails, squeezing bellows, and spinning propellers. How will you make it home?

[previewyoutube=FdfAvvcX3m0;full][/previewyoutube]

We just launched the steam page for our next game Making it Home and it would really help if you would add it to your wishlist.



Youre a ladybug building a marvellous contraption to travel from one side of America to the other. Bounce around your vehicle, hoisting sails, squeezing bellows, and spinning propellers. How will you make it home?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098220/Making_it_Home/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jLvcUSwsSo

There is nothing more I like more than some good graphs, and iocaio shows off some on this months first screenshot.



Here is an established group of plants by Mr_Twister. Enough collectors there?



And finally for this month, check out these massive herbivores created by walpurgisnacht ... those must have been genetically engineered right?

For a while Dave and I have been trying to figure out what we could do community wise with Intelligent Design. With our other game Cycle 28 we always try to post the monthly leader boards to encourage some friendly competition. That kind of thing doesn't fit with Intelligent Design since it's meant to be a relaxed experience.

Something I often do is look through the community screenshots of ID on steam. I know some people disagree but I genuinely love the look of this game, and clearly people have put the effort into taking great shots of their evolving worlds.

...so I thought I would try to set aside some time each month to pick out a couple of shots I really like and share them with you. I probably won't write too much, but just share these shots. Feel free to discuss them in the comments!



The first shot is by ablunk. This one caught my eye simply because of all the plants! Over 8000! ... and not a single carnivore - clearly a vegan world.



The next image by iocaio is just nice to look at. The green glow from the buildings, eggs and creatures on the floor, seeds flying in the background.



Finally for this week an image by The Ghost in the Trenches showing the results of some genetic modifications I think. Seeds so big and with so much drag they never fall to the ground... Is it a bug or a feature? I'll let you decide!

It's been a wild ride since launching Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox on Steam almost two years ago. Since then we've talked to and met lots of gamers from all around the world. We've launched a second game on PC and console, and released a free content update for Intelligent Design.

For the past month or so Dave and I have been building a Patreon page. We are creating this community for those of you who want to dig deeper into game development and game design. By becoming a patron you'll be getting behind the scenes access to how we make games, becoming involved in our creative process, and getting first access to everything we make - including our games.

For example, we have uploaded a playable version of the two dimensional precursor to Intelligent Design - along with a video of Dave and I playing it and talking about that project. Over the next few months we will be posting scans of my note books and other stuff.

If that sounds like something you would be interested in head over and check out the rewards we offer and pick something which works for you.

Over the past few weeks Dave has been playing through a new save on the new map, with me coaching him along the way. You can follow us on twitch to catch the streams live each week, and catch up by watching the archives below.

Let us know how you think Dave is doing! Any tips you can share with him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jucUE3FgWeU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR7WvM0h5-I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxcJ55olCTg

Patch Notes

• Population counters are now checked for error once per in game day. The time acceleration may be introducing slight errors which will grow over time on extreamly long runs. This sanity check should deal with those errors.
  
• Creatures can now no longer see things which are far above or below them, such as on the cliffs in the new map.
  

I've just pushed a patch to the experimental update based on an idea from the discord community.

When a seed lands the slope of the landscape is checked, based on some genes I won't reveal, if the slope is too steep (like on the sides of the maps) the plant will not grow.

This should stop all the weird looking plants on the map edges and will also add some interesting evolutionary strategies for the plant genes!

Let us know what you think! The change only effects new plants, so existing plants in your game saves won't be effected.

Thanks to everyone who helped us test this update (the biggest we’ve done) over the past few months. It’s full of new content and improvements. Give it a try, let us know what you think, and please tell your friends!

New Map
We’ve made a new map for you to play on. It’s inspired by arctic landscapes, and so features big flat plateaus with deep crevasses snaking around them. Will micro-ecosystems emerge in these dark depths? Will plants evolve to find their way up these sheer cliffs? We’re so excited about this new map, we’ve made it the first map new players will see.



New Controls
The controls have been completely changed. We read your reviews and we watched countless YouTube videos, and the hard decision was made to drop controller support (though you can still access the original version of ID via the Classic branch). Now the game controls something like Factorio or Two Point Hospital. Move the camera with WASD and holding down the middle mouse button. Then simply use the cursor to click where you want to build buildings or create creatures.



New Genetic Engineering UI
We have also completely changed the genetics panel. Now you can see every gene you’ve unlocked for an organism on one screen, and then edit them all at once using a slider-based system.This new UI also allows for quick and comprehensive inspection of existing organisms in your world. We hope this gives you a better sense of what is going on.



Massive Performance Improvements
It took a lot of work but we’ve managed to significantly improve performance in the game. This is mainly due to the experience gained developing Cycle 28 for Nintendo Switch™, but also due to updates in Unity3D. Population numbers can now get much higher at a playable framerate. The population cap is still something you can disable, so those of you who want to push your thinking machine supercomputers to breaking point - or just want to heat your room as we head into winter - can.



Time Acceleration!
The performance improvements have meant we have been able to add time acceleration unlocked right at the start. This is a feature that was previously unlocked by completing all Performance Targets in the game, but due to feedback from the community we have decided to provide players with this feature from the beginning. Use it wisely!

Full Patch Notes

• Save directory has changed. To copy your old saves over launch the game and start a new save. Push escape to open the menu and hit ‘Open Data Folder’. The old data folder will be one directory above the /intelligentdesign folder. Exit the game and copy all your old files over to the new one and restart the game.
  
• Significant performance improvements
  
• Controls completely reworked. Controller support has been removed in favour for a management game style mouse based input.
  
• Added time acceleration unlocked by default.
  
• Added a new map
  
• Revamped tutorial - Changed wording to reflect new controls, removed voice-over, made the tutorial button driven.
  
• Added tool tips to some buttons, these can be disabled in the options menu
  
• Changed the fire effect and behaviour
  
• Buttons are now highlighted red when selected
  
• Wind audio now changes smoothly
  
• Added join discord button to launch menu
  
• Changed the wording on the science panel
  
• Revamped the genetics panel so you can see all genes at once when editing
  
• System menu now accessed by pressing escape in game
  
• The Mac version now runs with newer versions of MacOS.
  

Thanks again for everyone giving us feedback on these updates. This is a big one, Dave and I have completly re-designed the UI for custom organisms!

• Wind audio now changes smoothly
  
• Added join discord button to launch menu
  
• Changed the wording on the science panel
  
• Revamped the genetics panel so you can see all genes at once when editing
  
• Adjustments to tutorial text
  
• System menu now accessed by pressing escape in game
  
• Fixed drone shadow bug
  

I just pushed out a patch for the experimental branch, as ever we would love you hear your feedback either here or in our discord. Thanks to everyone posting screenshots of the new stuff in the steam community, it really helps us with design!

• Revamped tutorial - Changed wording to reflect new controls, removed voice-over, made the tutorial button driven.
  
• Added tool tips to some buttons, these can be disabled in the options menu
  
• Changed the fire effect and behaviour
  
• Moved the starting position of the radar on Map 1
  
• Buttons are now highlighted red when selected
  

There has never been a better time to be a Pill Bug Interactive fan.

Today we are launching our Collection Bundle.

So if you already own Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox now you can get a copy of Cycle 28 and the fantastic soundtrack by Jordan Rees (Composer of trailer music for The Mummy [Universal Pictures], Mother [Paramount Pictures], The Defenders [Marvel Studios]) for 20% off.

Cycle 28 is an intense retro shooter with a mystery at it's heart. First you think it's an arcade game: simple controls, powerful upgrades, and intense dogfights. But you’re stuck living the same day over and over, trying to find out who the enemy are, and what they want.

Check out the review below to see if Cycle 28 is your cup of tea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FPXrf2Le_w

Good news, ecosystem engineers! We have added an entirely new world in which you can now test your efficiency and scientific prowess.

The as-yet unnamed world is Map 1 on the experimental branch of Intelligent Design. Conditions on this world are not considered stable, so all employees are advised to anticipate changes as we adapt to this new environment.

We value all staff feedback. Please let us know if you have any thoughts, comments, or concerns regarding this new and exciting opportunity.

Our Discord channel is an excellent medium for engineer-employer interaction, try it today!

Back in April we shared our plans for an Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox content update, you can read them here. Today I'm really excited to launch our experimental branch!

We decided to give you access to the content update as we build it because (1) we think the improvements we have made so far will allow more people to enjoy the game and (2) we want to get your feedback as we go. We can't push this patch into the default branch because, since the controls have changed, we will need to re-write the tutorial.

To download the update go to Intelligent Design in your Steam library, right click it and select properties. Then click on the Betas tab of the window which appears and select the Experimental Branch from the drop down list. The experimental branch will store game saves in a different folder, if you want to copy over existing saves into that you can, there is a button in the system menu (in game) which opens up an explorer window in your save game directory.

Here are the main changes:

• General performance improvements
  
• The controls have been reworked so they are entirely mouse driven. You now left click on the menus to select a unit or building you want to create, then right click on the map where you want to create it. Move the camera with WASD, shift, ctrl and hold the middle mouse button to move it.
  
• We have added a time acceleration slider. This was something you could unlock if you completed all of the performance targets, after lots of thought we decided to make this available right from the start.
  

You may not be aware but for the last 5 months, 14 days and 6 hours players of our second game Cycle 28 have been working hard to solve a mystery in the game.

The ARG-esque community puzzle involved hunting through ship logs, hidden stories, local libraries, and artisanal coffee videos.

We are extremely excited to announce that a member the Cycle 28 community, Sam from Australia, has claimed the first ever Pill Bug Golden Ticket by solving the mystery!

Having solved the mystery of Cycle 28, Sam explained step-by-step how they broke Flight Lieutenant Olivia Bergen - the game’s protagonist - out of the time loop, becoming the first person to see the end credits. Sam was very grateful to many members of the Cycle 28 community in helping them reach the solution. As well as a bunch of Pill Bug goodies and prizes, Sam will get every Pill Bug game we ever make!

We’re not going to tell you exactly how the mystery was solved, that’s up to Sam, but we will say all the community’s hard work in finding the codes, cracking the cipher, and keeping each other going made a huge difference. If you aren't part of the discussion already, check out our Discord channel:

https://discord.me/pillbugint

To celebrate Sam’s achievement, we are putting Cycle 28 and Intelligent Design on sale on Steam from August 27th to September 3rd!

Hot off the tails of our recent launch of Cycle 28 on Nintendo Switch, we turn our eyes to the next update for Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox.

We have been working on some UI updates which we wanted to share, you can watch Dave and I chat about them below. Let us know your thoughts.

EDIT: You can now try this out yourself... To download it go to Intelligent Design in your Steam library, right click it and select properties. Then click on the Betas tab of the window which appears and select the Experimental Branch from the drop down list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cXhnqeXKYI

This week Sean and I were lucky enough to be invited onto the Tanked Up Cast. We talked craft beer, game development, and future plans for ID. We also went pretty deep into the development process for Cycle 28 too.

It was great to sit down with Ben and Aadil and talk about life as game devs, including what we've learned over our two releases.

What will quickly become clear is we can never call ourselves beer connoisseurs! Perhaps the biggest takeaway was that we need to listen to Tanked Up more - as do the rest of you!

Check out Tanked Up episode 115, available wherever you get your podcasts!

The dust has started to settle following the launch of our second game Cycle 28 and Dave and I have started to draw up plans for the next Intelligent Design update.

We sat down today and read though every review for the game to find common themes we can address based on your feedback.

Based on that we've decided to work on the following things in the next big update:

1) UI and controls

When I first designed Intelligent Design I wanted it to be a relaxing couch experience, which to me meant controller support. The constraint I put on the design by wanting to retain controller support was a bad decision. We are going to rethink the control scheme by removing that constraint. Our plan is to have the game control like most other management style games, a simple menu where you click to select what you want to build then click in the world where you want it to appear.

2) New player experience

There is a lot to take in for a new player in Intelligent Design. Sometimes it is unclear what impact your choices have on the game world. To help this we are going to scrap the current tutorial and start again. The improvements to UI and controls will help us with this, making it easier to include context aware tooltips.

3) A new map

More maps can only be a good thing right? :D

We can't give a timescale on these updates, but we will continue to let you know how it goes. To get the news before anyone else be sure to sign up to our mailing list (which also comes with a free copy of the Cycle 28 soundtrack!)

Dave and I will be at the Arcade Vault's Player Nation event this Saturday in Cardiff. If you are local it would be great to say hi. We will be giving away some Pill Bug Interactive goodies, some for free and others which you'll have to work for by getting high scores on Cycle 28.

Dave and I will be at the Arcade Vault's Player Nation event this Saturday in Cardiff. If you are local it would be great to say hi. We will be giving away some Pill Bug Interactive goodies, some for free and others which you'll have to work for by getting high scores on Cycle 28.

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to let you know that our 2nd game, Cycle 28, has released on Steam! It's pretty different from ID, but still has some of features you'd expect from Pill Bug - like a really juicy, community-drive puzzle to solve. We know how much you love those! Check it out
here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCkjgSqn23c


We also have some exciting plans brewing for ID updates, so keep an eye on the Hub!

We are currently giving away free copies of the soundtrack for our next game, Cycle 28, when you sign up to our mailing list here.

I'm really proud of what we have created with Cycle 28, the soundtrack in particular is pretty special. It was composed by Jordan Rees who has worked on trailers for movies and games, including Call of Duty and Blade Runner 2049. Check it out.

We have just published a full guide to all the genes in Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox. This contains all we know about the genetics, so don't read it if you want to figure that stuff out yourself.

This is to get people thinking about the guide competition we announced last week to win a copy of Cycle 28 . If you want a chance to be one of the first to play our next game, follow the instructions in the post linked above.

Since I started designing Intelligent Design my aim was to make people feel like a scientist. To achieve that I wanted to hold back some information and let players work together to investigate the world. Some people really enjoyed that, whereas other people did not. For a while I've been resisting making a guide like this, but more recently I wondered "who am I to tell you how to enjoy the game". In light of that change of heart we've posted this guide. Hope you enjoy it and really hope it ignites some creativity with genetic engineering!

Today we are excited to announce Pill Bug Interactive's next game: Cycle 28.

To celebrate we are going to run an Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox (ID) community guide competition. The winners of which will get free copies of Cycle 28 with full closed beta access.

Over the last month we have gained a large number of new players to ID. These players missed out on the game’s amazing launch, during which everyone was working together to figure out what all the genes did to their flora and fauna. To try and help these new players out Pill Bug will be writing our own official guides, but we would love to see what the community can do, hence this competition.

On the first of February we will rank all the community guides by their rating and give the top 3 guides a Cycle 28 beta key (which is also a retail key).

To learn more about Cycle 28 and add it to your wish list check out the store page here.

• Updated to Unity 2017.1
  
• Added per object culling of objects at distance, should improve performance on low end machines
  
• Optimised building rendering
  

A few days ago I received an email from a player who successfully unlocked the final achievement. This triggered me to release the source code of the organism AI which you can find in this guide.

Now you have identified the corners of this puzzle it's time to piece together the core.

• General performance improvements to AI
  
• Turning off post processing no longer turns off fog (fog actually improves performance)
  
• The population cap is more aggressive - remember you can turn this off in the system menu if you want to push your rig
  

As soon as one of you guys has unlocked the final achievement "Code Breaker" and can explain all the steps needed to solve it I will release the AI source code.

I've been inspired by watching you all set up experiments and test hypothesises to try and work out what each gene does. You have been doing all that by looking at the behaviours and appearances of the organisms. Having the source code will be like doing a dissection.

Even with the source code you'll still need to do some experiments and work things out. I wrote the code and I still don't know what the perfect creature is!

Those of you who don't want to see it won't have to but I know some of you would love the chance to really poke around.

...of course you'll still have to solve the puzzle and unlock that achievement first.

Once you think you've done it and can explain it send an email to sean [at] pillbug [dot] zone.

• Added a population cap. It is enabled by default but can be disabled in the options menu. It isn't a hard cap but the success probability of seed/egg decreases as your population approaches a cap. This should help people on low end machines late game.
  
• Reduced performance impact of fire effect
  
• Fixed a bug when saving data with time acceleration
  

Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox is now available on MacOS. Thanks to everyone who helped me test the Mac version.

If you have been on the fence about buying the game be sure to look at all the patch notes since launch, a number of requested features have been added to the game.

If you do decide to jump in join us on discord and help each other unravel the mysteries in the game...

Pushed out a small patch with a few requested features. Join the discussion on the game's official discord server here.

• Graphs now only show the last week or so of data. This both solves the bug which occurred when the graph was trying to drawn thousands of data points and makes the graphs more useful. The full history from the dawn of time is still written into xml files, just click on the data folder button in the system menu to find those.
  
• I have changed the genetic mutation operator.
  
• CPU overhead of AI and some other systems has been reduced. Some of you should notice a performance improvement, let me know how this goes.
  
• Added multiple save slots for each map.
  

A small yet significant patch today...

• I have added a secret ability to the game which is permanently unlocked when you complete all the performance targets in one of your saves. This is something some of you are really going to love! If you already have a save game with all the performance targets completed just load it and it will unlock the abilities for all future new games. The ability really changes the pace of the game which is why I've hidden it under these objectives.
  
• The speed of the drone can now be customised in the system menu
  
• I have added an 'Effects' toggle in the system menu. This turns off the more performance intensive particle effects. These are also now dynamically turned on and off based on framerate. It should really help with large plant populations and lower end systems.
  
• Improved the 'hit detection' on the genetic engineering sliders
  

Just a quick announcement to say I've set up a discord server to help you discuss the game, work together to solve some of the mysteries and do some SCIENCE.

Hope to see you there!

Save/Load Custom Creatures
You can now save and load custom organisms. These files can also be shared between players, just put them in the relevant folder before you launch the game.

Improvements

• Added a button in the system menu which directs you to the save data location to easily find the xml data and custom organisms
  
• Improved UI scaling to help those of you on lower resolutions
  

I've pushed out a patch today with two new features and a tweak.

I'm calling this a hotfix rather than a patch because it has a few tweaks and bug fixes based on your feedback. I just pushed it live.

• I have reduced the ceiling height of your drone below the maximum height of the terrain to stop people flying into the void. At some stage those two values got out of sync.
  
• Reduced the performance impact of the fire effect. I was not anticipating the population sizes people have been achieving so far!
  
• Slightly reduced the frequency of AI update in creatures and plants to help performance
  

Launch day has arrived, I’m equal parts excited and nervous. I thought I would post an announcement just telling you what I’m planning to do today and how you can get in touch with me if you need to.

If you are still on the fence about buying the game then check out this video by Randomise User. It is of the release version and is a good overview. I think you’ll know if this game is for you or not after watching that.

So my main plan today is to sit on my couch with my laptop and dog watching GiantBomb videos and mashing F5 on the steam sales reports. As well as that I’ll be keeping my eye on the forums here, on the subreddit /r/IntelligentDesignGame, on facebook and on twitter @DrSeanWalton. I want to hear your feedback, I want to watch you try and figure out all the hidden little things together.

If you run a stream of the game I want to come along and watch it so message me on twitter or reddit or somehow!

On the technical side of things check the minimum requirements before you buy. The game is low texture but a heavy physics and AI simulation. If you are running on an on-board card you will need to lower the graphics options in the launcher. Any serious issues send an e-mail to support@pillbug.zone or post in the forums and I’ll try and look into it for you.