It's been a year since the busy building game by settler inventor Volker Wertich went into early access on Steam. This won't end next year for the time being: Pioneers of Pagonia will also receive some expansions and updates in 2025, as a new roadmap now outlines.
Roadmap for a second year of Early Access
On December 13, 2023, Pioneers of Pagonia saw the light of day. After an economic, co-op and mining update as well as numerous smaller quality-of-life patches, the fourth major and so far “Most important“ Expansion of the building game, the magic update. Just last week, Envision Entertainment also released a small winter update. However, it was already clear in the summer of this year: The first year will be followed by a second year of Early Access, as Volker Wertich revealed in an interview with ComputerBase at Gamescom. There was already a rough overview of current topics back then, but there was no concrete roadmap yet. The developers are now submitting them.
Probably the most important announcement: With the game version 1.0, which has not yet been scheduled, there will be a fully-fledged story campaign that will offer several levels of difficulty and will be playable entirely in co-op mode. The story of the campaign should be written by an established fantasy author. It is not yet known which author it is.
On the way to version 1.0, the developers want to focus on two main areas. On the one hand, it's about the general quality of the build-up game; Quality-of-life updates to the economy, combat and operation remain at the top of the to-do list. And on the other hand, the game content should be even more comprehensive; including additional tutorials, decorative buildings and a map editor. The food and population system should also be completely overhauled; However, details are still pending here.
The price increases with the new year
Unlike previous roadmaps for Pioneers of Pagonia, the developers have not already put the individual content into fixed update packages, so it remains unclear when and in what order which announcements will be implemented. However, the next roadmap update should be available in the second quarter of 2025; A lot will probably have happened by then. Already in the “Spring 2025“In the meantime, the price of the game on Steam should increase in order to do justice to the steady influx of new content for over a year, according to Envision Entertainment. Pioneers of Pagonia currently costs around 30 euros, but there is still a question mark over the future price.
The developers in a technology interview
In November, the editorial team hosted CB-Funk Envision Entertainment's CEO Dirk Ringe on the ComputerBase podcast, who has been working with Siedler founder Volker Wertich for over 30 years and is largely responsible for the development of the bustling indie building game. In the interview he revealed many details and answered exciting questions about the technology:
- How did the Settlers veterans come to develop their own indie development game after the creative break with Ubisoft?
- How and why did you come to use your own engine?
- What hardware is Pioneers of Pagonia developed on?
- How do system requirements actually come about?
- And what speaks for or against the use of ray tracing and upscaling?
Answers to these and other topics can be found in the 91st episode of CB Radio:
CB radio can not only be played via the Podigee player embedded in this article, but also conveniently subscribed to and listened to directly in the podcast apps of your choice. The ComputerBase podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and also on Deezer.
