Fight For The Survival Of The Human Race On A Hostile Alien World In Engrossing Sci-Fi City-Builder
UK – 30th January 2017, 2pm GMT – Award-winning veteran games developer and international games label Team17 has today announced its partnership with Texas-based independent developer Mothership Entertainment to publish the sci-fi city-building and management sim, Aven Colony, on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
Hi everybody … Good news! Aven Colony build 0.1.14014 is now posted. We apologize for the delayed update; we’d wanted to post an update several weeks ago but were stalled by a critical bug fix from one our our middleware providers.
Installation instructions are available here. If you’re an itch.io customer and experience issues launching the game, please be sure to read the notes on disabling sandbox mode!
Since it’s been a month since our last update, we have a lot more changes than usual! Besides a ton of bug fixes, we’ve added a ton of new features to the game, most notably:
Plague Spores. These deadly biological spores slowly float toward the colony and get sucked into the coloy through Intake Fans (or Geothermal Generators or any other building type). They then split into numerous smaller “microbes” that rapidly spread through the colony’s tunnel system, infecting any colonists they see! You will need Hospitals to stop the spread of the plague if this happens.
Plasma Turrets. Plasma turrets can shoot down Creep Spores, Plague Spores, and even shards from Shard Storms!
Lightning Towers. A Lightning Tower can fully defend part of your colony from the lightning strikes (“thundersnow“) that frequently strike during Aven Prime’s winter season, and will channel the electricity into any Energy Batteries connected to the same power zone.
Additionally, please note that our forums have been down for a few weeks due to spam. We apologize for the inconvenience and expect to have them back online within a few days.
Here are the full update notes:
New Features:
Added a Plague Spore that can enter the colony, split into tiny microbes, and infect colonists with the plague!
Added a new Plasma Turret that can shoot down Creep Spores and Plague Spores, and even shoot down Shard Storm shards!
Added a new defensive Lightning Tower! This protects the surrounding area from lightning strikes in winter and also feeds the electricity back into any Energy Batteries in the colony
Lots of new, more specialized voice-overs from the 5 main characters; also changed the assignments of who gives some of the various quests during the missions
Tons of additional ambient colonist voice-overs
Replaced voice-overs for the male colonist who sounded like a redneck and the female who sounded like Kalandra
A new alien dragonfly now wanders around Vanaar and Hyla’s Crescent during non-winter seasons
Added a new SHIPE call from Commissioner Veronika near the start of Vanaar to remind you that following the mission objectives is optional
The “Consumable” row on the inventory dialog now shows up in red if no food types are marked as consumable
Big improvements to line-drawing in the Stats panel; also made the panel much taller
Rewards from Veronika now grey out you don’t have room for them
There’s also an ‘X’ button in the upper-right of this dialog to close it if all options are greyed (this is available for the mission objectives, too)
Added new data types to the Statistics dialog: immigrants accepted and food/water/storage/electricity per colonist
Added flashing lights that light up the surrounding area for landing and descending immigration and trade vessels
Added an urgent notification when there’s a high crime level in part of the colony
You can now use Ctrl-Alt-X to temporarily disable the UI (for taking screenshots — use PrtScrn if playing via itch.io or F12 if playing via the Steam closed beta)
The Mini-Storage building now animates as it was always intended to
Bug fixes:
Tunnels under construction (and other buildings!) are now FAR more visible against the snowy background on arctic maps
Fixed bug where Police Drone Stations that lost power would remove their positive effects much too quickly, which make “death spirals” happen much too quickly under certain circumstances
Azara Falls & Tenari Glacier sandbox: fixed a few Zorium deposits not being clickable
“Citizen dying” and “citizens starving” notifications now eventually expire
Citizens will no longer initiate death if they’re saved from starvation at the last moment
Vastly improved line-drawing in the Stats dialog — much cleaner lines
Fixed bug with the inventory panel progress bar pausing before refreshing when you opened the panel
Fixed a bug with colonists getting traffic-jammed at the entrances to buildings in some cases
Fixed screwiness with the mouse cursor in certain maps, especially Tenari Glacier
Fixed inaccurate text for winter cultivation for Greenhouses
Zooming in and out with PageUp and PageDown no longer pans left/right/up/down due to the mouse position; only mouse wheel zooming does this
Notifications no longer auto-open during an end-of-game SHIPE call
Simplified & shortened Veronika’s intro speech in the main menu and added audio ducking to make it audible over the music
Fixed issue with VCR buttons getting “stuck” if you toggled them too quickly at low frame rates
Construction drones should now enter drone stations and dock much more smoothly
Fixed bug where the stats pane isn’t visible if you load a save where the game has already been won or lost
Improved the effect when upgrading buildings, most noticeable with the Solar Panel
Vanaar: fixed a bug where the “mine zorium” quest would not count zorium already mined
Sandy Gulch: fixed a bug where one of the trade objectives could not be completed at “insane” difficulty due to insufficient gold in the cargo pod
Azara Falls no longer mentions an “object”, since it’s now about analyzing the alien structures
Fixed a bug with having a selected building get stuck as ghosted when exiting an overlay mode
Fixed bug where food wouldn’t decompose if the storage building lost power if it was in a storage module or mini-storage
Fixed a bug with saving & loading certain quest types, such as getting food production or water production to certain levels
SHIPE calls now properly queue up instead of simply stomping calls in progress; this fixes an issue where important SHIPE calls could get missed under certain circumstances
Creep spores can no longer attach to buildings that have just been placed and are 0% completed
Fixed a bug where the morale effects of multiple retail, health, and entertainment structures would not stack properly but would instead just pick one arbitrarily
Social policies are no longer gated on referendum victories in Sandbox missions
Reduced the morale impact of VR Centers and Retail Centers by 20%
Reduced the morale impact of a Bar & Grill in ‘Lounge’ mode by 25%
Reduced the morale impact of an Earth History Center by 55% (though it’s still extremely high!)
itch.io public beta participants: download the latest version via the web and unzip on top of your current install — or, if using the launcher, make sure you’re using the latest version of the itch.io launcher (18.7.0 or later) and reinstall the game. Again, the beta is available here.
If you experience issues launching the game via the itch.io app, please open the itch.io app and click on the “Preferences” option and make sure that “Enable itch.io sandbox” is unchecked, as shown below. The game should then launch!
If you used the itch.io client to extract the game and you’re having problems loading the game or are otherwise unable to get to the main menu, please try the following:Hit Win+R (to open the “Run” box) and then paste the following into that box:
If you downloaded it as a ZIP, navigate into the directory you extracted it, and then go into Engine\Extras\Redist\en-us .
In that folder you should see an executable named UE4PrereqSetup_x64. If you run that, that will install everything that the game needs – and you should then be able to run the game without issues!
Steam closed beta participants (limited to media, streamers, YouTubers, and early beta participants from the closed beta prior to September): just exit Steam and restart to get the latest. Please keep an eye out for further updates; we’re laser focused on bug fixes and have several more coming down the pipe in the very near future.
Aven Colony Master Fixes List
(thanks to user Satoru for posting these!)
Save Game Problems
The latest patch may be causing issues with saving and loading your game. If you are encountering this issue then please try the following fix:
1. Open the itch.io app
2. At the bottom left is a button that has your username on it
3. Click that, then click “Preferences” in the menu that appears
4. Please UNCHECK “Enable itch.io sandbox” in the window that appears
Update Your Video Card Drivers
This is the next most common cause for people’s inability to run the game, particularly on PC.
First check your driver version using this method and make sure your drivers are recent:
For AMD cards, download the AMD Catalyst Control Center, which you can find here:
Make sure you get 3 updates from Windows Update after installing the Windows Media Framework – KB30100801, KB3099229 and KB3133719. If you’ve taken the above step, just running Windows Update should fix it.
Nothing Works! Help!
As the game is in alpha many many thing will likely go horribly wrong (just like on your colony!). To assist the devs in solving your issue as quickly as possible, please ensure you’ve tried all the steps above. Once you have you should create a new post outlining your issue. Please be absolutely verbose as possible. “Everything is broken” isn’t going to help the devs get your issue resolved. But something like “During a lightning storm I clicked on a farm and an alien came through my screen and punched me!” (file that under ‘non critical issue’…) is great. Make sure you put in your system specifications like
Operating System
Video Card Type
CPU Type
If you have a save game where your bug is consistently repeatable, please attach that to the post here. Your save games are here: