Devlog

Deep below the mine there was always a door nobody could open. This version opens it. Behind it sleeps an old robot factory, five halls of dusty machines, and you wake them one by one. You pick a machine for each slot, trace conveyor belts tile by tile, and watch the first spool roll out. It's a cozy take on factory games: guided grids, no splitters, no way to jam it, no timer. Just the very satisfying moment when a hall's lamps flicker back on.

Robots learn to run the machines the same way they learn everything else: by watching you pull the lever. Once a chain has its operators it hums along on its own, and the factory starts making robot modules: a long battery for night shifts, a dual tool, turbo wheels, and a teacher chip that lets a robot pass on what it knows.

And then there's the freight elevator at the very end, and the place it goes. We won't say much, except that the game now has a true ending, its own final credits, and that the farm goes on afterwards. Oh, and 51 achievements, each with its own little neon badge.

This version goes to our home playtester next. We can't wait to see where she gets stuck.

Back to the conveyor belts.

Echo Acres started as a simple question: what if your farm robots didn't need to be programmed, and just learned by watching you? That idea is still the heart of everything. You water a plant, the robot next to you takes notes, and a few days later it waters the whole row while you go fishing for old data chips.

This version was a big one. The island got seasons (with snow, falling leaves and a seasonal crop each), festivals on the plaza (a garden show, a cook-off, a pumpkin weigh-in and a robot parade), a huge glass Grow Hall, and a mine that goes down to -750 m, with haywire little machines you repair instead of fighting. Controllers are fully supported, and Neon Row finally feels like a street, with a noodle bar, an arcade and drones overhead.

The best part is still the playtests. Every evening, someone plays, gets stuck somewhere, laughs at something we never expected, and the next version is better for it. The old shed next to the house used to send you to bed if you pressed the wrong key nearby; it is now the stairs to the basement, and nobody naps by accident anymore. Robots wearing chef hats were not in the plan. They are now a core feature.

See you on the island.

Once you have six robots, knowing who does what gets tricky. So the crew got a proper Robots panel: every robot's job at a glance, one click to change it, and an Undo button for the inevitable misclick. Hold V and every plot lights up in the colour of the robot that tends it.

Seeds got friendlier too: press E on a bed to switch its crop, or hold E for a little seed picker. Build mode now has a real toolbar with costs, and hovering anything in the top bar tells you what it is and who buys it. One playtest story behind this release: an order at the diner looked complete but never closed, because the special wanted a dish nobody could see on the card. It shows now.

• v0.43.1 You can now buy robot parts straight from Rook's workbench (+1, +5, +10). Our playtester asked for it the same evening, so it shipped the same evening.

The home island doubled in size, with a south field and a west meadow to clear. A waterfall pours from a broken old aqueduct high in the sky, and its stream winds across the island to the pond, under two little bridges. You can even fill your watering can in it.

Most of this version came straight from the couch. Our playtester's thumb was getting tired, so you can now hold Space to keep working on whatever is in front of you. Mashing Space through a story scene no longer skips lines or cancels a purchase by accident, and buildings fade out when they hide your farmer.

• v0.42.1 Fixed a camera that could stay stuck far away after leaving the basement, making the farmer look invisible. The game now also rescues you if you ever end up somewhere impossible. Plus: rain falls straight down, and sounds muffled from downstairs.

Act 2 is here. Bee, who lived on this farm before you, left plans for a relay tower. You fund its five stages, your robots haul the materials, and every stage changes the world: longer forecasts, a night market, daily airships. What the last stage does, we will let you find out.

Robots now travel too. Fix up an old crane in the Scrapyard and send teams by sky gondola to far places; they come back with rare finds, keepsakes and seeds for a new crop, glow melons. Each resident also has a wish to grant and up to five hearts to earn, and Rook sells twelve robot outfits. Yes, including the chef hat.

The first long playtest went great: an hour and a half without noticing the time. But it also showed a problem. By mid-game, credits, cables and spare robots piled up with nothing exciting to spend them on.

The answer is under your feet. Rook repairs the cellar hatch and you go downstairs into a cozy basement workshop: a kitchen for sauces, jams and the dish of the day (worth far more than raw crops), and fabricators for gears, circuits and power cells, which the bigger robot upgrades now need. Of course, a robot can learn to run a machine down there for you.

The game got its final name, Echo Acres, and every save carried over on its own.

This version is all about showing instead of telling. Watching our playtester, it was clear that nobody reads long hints mid-harvest. So trees you can chop now light up with a tiny axe when you are short on wood, raised beds play a small animation showing that one gesture tends the whole bed, and a robot that knows a move but only watches tells you how to put it to work.

Echo Acres has a proper title screen now, drawn over your living farm, with Continue, New game, Load and Credits. There are three save slots, each with its farm name, day, playtime and a little snapshot.

And the robots got faces! Their screens blink, focus while they work, beam when they learn something, doze at night and glitch in the rain. It is a tiny change that makes the whole crew feel alive.

• v0.38.1 The Windows installer builds again (one build step was skipped on Windows).
• v0.38.2 The desktop app keeps a play log of each session on disk, to help balance the game. It never leaves your computer unless you send it.

Echo Acres now runs as a desktop app on Mac, with a Windows build ready too. It goes native fullscreen, Esc opens the menu instead of kicking you out, and saves are real files in your user folder, with a backup copy. A first step on the long road to Steam.

The first real evening of playtesting at home produced a long list, and this version ticks most of it. A small objectives checklist now walks you through the start. Odette waits until you have planted something before placing her first order, and cooks at her stove between orders instead of asking for tomatoes non-stop.

Raised beds became solid, with a crop sign in front of each one. Claiming a contract opens a little celebration with stamps and confetti, sleeping shows a big moon dial racing to dawn, and robots now short-circuit for a second in the rain. Bzzt.

• v0.36.1 Raised beds fit neatly inside their 2x2 tiles; walls and signs no longer spill onto the neighbours.

With three new regions, walking everywhere got long. So: a world map with waypoints, paved paths that make you and your robots faster, an e-scooter you build at Rook's, an elevated tram linking stops you place yourself, and, after some research, quantum relay pads that hop you instantly between two points. Robots love the paths as much as you do.

• v0.35.1 Play in fullscreen from the menu, or with Alt+Enter at any time.
• v0.35.2 In Chrome, Esc opens the pause menu without leaving fullscreen.

Three new regions wait at the end of long causeways. Rustwood is a forest of tall trees with wild neon berries and fireflies at night. The Scrapyard is full of wrecks to strip for parts, and home to Mags, who trades robot parts for wood. Saltmarsh canal has boardwalks over the water and glowing lilies to harvest. Each one has room for more garden beds, and more work for your crew.

A visual clarity pass. The ground is calmer and warmer, the grid only lights up around you, and the neon glow is saved for things that matter: ripe crops, robots, signs and things you can use. Characters get a soft rim light and a shadow, so you never lose your farmer in the crowd.

A brand-new start. You now arrive on an overgrown acre: neon weeds, brambles, stumps, scrap piles and old robot carcasses everywhere. Clearing them gives wood, parts and a few coins, and uncovers the two old garden beds hidden under the brambles.

True to the game's idea, your robots learn to clear by watching you. Once you have two of them, a crew terminal lets you choose their jobs: garden, woodcutting or clearing.

The farm has a past. While harvesting or chopping, you sometimes dig up data chips: fragments of a journal left by Bee, who lived here before you. Bolt remembers things too, when it evolves.

Find enough fragments and Rook has an idea about the old greenhouse past the lamps of Neon Row. Behind its gate waits the end of Act 1. That is all we will say.

Build a sky dock and, every two days, a cargo airship from the City moors for 90 seconds with a manifest to fill. Three corporations want different things, prices drift every day, and each one has a reputation that unlocks rewards, including a very shiny holo-chrome robot paint. Drones can load the crates for you, eventually.

• v0.31.1 The Look settings now work at night too (before, they only changed the daytime look).

The island has weather now, with a forecast next to the clock. Rain waters your beds, heatwaves speed crops up but make them thirsty, neon storms can knock back plants on open beds, and fog slows the drones.

From day 3, a few happenings a week: a food critic at Odette's, nano-bugs nibbling a bed, a lost delivery drone to bring home. Small surprises that make every day a little different.

Big moments now play as little story scenes, with portraits, typewriter text and a voice blip for each character: Bolt waking up, Rook showing up, new neighbours moving in. Some scenes even let you choose what to answer (just for fun). Around the island, neighbours say hello as you walk by and grumble at dusk.

Every menu got a neon makeover: a proper pause screen, key-cap controls, framed panels with glowing corners, smooth animations and UI sounds. Everything works with the keyboard, and things you can interact with now show the key to press, so you always know what you can do.

• v0.28.1 Robots find their way around the whole island instead of bumping into corners, plus a balance pass from a bot that plays the game from start to finish.

Your farm, your style. Build mode has a decor catalogue with flower beds, benches, neon arches, a koi pond, a fountain and a statue of Bolt. And at Rook's workbench you can give any robot a new neon paint job, which shows everywhere: on the robot, its gauges, its plots and its charging station.

• v0.27.1 Odette, Rook and Vex have hundreds of new lines that change with the time of day and what happens on the farm.
• v0.27.2 All 16 decorations got brand-new models, including a waving chrome Bolt on its plinth.

Meet Iris, the scientist. Her lab pod lands once your farm is well under way, and you research with her overnight: fertilizer, sprinklers, faster servos, grow lights and drones. With delivery drones, the last manual chore is gone: they carry your stock to the neighbours on their own. You are officially the manager now.

Invest in your neighbours. Each shop can be upgraded twice, with real perks (better orders, cheaper parts, bigger parties) and a visible makeover: neon signs, string lights, a crane and a radar, lasers and a rooftop dancefloor.

A balance pass for the mid-game, tuned by a bot that plays the market, contracts, towers and Neon Row over and over. Market days now grow with your farm, contract rewards climb steadily, and robots stopped getting stuck against Rook's workshop.

Neon Row gets a resident: Vex, DJ of The Hum, a little night club by the bridge. She works nights, sleeps by day, and pays well for glow drinks. Every order adds hype, and at each milestone she throws a party: your robots work 25% faster until dawn, and the lamps of Neon Row pulse to the beat.

Placeholder music arrived: a warm day theme, a slower neon night theme and a bouncier market-rush theme, with smooth crossfades and their own volume slider. Just something to keep you company until the real soundtrack.

Once a robot knows every gesture, the district board lights up next to the diner with three contracts at a time: deliver 30 tomatoes, run a crew of four, find every curiosity. Progress counts on its own, and every third contract the district chips in a whole robot's worth of parts.

Our pacing bot (a little program that plays the game to measure it) found too much standing around at the start. So crops grow faster, six curiosities hide around the island for the curious, and when you seem idle, the game gently suggests something useful to do.

Juno's market moved to its own plaza island, across a footbridge. At first a cargo drone sleeps on its crates and blocks the way; when Juno arrives, it wakes up, flies off with them, and the plaza rises with her stall.

You can finally go to bed. At night, press Space at your front door and the night flies by until dawn. E became a second action key, so at Rook's you can hand her volt cane or open the workshop without mixing them up.

• v0.18.1 Juno's market moved to its own corner, revealed by a sleepy cargo drone flying away.

A whole new district across a bridge: Neon Row, a violet-lit island with lampposts, a holo billboard and room for many more beds and towers. Your robots cross the bridge on their own to tend their plots over there.

• v0.17.1 The game keeps a local play log to help tune the pacing, and holographic signs are drawn over buildings.

Point at a garden bed in build mode and stack a hydroponic tower on it: two glass floors under violet grow lights, 12 plots on 4 tiles. The upper floors are too high for you, so only robots tend them. Automation, literally stacked.

Meet Juno, the travelling merchant, and her neon berries, a slower crop with two berries per harvest. Every third day is market day: a three-minute rush of customers queueing at her stall, with a combo bonus if you serve them in a row.

Odette's specials now ask for volt cane too, so every harvest is a choice: credits by day at the diner, or cables at night for Rook. And robots learn to chop wood by watching you, then cut the nearest grown tree whenever their plots need nothing.

Shops pull their shutters down while their owners sleep, with a little "z" floating from the roof. Rook's workbench got two robotic arms that screw each part on in a shower of sparks, a scanner ring and dancing diagnostic screens.

Neighbours keep their own hours now. Odette sleeps at night, Rook works nights and sleeps by day. Nights got busier: deliver cane to Rook, collect your cables and build at the workbench in one go.

Building a robot is now a little ritual. Your robot stands on a turntable under the lamp, and you hold Space to screw each part on while the pieces snap in as holograms, one by one, with sparks.

Every robot gets its own charging station, ringed in its colour. At night, each one walks back home to recharge. Place and move stations in build mode, wherever suits your farm.

Raise a garden bed and one gesture tends all four plots at once. It takes four times as long and uses a single drop of water, so it is perfect for robots, who tend them the same way.

No more "For sale" signs: press B and place garden beds wherever there is room. Beds cost credits and wood, so you chop trees, which grow back after a while. Pick up a bed and its plants and its robot follow it.

A balance pass for the second act, measured by a bot that plays the whole thing: new robots around night 2, the first evolution around night 3, and the whole land within about 45 minutes.

A robot that knows all three gestures can evolve. Go generalist (Mk II, then Mk III: faster, bigger water tank) or specialize for good as a Planter, a Hydro or a Harvester. Each evolution changes the robot's look: armour plates, a seed hopper, a glowing tank, big claws.

Meet Rook, the mechanic: Bolt was her old robot. Repair it and she moves into her workshop. She pays for volt cane, a new thirsty crop, in credits and cables, and at night you assemble new robots with her instead of buying them.

Holographic signs mark new garden bed slots, and an east terrace makes the island bigger. More land means more work, which is a very good reason to get more robots.

Days now end: about six minutes of daylight, then two minutes of night. Plants rest, the diner closes, robots walk back to recharge, and the neon really pops after dark.

The game found its look: glowing slate ground, robots rebuilt as real little machines with exposed servos, a street diner with a vertical neon sign for Odette, and punk tomatoes with a neon mohawk, easy to spot when ripe.

The very first playable slice. You plant, water and harvest tomatoes by hand and deliver them to Odette. Then you repair Bolt, an old robot that follows you around and learns each gesture by watching you. When it masters one: ding! Give it a few plots and it works on its own. Everything since has grown from that moment.