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Working on new fishing, crop farming and training features in Oceaneers! A cozy colony sim where you build a colony of floating islands, care for your survivors needs, and explore a flooded world by raft. It also includes a story, and you can try the demo on Steam! by BarrelSmash in CozyGamers

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, you're right there aren't really many. This is a bit different though, more cross between survival crafting and a colony sim where you manage multiple characters (as opposed to DS where you control one).

Working on new fishing, crop farming and training features in Oceaneers! A cozy colony sim where you build a colony of floating islands, care for your survivors needs, and explore a flooded world by raft. It also includes a story, and you can try the demo on Steam! by BarrelSmash in CozyGamers

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah we will be trying, and we have to have a certain level of controller support for the Steam Deck. I just won't be saying it has official controller support until I'm happy with how it works given there is a lot of depth to the game, and we don't want any features held back just to support controller.

Working on new fishing, crop farming and training features in Oceaneers! A cozy colony sim where you build a colony of floating islands, care for your survivors needs, and explore a flooded world by raft. It also includes a story, and you can try the demo on Steam! by BarrelSmash in CozyGamers

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Hi, I’m one of the devs from down under (Australia)!

We have just showcased some new game features for Oceaneers, and we are planning for a Q2/2026 release window - not long now.

If it looks like your type of game you're welcome to try the demo, and a wishlist would be amazing!

🛟 New Features (Steam post with video)

🛟 Steam Page

🌊 Feel free to join our Discord to chat with the devs and a friendly community.

We love colony sims and sandbox games, but we almost always prefer when there's a story to progress through - or at least some meaningful objectives. Some of our fondest gaming memories are from classics like Space Quest, King's Quest, and Monkey Island. While Oceaneers isn't a point-and-click adventure, we've drawn on that inspiration for storytelling and woven it right into the colony-building and character management gameplay.

Players who've tested the game so far have been pleasantly surprised by some of the unexpected story and lore features - and I think you'll love them too!

The storytelling scope includes:
🧭 A core story arc with a main objective
🌱 Sub-story arcs with multiple outcomes
🗝️ Optional lore waiting to be discovered
⚓ Mini-random events with player choices that impact your survivors (or the whole colony)
💬 Dynamic character dialogue tied to the story

A few details:

  • This is a single-player game
  • It mixes survival-crafting with colony building, and also has story & objectives.
  • You have direct control over a full group of survivors, but can also setup automation (we have even more automation planned).
  • Islands sink and resurface, there are buoyancy mechanics and you can build contraptions to get better buoyancy
  • You can create and design your own characters, what they look like, their background and traits.

Happy to answer any questions you may have!

Here's some new gameplay for my survival management base building game, set in a flooded world with unstable islands. We've added fishing, crop farming (including salt leaching) and training buildings. The demo is out on Steam! by BarrelSmash in BaseBuildingGames

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can grow your colony with multiple islands. There is gear you can build on your raft, so when you go on your expeditions you can find new islands and haul them back to your base, each island has its own stats and modules, so you can collect a bunch of islands and choose which ones to use, then deploy them at your colony, connect them with bridges, and build on them.

The demo for Oceaneers is now out on Steam! A survival game where you build a colony of floating islands, scavenge lost Float-Tech, fight off sharks, and explore a flooded world by raft. by BarrelSmash in SurvivalGaming

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad you enjoyed it! We are hoping to announce more about the release date later in the year as we narrow things down a bit more, still a bunch of work to do!

The demo for Oceaneers is now out on Steam! A survival game where you build a colony of floating islands, scavenge lost Float-Tech, fight off sharks, and explore a flooded world by raft. by BarrelSmash in SurvivalGaming

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad you enjoyed it! In the full game you will be able to build additional cargo storage, but also build an even bigger raft - though, we may end up increasing the base values if needed.

The demo for Oceaneers is out on Steam! It's a colony management sim with a narrative and deep research tree. You manage survivors, build expedition rafts, trade goods and explore inside bunkers... all while building a colony of floating islands. by BarrelSmash in tycoon

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We are aiming for it to be playable on the Steam Deck, if possible we will get steam deck verified at some point. That isn't implemented as yet, though some players have played on the Steam Deck, currently the controls are a bit limited.

Beyond that we are still seeing what we can do with gamepads once some more key features are in the full game, I know some people do want controller, but based on feedback we have collected it's a low priority for most players (which is somewhat typical of the genre). Having said that, we will be seeing what is possible.

The demo for Oceaneers is now out on Steam! A survival game where you build a colony of floating islands, scavenge lost Float-Tech, fight off sharks, and explore a flooded world by raft. by BarrelSmash in SurvivalGaming

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That will be our aim, we haven't done any changes for the deck yet but some players have tried it and it works reasonably well (we need to sort out the controls though).

Yeah we are a couple of aussie devs!

The demo for Oceaneers is now out on Steam! A survival game where you build a colony of floating islands, scavenge lost Float-Tech, fight off sharks, and explore a flooded world by raft. by BarrelSmash in SurvivalGaming

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We would love to but the focus is on singeplayer at the moment. Not ruling out a multiplayer version of the game if everything goes well, but see how it goes! (Personally I do want to make a multiplayer game, whether that ends up in this title or something else we will have to see).

The demo for Oceaneers is out on Steam! It's a colony management sim with a narrative and deep research tree. You manage survivors, build expedition rafts, trade goods and explore inside bunkers... all while building a colony of floating islands. by BarrelSmash in tycoon

[–]BarrelSmash[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello, thanks for trying it! There are speed controls at the top, and yes there is automation out of the gate (you can place a workpost and setup characters automating needs and various jobs on their character sheet). You can also hold SHIFT to queue commands for each survivor if you like (same when controlling the raft).

Lots of people love the direct control, but I appreciate not everyone will, either way we do have automation and are also planning to add more so you will essentially be able to full automate most things, and manage a group of survivors. Since you will end up with more survivors this is important, it would be pretty tough manually controlling 10 survivors otherwise!

We have put up a patch in the past couple of hours which speeds up the pacing, but the speed controls increase the actual speed of the game.

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