NEW CYCLE: A New Beginning for the Survival City-Building-Genre

The will to survive and the desire to create something are humanity’s most important drivers - even the worst strokes of fate cannot break these needs. In the new survival city-builder game New Cycle from Turkish developer Core Engage, it's up to you to be the living proof that these drivers will always exist. New Cycle is the studio’s ambitious debut title, which you should wishlist on Steam now.

Rebuild Civilizaton after devastating Solar Storms - A Preview

As the leader of a small band of survivors, you set out to rebuild after Earth was shattered by devastating solar storms. Starting with the basics, you try to satisfy the needs of your little village and give them hope for a better life. Over time, refugees will join you, children will be born, and your small community will grow. As a result, the needs and demands of your people will grow as well. If these needs are not met, the morale of the entire settlement will deteriorate!

Through hard work and consistent research into forgotten technologies, you'll evolve your settlement. The more advanced the technology, the higher the requirements will be for you to complete that level of research. For example, paper production and a corresponding supply of wood for the sawmill can play a major role in your ability to evolve your settlement. In addition, some research branches build on each other. If you haven't researched simple metalworking techniques, you won't have the basis to process tin ore to produce ingots later in the game. The number of resources your settlement will need can increase to three or even four times as many over the span of a few hours! Altogether there are more than 40 different resources in New Cycle.

More technologies ensure a steadily increasing quality of life and, logically, even higher demands from your population. Soon, it will no longer be enough for your inhabitants to live from emergency ration to emergency ration or to run through the streets in torn threads. They will want varied meals, warm clothes, and proper healthcare. In order not to jeopardize progress, you must legislate. The work-life balance of your inhabitants is relative to your production output and likewise, their overall quality of life. Strike a balance or be stricken with the consequences. There are tough choices to make.

As your settlement grows, ​ so does the difficulty ​ to keep the commodity cycles running. Initially, this is easy because there are only a few stations and buildings that are connected to each other in terms of production and technology. Over time, however, these connections become more complex, and managing them will be more challenging. You'll need to weigh ​ exactly how many hunter-gatherers you really need to maintain basic supplies against higher-trained and specialist roles like craftsmen or specialists required for advanced building abilities. 

Later in the game, the power supply for your settlement becomes really tricky. For example, a well-placed wind turbine can alleviate problems later on, but you can't always rely on the wind. ​ Only further into the game will you have the opportunity to produce larger amounts of electricity via coal-based power plants. In addition, buildings such as mines or the smelting furnaces consume a lot of power, which automatically leads to bottlenecks. In one possible scenario, random sandstorms can have a massive impact on the efficiency of your wind turbines. The exciting question then becomes: which buildings do you shut down so as not to put the power supply of your most important infrastructure at risk? And how do the residents react to a renewed rationing of food, or to strenuous extra shifts, even if it is only for a short time?

Your fickle settlers are not the only variable — harsh winters, sandstorms, droughts, and other natural disasters pose a constant threat to your fragile community. Of course, there are also glimmers of hope. Completing tasks brought to you by your residents or visitors is always a welcome morale booster.

It gets even more exciting when you're far enough along to be able to send expeditions into the surrounding areas. You never know what resources and opportunities your scouts will encounter on their forays. Maybe they'll find valuable resources that you can mine or even a particularly rich hunting ground. In any case, it is worthwhile to explore the surrounding area and become active there, even if it is only by building a watchtower with which you can guide more homeless refugees into your settlement. 

The fight for survival in New Cycle is an exciting, constantly up-and-down experience that will demand everything from you. Only with sensible and constant development, quick problem-solving can you ensure the survival of your settlement! Core Engage’s first title is built on lessons learned from breaking down well-known colony-building games, making sure to put their unique stamp on the genre with the gameplay of New Cycle.

The Early Access version releasing on January 18th, 2024 offers an extensive campaign that will teach you everything you need to know to succeed in trouble-ridden scenarios. In addition to the campaign mode, New Cycle’s  Early Access will include two playable scenarios where you'll take control of advanced settlements, ​ wherein you must take drastic measures to save them from certain destruction. 

Also included is a sandbox mode offering 2 biomes, with more to come later.Here, you can select exactly how difficult the mission will be and which biome (meadows, steppe, etc.) you want to settle down in. Each of the areas available at the Early Access launch offers a thrilling mix of advantages and disadvantages. So, would you like to take a closer look at New Cycle from developer Core Engage? Then put the title on your wishlist today so you don't miss the Early Access launch!

About Core Engage

Core Engage is a videogame development studio based in Istanbul. Founded in 2019 with the partnership of Verusa Holding under the leadership of two developer brothers, the company aims to produce management-based, systems-driven games with rich mechanics, comprehensive worlds, and high levels of scientific reality, especially in the strategy and simulation genres. Core Engage, which has been working non-stop and expanding its development infrastructure since the day it started its development life, is now preparing to launch its first product, a post-apocalyptic colony survival city builder titled New Cycle. For more information, please visit: