Why the Starting Planet Isn't Always Grey Anymore

For a long time, every new game began the same way: on a rocky, grey planet. That was a deliberate beginner-friendly decision — rock is easy to read, nothing distracts you. But it came at a price: the game's first impression was, of all things, its most monotonous planet. Screenshots from newcomers? Grey. First hour of play? Grey.

So we rebuilt the start. The starting planet is now chosen from a selection of varied world types — with one important guardrail: it has to stay fair. The starting world needs the resources the early game demands (which is why the starting ore mix got carbon added), and world generation has a fallback that guarantees a breathable world exists in the system. Variety yes — but nobody should start on a world where the first steps are impossible.

The best part of this rebuild, though, was a side discovery. While testing the breathable worlds, we stumbled over a latent bug that had been slumbering in the game for ages: on worlds with a breathable atmosphere you regenerate health — and in an edge case at 0 health points, precisely this regeneration could block the respawn. On the old rocky planets (no atmosphere, no regeneration) the bug could never occur. Only the new variety brought it to light.

That's a lesson we've found confirmed again and again since: if you increase the variety of your inputs, you test code paths you didn't know were untested. The grey planet wasn't just boring — it was also hiding bugs.