HARWELL: Mars Industries

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• Announcements·8 Jul 2026Official

  Dev Diary #1 - The Building Blocks

  Hello, Pioneers, and welcome to the first Harwell: Mars Industries dev diary. If you're new here, hello! I’m Caleb Houlding, solo developer of Harwell: Mars Industries, along with publisher Aquila Interactive. It's great to have you here!Today we’re looking at the building blocks of Harwell: Mars Industries, and we'll be showcasing the implementation of various buildings, along with their resources and the code that makes them run. You can find today’s dev diary in video form right here:Before we go on, the following are still a work-in-progress and could change before the final release. The First Step Mining for resources is the first step to success. This means that when starting out, you’ll need to place your HQ carefully to maximise the resources available to you, but once you’ve built it, you’ll need to get started quickly to get ahead. Let’s take a look at the buildings available and how they will work.There are three types of buildings in Harwell: Mars Industries. These are: mining facilities for harvesting raw resources, factories for refining those resources into more advanced goods, and housing for your workers. The Building Blocks Mining facilities are your corporation’s backbone. In game at the moment there are six different resources dotted around the map – aluminium, carbon, copper, ice, iron and silicon – and each has its own mine you’ll need to build on each square. The closer the resources are to your HQ, the more efficient your mine will be, which is why you need to be careful about where you start. The real levelling up comes from refining your resources further and selling them on the market. This is where factories come in. There are five different types of factory, each refining different resources into other, more complex products that can be sold on the market for more profit (depending on demand, of course). The more factories you can sustain, the faster you can sell products on the market.Without workers, both factories and mines won’t work...
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• Announcements·28 Apr 2026Official

  New Publisher Announcement!

  Mars is open for business! Developer Caleb Houlding is partnering with publisher Aquila Interactive to announce Harwell: Mars Industries, a sci-fi economic strategy game set on Mars, coming 2027.This is the start of an exciting journey, and we'd love for you to head to the Store page, wishlist and come along with us for the ride in our Discord. What is Harwell: Mars IndustriesEach corporation begins on an equal footing in Harwell, a singleplayer and multiplayer economic strategy game set on the Mars. Build your company, control production, and trade in a dynamic economy where shifting supply and demand can lead to vast riches – or drive you into bankruptcy.Your path to victory is simple: Accumulate wealth, outmaneuver your rivals, and buy out every competitor to establish a total monopoly.FeaturesA brand-new planet full of resources to plunder - mine valuable resources directly from the Martian surface, and refine raw materials into advanced goodsA dynamic market that shifts with your decisions - engage in real-time trading with other corporationsAn in-depth financial system - every corporation has its own stock price. Outproduce your rivals – or buy them out and take everything they built. The choice is yours. The Black Market - engage in diplomatic strategies or disrupt your opponents when it benefits youFor the community - development will be shaped by the community, with features like expanded moddability planned for the future.Available to play in both singleplayer and multiplayerWhen will it be released?We're aiming for a 2027 release date, but we're hoping to have plenty of opportunities for you to get hands-on with Harwell: Mars Industries before then! Keep UpdatedJoin the Discord and follow Aquila Interactive on our socials to keep updated!DiscordYouTubeTikTokInstagramXFacebookWebsiteReddit
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• Patch Notes·13 Apr 2026Official

  v0.20.4 Patch

  New FeaturesFriends system with Steam and Nakama integration — add friends, see their status (online, in-game, in-lobby), and invite them directly to games.Beautiful Shadows toggle in Graphics settings for the new lighting pipeline.Game end screen redesign with full-screen overlay, financial graphs (revenue, expenses, company value, profit, debt), per-resource production tables, and complete player leaderboard ranked by company value.Spectate mode for eliminated players — watch the rest of the game without access to building, demolishing, or sabotage menus.Expanded lobby hosting and connection flow with signal-driven status updates.ImprovementsHost migration now elects a new host automatically when the current host disconnects, with high priority notifications.Host disconnection detection prevents players from getting stuck in zombie states.Reconnect prompt now validates against live Nakama matches to prevent connecting to dead lobbies.All players can now see every player's sync status, not just the host.Building stats rebalanced for better economy flow.Dynamic map viewport bounds computed from terrain for better rendering efficiency.Notification panel enhanced for better event visibility.Per-transaction price sync rate limited to prevent network flooding.Building state flushes capped to prevent burst RPC traffic.Stock broadcasts batched for smoother network performance.AI will buy/sell stocks slightly more realistically, they won't just go for the cheapest company, they will invest in companies that are doing slightly better so they can benefit from dividends.Updated the main menu background image.Bug FixesFixed lobby sometimes displaying as greyed out when joining.Fixed players unable to join games after leaving due to version mismatch.Fixed buying your own stock not actually costing money.Fixed stock data resetting when a bought-out player disconnects.Fixed manual wage not syncing in multiplayer.Fixed long player names breaking labour tab layout.Fixed housing tex...
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• Patch Notes·6 Apr 2026Official

  v0.20.2

  New FeaturesCosmetic delivery ships now fly between your HQ and distant buildings with smooth arcs, steering, and dynamic shadows.You'll now get a daily notification when you don't have enough workers to keep up with demand. ImprovementsThere's now a loading overlay while the lobby loads so it doesn't just feel like nothing's happening.The sync overlay got a full redesign with a cleaner layout and a per-player indicator showing who's ready.The Start button now waits until all players are fully synced before letting you begin.The reconnect prompt looks nicer now with a vertical button layout and a fade-in animation.Multiplayer authority checks are more consistent across the board for better host/client handling.Bug FixesFixed memory leaks in effects, singletons, and UI systems that were leaving stale references around.The game now properly resets its sync checklists and waits for full world state before unpausing.Fixed stale retry timers that were causing fake "Player Rejoined" notifications on game start.Disconnect notifications now show the player's name instead of a raw peer ID.Players now get registered before the game scene loads, which was causing early disconnections.Fixed the lobby loading overlay sometimes timing out and sync stage logging not working properly.The lobby player list no longer stretches vertically in weird ways.Fixed registry broadcasts getting suppressed during the sync phase.Player tags and AI data now properly reach players who join mid-game.You can no longer reconnect to a lobby that's been deleted.Fixed some interaction issues in the black market menu.
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• Patch Notes·5 Apr 2026Official

  v0.20

  New FeaturesThere's a brand new sabotage system with 17 cards across five categories: destruction, disruption, finance, intelligence, and labour.The black market menu lets you browse, buy, and manage sabotage cards to build your hand.You can now control game speed with five settings (x1 through x16), and if your system can't keep up it'll automatically step down — in multiplayer, everyone has to agree on speed changes.You can now demolish your own buildings, complete with particle effects and animated destruction.Buildings are now clickable with an outline shader that highlights them when you hover.A new notification panel shows game events with icons and visual feedback as they happen.The finance sheet got a full redesign with detailed tooltips and proper transaction tracking.The build menu has been redesigned with a floating bottom-left layout and category panels for quicker access.You can now name your multiplayer lobbies.ImprovementsAI players now build consistently from the start of the game regardless of difficulty, with smarter adaptive behaviour replacing the old rigid profiles.The labour system now uses reputation and sentiment mechanics so worker distribution feels more dynamic.Financial line graphs are easier to read with better data visualisation.Miner smoke effects now use GPU particles for better performance and nicer visuals.Building tooltips have been overhauled with more useful info and a cleaner layout.Cursor detection is more accurate so clicking on buildings feels better.The lobby sync UI has been rewritten to show a single status line instead of polling constantly.Network sync is now handled by a centralised queue which makes multiplayer coordination more reliable.Sabotage cards now have rarity glows and badges so you can tell them apart at a glance.Menus now have sound effects for interactions like opening, closing, errors, and confirmations.Player tags above buildings now bounce when they update so they're easier to spot.The market runs on thr...
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