Buildings

Chapter 1 · Earth — 12 structures

Earth's ladder runs from a single dust condenser to a star-gate. The first tiers teach idle production and upgrades; the last four are gated — you unlock them by developing other structures, not just by hitting a Stardust number.

Stardust Condenser

Draws drifting dust into a slow, glittering orbit.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes We wanted the very first structure you buy to feel like cupping your hands around a spark — a slow, glittering trickle you can watch coalesce out of empty dark. Priced at almost nothing, it's the game's handshake: it teaches that Stardust flows on its own once you seed it, so idle production clicks before any economy pressure does. It also carries the game's first upgrade lesson: Magnetized Dust doubles every condenser for pocket change, a quiet demonstration that upgrades will always outpace raw buying.

Meteor Collector

Catches infalling rock and feeds the young world.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The Collector is the first real step up in scale, and its job is pacing: it carries you across the dead zone between your opening clicks and the moment production feels alive. In the fiction, infalling rock is the young planet feeding itself the mass it needs to grow, so the number going up is also the world getting heavier and more real. We tuned its cost curve so a returning player always has a Collector or two just out of reach — a small, honest carrot.

Protocore Forge

The planet's heart ignites, pulsing with first heat.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes This is where the planet stops being debris and gets a heartbeat: the core ignites and starts pulsing with first heat. Economically it's the bridge into the thousands, the tier that makes early global-multiplier upgrades finally worth buying. We leaned the art and blurb toward heat and pressure on purpose, so the jump from cold collection to a living furnace reads as a genuine phase change, not just a bigger number.

Crust Foundry

Molten seams harden into the first solid ground.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Molten seams hardening into solid ground gave us the first structure that visibly *builds* the planet rather than just orbiting it, and that mattered for the scene: this is the tier where the world in the viewport starts wearing a surface. In the economy it's the mid-early anchor that keeps output climbing while the player learns to read milestone stars. We kept its rate deliberately unglamorous so the ocean tier right after it lands as a reward.

Atmosphere Spire

A thin shell of air wraps the world in light.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The Atmosphere Spire is a setup building — it's the first half of a synergy we pay off later, when Atmosphere–Ocean Coupling makes every spire quietly boost your oceans. That's why we introduce it just before water: we want players to buy air, then discover it had a hidden second purpose. A thin shell of light around the globe is also the first time the planet looks like it could hold weather, which sells the ocean tier that follows.

Ocean Seeder

Blue water spreads, and the planet begins to gleam.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Water is the emotional beat of the early game — the moment the rock turns blue and the planet reads as a world worth saving — so we spent the pacing budget to make Ocean Seeders feel like a genuine graduation. It's the payoff end of the Atmosphere–Ocean synergy and a Greenhouse-Effect multiplier target, meaning it rewards the players who bought air early. Reaching it flips the hero globe from ember to marble, which is the whole point.

Lunar Mine

A moon rises and you mine its silver dust.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes A rising moon lets us change the camera's mind: for the first time the player is mining *off-world*, which foreshadows the orbital and interstellar tiers without a word of exposition. In the economy the Lunar Mine is the on-ramp to the millions, and it feeds the Lunar–Sail Resonance synergy, so it's secretly an investment in the solar tier above it. Tidal forces pulling silver dust down is our excuse to make the number jump feel like leverage rather than grind.

Solar Sail Array

Golden sails drink the starlight in orbit.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Golden sails drinking starlight are the game's pivot from surface-building to space-industry, and they carry a lot of weight: they're the Lunar–Sail synergy payoff *and* the gate that unlocks the Orbital Ring once you've stacked eighteen of them. We wanted the requirement to reach the Ring to be a specific, visible goal — spread your sails until they can circle the planet — so this tier doubles as a soft tutorial for reading unlock conditions.

Orbital Ring

A luminous ring binds surface to sky.

Reach CivilizationSolar Sail Array × 18

✎ Design notes The Orbital Ring is the first *gated* structure, and that gate is intentional theater: you can see it listed, locked, long before you can build it, which turns Civilization-stage progress into a countdown. A luminous ring binding surface to sky is the visual promise that this world has left the ground. It's also a hard requirement for both the City Lightgrid and the endgame Gate, so it sits at the center of the late-game unlock web on purpose.

Bio-Dome

Life takes hold under domes of green.

Ocean Seeder × 30Atmosphere Spire × 30

✎ Design notes Life is the payoff the whole first half has been building toward, so we hid the Bio-Dome behind a double lock — fill the oceans *and* thicken the atmosphere — to make it read as a reward you earned rather than a tier you bought. It teaches the game's most important late lesson: the deepest structures unlock by developing *other* buildings, not just by hitting a Stardust number. Domes of green also seed the Bio–City synergy that powers the cities above.

City Lightgrid

The night side blooms with a web of city light.

Bio-Dome × 18Orbital Ring × 10

✎ Design notes City Lightgrid is where the planet gets a civilization looking back up at you, and its unlock — grown life plus orbital infrastructure — is our way of saying a world needs both roots and reach before its night side can bloom. Economically it's a top-tier engine feeding the Bio–City synergy and a headline requirement for the win condition. We made the night-side light bloom the single most satisfying scene transition in Chapter 1 because it's the last one before the Gate.

Starforge Gate

A gate spins open — the planet is ready to leap.

Reach Stellar DominionCity Lightgrid × 24Orbital Ring × 18

✎ Design notes The Starforge Gate is the finish line wearing a building's clothes: it demands Stellar Dominion, thriving cities, and ringed orbit all at once, so assembling it *is* the endgame checklist. Its Gate Singularity synergy makes every copy boost all production, which turns the final push into a snowball. We wrote it as a door spinning open rather than a trophy because Chapter 1's real reward isn't winning Earth — it's the red point in the sky it points you toward.

Chapter 2 · Mars — 18 structures Premium

The red world is a harder, stranger climb: a climate meter to defend, storms that some structures feed on, and a water pipeline that runs from polar ice to planet-spanning canals. Sixteen structures are shown below — 2 remain classified, sealed behind the storm until you reach them in-game.

Regolith Sifter

Sifts red dust for the faint charge trapped in the grains.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Mars had to feel poorer and more stubborn than Earth from the first purchase, so the Sifter opens not with abundance but with scarcity — a machine scraping a faint charge out of dead red grains. That lower, grittier starting rate is deliberate: it resets the player's sense of scale and signals that this world fights back. Like Earth's condenser it becomes the long-tail milestone workhorse, which is why a top-tier multiplier eventually rewards stacking sifters.

Polar Frost Harvester

Carves the ice caps for the water that starts everything.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Everything on Mars begins with water, and we wanted that to be literally true in the tech tree: the Frost Harvester carving the ice caps is the source that the Meltwater Feed synergy later routes straight into your brine drills. It's the first pacing step out of the opening scarcity, and its polar-ice framing plants the idea — grounded in real buried Martian ice — that the raw material for an ocean was here all along, just frozen.

Basalt Melter

Melts volcanic rock to bleed heat back into the crust.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Melting volcanic rock to bleed heat back into the crust is our nod to real terraforming proposals for tapping Mars's basalt heat, and it gives the early game a warmth beat to counter all the frost. In the economy it's the bridge into the hundreds and the source end of the Thermal Aiming synergy that later sharpens your orbital mirrors. We kept it modest so the pressure and brine tiers above it feel like escalation.

Pressure Tent Array

Sealed tents hold breathable pressure against the thin air — and shelter the world, so each dust storm strips less of your Atmospheric Integrity.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The Pressure Tent is the player's first lesson in the Atmospheric Integrity meter: it doesn't just produce, it *shelters*, so every tent you own means each dust storm strips less of your sky. We introduce it deliberately early, before storms bite hard, so players learn the defensive layer while the stakes are still forgiving. Sealed tents holding breathable pressure against the thin air is also the first time Mars feels survivable rather than merely mined.

Brine Well Drill

Taps briny aquifers hiding under the frozen regolith.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Briny aquifers under the frozen regolith are real Martian science — liquid brine stays stable where pure water can't — and we used that to justify a satisfying mid-early production jump without breaking the fiction. It's the payoff end of the Meltwater Feed synergy and the source of the Runoff Channels synergy into crater lakes, so it sits at a crossroads: frost flows in, lakes flow out. Buying drills is quietly an investment two tiers deep.

Dust Kite Turbine

Rides the dust storms it should fear: while a storm blows it spins up and PRODUCES MORE — turning the weather that hurts everything else into power.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The Dust Kite is our favorite twist on the climate system: instead of fearing storms, it *feeds* on them, spinning up to produce more exactly when the weather is hurting everything else. It teaches players that Mars's hazard is also a resource, and it rewards the ones who read the storm timing. We placed it mid-tree so that by the time storms are frequent, you have a structure that makes you almost want them — a deliberate emotional inversion of the integrity meter.

Perchlorate Scrubber

Leaches the toxic salts so life has a chance to take root.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Martian soil is genuinely laced with toxic perchlorates, and cleaning them is the real prerequisite to growing anything — so we made the Scrubber the gatekeeper of all life on the planet. It's the source of the Clean Soil Beds synergy into greenhouses and a heavy requirement for both the Areology Lab and the Canal Grid. Framing progress as *detoxifying* rather than just producing gives Mars's midgame a distinct moral texture Earth never had.

Greenhouse Dome

The first sealed gardens breathe warm green into the cold.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The first sealed gardens are Mars's blue-marble moment — the beat where the number going up finally means green instead of grey. It's the payoff of the Clean Soil Beds synergy (you had to scrub the poison first) and the source of Spore Dispersal into the lichen vaults, so it's the hinge between industry and biology. We spent real pacing budget here because a warm green dome glowing in the cold is the image that convinces players Mars can actually live.

Orbital Mirror

A sail of mirrors in orbit pours captured sunlight onto the poles.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes A sail of mirrors pouring captured sunlight onto the poles is drawn straight from real orbital-mirror terraforming proposals, and it lets us lift the camera off the surface again mid-chapter. It's the Thermal Aiming payoff and a requirement for the Mass Driver Foundry, so it quietly bridges surface heat to heavy industry. Economically it's the on-ramp to the hundreds of millions — the tier where Mars's output starts to feel genuinely planetary.

Crater Lake Basin

Meltwater pools in an impact scar — Mars holds open water at last.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Meltwater pooling in an ancient impact scar is the payoff of the whole water pipeline — frost to brine to runoff to open lake — and it's the first time Mars holds standing water in the scene. Turning the planet's oldest wounds into its first mirrors was too good an image to waste, so we made lakes a milestone-heavy structure the win condition can lean on. It's the Runoff Channels payoff, rewarding everyone who over-invested in drills earlier.

Magnetosphere Tower

A local magnetic shield that keeps the new sky from blowing away and helps your Atmospheric Integrity recover faster between storms.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes The Magnetosphere Tower is the second pillar of the climate system: a local magnetic shield that both keeps the new sky from blowing away and speeds your integrity recovery between storms. It answers the real reason Mars lost its atmosphere — no global magnetic field — so the science does the storytelling. We made it a defensive *and* offensive climate piece, and a Shielded Grid synergy source for dome cities, so late-game stability and late-game output finally share a building.

Lichen Vault

Releases cold-hardy lichen to spread across the thawing plains.

Unlocks by cost — appears as you close in on affording it

✎ Design notes Cold-hardy lichen spreading across the thawing plains is the most patient kind of terraforming, and that's exactly the feeling we wanted for this tier: slow, stubborn life doing what domes can't. It's the Spore Dispersal payoff and one of the win condition's optional biology targets, so it rewards players who chose to grow the planet rather than just power it. The vault framing — life kept in reserve, then released — sells the idea that you're seeding an ecosystem, not planting a crop.

Areology Lab

Martian geoscience that quietly lifts every process on the planet.

Reach Blue CratersPerchlorate Scrubber × 20

✎ Design notes The Areology Lab is Mars's first *gated* structure, and it's deliberately a knowledge tier rather than a brute-force one: Martian geoscience that quietly lifts every process on the planet via the Areology Doctrine synergy. Locking it behind Blue Craters and scaled scrubbing teaches the same lesson Earth's Bio-Dome did — deep structures unlock by developing others. It's the payoff for players who treated perchlorate cleanup as infrastructure, not a chore.

Mass Driver Foundry

A magnetic launch rail flings raw material where it's needed, fast.

Reach Lichen FrontierDust Kite Turbine × 25Orbital Mirror × 12

✎ Design notes The Mass Driver Foundry is where Mars turns industrial: a magnetic launch rail flinging raw material wherever it's needed at speed. Its unlock — dust kites plus orbital mirrors — rewards a player who invested in both the storm economy and the sky, so it reads as the payoff of two earlier bets converging. Economically it's the late-game heavy hauler that keeps output scaling into the billions while the biology tiers mature underneath it.

Canal Grid

A planet-spanning water network laces the deserts blue.

Reach Lichen FrontierCrater Lake Basin × 18Perchlorate Scrubber × 30

✎ Design notes A planet-spanning water network lacing the deserts blue is Mars's signature image, and we gated it hard — filled crater lakes plus heavy scrubbing — so the canals only appear once the planet can actually feed them. It's a headline win-condition requirement, meaning the endgame checklist literally asks you to plumb the whole world. Turning scattered lakes into a connected grid is also the moment the map stops looking like patches and starts looking like a living hydrosphere.

Dome City

Glass cities rise under the domes, and Mars is finally lived in.

Reach Canal CitiesCanal Grid × 10Lichen Vault × 12

✎ Design notes Glass cities rising under the domes are the point where Mars stops being a project and becomes a *home* — the emotional twin of Earth's City Lightgrid. Its triple lock (Canal Cities, flowing water, green life) enforces the fiction that people arrive last, after the world can hold them. It's the Shielded Grid synergy payoff and a core win requirement, so the most human tier is also mechanically the one that ties the climate shield to civilization.

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Two structures on this world are still sealed behind the storm — their shapes only resolve once you've held the sky long enough to reach them.

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The last things Mars asks you to build have no names yet; the red world keeps them for the players who make it that far.

Ready to terraform the red world? Play PlanetIdle and unlock Chapter 2.