Hey everyone! Daily Challenges are in. This is the feature I have wanted to build since the first leaderboard went up, so this post is a bit more explaining than usual.
What a Daily Challenge Is
Once a day I publish one map, one seed, and one goal. Everyone gets the exact same board - same terrain, same deposits, same everything - and races to hit that goal. Your score is how many ticks it took you. Lower is better.
It runs in its own colony, next to your main one. Tap the world button in the topbar and you get the picker in the screenshot above: main colony on top, today's challenge underneath, with the goal, the map, and how long is left before it resets.
A few things about that challenge colony:
- It always starts from nothing. No Terraform perks, no carryover, no Cores, no boosters, no contracts, no ads, no tutorial. Everyone starts equal, which is the whole point.
- Levels, upgrades and production all work normally. What you build during the run is the run.
- You can retry as many times as you like. Only your best time today counts.
- Your main colony is paused while you are away, so it does not idle-produce in the background - but nothing is lost, and boosters keep whatever time was left on them.
- It resets at midnight UTC and a new one starts. If you are mid-run when that happens, the run ends there and you are sent back to your main colony - with your best time for that day if you already set one.
Some Example Days
The goals are deliberately simple - one line, no reading. A few from the current batch:
- Reach Level 8 on Deep Frontier. Straight progression race.
- Produce 300 Iron Ingot in total on Tempest Barrens, with storms every 15 minutes. Build the chain, keep the power on.
- Reveal 350 tiles on Shattered Highlands. Canyons make that harder than it sounds.
- Reach +100 MW of surplus power on Deep Frontier and hold it for 3 ticks.
- Construct 40 buildings. Cheap and fast, but the layout still decides it.
Some days carry a modifier - cheaper buildings, more frequent storms - and it is the same modifier for everyone.
Rewards
When the day closes, the standings settle and placement points go out:
- 1st place: 10 points
- 2nd place: 7 points
- 3rd place: 4 points
- Rest of the top 10%: 2 points each. On small days that is 4th and 5th place.
Every point pays 5 Cores, so winning a day is 50 Cores in hand. Mission Control delivers them the next time you open the game.
The points also stack up forever on an all-time Challenge Points board, alongside the one for community events. So a single good day pays, and being consistently decent pays too.
On top of that the game tracks your streak of days completed, and there is a share button on the result screen if you want to post your time.
One Note
I am tuning the schedule as it runs. Definitions live on the server now, so if a target turns out to be way too easy or way too brutal I can fix it mid-day without shipping an update. If a day feels off, say so in Discord and I will adjust it.
First one is live now. See you on Mars!