More challenge mechanics for increased difficulty

26 Jun
Gin Fuyou System

Highlighted comment

"Late-game survival challenges (Freezing seasons, crop diseases, and epidemics)" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2026-06-17), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

28 Oct, '21
Andreyq Merged

This game could be awesome if any challenge will be added. Right now - it doesn't matter what difference is it, how long dry season is or anything else. You just put dam blocks at the third day and get yourself infinite water and food grow. Why it will be interesting to progress? Just to build a huge base? I know - nowadays it's popular to make games without any challenge - stupid kids don't like to think, but please, change something at least at the hard mode so it would be actually challenging without any artificial limitations you build for yourself.

29 Oct, '21
Gin Fuyou Admin Merged

You can't survive harder difficulties (hard or custom) with a first dam you build, not sure why you say that. But generally I agree with the point - game needs more challenges for players who want it.

25 Nov, '21
Arreclain Merged

I was wondering how people would feel about wolves or something after establishing your 2nd or 3rd district?

Once you have a balanced district, on Easy or Medium difficulty you become invulnerable. It would be interesting to have a reason to migrate to another district to avoid some kind of secondary threat.

Note: I do not mean a village ending threat. I more mean the loss of the occasional villager as a sort of incentive to expand outward or to change things up rather than to stay in a safe zone and just amass science points.

07 Jan, '22
Nathan Merged

I absolutely loved this game, I had such a fun time playing, it was so challenging and creative at the same time. I feel though the two games I put lots of time into, the challenge was the drought and engineering around that was hard, challenging, and fun. However, after I was able to build various reservoirs and water structures. That by the 5th or 6th drought it was not pain to my districts. I could have cared less if a 7 day drought came by, and the droughts topped off at 9 days?

I am almost felt as the game is missing gamification, where do I level up, unlocking the Iron Teeth was fun, but that was the only challenge. There was more to do, such as the higher tech stuff, but again why do I even need to bother, my distract is self sufficient, droughts don't affect me, and there isn't any objectives with acheivements incentivizing me to do so.

One idea, Instead of a drought, a flood could also be a forecast that you must learn to deal with.

07 Jan, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin Merged

Have you tried hard, it has 30 days droughts? But I agree game needs more challenging mechanics, there are quite a few suggestion for it here, please vote up and comment which you like.

21 Jan, '22
Gustavo Santos Merged

The curve of difficulty could be more agressivily in my opinion.
I started the game a few hours ago and since then my experience had been very nice, however, it starts to not have challenges. Drought is not progressing as i was expecting, maybe i should try in the hard mode but adding more challenges would be great.

21 Jan, '22
Gin Fuyou System Merged

"Difficulty progression" (suggested by Gustavo Santos on 2022-01-21), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

27 Sep, '22
Andreyq Merged

Why can't you? You build dam - you got yourself infinite water. What else do you need?

27 Sep, '22
Gin Fuyou Admin Merged

There is no infinite water, it runs out in a drought in flash, actually you can pump dry up some maps even outside of the drought

13 Dec, '22
Me Merged

My main issue is, the game is too easy. I've done hard mode, I've even set it up to where I had a 60 day drought on Diorama. There should be a setting that is essentially perpetually harder, no cap on drought length, play until you die. Other than the joy of just building for building sake, it loses continued play appeal once you stabilize the colony. And getting a colony to the point where it can survive a 30 day drought is fairly easy. I want to need to unlock features to stay alive, not unlock them for funsies.

19 Dec, '22
Gin Fuyou System Merged

"Game Improvements" (suggested by Me on 2022-12-13), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

19 Dec, '22
Gin Fuyou System Merged

"Really fun, but the challenge drops off" (suggested by Nathan on 2022-01-07), including upvotes (7) and comments (5), was merged into this suggestion.

19 Dec, '22
Gin Fuyou System

"Add at least some challenge" (suggested by Andreyq on 2021-10-28), including upvotes (9) and comments (10), was merged into this suggestion.

20 Dec, '22
TTJ

I fully agree, we need more challenges from the terrain itself. I like especially the idea of weeds and toxic waste.

I also think that weeds or toxic waste could have different effects on bots and beavers. For example, a bot could maybe swim through a puddle of toxic waste with only little harm while a beaver gets sick instantly. Maybe another mechanic can be found where bots suffer from something (e.g. extremely salty water that leads to metal corrosion) that does not affect the beavers.

26 Dec, '22
. Merged

The game is too easy on hard.

01 Jan, '23
Gin Fuyou System

"More adversity" (suggested by . on 2022-12-26), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

28 May, '23
Ray Merged

As soon as you got a basic food and water infrastructure going this is a game of waiting for the research points to tick. Gameplay feels very lackluster at this stage and there does not seem to be a challenge. Tried different difficulties, but it just is lacking content to keep going other than waiting for the research to accumulate. I have not found another suggestion of this kind, so am I alone on this?

02 Jun, '23
Gin Fuyou System

"Boring gameplay, waiting for research" (suggested by Ray on 2023-05-28), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

24 Jul, '23
Holy Merged

I'd like to have some challenges in game, like having to build a massive monument that required crazy amount of resources as a final goal or perhaps in addition to surviving having to pay "taxes" to the bevermaister as extra difficulty or something along those lines. Just like the option to have something to strive for, some people like pure sandbox, personally I like a combination of challenge and sandbox. (Just don't make it timed I hate that shit)

31 Jul, '23
Gin Fuyou System

"Challenges / goals" (suggested by Holy on 2023-07-24), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

16 Aug, '23
Tweek (Kevin) Merged

improved difficulty.

I find that Timberborn is too easy. I really liked the idea of a "creation" mode free of the hassle of construction time and resources...

but on the other hand, I think we have to find a way, maybe via listed maps! ...
increased the difficulty in, 'real games'

I find the part simple, quite affordable and very well done, but there's a moment, we want to take up challenges! ...

a story mode with specific objectives..?

difficult cards?

I don't know, I'll let you think about it more deeply.

17 Aug, '23
Gin Fuyou System

"improved difficulty." (suggested by Tweek (Kevin) on 2023-08-16), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

01 Nov, '23
Gin Fuyou System

"Late Game Additional Threats [to be merged]" (suggested by Arreclain on 2021-11-25), including upvotes (3) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

15 May, '24
Crazy Merged

More events would break the meta and change the dynamic of the game some ideas are

Flooded - Water could come out 2-3x causing floods and have it happen with little warning making it harder to sit on stored water.
Winter - Having water freeze over, would make it interesting if you could use the ice to travel around easier but when it freezes it breaks everything on it.
Thunderstorm - Could utilize rain/Thunderstorms could cause fires which would be a whole mechanic with firefighting beavers
Wildfire - A big fire off-screen causes smoke to cloud your map and make plants not grow or grow slowly. Would be interesting to have an event that's not just water-based.

Not sure if any of these have ever been mentioned but I feel like new events in general would change the dynamic and spice things up each play-through.

17 May, '24
Gin Fuyou System

"More events" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2024-05-15), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

07 Aug, '24
capitainefada

I did a full game in 2022, and I was having dry spells of 30+ days quite frequently. There, in experimental branch, I have not seen any more than 25 days and no more than 20 days for polluted water.
I think the difficulty would be increased if we did not know the duration of droughts or polluted water. We could simply be notified of their end three days before.
Likewise alternating droughts / polluted water (without exceeding a limit of 35 days before flooding) would be an interesting challenge.
--
But, without changing the game mechanics, create steam challenges. This is a very good method for increasing the lifespan of the game and it allows players who are looking for a challenge to have it without inventing their own rules and to proudly display their success to their community. (currently, I play the folktais without wind turbines and it’s fun 😊)

27 Aug, '24
Steffen Merged

First of all: I always play on hardmode.

But after surviving the first ~15 days, there are no more threats that can kill my settlement. I can keep enough dringable water, have anough food for 30+ days. I just need to check if the gates are closed/open when the normal weather changes to no water or badwater ... so game looses much tension while no more threat can harm me.

I really think this is too short for this great game, why can't there be another threats like
- heavy rain -> you need to drain the water away (because it lands everywhere, you need always a way out for the water. This greatly increasy building complexity
- Disease spreads: %of you timbers get sick, cure them or handly you city with very less workers
- no sun: crops don´t grow further
- Vulcanic strike: some rocks fall of the air - changing landscape or damaging buildings.
This really would make the game more interesting, if you need for example a 2. anti water wall or be creative to repair destroyed pathes.

30 Aug, '24
Gin Fuyou System

"Make game harder - new threats please!" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2024-08-27), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

05 Aug, '25
SmolChungus Merged

I feel like once you have a permeant solution for droughts and badtides the game becomes trivially easy. The game is too easy on normal difficulty, even when i go afk at 3x speed my beavers are always fine. The only time i have lost a colony was on hard mode and even then once you solve for the badtides the difficulty is gone. I think the game would benefit from different kinds of challenges to your beavers so there is always problems you have to solve. it would be even better if they intersect, for instance solving one problem makes another worse.

10 Aug, '25
Gin Fuyou System

"Various different challenges" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2025-08-05), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

01 May
Lence Merged

Only two disaster is boring for the end of this game. Maybe you can create more disaster, like: tempest ( distroy all building which is higher than a random height with no protect ) ,flood (ten times of water) , severe cold (freeze all water which is not insulation)

05 May
Gin Fuyou System

"Can be more disaster" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2026-05-01), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

17 Jun
Raouf Merged

Hi developers,

First of all, thank you for this amazing game! I really love the mechanics, but I have a suggestion regarding the difficulty and the late-game experience.

Right now, even on High difficulty, the game becomes a bit too easy after a few cycles. Once we secure enough food and water reserves, and reach a high level of well-being, Timberborn stops being a survival game and becomes purely a construction game. The sense of danger disappears.

To keep the survival tension alive throughout the entire playthrough, I suggest implementing dynamic late-game threats and new environmental challenges:

Freezing / Winter Season: A rare or late-game seasonal event where the water surfaces freeze completely. During this time, water pumps and water wheels stop functioning, and regular crops freeze and die. Players would need to store enough water beforehand, rely on alternative power sources (like windmills or engines), or build advanced structures like greenhouses to survive the

16 Jul
Yeah no Merged

Between controlling the forces of nature and monuments, there is a lack of challenge other than waiting problems out. There is a dire need for some kind of challenge or goal between that period.

yesterday
Gin Fuyou System

"More close to end/endgame challenge?" (suggested by <Hidden> on 2026-07-16), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

Comments: 36 Oldest • Newest • Most likes • Fewest likes

Comments: 36
Oldest • Newest • Most likes • Fewest likes