Opening a relic - what was the game like in version .29 ?

Hi everyone,

Looking through the My Colony files on my old computer, here is what I found:

A My Colony installation file, dated 17 March 2017. Looking into its properties, the field Product Version says 0.29.0. As we are approaching version 1.0, I thought I would do a little retrospective of this game version and see how the game progressed in two and a half years.

I will proceed by opening a virtual machine. In fact, I want to make sure none of my files are altered when installing this version of the game.After setting up the VM (running with 2GB of RAM, hoping this will be enough), I start the setup file, and it installed literally in 3 seconds. No wonder when you see that the file is 58 MB compared to the 178 MB nowadays.So, the installation went well, the game launches and it proposes me to do an update. Of course, I decline the offer.

I did not hide the ad on the right, it simply does not show up. Also, there is no login option on the menu. Anyway, let's try to create a colony. I don't have to choose if I want an online or offline game, no creative mode either and of course no multiplayer region! We have two civilizations: UE and Zolarg. No Reptilians, those went into the game in version .53, in January 2018 and LIS was introduced in summer 2017 (no exact date as changelogs aren't available before .43). I will focus on UE as it's the most known civilization. For planet type, we only have 3 options : Red Planet, Lunar and Forest World. Earthlike and Waterworld were added respectively in .52 and .77.

I pick Red Planet. At first, it does not look very different than if I was starting in a modern version. The main change we can see is the resources bar, which is a bit smaller and there are no buttons on the bottom left corner to access game chat and streaming. The biggest viewable difference here is with the UI. It is less readable and not really integrated in the game. In the stats, we have no charts whatsoever, no stats about the growth in population or GDP. Don't even think of embassies or federations. Back then, IQ and schools wasn't implemented (schools were introduced in .58). There was no lightning effects, no day/night cycles, and no bulldozer tool.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to access the engine settings due to a little problem in the layout of the menu. The button is not clickable:

Along with that setup file I found some old save files of my first colonies! I take one from 11 March 2017, that way we are certain it's compatible with version .29. I modify the file so that it becomes an offline game, try to load it, and … it worked!

There was no limit for some resources. People could just have trillions and it would never decay or stop producing. If I remember correctly though, at that time Bast was phasing in storage caps, that's why there are caps on steel and charcoal for example.

The policy menu had most of the current policies, immigration, labour, laving wage, fire drill, work policy, stimulus package, tax collection. This colony wasn't really end-game though so there might have been more that I hadn't unlocked, like land annexation.Here is a statistical comparison of both versions:

All in all, what has changed in My Colony over the past 2 years and more is the content itself. There has not been big UI rearrangements and when you come from the future like I was doing you easily find your marks. In that time span, a lot of buildings and features have been added, as opposed to the ergonomics which, apart from the looks of the windows, the buttons and some quality of life improvement features, remained more or less the same. There has not been modifications to the existing location of features but rather a lot of features built and added around the existing ones.
I can only see more features and content updates in the future - see you in 2 years!

Did I miss something here? Give your thoughts in the comments!