Tower Lab Roadmap

Tower Lab does not publish a dated Gantt chart with quarterly boss names. What it does publish is a Steam Early Access FAQ that answers “how is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?” This page copies that list, explains what each line means in play terms, and keeps the six-to-twelve-month window in view. Early Access is scheduled for September 7, 2026. The roadmap is a plan, not a patch that already shipped.

Read Early Access for the content the EA build is supposed to launch with. Return to the updates hub for demo history and how to watch news. When a line says “more towers,” jump to the towers hub to see the twenty that already have names.

The 6 to 12 month window

“We expect Early Access to last roughly 6 to 12 months. The game will leave Early Access when the planned content is in, and we’ll keep players informed if that timeline shifts.” That is the entire official clock. A two-person team wrote it, so treat slip as possible without treating the date as fake. Six months from September 7, 2026 is early 2027. Twelve months is late summer 2027. This wiki will not invent a 1.0 calendar day.

Price is part of the same FAQ: a modest increase around 25% when the game leaves Early Access. Buying during EA is described as the lowest price and a way to shape development. Still no dollar figure here.

Community involvement is the process under the clock: Discord daily, regular updates that cover content, gameplay, QOL, and bug fixes, balance against player data, Steam discussions and reviews, and Workshop levels that can inspire official pads. If you want to affect the order of this roadmap, that is the channel list on community links.

Full version plans from the Steam FAQ

Quoted in spirit, grouped for players:

Increased tower, trap, unit, and machine roster. EA starts with twenty towers, seven traps, five machines, and a robot cast that already includes shell types such as Copper, Rubber, and Iron from playtests. 1.0 is supposed to grow all four lists. That means new verbs, not just new hats. A new trap as important as This Way can rewrite Scrap Line. A new machine can change starting energy and the first starter deck you pick. A new unit can hard-counter Tesla the way Rubber already threatens pure electricity.

Additional cores, physics cards, utility cards, and rewards to expand build variety. EA’s FAQ count is twenty-six player cores plus fourteen Hazard Cores, seven physics-effect cards, and eight utility cards. Salvage and Hot Swap are examples of utilities that already moved in and out of Region 1 starts. More cores means more run modifiers. More physics cards means more Grow/Shrink-class tools. More rewards means the Vend-O-Lab will not stay at screenshot prices of M200 / M400 forever.

More levels, enemies, and regions for the campaign. EA campaign is three regions with Hazard difficulty modifiers and meta progression. Extra regions are the long spine. Extra enemies are why you should keep reading wave previews. Extra levels are new pads with new edges, which is the actual skill in a no-HP game.

Deeper Endless mode progression and expanded Steam Workshop support for player-created levels in sandbox mode. Endless already uses a procedurally expanding map and weekly ideas such as Overmass. Deeper progression implies more reasons to stay after the campaign story-shaped loop ends: scaling, shops, maybe more modifiers. Workshop expansion is tooling and discovery, which the FAQ already flags as still in progress during EA.

Ongoing balance, performance, and polish work informed by community feedback. This is the unglamorous line that will change Matter farming more than a new trailer will. Tesla knockback, Fan volume detection, Grow payout, remove-card limits — all of that is balance.

Aesthetic improvements to in-game environments, characters, towers, and UI. Visual pass. Photo Mode already exists as a store flag; prettier labs make that mode less of a screenshot of a prototype.

The FAQ closes with the usual honesty: plans evolve, and community feedback during Early Access helps decide priority. Nothing on this list is a legal promise that a specific tower name arrives in month three.

What is already in versus what expands

Already named for EA, from the store:

• Twenty towers with tech trees (see the tower roster).
• Five modes, including Campaign, Standard TD, Endless, Puzzle, Workshop.
• Forty cores, five machines, traps, utilities, physics cards.
• Leaderboards, collection, meta-progression.
• Windows and macOS, Deck Playable, 2 GB install, DirectX 11 and Metal.

Planned to grow after that baseline:

• Roster width (towers, traps, units, machines).
• Build variety (cores, cards, rewards).
• Campaign length (levels, enemies, regions beyond three).
• Endless depth and Workshop tooling.
• Balance, performance, polish, aesthetics.

If you only read marketing, you might think EA is a demo. The developers describe EA as a complete start-to-finish core with modes, and 1.0 as more of everything plus the polish pass. Play the baseline, then watch which roadmap line actually moves.

Workshop, polish, and community priority

Sandbox Workshop is already an EA mode. Expanded support is the 1.0 delta: better sharing, better tools, more official reaction to community pads. That matters for this wiki because a community level can teach a synergy the towers hub has not written yet. It does not mean official campaign regions will be replaced by Workshop. Campaign still gets “more levels, enemies, and regions” as its own bullet.

Polish includes performance on the system requirements floor: i5-4590 / FX-8350 class Windows boxes, M1 or 2018 Intel Macs, 8 GB RAM, 2 GB disk. A physics game with Grow stacks and Grinders can tax a minimum GPU even when the install is tiny. Roadmap “performance” is how those labs keep simulating at 3X speed.

Priority is not listed as “new tower every month.” Priority is listed as community-informed. If Discord hates a Hazard Core, that core might move before a sixth region does. Track arguments on Early Access, not on a fan-made calendar.

How this wiki will track the list

When a Steam news post ships:

1. Check whether it adds a roster name. If yes, the towers hub and tower roster update first.
2. Check whether it adds a region or mode rule. If yes, the campaign walkthrough and this roadmap’s “already in” list update.
3. Check whether shop or Matter rules moved. If yes, Matter farming and starter decks take the hit.
4. Check whether it was only polish. Then this page gets a sentence, not a new hub.

Until September 7, 2026, the honest roadmap status is “FAQ published, EA not unlocked.” After that date, status becomes “EA live, 1.0 still planned.” We will not mark Tower Lab as a finished 1.0 game while this list still has unchecked roster and region lines. The Steam FAQ is the contract. This page is the readable copy. When Play Tug Studio edits the contract, edit this copy, then go knock a grown robot off a new edge.