Approximately up town building guide

Town and headquarters basics

In Approximately Up,Headquarters is your home anchor, the place you return to between expeditions and drop off whatever you have hauled back from the field. The early achievement Baaa-ck To Headquarters, which asks you to bring tutorial sheep home, confirms that Headquarters is a fixed staging point even in the opening hours. Treat it as your workshop, depot, and objective hub all at once.

This is not a conventional grid city builder. The confirmed building system is fully modular construction: you bolt together parts to make a ship that can carry you and your base to new planets. Your "town" is really your mobile build, so every module is both infrastructure and cargo.

• Headquarters is the early-game base and the destination for tutorial objectives.
• Modular parts are the foundation of every build, ship, and expedition.
• The core loop is build, crash, rebuild, so plan for constant revision.

Build, crash, rebuild!

How building and upgrading works

Building works by bolting modules together until the whole thing holds. You can mount giant thrusters, run annoying cables, and attach everything in between. There is no single fixed blueprint path, so experimentation is the intended route. Upgrades come from attaching better or additional parts, and your progress is tracked through completing objectives rather than a traditional tech tree.

Because everything is modular, upgrading usually means replacing or repositioning what you already have. Swapping a small thruster for a giant one changes your center of mass and can turn a stable cruiser into a crash hazard. Verify each new part against the whole build before you rely on it.

• Finish the Tutorial Completed achievement before expanding your build.
• Add thrusters for speed, but keep cables organised enough to trace problems.
• Test after every change; do not bolt on three new modules before flying again.

Progression: objectives, milestones, and unlocking new areas

Progress is driven by objectives. Completing your first one earns the First Milestone achievement, and working through available objectives unlocks the next destination. The One Step Further achievement, earned by discovering a new planet, shows that exploration is gated by your building and mission progress rather than by story events alone.

Later milestones push you across the solar system. The achievement list includes transporting a sheep from Earth to the Moon for Wool Age and a mastodon from the Moon to Earth for Ice Age, so plan builds that can carry living cargo safely. Far ahead, you will activate Black Hole Tunnels with the Way Forward achievement and travel through one to a new universe for Event Horizon. The Edge Of The Known achievement asks you to find Tenebra, the farthest known planet.

• Focus on currently available objectives; they unlock the next planet or milestone.
• Design for living cargo once animal transport missions appear.
• Keep builds durable for long hauls, since the Long Way Home journey spans several worlds.

Co-op construction and crew responsibilities

Approximately Up supports co-op and online co-op, and the game openly encourages you to argue with your crew. The modular system means multiple players can attach parts at the same time, but that freedom can produce chaos unless everyone knows their job. It is not fully documented whether every base structure can be built collaboratively, so start by splitting the work on your main ship.

• Pilot: flies test runs and reports handling problems after each change.
• Builder: attaches new modules and routes cables along the frame.
• Scout: checks objectives, finds resources, and flags missing parts.

Layout and modular building tips

Good layout starts with balance. Giant thrusters provide power but need structural support, and cables are annoying for a reason: route them along the frame instead of across walkways or attachment points. Plan for access, because a module buried under later additions will need to be reachable when a crash forces repairs.

Keep critical modules near the center of the build and protect them with spare bolted parts. Symmetrical designs are easier to pilot at first, and they leave cleaner attachment points for future sections. When you expand, expand outward in balanced pairs so the ship does not list to one side.

Common building mistakes and how to avoid them

Most early frustration comes from a handful of predictable errors. Crashes are part of the design, but some of them are self-inflicted.

• Overbuilding: bolting on more thrusters than the frame can handle makes the ship hard to control. Add parts in small batches.
• Ignoring objectives: free exploration is fun, but you need objectives like First Milestone to unlock new planets.
• Blocking access: running cables or modules across doors and attachment points forces deconstruction later.
• Skipping test flights: always fly a short test after major changes, especially before long cargo missions.

If a build is not working,rebuild. That is the intended loop of the game, so treat every crash as a layout lesson rather than a failure.

Time Rewind: fixing construction errors

Time Rewind is the most reliable fix for construction mistakes. It lets you undo a bad build, a crashed test flight, or a mission attempt that went wrong. The No Rewinds! achievement rewards completing an objective without using it, and Golden Thruster asks for a full run with no rewinds at all, so the game clearly tracks how often you lean on it.

On a first playthrough, use Time Rewind freely while you learn the modular system. If you want the no-rewind achievements later, plan a dedicated run where you test every layout decision carefully. The game also supports Save Anytime, so create a save point before major rebuilds and you can experiment with wild configurations without losing working progress.