In Brief:
- Parallel Studios detailed the Fabricator, the system in Colony: Survival that turns a written description into an equippable 3D weapon or helmet, and credited its partnership with Atlas3D AI and Google Cloud.
- Players describe an item, get a 2D preview in seconds, refine it, then spend Weave, an in-game currency earned through story chapters or bought in the Colony Store, to fabricate the finished asset.
- Colony went free-to-play worldwide on iOS and Android on Sept. 3, after almost a year of restricted testing that started on Solana’s Seeker phone.
Parallel (official site) Studios published a breakdown of crafting in Colony: Survival this week, spelling out how the Fabricator converts player text into gear a Colonist can actually wear.
The loop is short. A player describes an item, the Fabricator returns a preview in seconds, the player refines the description, and the system then fabricates it into a fully equippable asset in game. Parallel calls it AI-assisted UGC.
CRAFTING IN COLONY
Learn how the Fabricator is taking player creativity and item crafting to new heights in Colony, thanks to our partnership with @Atlas3DAI and Google Cloud.
LINK: https://parallel.life/blog/crafting-in-colony…Colony: SurvivalView on X ↗
Atlas3D AI and Google Cloud supply the machinery behind it.
What it costs, and what it makes
Fabrication runs on Weave. The currency comes from story chapters or from the Colony Store, and every generated item consumes some.
The output is cosmetic. Weapons and helmets are the two categories, and players review a 2D version before committing to the 3D object, which can then be equipped to a Colonist.
That keeps generated content out of the balance sheet. Functional gear goes through a different door: an interactive character called Skipjack helps players devise weapons and tools aimed at specific colony problems, and those items use the conventional crafting system with resource costs, production queues and completion times.
A third AI layer, Generative Dilemmas, lets players type their own response to a scenario instead of picking from a preset list, then watch how the colonist handles it.
The Atlas partnership
Atlas, the Vienna company behind Atlas3D AI, announced a partnership with Google Cloud on Aug. 18, 2025, and named Parallel as a collaborator at the time.
Atlas sells an agentic 3D content creation platform aimed at professional studios, built on Google Cloud infrastructure, using Vertex AI for orchestration and plugging into Unreal Engine, Unity and Houdini pipelines. It is also distributed through the Google Cloud Marketplace. The company claims its technology can speed up development workflows by up to 200 times.
Tommy Alvarez, head of 3D and immersive content at Parallel, said the studio wants to “embrace technologies that empower creativity, expression, and ownership,” and that working with Atlas lets it build experiences that are “more immersive, more personal, and powered by truly unique, player-driven content creation.”
Ben James, Atlas CEO, said Google Cloud provides the compute foundation and orchestration support. Jack Buser, global director for games at Google Cloud, framed Atlas as enabling AI-native game development through agentic design systems.
What Google Cloud runs
Google Cloud has used Colony as a reference customer for what it calls living games. Parallel runs the title on Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run and Cloud Functions, which Google says supply the scale and low latency for a world that never switches off.
The autonomous colonists are powered by Gemini. They hold persistent memories, personalities and evolving ambitions, and keep socializing and gathering resources while the player is logged out. Google Cloud describes the generative crafting engine as running on Nano Banana.
Sascha Mojtahedi, Parallel Studios CEO, described Colony as a world where “player intent, generative creation, and autonomous agents meet in a world that keeps evolving long after you log off.”
Parallel demoed the Fabricator in public earlier at the Google Cloud booth, No. 1227, at GDC.
Background
Colony: Survival is a sci-fi 4X mobile strategy game set in the universe of Parallel TCG, on an Earth wrecked by fighting between the five Parallel factions. Players start with a Reactor and build outward, adding structures such as the Barracks and Canteen, gathering raw materials, recruiting Colonists and fighting in lane combat.
It entered Early Alpha Access on Sept. 22, 2025, restricted to owners of Solana’s Seeker smartphone, and launched globally free-to-play on the App Store and Google Play on Sept. 3. Colony runs on Solana and uses the PRIME token.
Parallel Studios raised $35 million on March 28, 2024, from Distributed Global, The Operating Group, Solana Ventures, VanEck, the Base Ecosystem Fund, Collab + Currency and The Spartan Group, with angel checks from Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz and Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon. The round followed a $50 million raise from Paradigm in 2021 at a reported $500 million valuation, and brought total funding to $85 million.
The Fabricator is still being patched. A recent update added helmet rotation in 90-degree steps, fixed several issues across fabrication and improved performance on the Fabricator and Inventory screens.
