Fallen Earth celebrated its one-year anniversary this week, so we sat down with Senior Game Designer Marie Croall to reflect on the past and look toward the future.

Fallen Earth celebrated its one-year anniversary this week, and the development team is keeping pretty busy for a game that's set in the wasteland of a post-apocalyptic future. Patch 1.7 is now live, the game's soundtrack has been released, premium features have been added to the game's mobile Companion App, the Customer Rewards Program is under way, and you can still take part in the anniversary events throughout the weekend! Oh, and did I mention an in-game wedding will be held on Sept. 25?

With so much activity going on in the world of Fallen Earth, we decided to sit down with Senior Game Designer Marie Croall and discuss all of these topics. Marie reflects on the past year and gives us some more information on patch 1.7 and beyond. Keep reading after the jump for the details, and be sure to check out our Fallen Earth screenshots gallery for exclusive images of the in-game anniversary event!

ZAM: Congratulations on Fallen Earth's one-year anniversary! How does it feel to celebrate 12 months in the wasteland?

Marie Croall: It's pretty incredible. We've had some ups and downs since release, but overall it's been fantastic to see the game out there.

ZAM: What are some of your favorite Fallen Earth memories from the past year, both in-game and out?

Marie Croall: Launch day was pretty cool. I couldn't pick just one out-of-game memory, though. Instead I'd have to say that my favorite moments are any time the team really gets together to solve a problem or develop new content. It's pretty inspiring to watch and quite often hilarious.

ZAM: What are some of the major changes the game has undergone in the past year? What should players who tried the game a year ago keep an eye out for if they decide to log back in now?

Marie Croall: In the past year we've raised the level cap by 5 with a whole new area for players to run missions and craft in, we've added Blood Sports (our arena PvP system), Achievements, a limited fast travel system, a minor respec system, camp system, taverns, Blackjack and Slot machines, customizable colors for vehicles and now clothing. In addition to that, we've introduced a weather system, re-done the trees to improve the look of the game and added some new lighting effects that we started implementing with the Quarantine event (and will be seeing a lot more of in future patches). It's been a busy year for us.

ZAM: Speaking of changes, is there a push to make Fallen Earth a bit more accessible to new players through upgrades like the revamped tutorials, faster leveling, and minor respecs? Were these options you ever expected to add a year ago?

Marie Croall: The revamped Starter town tutorial missions were definitely re-done to get players into the action faster. Respecs we had always planned on putting in, in some form or another. There is a bit of a learning curve with FE, and while we don't want to over-simplify the system we also never want players to feel punished for changing their minds about their builds or play style.

ZAM: In addition to Fallen Earth's anniversary, this week also marks the launch of the Fallen Earth soundtrack. Many MMOs don't release soundtracks, so I thought this was an interesting move. How did it come about?

Marie Croall: For this question I went right to our Audio Director Mike Franke! He said, "The music in Fallen Earth was definitely a labor of love." Everything was done in-house from writing to mixing to implementing, all done by only two people: Enrique Varela and Mike Franke. The soundtrack is something that has always been on our radar, it was just a matter of time and the right way to distribute it independently. Earlier this year we had the opportunity to have our tracks re-mastered, which was awesome, and brought some new life to our music. While the old masters sound good in game, the re-mastered tracks sound even better!

The hardest part of defining our soundtrack was to select what to put on it. We have well over five hours of music in Fallen Earth and there was definitely some back and forth in deciding which ones made the cut. We feel that what we chose is a fair representation of the apocalypse, with room to grow further down the road.