The summer holidays pushed this update back a little longer than expected, but it’s finally here! This small update introduces a new Visual Info Card in the menu, making information about plants and animals much easier to understand at a glance. 0.14.00 ======================================================= · Add Plants and Animals info card in the menu. · Fix issue when clicking over the menu…
Hello everyone. Today, I'd like to talk a little about biomes . Over the past few weeks, I've been focused on calibrating and fine-tuning the biome systems . It's now mostly functional and ready for players to explore. But what exactly are biomes? Biomes are special environmental zones that emerge naturally when the right combination of terrain and vegetation is present. Create the proper condi…
Hello everyone. As time flows, we draw closer to the Demo Release . All core mechanics are now in place. The next step is calibration and fine-tuning . Calibration plays a major role in a simulation . This is where we determine whether a plant consumes too much water, or if a tree grows too slowly. We calculate the balance between mice and available grass tiles, and estimate reproduction rates…
Hello everyone. Still alive and working hard on the project. For a long time, I wanted Small Living World to be a pure sandbox . No story mode, no quests, just an open-world sandbox. But times change, and so do users' requests. At first, it was designed as a tutorial mode to help new players grasp the basic concepts of the game. But early in the design, I discovered: hey, this could become a fu…
Hello everyone. Your passionate indie developer behind the keyboard. With the playtests came another realization: the game UI wasn’t great : steamsad :. It worked, but it could be better. So we went back to the drawing board and redesigned the in-game menu ( with the help of a talented fellow tester ) . This required some changes, but less than expected. In just two weeks, we were able to revam…
Hello everyone. It’s me... again. Playtesting revealed an issue with the scoring system . I was already aware of the problem, but the tests confirmed it. We originally used a score number to represent the world’s progression. This proved confusing , since points are also used by tools. Having two large numbers on screen made it hard for new players to understand what each one meant. So we decid…
First of all, Happy New Year 2026 everyone ! I will start the year slowly. Today, I want to share a bit of the behind-the-scenes work of game development. Not everything we work on becomes a gameplay feature. This month, I coded a tool to help create the game’s trailer. It’s a simple automated screen-grabber that saves a sequence of images, which will later be merged into the video game trailer…
Hello everyone. This month, we quietly started the beta testing phase . Let’s call it a private alpha . It’s better to begin with a small group of testers, so if anything goes horribly wrong, not too many players will be affected. Fortunately , nothing horrible surfaced, and we received very valuable feedback . Beta testing can be very motivating . For the first time, we get to share the game w…
Hello everyone. I suppose you were expecting this new Dev Diary. This will be a short one. I simply want to present the game’s new soundtrack . For this game, I wanted something different and original. I delegate this task to a talented music composer, Marco Cutini ( ). To give the musician maximum freedom, only minimal guidelines were provided. I believe artists are at their best work when giv…
Hello everyone. Time for another Dev Diary. This week, I want to highlight the new Entity Information window. In the first game , this was one of the major weak points — when a plant or an animal wasn’t happy, it was often unclear why. The game didn’t provide enough detailed feedback. In the new version, I’ve focused on improving that aspect. Now, by clicking on a plant or an animal, you’ll see…
Hello everyone. Welcome to Dev Diary number tree ( little pun here, it sounds cool ) . Ok, next thing, we need to revamp the store screenshots to truly showcase the game’s quality, something the current ones just don’t capture. But something held me back : the look of the trees at maturity. Their branch layout felt strange and unbalanced, so I need to rework them first. And while at it, why not…
Hello everyone. Time for the second dev diary . Just in time, I should add. After reworking the in-game UI, it was time to tackle the main menu . I won’t show images of the previous version, as it was just a messy collection of placeholders. We took the time to do it properly, hoping we won’t need to revisit it. And, I think we have achieved a pretty good result. Guillaume has drawn a superb ba…
Hello everyone. Welcome to the First Small Living World 2 Dev Diary! Let’s call it SLW2DD … or maybe just Dev Diary to keep things simple. In this series, I’ll be sharing game development progress on a monthly basis . At least, that’s the plan. Let’s see how diligent I turn out to be. If you’ve seen the latest screenshots, you might be wondering—where’s the UI? Well… it was hidden. Because hone…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.