0.30 — First Steps
The last update was about being able to talk to anyone. This one is about the game getting out of the way: a guide who walks you in, stories that let their people speak for themselves, and minds that answer faster. Everything still runs on your own machine, with no account and no connection.
Someone shows you around
Start the game and you're met, not dropped. A narrator talks you through moving, looking around, and walking up to someone — out loud, in their own words, and they'll rephrase if you ask. Say "help" or "I'm lost" whenever you want the current step again. Say "give me the tour" for the whole walkthrough, or "skip" to get on with it.
On the road you'll meet Wren. She has her own voice and her own way of talking, and a small thing she needs done. Doing it is the first goal you'll complete in the game, and the game tells you when you have.
If you've done this before, there's a Tutorial switch in Settings.
Stories show instead of telling
Narration used to fill silences whether or not the writer wanted them filled. Now a chapter only narrates where its author put narration. The rest of the time, the people in a scene carry it: they go about their business and say things as they do — a line as they pass, a remark at the counter — in their own voice, from wherever they are in the room.
Characters who talk in short sentences no longer get cut off mid-thought.
Minds that answer faster
The on-device engine has been rebuilt. First load at the main menu is noticeably quicker, characters start their reply sooner, and the words come a little faster once they do. Writing quality is unchanged. The 8 GB fit from last time holds.
Soft Fork, tightened
The clinic under the freight line got a pass. Characters stay themselves over a long conversation instead of drifting into someone else. They know how they feel about each other, and it shows. Iri now has a body that reacts to the world. And when you walk up to someone, they notice you before they speak, not after.
Typing to a character works the same as before: the field at the bottom of the screen, Return to send, a name to pick who you're talking to.
The stories live on the Workshop
First Steps is the only story built into the game now. Soft Fork, Rally, The Midnight Limited, and Last Call ship through the Steam Workshop, where they can be updated without waiting for a new build — and where your own stories sit beside them. The Workshop opens to everyone on release day.
Nothing is subscribed on your behalf. You choose what to install.
If a story was built for a newer version of the game than the one you're running, the game says so before it loads, instead of dropping you into an empty world.
The Construct
There is now a workbench for building your own scenes — press ⌘⇧M from the menu. You can bring in an avatar, place a few props, put a crowd in the background, and step into a rough version of a world to see if it holds up before you commit to it.
It's early. Expect gaps, and expect it to change. It's there for people who want to try building and tell us what's missing.
Also
One screen now carries the whole game, so moving between menu, story, and workbench no longer flickers. The debug avatar that used to sit in the corner during play is gone.
A note on what this is
Game of Mods is being built in the open, and this is still early. Characters can ramble. A scene can surprise you. We'd rather ship the honest version and fix it in front of you than polish behind a curtain. If something feels wrong, say so on the discussions board — the person who wrote the code reads it.
Thank you for being here this early.