July Dev Update! Beta v0.50: Events, expanded Rival Marriages, & more

Hey everybody! I know we’re a couple days early but the July update is ready so here we are with the monthly development report!

We were thrilled to take part in Steam Next Fest during the month of June, a celebration of upcoming games with free demos. The Cattails: Wildwood Story demo launched June 1 in preparation for the event and is still live for anyone who wants to try it out. We’ll keep the demo up at least until the end of July.

We loved our time showcasing Cattails: Wildwood Story to players on Steam! We got so much great feedback and saw some excellent new traffic to the game’s Steam page. Here’s a couple interesting stats!

-22,500 users have downloaded the demo!
-The median playtime for the demo is over an hour (that’s super good for a demo! 😸)
-Cattails: Wildwood Story is currently ranked #558 out of all upcoming Steam games in terms of wishlists 🙀 (roughly 30 games release every day on Steam so this is really, really awesome to see)

Beta v0.50

We’ve also rolled out a game update to our beta-tier backers! Please note that these new features are not available in the demo.

New Accessibility Features

Two new hotly-requested items were added to the in-game accessibility options menu: Auto-run and Alternative Text!

Auto-run: Turn this feature ON and your cat will always run automatically, without needing to hit the run key. (Default: OFF)

Alternative Text: Turn this feature ON and all in-game text will be replaced with a simple sans-serif font alternative. We’re partial to the stylish hand-drawn font featured in the game by default, but we understand there are plenty of great reasons to want a cleaner, more legible option. We’ve selected Roboto Condensed - Regular as the alternative font as it generally fits the existing character of our custom font face. (Default: OFF)

We’ve also patched up a couple typos, made a few bugfixes, and added a “Sell Everything” button to shops that allow you to sell your items.

Rival Marriages - New Dialog, Mail, & Events

Last month we introduced the Rival Marriages feature to the game. This month we fleshed out some additional details that will make each Rival Marriage even more rewarding to complete.

-New Dialog: Unique dialog was added to each rival marriage spouse, including lines about their kitten(s) after they are born.
-Mail: You’ll receive a thank-you note from each rival marriage couple after you’ve helped them get together.
-Events: We’ll talk more in depth about Events below, but each rival marriage couple now has 3 special Events that must be witnessed before they will pair up!

Events

This is the biggest new feature in Beta v0.50! Events are special cutscenes that play when certain criteria are met. During Events, we have a chance to show the NPCs that live in your colony in a fun new way with scripted dialog and interactions with other NPCs. Some Events require your participation, and there may even be consequences for your choices, so pay attention!

We’ve added 30 Events to the game in Beta v0.50. We also know that some players may not wish to experience the interruption brought about by Events (especially during replays or speed runs!) so we’ve included a feature that allows you to bypass any event. Simply pause the game during an event and select “Skip Event” to instantly continue.

We trust that players who choose to watch Events when they occur will enjoy this new feature. Events have given us a great chance to showcase NPC interactions between each other (not just with the player) and really dig into the quirks and personality traits that make each character unique and fun to be around. You can really learn a lot about your neighbors by watching Events unfold!

Ok, that wraps up the developer update for this month! Looking to the future, we have a few months of development to go still with the impending addition of the Main Story. We’ll have more to say in a future post. Until next time!

-Tyler (@FalconDevelops)