As we head into spring, the team has been hard at work building upon the foundations we laid down last month.
Let’s not waste any time and take a look at what we have been cooking behind the scenes!
Last month we laid the groundwork for the new Underground Areas.
We focused heavily on the details, decorating the spaces, refining the atmosphere, and making sure the environmental storytelling is on point.
These new zones are the first major step into our underground expansion, and we can’t wait to hear what you think once you finally step foot down there!
But we haven't just been focused on the dark.
Back on the surface, we are currently revamping several key locations to give them more life and make them easily recognizable:
Faction Leader Rooms: We gave both faction HQs major visual upgrades to better reflect their leadership and ideologies.
The Tavern: We polished both the interior and exterior to make it feel like a true, lived-in community hub.
The Doctor's Clinic: We updated the doctor’s room design so it stands out clearly.
We listened closely to your feedback regarding how you interact with the world, and we implemented several new systems this month to improve clarity and immersion.
To help you in finding specific NPCs, we worked on a new “pointing” system. Asking an NPC about another NPC’s location will make them point toward that individual. For NPCs they do not know personally, they are programmed to point toward the appropriate faction or area to guide you on your way.
We noticed that UI notifications for survival mechanics could sometimes get lost when performing other actions. To solve this, we created the "Player Thoughts" system. We designed it so that when a character encounters a new mechanic or suffers a status effect, a thought bubble appears over their head.
This is just our first iteration, and we plan to keep building on it for better, immediate feedback.
A major focus for the team this month was redesigning aspects of the UI to ensure players won't be fighting menus or missing crucial information in the upcoming patch:
To prevent those frustrating moments where a shop owner interrupts a trade to kick you out, we added the shop's closing time directly to the HUD while inside a store.
We gave conversations more visual personality. We designed different styles for chat balloons so players will be able to instantly tell if an NPC is just chit-chatting, delivering important lore, acting aggressively, or just speaking normally
We restructured how radio broadcasts are displayed. Instead of requiring players to stand right next to a radio to read its messages over it, we routed that text directly to the HUD.
Many of you asked, "What is this item needed to repair this structure?" We heard you! We updated the Repair UI so that it explicitly spells out the ingredient names, completely removing the guesswork. This will help us also with the new tool tier system that we will be adding later (more on that in a few months!)
We also took a hard look at the Atkers. We know their spawns could sometimes be incredibly annoying, especially when they interrupted conversations or escort sequences. We adjusted their spawn conditions and numbers to make these encounters feel much more balanced.
Balancing is an ongoing process that we will continue tweaking with every update. While we tuned the default experience for this next patch, our long-term plan (after the 1.0 Full Release) is to add custom World Difficulty sliders to accommodate everyone's preferred playstyle.
Our team managed to track down and address many of the bugs and crashes you reported, especially the frustrating and unfortunately frequent "item logic" crash...
However, because this fix touches deep systemic logic, and because we added so many new areas and underlying systems this month, the upcoming patch will require a save wipe. You will need to start a new game once the update drops.
We know losing progress is tough, but it is a necessary step during Early Access to ensure everything works fine together.
Phew, this was a long one! Thanks for sticking with us to the end!
We accomplished a lot this month, and we are thrilled to let you experience everything we've put together.
Hang tight, Citizens, you'll be able to get your hands on them when the update drops next month!
Which of these newly built features are you most excited to see? Let us know!
Till next time!!!