Ahoy Critters! Our “Brains, Bones and Badges” update is out now, our second update of the year and it’s a big one, with two more buildings added to the town, Steam achievements, a SEA SCOOTER and much more.
Hiring a medically-minded Critter to run the Clinic will allow you to treat sickly residents and tourists alike, giving your tourism scores a healthy boost. While Critter Cove offers free healthcare for all, you’ll first need to rebuild the facility and tackle some new repeatable quests to keep the medicine cabinet stocked.
If the thought of having Pokee as your doctor makes you feel even more unwell, but nobody else seems like a good fit, you can now also rebuild the school house. This lets you retrain critters in different jobs, allowing you even more control over your town.
Whether you’re a master of exploration, a crafting genius, or a social butterfly, there’s an achievement (AKA badge, we needed that third “B”) with your name on it. As of now, these shouldn't require a fresh save to trigger, but if anything feels "fishy," let us know in the dedicated Steam forum thread.
We’ve added a bunch of new customization options including pig and boar noses, new ear options, and a ton of new back options – these also will now live in their own tab in the character creator since our options are overflowing! Plus there’s some new music and animations to enjoy, and this cool new goth dress (the music isn’t goth but don’t let that stop you).
New Critters Hanzel, Bogo, Nova, Julie, Xolotl and Emberneigh can all be found in the world, plus we’ve made another two houses available in the town, bringing the current resident limit to a grand total of 21.
The new sea scooter can be acquired via a quest line from Anchor and works as an equip able item to allow for MUCH faster underwater exploration. If you’re not quite ready to go that fast, we’ve also added some awesome new fins that increase your underwater speed without a vehicle.
We’ve added new visual and audio cues for when things are cold or you’re running out of air, we’ve made all the ladders in the game actually climbable, and we’ve continued to make improvements to the controller, adding some new remaps and tweaks to the UI and added mirrors to most of the businesses around town. Check the path notes for the full list!
We’ve been busy behind the scenes finalizing our path to 1.0, and also our console plans. We’re very close to working out a roadmap to 1.0 and a final release date, but we’re not quite there yet.
Our next update should launch around the end of April. We hope that will cover the final new features we’ll be adding during Early Access. After that, we’ll want some time to really polish and improve the game we have. That will include a lot of bug fixing, but we will also be adding in new dialogue, and some QoL features.
We don’t want to rush out for the sake of it, and we’re super grateful to everyone providing feedback as we go.