It's been a productive week of working on Agraria, and hopefully we're nearing the point where the demo is ready to roll out.
Most of the work has been balancing and polishing. The little things that make the game work just a bit better. Increasing the payout for private orders that offer Aggies (the game's general currency), livening up sunsets, preserving key emails... that sort of thing. But a few big changes have snuck in as well!
The harvest festival kept getting mentioned in various tangential ways - podcasts talk about events, there's a trial that tasks you with supplying the event (hello, pumpkins!), etc. But it never really OCCURRED for the player. Now, it does, in a very Agraria way!
You'll get an email informing you of the upcoming event on Fall 20. A delivery crate will appear on your farm, and you can put one crop inside. As you might imagine, high-value, high-grade, organic crops are best. The crop gets sent off on the day of the festival, and goes up against 11 other farmers. You'll be informed of your performance, both overall score and relative placement, a few days later, and if you come in 3rd, 2nd, or 1st place, you'll get a really nice reward.
I've been working on this for awhile, but finally got everything pieced together. Caps are now a collectible customization option in Agraria! Once acquired, they can be worn at the player's closet. There are 32 caps to collect. 2 are granted from specific events. The rest must be aquired by trading with the new NPC - Capsquatch!
Capsquatch wanders the Agraria Valley, adding to his cap collection. Occasionally he'll drop by your farm. If you find him, you can trade Aggies for new caps to add to your own collection. Some are reasonably priced, but a few are collector's items, and Capsquatch won't let them go cheap!
The cap system required an update to the save manager, so beta testers will notice that saves get updated. This shouldn't affect progress.