Hello, city builders!
As we move further into 2026, the studio is buzzing with activity. Today, we’d like to take you behind the scenes to share what we have been working on, with a focus on improvements that both enhance the base experience and support upcoming content.
Harvest Festival Progress
Work on the Harvest Festival DLC is progressing at a strong pace and remains a major focus for the team. Much of the content is now implemented, with systems beginning to come together into a more complete and cohesive state.
We are now moving into a new phase where we will begin playing through the content more extensively and gathering feedback on the experience as a whole. With the core systems now in place, the focus is shifting towards ensuring the gameplay feels intuitive, engaging, and aligned with the overall experience.
This marks an important milestone for the project, and we are continuing to refine and shape it over the coming weeks based on feedback as development progresses.
Royal Book Revamp
The Royal Book is receiving a series of improvements focused on clarity, usability, and better access to information across its pages.
We are currently overhauling several areas, with the Resources page being one of the first to be improved. These updates are part of a broader effort to make navigation and information handling more intuitive throughout the interface.
Resource Filtering Improvements
You will be able to filter resources by categories such as raw and refined goods, as well as by trade status, making it easier to understand how your economy is functioning at a glance.
Alongside this, we are improving overall usability and readability across the Royal Book. This includes clearer tooltips, improved layout structure, and more responsive interface elements such as scrollbars, which will require less precise input to use effectively.
Villager Issue Feedback
As part of this revamp, we are also improving how villager-related issues are presented. We are moving away from general “!” alerts towards clearer and more specific indicators, making it easier to understand and respond to problems affecting your villagers.
These changes are part of a broader effort to make the Royal Book clearer, faster to use, and more responsive to the needs of your growing settlement.
Building Menu Improvements
We are currently working on improvements to the building menu to make planning and expansion more efficient, with a focus on how information is presented and accessed.
One of the changes in progress is the addition of resource icons for workplaces and sub-buildings. For example, a bakery will now display a bread icon, allowing you to understand production at a glance before opening individual menus.
The search functionality is also being expanded significantly:
Related & Keyword Search
We are improving search behaviour so that related terms such as “berries” or “rustic food” bring up relevant production chains. Searches based on function, such as “logistics” or “lighting”, will also help bring up suitable buildings more easily.
Synonyms & Linked Terms
Search is being improved to interpret related language more naturally. For example, “army” may lead you to military structures such as the Castle, while “construction” will highlight the Builder’s Workshop. Other related terms will help guide you towards relevant buildings depending on context.
Monument Parts
We are adding a search bar to the Monument sub-building menu, while also extending the improved search functionality to this area. This will make it easier to locate specific parts using categories, keywords, and related terms.
A New Compendium
We are developing a searchable in-game Compendium that brings together information across many aspects of the game, including workplace recipes, buildings, village titles, and more.
The aim is to provide a centralised place where you can see everything that can be unlocked in the game, along with clear information on how to unlock it. This makes it easier to understand your progression at a glance, while also adding more depth over time, such as tracking whether certain items have been unlocked across different playthroughs.
The first two functions being worked on are a workplace recipes section, which will list all available recipes along with their unlock conditions, and a Village Titles section, which will provide clearer information on the different titles your settlement can achieve as it grows.
Support for DLC and Core Improvements
Alongside the Harvest Festival DLC, we are developing a set of supporting systems designed to enable event-driven features while also laying groundwork that may be carried into the core experience over time.
One of these focuses on how villagers visually respond to events. An outfit system is being developed that allows villagers to change attire during specific occasions, such as the Harvest Festival, helping reinforce the identity of these moments.
Another system focuses on decoration activation. This allows festival decorations to be placed and adjusted outside of events in a preview-style mode, similar to monument building, with their full visual impact only appearing when an event is active.
We are also developing a more flexible workplace recipe framework, allowing a single workplace to support multiple production options depending on context. While this is being introduced through the Harvest Festival DLC, it opens up wider possibilities for the future of production systems. The exact use cases across the core experience are still being evaluated, but it represents an important step towards more dynamic production design.
Logistics Improvements
Community feedback has highlighted logistics as an area many of you would like to see further developed and refined. This topic has been raised regularly, especially in discussions around how resources move through larger and more complex settlements.
To better understand this, we have gathered and reviewed feedback from a range of sources, including Discord, Steam forums, Reddit, and internal discussions within the team.
Following this initial review, we are now preparing a more detailed diagnostic and plan of action to address the key points raised. This includes identifying areas where clarity, efficiency, and overall behaviour can be improved, as well as exploring opportunities to better support larger-scale village organisation.
This is an ongoing area of focus, and we will share more information as this work progresses.
Technical Improvements: Texture Streaming
On the engine side, we are improving how the game handles high-resolution assets in memory by introducing a system known as texture streaming.
At the moment, high-resolution textures are kept in memory even when they are not actively visible. With this system, these assets will be loaded dynamically when needed, such as when they enter the camera’s view, and unloaded again when they are no longer required.
The goal is to reduce video memory usage, allowing us to support larger settlements and more content without increasing performance pressure. It may also help players with more limited video memory, although systems with ample VRAM are not expected to see a noticeable difference.
This builds on our existing use of level-of-detail models and texture mipmaps, improving how higher-quality assets are managed during gameplay as villages grow in complexity.
That wraps up this devlog. We hope this gives you some insight into the work happening behind the scenes as development continues across both the DLC and core experience.
The Polymorph Games Team