Hello, Cropdeckers!
This patch includes more changes around full-screen mode/game freeze/black-screen at startup, but also a few tweaks to the balance.
Balance tweaks
I received a lot of feedback about the game being a bit too hard in some places and the endless mode being too easy. Here are a few changes addressing these issues:
⭐️ Aston, the Good Boy (dog pet) now has -15% tax reduction, and 35 starting gems, instead of 20.
Small note: you need to start a fresh run to get the tax reduction.
⭐️ Endless mode difficulty, especially after season 10, is higher.
Taxes, mainly after and around season 10 are now higher. The difficulty curve also rises faster with each season.
Starting from season 6, all levels will have an extra yellow or orange hazard.
Markets should be more viable now.
Prices have been reduced by approximately 10%.
Initial card options will always include one card from each of the category: plowing, watering, plants, utility. Rerolls are more random.
Taxes in seasons 1-3 are slightly changed (a bit easier season 1, and a tiny bit harder seasons 2 and 3).
Taxes after the first week (mainly 1-star levels) are a bit lower.
Important fixes
Black screen or game freeze at startup
I have changed how the game loads video settings. This should fix some of the black-screen and freezing issues a few players have when launching the game.
👉 If you still experience these problems, please try these:
Launch the game with the following options (right click on the game -> Properties -> Launch options). This will force a windowed mode. You should remove those options for the next launch of the game.
-screen-height 720 -screen-width 1280 -screen-fullscreen 0
Launch the game with the following options. This will clear your current, possibly faulty, video settings. You can also combine this option with the option above.
-clear-device-storage
If you still experience these problems, please contact me 🙏 I want to fix these nasty issues so you can enjoy Cropdeck.
Wrong or empty save
Some players have problems with the game failing to initialize Steam, which results in an empty or incorrect save file loading. If it happens, the game will now attempt to load a save from the last logged user, instead of loading a "non-steam user" save.
👉 If you are affected by this problem, and the game still loads the wrong save, please do the following:
Try restarting the game until it loads a correct save. In short, the game has to successfully initialize Steam once for this fix to work.
You can also go to the in-game settings and try to recover a previous save (general tab -> Restore local save...). Now, it will show you all available local backups, including other users' backups.
If you still have problems, please contact me!
Best,
– Piotrek