October 3 — tutorial rivers, clearer controls, and safer voyages

This update improves the sailing lesson, menu navigation and several issues reported by playtesters. These changes apply to the full game and the demo.

Sailing lesson and controls

• The tutorial river now follows a chain of hexes with gentle bends, using the same river geometry, water checks and navigation rules as the voyage.
• River bends give ships more clearance on the inside without widening the outside bank. This correction applies throughout the world.
• When shore hauling is possible but you are not hauling, the lesson shows a large pulsing reminder using your current controls. Reduced motion disables the pulse.
• The point-of-sail display uses green for beam reach, red for in irons, and orange or yellow shades for the other courses. The written names remain.
• Options is available from the tutorial pause menu. Back returns to that menu without restarting the lesson, including when paused at the city or market.
• Tutorial status counts remain separated with taller script and high-legibility fonts.
• D-pad tab navigation follows the menu layout: Up/Down for vertical tabs, Left/Right for horizontal tabs. Shoulder-button shortcuts remain available.
• Rowing instructions are shorter and use the actual bound keys. Bottom action buttons now show their keyboard or controller bindings too.

Crew and localization

• Sailors are available across a wider variety of ports and provide a modest ship-handling bonus. Their hiring and management information explains it.
• Crewmates use given names, with localized name presentation for each language.
• Place names and composed interface text receive stricter localization checks. Rebound keyboard symbols remain readable without being mistaken for prose.
• Passenger offers preserve their reviewed translated paragraphs when distance or deadline information is added.
• Pixel-font raster checks have been strengthened to catch doubled glyph strokes and unexpected fallback fonts.

Dialogue and reliability

• Fixed an error when reopening a port after a recovery.
• Quest instructions and long greetings have more room, and long help pages remain readable through their page controls.
• Hull labels display rounded values without changing the underlying damage.
• Fixed North Sea navigation transitions that could move visible ships abruptly.
• Improved passenger destination guidance, ledger layout, credits spacing and full-shipyard explanations.
• The feedback form can send a reviewed report and game-state snapshot to the developer. Editing and caret movement have also been improved.

Thank you for the saves, screenshots and precise descriptions. They help us check both the reported problem and the other screens that share its code.

Screenshots

Shared river bends in default pixel text.

Beam reach and the hauling reminder in High legibility text.

Options without restarting the lesson.

Japanese High legibility text with separated status counts.