Hello everyone!
It's been just over a week since the Early Access release and thanks to your massive pile of feedback, I already made 5 updates addressing some of the most important bugs and balance issues to quickly get to a more enjoyable version.
I would like to share my thoughts about how development has been going since the launch and my plans for the future.
Generally the reviews and general feedback have been quite positive, which makes me so glad and it will help the game for the long term. The negative reviews mentioned performance issues, which is completely understandable and I will be addressing these over time. My apologies if you're one of those affected and thank you for your patience.
I felt it was necessary to patch some of the gameplay bugs sooner rather than later, even though it could potentially cause some short term inconsistencies on current saves. I did overlook a couple bugs so I'll try being more careful before pushing an update. For example, a tiny misplaced collider prevented players from building anything on the terrain, which was alredy fixed.
Hopefully we reached a point where there are no more gamebreaking bugs - though please let me know on discord or Steam discussions if an emergency patch is needed. My workflow long term is better suited for larger updates that are more throughly tested and have additional content, so that's the plan going forward. The pace of the updates should be similar to what I've already been doing in the past 3 years with the playtest and the demo.
My top priorities are in this order:
Important bug fixes for the current players
Solve the CPU bottleneck to allow new players to enjoy the game
Add additional content (I have plenty of ideas)
In case you missed the changes, here is the complete summary:
Changelog 0.4.5
- All furniture can now be placed in the witch tower, townhall and abandoned houses
- Added labels to map zones, but it requires a new world as I can't add objects to already generated maps
- Paintings and fireplace now can also be rotated
- Rubble inside abandoned houses can be cleaned up with a broom
- Campfires and tents no longer break apart after a week and may be removed with an axe
- The monster can now destroy campfires and tents on the map
- Increased monster HP from 130 to 180 to match the new game balance
- Doubled the collider size of the monster to make it less likely to attack through walls
- Furniture can no longer be destroyed by the monster from outside the hut
- Kozinak no longer spoils and can be conserved forever
- Slightly reduced chance of finding ingots in the mud chests in favor of ores
- Added an additional terrain collider to help prevent instances of the player or animals falling through
- Unstuck button now correctly positions the player at the starting location when out of bounds
- Added a safety cleanup script to maintain performance during long plays
To address players potentially losing unique essential items:
- Added the potion and cauldron books in the tent shop in case you lost it
- Added a unicorn (disguised as a horse) to the tent shop in case the unicorn you saved disappeared
Changelog 0.4.4
- All furniture inside the tower and townhall can now be destroyed
- Fences no longer need to be built on a grid and can be rotated
- Cats no longer runs away to its original position after digging out a chest
- Fixed items floating when the table or chair they were on got destroyed
- Fixed an issue with dropped stacked items potentially disappearing (investigating single items)
- Added missing HP bar on the tower bookcases
- Removed problematic barrels in fenced areas
- NPC fences and furniture no longer can be attacked
Changelog 0.4.3
- Furniture and crop fields no longer require a grid and can be freely rotated
- Benches, tower tables, chair, armchairs and chests are now breakable
- Added missing tooltips for the craftable items
- Added tooltips for the required constructions (campfire, anvil, vanity table)
- Fixed the dialogue for the second quest of the lumberjack
- The vagabond now sells ruby at his tent shop
- Half wheat and rye breads now last 33% longer
- Fixed a bug where you could not smelt in the furnace if the ores were in a basket
- Reduced the HP of bookcases inside abandoned houses to match other furniture
- Removed half of the nests on rocks for more map variety
- Increased stack size of cooked pumpkins from 10 to 20
- Minor UI improvements
Changelog 0.4.2
- Small adjustment to the new stat depletion rate for Chill World
- Fixed a bug where crops would grow 100x faster
- Fixed a bug where the horseshoe could not be crafted at the anvil
- Doubled the stack size of traps from 5 to 10
- Reduced the effect duration of potions from 48 to 36 hours ingame
- Fixed a bug where you could equip the enchanted broom (it should disappear after learning, so you don't have to carry it around)
Best wishes,
The Developer