The demo has been dormant for a while now, but this update brings it functionally in-line with the current state of the game's development. This means all QoL, fixes, early-game changes, and system reworks that the current build of the full game has. This will now feel more like playing the early areas of the game as it will be when it is finished. This also adds a small bit of new content, namely a new task which comes with its own area, monsters and boss.
CHANGELOG:
Big Changes
Movement
Completely overhauled the movement system. The game now uses a hybrid system, somewhere between "pixel movement" and "tile-based movement". This should make movement feel smoother, while still maintaining the game's tile-based interaction and collision system.
Added full 8-directional interaction support. Now, you can highlight all 8 tiles surrounding the player with the mouse, and interact with diagonal tiles directly.
Mouse users can now also interact with (and highlight) the tile directly beneath the player, such as picking a crop the player is standing on.
Added a new farming tile highlight for non-mouse users. It will show which crop plot you're targeting, making gamepad/keyboard positioning much easier.
The camera movement has also been reworked to work in harmony with the new movement system, and should now be smoother in general.
Added a toggle to the options menu which reverts the movement system back to tile-based, while maintaining all of the new interact features (requires client restart)
Enemies now wander around, can hear you, can see you, and will chase you
Visuals
Added new default post-processing effects to the game camera. These additional "HD" filters can be scaled down or disabled in the graphics settings
Added a new optional retro CRT filter to the graphics settings
Added lots of new particle effects, and overhauled some visual elements (such as rain)
Added brightness, contrast and saturation scaling to the graphics menu
De-coupled the game's color desaturation filter and the chroma separation filter. You can now scale both of these independently from the graphics menu. This means that folks who were sensitive to the chroma filter can disable just that while leaving the game colors unaffected, and folks who want to keep that chroma filter can still scale the game's saturation to become more vibrant as they like
Reworked the Character Customization scene and effects
Reworked all the window borders
Updated the game text to make it more crisp, have a cleaner outline, and the text box backgrounds are now darker
Reworked the day/night lighting transition system. It should now change more gradually, and maintain mid-transition changes between map changes
Updated the death scene image to new artwork
Updated the item placement visuals to make valid placement tiles clearer
Farming
Reworked the farm tool range system completely. You can now hold down the "OK" key or mouse to charge the tool, and release to hoe/water the highlighted tiles. Clicking normally without charging will just affect the targeted crop (as if your tool were lv1).
Holding down the "OK" button or left mouse when harvesting a crop will now allow you continuously harvest crops near as you move around
Holding down the "OK" button or left mouse when planting a seed will allow you to continuously plant in a line as you move forward
Interacting with a watered crop now tells you the seed name of that crop
Reworked the farm map a bit
Floor tiles and fence now connect to each other as you place them
Floor tiles now play the proper footstep sound while walking on them
"Large" floor tiles were removed, as they are now all the same type. Picking up a large tile will return a regular one. Existing large tiles will not connect or play footstep sounds properly, but will still remain unchanged on the map. Some fence will need to be picked up and placed again to make them connect.
Added 2 new types of products made in the Prep Table/Drying Rack: Rawhide and Herb Bundles
Added 1 new crop: Leadleaf. This is a new material used in the forge. Buy the seed from Crawford.
Added an upstairs to the farmhouse (though it just has some locked doors for now)
You can now re-color small wood chests.
Reworked all of the Ranch Animal and Ranch Building menus.
Reworked the appearance of the Levels menu
Reduced the rate of Black Goat events triggering by half
Equipment/Combat
Difficulty can now be both increased OR decreased at any time from the bed, and doing so will only affect achievement availability (once they actually exist)
Added a new system: Equipment Upgrading. You can now use the new Lapidary Table forge upgrade to unlock the ability to add gems to your equipment at the anvil. This upgrades them to a higher level, adding whatever bonus stats the gem listed. In this way, you can customize your gear in many ways.
Added a new forge upgrade: the Lapidary Table. This is unlocked via a new task, which you will get mail for on day 5 or later.
Added a new area to the mall mines (unlocked via the new task). It has new enemies, and gives you far more ore rocks to mine per mine regen.
Added 3 new regular enemies and 1 new boss
Added 50+ new "Gem" items, each of which can add different stat bonuses to different types of equipment, and have different equipment min/max levels for upgrading. Gems can rarely be found all over the world, through pretty much every type of loot.
You can now hold Control while viewing an item in the equip scene to see each of its individual gem upgrades, in the order applied. This will make it easier to see what a Clear Gem will remove if used
Completely reworked all damage formulas.
Added a new system: Equipment Types. All weapons, armor and shields now have a "Type", which is a universal bonus that all equipment of that type has (such as "Heavy" weapons having a chance to stun the target). Many types were added, so take a look at your gear and see how they've changed!
MP no longer scales with level, meaning it will only come from gear
Changed the stat display in the crafting scene. You can now hold Sprint or Control to view the same stat comparison window shown in the equip scene (including the new "type" info)
All equipment slots are now visible without scrolling (making it easier to notice the last "Trinkets" slot)
Equipment slots now show "New!" text on them until entered when you find a new piece of equipment, making it easier to know where to look for your new item
Added more stat information to the equip menu, such as the stats of the currently equipped item, and a total change value
Enemies will now only use their own AP, rather than randomly selecting which enemies attack from the total pool of enemy AP
Magic-based weapons now also increase the MP cost of skills and rituals relative to their damage
The chance for enemies to stun the player has been reduced
Battle items now remove Stun when used (instead of just bypassing it once)
Added a new system: Combat Shrines. Players can now place Combat Offerings at shrines found at the start of the Mall to make the enemies harder. You can add up to 5 levels of difficulty, with each level making drops more common, as well as adding new unique rare drops for each difficulty level. You must also unlock your 2nd AP before you can place Combat Offerings.
Hard Mode is now always at combat shrine level 1, and Nightmare is always at level 2. The enemy strength is the same as usual, but you can now find some special drops by default to suit the enemy stat bonus on those difficulties, making them feel a bit more unique.
Overhauled all enemy loot tables, and the way loot is rolled for.
Added 10 new crafting materials which are exclusively dropped by enemies
Added 3 new armor sets to the forge, which use the new materials rather than mined ores, and don't require any forge upgrades to craft
Added 6 new pieces of jewelry to the forge
Added 8 new food items to the various cooking stations
You can now re-order and hide certain skills/rituals in battle via the Abilities menu
Skills added by equipment are now always shown at the top of the list in battle
Skills disabled by equipment are now hidden completely in battle
Sealed skills are now clearly marked as "Sealed by Equipment" in the Abilities menu
You can now hold control/L/R (by default) to show all player and enemy state tooltips in battle, so keyboard/gamepad users can use this feature
Replaced the "Strange Doll" and "Lost Ring" key items with equivalent new equipment. These will be replaced automatically if you already have them.
QoL / Misc.
Slightly increased the amount of friendship awarded from gift-giving
Added a friend mail system. Townsfolk can now send you gifts in the mail. Quality and message content scales with your friendship level.
Tanner and Molly now have regular NPC schedules
Implemented a ton of new optimizations, specifically aimed at improving the framerate on heavily decorated farms. On existing saves, there may be a noticeable lag on the farm when you first enter, but just give it a moment.
Added new treasure spots which rarely spawn in most outdoor areas, and can be dug up using the hoe to obtain items
The item stack limit is now 9999
Crafting recipes that you have all ingredients for will now be highlighted green
The sell price of items is now displayed as part of their name tooltip when hovering over them in the inventory/storage/shop
0g and unsellable items no longer show up in the sell tab in shops
Shops now display all stock items in a single list, rather than having separate categories for items and key items
Added "drag-and-drop" sorting to the inventory and storage. You can now hold "OK" or the mouse click to drag items around, re-ordering them. This organization persists until all items of that type are removed from the inventory.
You can now drag items from the inventory to the storage item list, directly placing them between the target items in the container (and vice-versa)
Added multiple additional sort modes for the storage scene: Alphabetical, Time Added, Category and Sell Price. Changing between these modes will keep your custom sorting from the "drag and drop" changes you have made untouched, and switching back to Manual mode will return that sort order and re-enable the drag and drop feature
Added a new "Deposit All" button to the storage scene. This will deposit all displayed items from the inventory, allowing the player to either deposit all of their items, or items of a certain category by filtering the displayed items via the category tabs
Added a new search feature to the storage scene, which filters items which include chosen text, which can be further filtered via category tabs
Cleaned up the storage UI in general to remove redundant buttons and make more space to display items
Rugs now require a Lifter or holding Control to be picked up (just like tiles), allowing them to be placed beneath other interactable objects like chests without causing issues.
Added an option to lock the framerate to 30 fps
Reworked the save load menu to always show the autosave in a separate window, and start with it selected
Added subtitles to the radio
Added media playback buttons to the radio, and a playback speed toggle
Added a new "Background Mode" button to the radio. This allows the radio to continue playing in the background instead of the normal background music until you leave the current map or open the radio menu again
The radio now plays continuously, and loops when reaching the end of the track list
The tutorial control prompts now detect your gamepad/keyboard, and show only relevant buttons for your device
Added a dynamic save list rebuilder. Now, if your global file (which handles your save file list in-game) is ever out of sync with the save files in your folder, it will rebuild itself. This will also happen if it is missing or corrupted, so broken save file lists from bad save transfers, power outages, etc. are a thing of the past.
Little Changes
Fixed a crash when clicking on an empty item slot in the discard scene
"Lower" decorations like tiles/rugs can now be picked up without needing to be standing directly on top of them
The Face/Body selection screen in character customization now shows the actual current portrait
Enemy target selection should now always remember your last target
Fleeing should now reset your remembered battle commands, to avoid accidentally clicking it again in the next battle
Added new failsafe features to prevent keybind soft-locks (such as initiating a gamepad rebind without a gamepad connected)
The Difficulty Select menu now always starts the cursor on the default difficulty
Fixed the Artwork for Abigail task
Fixed furniture sometimes appearing out of bounds when loading the home map after sleeping.
Fixed some gamepad remapping issues (such as wrong button icons and issues with directional remapping on PS controllers)
Added a new smart system for detecting "tall" events, using sprite detection to allow activating events under the mouse instead of the highlighted tiles in specific circumstances. This should make it easier to activate events via mouse in general.
The bobber sprite has been updated to work better with the new movement system.
The pre-title video clips now respect the game's master and bgm volume settings
Added a new "Item Icon Scale" setting which allows you to resize inventory/storage/etc. item icons significantly
Fixed the one-way scroll wrapping in many menu lists. They will now stop at the bottom, even if you press down again
You can now pass through pets, making them far less realistic (or perhaps more? Since they are now frequently right under your feet...)
Pets can now pass over lower decorations such as carpets, so they wont get trapped as easily
Un-equipping an item now also plays the equip sound effect
You can now scroll mail with any left/right button (not just A/D), and there is now a prompt at the bottom of the scene, and a visual scroll bar
Fixed the issue (in all cases that I could test) where the default cursor would appear and remain visible after some specific window-changing interactions
Completely reworked the game's lighting system. The new system should mostly look the same, but runs significantly faster.
Added a failsafe to keep trough feed limits from changing to impossible numbers
Fixed some stats showing way too many decimal places
Fixed some object placement bugs, including some tiles on the farm blocking placement and objects not always having the correct footprint during placement
Fixed the fishing bar sometimes appearing full for a moment when rendering for the first time
Improved cursor graphic latency
Updated the crafting menus to show more info without scrolling and added auto-scroll after 8s
Crafting "Success!" text now displays for half as long
The Tax Sign now states the names of owed items
Fixed the lighting sometimes becoming dark at the wrong time
Fixed a bug that causes the bath in the tutorial to not show any options
Fixed a freeze that occasionally happened at midnight
Reduced the frequency of bugged/flickering sprites when tending to crops
Fixed casks sometimes incorrectly showing that they have an aged item and giving an error when interacted with (reload the area to fix existing bugged casks)
Fixed trees and flowers sometimes being fully grown when planted
Fixed the "show fps" option resetting on game reload
Fixed black bars refreshing repeatedly sometimes during cutscenes
Fixed state tooltips displaying through the skill select window in battle
Fixed that annoying visual bug which caused a rectangle to flash in the top-right of the screen during sleep and some loading scenes
Fixed changes to Max HP also affecting current HP, creating unintended exploitable situations