Hello everyone!
I am finally releasing today new content in the Shipolis Playtest! The long awaited new sectors are finally there! It's time to grab your travel permits and sail to the boreal and tropical seas! You will find there new resources to collect and new production lines to set up. New accessible quests will also unlock new features like supply routes, export routes between sectors, and even the beginning of building a wonder! I hope you will enjoy all the new content.
Also, you will notice that almost all buildings got an improved design! Basically, I upgraded my pipeline to create 3D models for buildings. The goal was to make it easier and quicker to work this, and also to improve the consistency of all models in terms of shapes, scale and palette. And I'm quite happy with my new pipeline, it is definitely better than before. So I updated all buildings to my new system, and I hope you will like their updated look!
Also, the title screen got a new look! It now show a tiny world instead of the key art. The general shape of this world is fixed, but the biomes and positions of cities are randomized, so the title will look a bit different each time you launch the game!
If you have an ongoing save, this is reflected in the title screen as well, it will for instance show the snow sector if this is where you last saved!
And the cool thing is: you can actually move the ship! The title world is a bit bigger than what you see at first on screen. I might hide some easter eggs in there in the future...
That's all for the main part of this Playtest update. The rest is smaller improvements and fixes. Full changelog is below. As always, feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions in the comments. Or in my new Discord server!
What's next? I am planning to prepare for an official demo release. That means updating the store page with new screenshots and making a new trailer. I would like to add a bit more content again too, mostly new buildings. I also have a couple ideas for side mechanics / minigames I would like to experiment with, they could be a nice addition for the demo. So plenty of work to be done!
Thanks for your support, and see you next time!
-Radiant Sloth
Changelog v0.4d:
Added two new regions: Boreal shores at the north and Tropical desert at the south
7 new resources accessible
16 new buildings
2 new music tracks
6 new quests accessible
Access to supply routes, export routes between sectors, and first step of building a wonder
Improved the look of almost every building in the game to have better consistency
Reworked the title screen to be a tiny world with a playable ship
Added a small highlight animation around buttons when unlocking a new part of the menu
Improved the text of one quest to better explain that each island gives access to a limited set of natural resources
Tweaked sector generation to make islands with hardwood a bit more frequent
Removed a bunch of unused sound effects that were inflating the game size for nothing
Changed Small obelisk cost to use bone instead of wood
Fixed the docks not facing the water correctly in some rare cases
Changelog v0.4c:
Fixed workers not being free at disabled buildings when loading a save