The demo moves to version 1.0

Exactly two months to release!

Build 1.0.1509. This is the final version of the demo: polished, updated on your feedback, and brought in line with everything that has happened to the rest of the game since the last build. The version number is the release one now, but the demo's scope is what it was: one run, as the Student. The rest is for the full game :)

Here is what is new.

• "Choose Your Destiny". The Student's first event now asks what to study: "Architecture", "Law" or "Programming". The starting kit is the same either way; only the bachelor you are enrolled in differs. Until now the major was decided for you by a line in a file you never saw.
• Six new careers, each with its own five-course chain, employers and icons: architecture, police, law, construction, music, culinary. These are two-attribute careers: every rung asks for both and trains both. The "Construction Laborer" needs no diploma and no equipment. The "Dishwasher" takes you at sixteen with no requirement at all, but kitchens run longer weeks than other jobs of the same tier. Musicians audition: the two lowest rungs hire at 45 % and 50 % odds instead of the usual 70 % and 65 %.
• Habits. Two new timed debuffs and the events that hand them out: "On the Bottle" (happy hours, a nightcap, and the coworker who keeps asking you out for drinks) and "One More Spin" (free spins and a table in the back room). Each lasts eight months and wears off on its own.
• Statuses that cost you time. "Guild Raider": the "Raid Night Invitation" event pulls you into an online guild that reserves ten hours a week in "Time allocation" for ten months and pays a little happiness; a month without an equipped computer gets you kicked early. "Off the Grid": three months without an equipped phone cost ten hours a week and a little happiness until you equip any phone. Both show as a locked row in Time allocation, with the months left or the way out under the name.
• "Merry Christmas". A yearly December event. Its recap shows next year's inflation and the mortgage rate that follows from it, with the change from this year.
• "Career ladder" in a job's details. A job card ends with the whole promotion ladder: your rung marked, the ones you have held filled in, the rest dimmed. Hover a rung for its salary, monthly effects, hours and a hiring checklist with ticks and crosses. The same hover works on the jobs under a course's "Unlocks jobs".
• A wider electronics catalogue. Nine new phones, computers and accessories on the three lowest tiers, with renders and new brands. Every tier now has two phones, two computers and three accessories, so it is a choice rather than buy-or-skip.
• More gigs, a fuller leisure menu. Nine new gigs on the three lowest tiers (33 in all): every tier has two for each of Intellect, Fitness, Charisma and Creativity and three for Cunning. Six new leisure bookings (18 in all): six per tier, on one grid of 20, 16, 12, 8, 5 and 2 hours a week.
• "Durability" instead of odds of breaking. An item you own has a durability bar: 100 % the month you buy it, 0 % the month it is certain to break, green, amber, red. It sits on the inventory tile, the loadout slot and the detail pane. An item in the bag has it too, with a caption that it ages but cannot break in the bag.
• Room ambience is back, with its own "Ambience" slider under "Audio" and a different sound for every home. The "Notifications" setting is a volume now, not a checkbox.
• Checkpoints. Outside "Iron Will" the game keeps a snapshot from the start of each of the last two years. The load window marks them "Checkpoint" with a "Start of {year}" line, and they load like any save.
• "Resources panel on the right". A checkbox under "Display" moves the cash, health and happiness panel to the top-right corner, right above "End planning". The panel can also be moved with a button on the panel itself, in game.

Changed:

• The jobs board. Only vacancies you already hold the diploma for are posted, so a new diploma adds a rung instead of replacing the old ones.
• The education board. A branch can offer the rung one step above its entry course, so you can enter a field straight at the bachelor and skip the certificate; the chance grows with your tier.
• Event titles say what is happening. 21 titles that used to be a joke or a metaphor now name the situation, and the choice buttons make sense without reading the body. The five breakage events are called "Your phone broke", "Your outfit wore out" and so on, and the recap names the loss.
• Gigs are named after the activity, not the job title ("Snake milking", "Helping people move"). In the eight gendered languages, gig and leisure cards no longer guess the player's gender.
• Every money stream a status carries (parental allowance, alimony, a gambling habit, a night-shift bonus) scales with inflation like everything else.
• The happiness and health tooltips name the slider behind each line. "Lifestyle" is gone: the happiness drift is labelled "Free time", the health drift "Sleep".
• Character portraits are warmed to the lamplight of the rooms.
• Tooltip text is larger (16 px) and wraps wider.
• The end-of-month warning about missing hours fires only when a job or study contract is actually short. A skipped week of gym or streaming no longer holds up "End planning".

Fixed:

• Saves from older demo builds load cleanly even where the content has changed since. Ids that no longer exist are repaired or dropped on load, instead of leaving a rent-free flat forever, a zombie job or a board that never refreshes again.
• An event can no longer open with every option locked. The soft-lock where both buttons were grey (a cash bar plus a skill bar) is closed for every event, and a pending event whose options all became unaffordable lets you pick one and go into overdraft.
• "Reset save data" no longer freezes the window for many seconds with the confirmation dialog stuck on screen.
• The character window: the focus frame on "View inventory" no longer hugs the text, an attribute at 100 no longer shows a progress bar, and the "Work", "Education" and "Effects" tabs show a scrollbar.
• Inventory tiles are bigger, the product art leads, the name is one line with the full name on hover; the longest names no longer break the grid.
• "The Dreamer" on the locked roster card is masculine in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, like the portrait.
• Stray quotation marks in the French car event, gendered past-tense verbs in Russian, Ukrainian and Polish texts, and a few clumsy item descriptions ("never falls over" is "never crashes" again) are corrected.
• The Student's goal explains itself. On character select, "Tier 2" in the goal line is highlighted: hover it and you see every job currently on that rung.

Balance. Every number is here so you can tell whether your strategy still works:

• Items live 30 % longer: no breaks for 24 → 31 months, certain break at 54 → 70 months. Prices, repairs (70 % of the purchase, vehicles 20 %) and vehicle buy-back are unchanged.
• Cheaper low-tier electronics and clothing: "Refurbished phone" 850 → 700, "Refurbished laptop" 1 000 → 850, "Fake HShock watch" 650 → 550, "Huixianglong Redme Note" and "Huixianglong Mibook Air" 3 350 → 2 850, "Huixianglong Miband", "Huixianglong Mibuds" and "Lemon Polishing Cloth" 2 500 → 2 150. Clothing 650 / 2 500 / 4 600 → 550 / 2 050 / 3 750. Item stats are untouched.
• The overwork health penalty is gone. Job plus commute above 50 hours a week used to cost −0.20 health per hour each month. Long hours now cost only your free time, and a job's health cost is the figure on its card.
• The event pool leans toward work and study. Share of random events: career 17.6 % → 35 %, education 22.4 % → 22 %, social 29.4 % → 17 %, financial 13.3 % → 11 %, health 11.8 % → 11 %, wildcard 5.4 % → 4 %. Events are as frequent as before; only what comes up changes.
• "Drinks After Work?": the reward for going +8 → +4 happiness, and it now applies "On the Bottle"; the event left the every-month slot for the general pool with a long cooldown.
• The leisure grid: "Live concerts" 3 → 2 hours, "Spa day retreats" 3 → 5 hours, both repriced to the grid.

If something looks wrong, the "Report a bug" button in the menu goes straight to me.

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