This update reworks housing for players and villagers in Animalkind, adds decorative plots that your villagers will treasure, and adds a layer of progression to your town. This is a major update that will make existing worlds incompatible going forward, so please read below on how to continue an existing world. We hope you enjoy this update and please let us know if you have any feedback or reactions in our Discord!
Version 0.7.0 is a breaking update and what this means
With this latest version update, game worlds that were created in previous versions will not work correctly. This can happen with major updates and it is difficult to avoid at times. This is our first breaking update, so we wanted to explain what’s happening, how to get around it, and when it might happen again.
The most important point is that these worlds will not go away, but we have made it so you cannot play them in version 0.7.0 or later. There is a way to continue playing them, but you will have to switch to a special branch.
Version 0.7.0 fundamentally reworks how the villagers and players are housed in the game, which is incompatible with existing worlds. In this case we didn’t see a good way to migrate older versions, so instead we’ve prepared a beta branch for players who want to continue their existing worlds. We’ve also updated world selection to indicate which worlds were started on older versions of Animalkind. See the next section for details.
Breaking updates are something we really want to avoid in general, but we didn’t see a good way to migrate in this case. We believe 0.7.0 is a huge step forward for the game towards our vision for 1.0, so we didn’t want to hold it back. We don’t expect another breaking change until the update to 1.0. If this changes, we’ll communicate it in community channels.
How to continue an existing world (pre-0.7.0)
To continue playing an existing world on a pre-0.7.0 version of the game, you can opt into a special branch through Steam. What this does is allow you to play an older version of the game, which will be fully compatible with your saved world. You won’t be forced to update the game until you choose to leave this branch. We’ve provided some instructions on how to switch to the special branch below.
Step-by-Step Instructions
Open your Steam library
Right-click on Animalkind to reveal a menu
Select “Properties” from this menu
In the Properties menu, select “Game Versions & Betas”
In the Game Versions & Betas submenu, select “0.6.18”
Close the Properties menu
Animalkind in your Steam library should now read “Animalkind [0.6.18]
Version 0.7.0 Summary
The 0.7.0 update is focused on the town-building aspect of Animalkind, reworking how housing works for both villagers and players while also introducing new features called Nooks and Villager Happiness. In the following sections we go into a lot more detail, but the main point is that town-building going forward is a bigger part of the Animalkind experience than before.
Introducing Nooks and Nook Kits
Up until now the buildings you placed in your town were mostly functional. Your villagers could be shown a house to live in or a shop to work in, but that was the extent of how buildings worked. The villagers and the game itself didn’t encourage you to go beyond putting down those functional buildings. Nooks are our name for a new way of approaching building your town.
Nooks are essentially themed zones that you place on your island to form a more well-rounded town. They work similarly to houses in that every player and villager will have a nook that they call home. But villagers will be associated with up to three nooks each, including their home and their shop (if they have one).
Nooks are created from nook kits, which spawn next to your portal in the home island. You create a nook by locating one of these nook kits, moving it to where you’d like to create a nook, and opening it. This will mark the nook’s boundaries when you’re in design mode, as nooks are more than any building that they contain. They also include the plot of the land that they are on and allow you to use Design mode inside and outside of buildings now.
The big difference is that nooks reflect the decoration needs of their associated villager, expressed as tags. These tags identify what kinds of decorations will meet a need. For example, a “cozy” need would be fulfilled by a cozy chair (which has the cozy tag). Each nook also has three stars representing how much the nook’s contents fulfills its decoration needs. Villagers get especially excited as you decorate their nooks, making them happier. We’ll get into villager happiness in just a bit though…
Introducing the Town Level
Alongside Nooks we’ve also created a new system called “Town Level” which represents how much progress you’ve made with your town! Barney will provide you with a special town board that you will be able to interact with to see your Town Level and how to progress. We recommend stashing the board near your town so that it is convenient to check out.
Town Level is based on three measures: villagers, villager happiness, and nooks. Basically you’ll want to recruit all of the villagers that you can, befriend them and make them happy, and decorate any nooks that they provide you! To recruit more villagers and get more nooks, you’ll need to increase your town level occasionally. You can use the town board to see who you’ve recruited, their current level of happiness, and the nooks available to you.
There are four town levels that are achievable in version 0.7.0, with plenty of villagers and nooks to use to get there.
Villager Happiness Deep Dive
Villager Happiness is another new system in the game, replacing the Friendship system that was low-key and in the background of prior versions of Animalkind. The goal with this change is to make the town and its villagers feel more dynamic and life-like.
The basic idea is that each of the ways that you interact with villagers will now help make them happy. Talking to them, fulfilling quests, providing them nooks and decorating them, sharing meals and exchanging various types of gifts all contribute to each villager’s happiness. Villagers care about you interacting with them in these ways occasionally and their happiness from these activities will fade after a few in-game days. In other words their happiness will maintain or grow when you are regularly checking in with them, sharing meals, and helping them with quests. Villagers won’t be extra happy if you do a lot of one type of thing, for example quests. Learning a villager’s preferences can also help give you an edge, as some villagers will be extra happy if you share their favorite meal or gift.
Some sources of happiness are closer to permanent and you won’t need to maintain them as much. For example, making sure a villager has a nice nook for their home and other nooks that they care about will make them very happy as long those nooks are around and well-decorated. In other words, adding or removing decorations can cause a shift in a villager’s happiness.
Each villager has five levels of happiness in version 0.7.0. There aren’t any special rewards if you maximize their happiness - other than the benefits of having a higher level town.
Item Tags Deep Dive
With version 0.7.0 we’ve added tags to items that can be placed as decorations in nooks. There are currently over 30 different tags in the game, though some may not show up immediately in this release.
The basic idea around tags is that we wanted a way to match items to the decoration needs of our villagers, and that each tag on an item should make sense based on its purpose and visual design. Items can have more than one tag, allowing smart decoration choices to fulfill multiple needs at once.
New Decorations
With nooks and decorating highlighting this update, we added a number of new decorations to the game to help you realize your vision for your town. These new decorations include themed sets such as appliances for your home kitchens, stone decorations perfect for a park, picnic decorations, and more! We’ve also added food items that you can actually place on tables or wherever you’d like. All told there are over 30 new decorations!
These decorations are available in a variety of ways, so make sure to check out the various shops and pay attention to the unlocks as you complete quests or codex milestones!
Other changes with version 0.7.0
Recipe unlocks were moved around to coincide more with nooks becoming available, generally earlier than before
Tutorials were added to support Nooks, Nook Kits, Villager Happiness, and other additions
Various tutorials were adjusted to have better timing
Increased spawn rate of codex fragments in all islands
Reduced codex fragment requirements in Tallwoods and Snowrock
Addressed an issue causing players to spawn in the wrong location in Tallwoods
Made snapping more intuitive and easier on bridge pieces (making Tallwoods much easier to bridge)
Addressed an issue causing some seeds to not snap in placement
Added unique icons to a number of plants, making them easier to distinguish in shopping and inventory screens
Adjusted some dialog associated with quests that was misleading or confusing
Removed some daily quests from Rosie that were not as enjoyable as we’d like
Addressed an issue causing iron and silver ore to resist multi-collection
Watering reticle was adjusted to be easier to see in Snowrock
Various controller bindings were made more consistent
Addressed issues with floor decorations overlapping
Addressed issues with outlines around some world objects
Addressed an issue where extra text would show up in the daily recap screen
Addressed an issue where the invite modal would overflow
Addressed confusing dialog around the large and cooking campfires
Thank you for playing Animalkind and reading through this dense update! Please drop by the Discord server if you have any issues or feedback, your input is unbelievably helpful in improving Animalkind.
Have a great week!
The Uncommon Team 🐾