Patch Notes for 4/25/2026

Performance

I took a pass at the things that were making frame rate dip in larger settlements. A few hot spots in the rendering loop were doing more work each frame than they needed to:

• Smoother frame rate with lots of villagers and wildlife. Depth sorting (the system that decides what draws in front of what) now updates a couple times less often. You won't notice the difference visually, but the game has more headroom for the rest of the simulation.

• Faster combat with hunters. Hunter targeting no longer scans your entire population every frame to find the bow-users, it just remembers who they are and updates the list when roles change.

• Off-screen wildlife stops "thinking." Birds, bats, rats, and other ambient critters now pause when they're outside your view and pick right back up where they left off when you scroll back. They were burning a small amount of CPU pretending to wander around in places you couldn't see.

Visuals

A bunch of layering bugs that became visible during weather:

• Rain and snow now render in front of buildings, not behind them. Same for fog effects.

• HUD elements stay on top during storms. Tooltips, floating "+5 Wood" text, building HP bars, and the rotation widget no longer get hidden behind rain or snow.

• Fog of war correctly covers weather in unexplored areas,  rain doesn't fall on tiles you haven't discovered yet.

• Seasonal color grading applies on top of weather. The autumn warmth, winter blue, and spring green tints now color the entire scene, including rain and fog, the way they were supposed to.

Notes

I am still watching frame time on larger maps. if you've got a save with a packed late-game settlement and notice slowdown, please post details (Era, population, weather conditions). It helps me prioritize the next round of optimizations.

Free Post Release Content - Always

6/06/2026 - Massive Content Update - Searching for beta-testers via Discord.

Update 1: Wilds & Omens

The world just got teeth. Albino elk haunt the snowline, elder bears that remember winters you don't, and if you hear the yale at dusk — start praying it's not hunting you. Seasonal hunts, rare bestiary unlocks, and creatures that only appear when the conditions are just right. Some are beautiful. Some are omens. Good luck telling the difference.

The wilderness remembers. Now it fights back.

The forests beyond your walls are no longer empty. Update 2.0 transforms the wild into a living, breathing ecosystem — new creatures to hunt, ancient beasts to fear, and stories your settlement will tell for generations.

A World Full of Prey

Seven new animal species roam the land, each appearing as your settlement grows:

Young Deer — Skittish and quick. A test for any apprentice hunter.

Gray Deer — Larger and tougher, found deeper in the forest.

White Deer — Rare and elusive. The old tales say they only appear to settlements blessed by fate.

Black Bear — Smaller than its brown cousin, but no less willing to fight.

Polar Bear — A mountain of white fur and muscle. Hunters who bring one down don't stop talking about it for seasons.

Elder Bear — An ancient omen beast, wreathed in forest moss. It was here before the first fire.

Spirit Deer — Translucent and swift as thought. Its hooves don't touch the ground.

New Threats in the Dark

Three new enemies join the nightly raids:

Goblin Archer — Small, sharp-eyed, and patient. You don't see the arrow — you hear the thud.

Gnoll Warrior — They hunt in packs and they're faster than they look. Gnolls don't negotiate.

Kobold Footpad — Alone, a nuisance. In numbers, a catastrophe.

Raid warnings now tell you exactly what's coming — "2 dire wolves, a bandit, and 3 skeletons" — so you can prepare accordingly.

The Bestiary

A new long-term progression system rewards mastery of the wild:

Track every species you've encountered and killed

Hunt all species to complete the Bestiary and earn a permanent +5% hunting food bonus

Difficult kills grant bonus experience to your hunters — tougher prey means faster growth

Your settlement reacts to what you bring down. Omen beasts spark celebrations. Rare kills earn recognition. The common rabbit? Just dinner.

New Milestones

Five new achievements to chase:

Bear Slayer — Kill your first bear

Big Game Hunter — Bring down five

Rare Quarry — Hunt your first rare animal

Diverse Hunter — Kill five different species

Master Naturalist — Complete the bestiary

Earn the Bearhide Lodge — a new settlement title for proven bear hunters with a growing population.

The World Speaks

Five new narrative events respond to the seasons and your choices:

Bear Den Discovered — Workers find a den near the quarry. Clear it, trap it, or leave it be.

The White Stag — A once-in-a-lifetime sighting. Hunt it for a legendary haul, or revere it for fortune.

Swarm of Bats — An autumn plague of wings. Light fires, send hunters, or endure.

Tracks in the Snow — Something massive passed through in the night. Follow it, fortify, or send an expedition.

The Great Hunt — The forests teem with game. Rally every able body for the hunt of a lifetime.

Every creature now has lore text in the Codex — 19 hand-written entries that bring the bestiary to life. Ambient narration shifts with the seasons, from young deer in the tribal undergrowth to polar bear tracks in kingdom-era snow.

Acerca de este juego

About This Game

From Embers is a survival city-builder where every villager has a name, a family, and a story. Starting from a single campfire, you'll assign workers, construct buildings, research technologies, and guide your people through harsh seasons, monster raids, and difficult choices - advancing from a tribal camp through four distinct ages of civilization.

Every run ends. Every run matters.

Know Your People

Your villagers aren't numbers. Each one has a unique name, up to three personality traits, ten trainable skills, and family connections - parents, spouses, children. They marry, grow old, and are remembered in eulogies when they fall. Click any villager on the map to see their full history. When your most legendary citizens die, their story doesn't end - they become ancestors whose traits echo into future generations.

Survive the Seasons

Spring is for growing. Summer is for building. Autumn is for stockpiling. Winter will test everything you've built.

Food production drops sharply in the cold, blizzards can cripple your entire settlement, and if your stores run dry, your people will starve. Every year is a crisis waiting to happen - and surviving the harshest winters permanently hardens your villagers.

Rise Through Four Ages

Advance your civilization across four eras - Tribal, Settlement, Kingdom, and Empire - each unlocking new buildings, technologies, resources, and threats. Watch your humble campfire grow into a castle surrounded by academies, markets, and monuments.

Build With Intent

Place 30 unique buildings across a 70×40 isometric grid, where strategic positioning matters. Thirteen district bonus pairings reward thoughtful layouts - farms near granaries boost food production, libraries adjacent to academies accelerate research. Every placement decision shapes how efficiently your settlement runs.

Make Hard Choices

Dozens of narrative events challenge you throughout each run - welcome refugees or hoard supplies, fund the scholar's research or put everyone to work, negotiate with raiders or rally your defenders. Multi-event storyline chains unfold differently based on your previous decisions, ensuring no two runs tell the same story.

Defend Your Home

When night falls, monsters come. Wolves prowl the wilderness, bandits raid the settlement, and as your civilization grows, trolls and siege ogres threaten your walls. Train soldiers, build barracks and guard towers to strengthen your defenses, and set rally points to direct your warriors. Your hunters patrol the fields by day while your soldiers hold the line after dark.

Prestige and Begin Again

When you're ready, reset your civilization and carry forward Legacy Points to unlock nine permanent upgrades for faster gathering, larger starting stockpiles, reduced building costs, and more. Your greatest villagers become legendary ancestors. Ghost outlines of your old settlement echo across the new map. Each run starts stronger than the last.

Features

• Four eras of civilization: Tribal, Settlement, Kingdom, and Empire

• 30 unique buildings with 13 strategic district placement bonuses

• 18 technologies forming a branching research tree

• 40+ narrative events with multiple outcomes and branching storyline chains

• Six resources, ten worker types, 13 personality traits, and ten trainable skills

• Full day/night cycle with seasonal survival pressure

• 10 weather types plus three catastrophic mega-weather events

• Five huntable animals and six monster types with scaling difficulty

• Nine prestige upgrades and legendary ancestor inheritance across runs

• 34 milestone achievements and 11 dynamic settlement titles

• Three difficulty levels with autosave

• Hand-painted isometric pixel art with animated villagers and weather effects

Credits & Attribution

From Embers is built with art, music, and tools from talented creators whose work made this game possible.

Isometric Buildings & Terrain Hand-painted medieval sprites by JP Cummins -

UI Art Citadel RPG GUI by Kodiak Graphics - kodiakgraphics.itch.io

Creature & Villager Sprites Sourced from the Wyrmsun project by Andrettin, with sprite art by b_o, Jinn, Kwaliti, Gregor-Mack, and Wildfire Games. Licensed under GPL 2.0 / CC-BY-SA 3.0 / CC0.

Ore Sprites Ore Pack by CaptainSkeleto

Music Free Fantasy Music Pack and Firewood Music Pack by TomMusic - tommusic.itch.io

Sound Effects Free SFX Fantasy Pack by TomMusic - tommusic.itch.io

Fonts Source Sans Pro by Paul D. Hunt (Adobe) - SIL Open Font License Gentium Book Basic by J. Victor Gaultney and Annie Olsen (SIL International) - SIL Open Font License Rooters by Twicolabs Fontdation -

Steam Integration GodotSteam GDExtension by the GodotSteam community - - MIT License

Engine Built with Godot Engine 4.5