We've just added a fourth screensaver. This one is for displaying the airplanes and messages that you've marked as your favorites. Add some ambiance to your life and relax in the company of the finest words of your choosing.



We've also added a Clark sticker! The Kind Words composer, Clark Aboud, just added a bunch of new songs to Kind Words 2 so we put a sticker in there. And, as you know, any sticker added to Kind Words 2 also goes right back to you here in the original.

We've also simplified the title screen a little, removing a couple social media links. (I'm not really twitch streaming much anyways.) And put in a link to KW2 at the bottom.

There's also a new one-time-only popup letting people know that Kind Words 2 exists. If you're someone who reads these patch notes, that probably seems unnecessary to you. But you are an attentive and appreciated gamer.

Cheers,
Ziba & Luigi

I was planting tulip bulbs in the back of my house and I heard a rustling under the back steps. I kicked the steps a bit to scare away whatever cat or racoon was partying under there. Nothing ran out, but it got real quiet for a second and then there was this gentle popping sound. Whatever it was... it weren't there when I looked. But it did leave these neat little stickers behind! So we stuck them in the game. Enjoy!

Maybe you've noticed I've been updating Kind Words a lot lately. It's all been in preparation for today!

Kind Words 2 is now available!

• More players
  
• More stickers

The sequel contains a remaster of the original that runs on the very same server. That means every new Kind Words 2 player is automatically a Kind Words player.

You will be seeing their requests, responses and airplanes!

Because of you, Kind Words is such an amazing community. We wouldn't dream of splitting it. Two games, one warm internet hug.

Also stickers. Every new sticker for Kind Words 2 is also coming to Kind Words. The first batch already made its way in to circulation during the Kind Words 2 playtests. But today a new batch of 12 stickers will start making their way to your inboxes.




Most of the design of Kind Words 2 was inspired by observing what Kind Words players were trying to do in Kind Words, but that just didn't fit the space.

If you've played a lot of Kind Words, you may have run in to off-topic expressions of joy, creativity, invitations to vent or questions about movies and games. These are all great things to share with people and it always hurts to moderate them away. But the design of Kind Words is so focused on requests for comfort, responses and airplanes, that if we didn't do something, the globally shared inbox could fill up with unanswerable messages.

So Kind Words 2 has new, virtual spaces to handle all the quirky and joyful expressions that players have been trying to find a home for for the last 5 years.



I could go on, but I don't want to run afoul of Valve's cross-promotion rules :) The headliner here is: The game you already own, Kind Words, just got a bit more awesome today.

Thanks for being on this ride with us.


Yours,
Ziba & Luigi

Stickers:
Now that there are SEVENTY FIVE stickers in the game, we have to be a little more mindful about the space on disk and memory that they take up. This update uses some smarter compression options that won't change how they look but will reduce the game's build size by about 80mb.

Favorites:
Thanks to the multiple users who reported a softlock if you tried to view the favorites page before you've ever favorited anything. The old favorites system used to take a little time to check if you have no favorites. In a recent update I made it super fast to check your favorite count. Yay! Except that the system was expecting at least one frame of delay when checking. I made it so fast it broke. I'm the greatest?

With apologies to the many users who got a little scared when their stickers disappeared, I present this humble bug fix.

Your stickers were never really gone. They were always in your hearts. But I understand that you wanted them on your screen too. So that's where they should be now.

Also, things get less weird now if your internet keeps turning on and off.

That's what the whole sticker bug was about. The game would lose connection with the server and the game's response was not "Remain calm. it will be ok. These things happen." it was "Forget all stickers".

Should be better now.

Yours,
Ziba

Remember that period of a few years when there were no new stickers for Kind Words? Those were dark times. I'm glad we all made it safely here to the future. A future where we dropped new stickers last month and are now teasing even more for next month.

TEASE!



Consider yourself teased.

These 12 new stickers are coming to all Kind Words 1 players for free so that you can swap them with Kind Words 2 players when that game comes out on October 7th.

Yours,
Ziba & Luigi

You may have already noticed new stickers sliding in to your inbox. You may also have noticed a ton of new players writing a lot more responses this week.

Kind Words activity has always been strong, but lately it's is doing numbers it hasn't seen in a few years.

That's because we've opened up Kind Words 2 playtesting to everybody for a limited time. And since they're on the same server, Kind Words is extra busy.

So it's a fantastic time to jump back in and share some kind letters. Show the new arrivals just how gosh darn caring you can be. Also, come on over and play the demo for KW2!

Yours,

Ziba & Luigi

Thanks for the bug reports!

• The sticker name "SuperMegaUltraMan" was too long to fit on in the space provided.
  
• Exporting your message history could get stuck exporting....FOREVER.
  
• Some new stickers are hiding inside the game binary waiting to be released by Kind Words 2 players who will be talking to you soon. Yes, they would also just be downloaded from the Kind Words server if they weren't inside the game, but I wanted to put them out to everybody via Steam first cause they have big strong servers and I have to be a little careful with mine.

The slicker sticker picker is also quicker.

Don't worry, the cute sticker sheets are still there when you're decorating your room. But when you're choosing which sticker to send to somebody, there's a much faster way to review your adorable inventory.

But why, 5 years after launch and a year since the last update, would we push a seemingly small quality-of-life update?

A) Because we love you
B) It's actually a much bigger update

Kind Words 2 is coming and it will run on the same server as Kind Words. People playing KW2 will be sending you letters with new stickers they find. That means the original Kind Words needs to be able to understand what the heck is attached to those letters.

Also, since there's no room associated with the new sticker, Kind Words needs a new interface for you to enjoy the sticker and to choose it if you want to gift it to someone else.

Therefore:



The behind the scenes magic is this: stickers no longer have to be built in to the game. We can add new stickers to the server and the game will know what to do.

In fact, this update brings in 3 years of work we've done on the component of Kind Words 2 that talks to the server. We rewrote how the game talks to the server for greater reliability, efficiency and flexibility. And now Kind Words and Kind Words 2 share the same "client library". This is an important part of our commitment to supporting both games for a long time.

This update also uses the latest stable version of the Unity game engine.

Also, I fixed a silly typo on the help screen. Thanks to the multiple users who pointed it out. Spelling has never been my strong suit. Good thing my job requires me to write things lots of people read.

Oh, and KW2 playtesting will open up again pretty soon. So sign up, wishlist and say hi on our discord.

Cheers,
Ziba & Luigi

We like you too much to stop adding free things to Kind Words. And so I find myself sitting on a pile of 20+ new stickers that Luigi made which will soon find their way in to your letters.

We actually made all these stickers for Kind Words 2 (you did wishlist Kind Words 2, right?).

But since Kind Words and Kind Words 2 players can send letters to each other, everybody gets all the stickers! What are these stickers, exactly? I'm not telling. We have to keep some mystery in our relationship. But here's a teaser:



Kind Words will get these new stickers but, and for this I apologize, only Kind Words 2 gets the cool new rooms that go along with the stickers. I know, I know. I don't really want to create fomo. That's clearly not our brand. But we gotta save SOME shiny new stuff just for #2.

In summary, hang tight, do nothing and a batch of sweet new stickers will start showing up on your letters this year.

(also please, please wishlist KW2 so it does well and we can keep making free stickers forever)

Yours,
Ziba & Luigi