Greetings Shopkeepers!

We have some very exciting news to share with you. Winkeltje is getting a sequel called Faire Trade aimed to launch later this year!



Winkeltje was our first venture into the shopkeeping genre and we have learned a tremendous amount from it. Many of these lessons could not be retroactively applied to Winkeltje and so it made a lot of sense to the team to start working on a sequel that will eventually go beyond the experience that Winkeltje has achieved thus far.

Faire Trade

Faire Trade is a shopkeeping simulation game that builds on its predecessor on a rebuilt foundation with much greater aspirations. It contains essential features such as buying low and selling high, customers, shop building, furnishing, decorating, crafting, farming, and a lot more. In addition, exciting new features will be introduced during early access as the game develops, based on feedback from our community.

https://youtu.be/oxo8N7mnYuA

Let’s start with the obvious, why change the name from Winkeltje to Faire Trade?

When listing all of the things that we wanted to improve in Winkeltje, the name very often came up as something that could be better considering its international audience.

Winkeltje as a game name is still dear to our hearts as developers with Dutch roots. But we also realize that ‘Winkeltje’ does not have much meaning outside of a Dutch audience so we wanted to update this to broaden the game's appeal to our global community, now spanning 16 languages.

Rebuilt from the ground up

Many of the other things we wanted to improve came down to foundational architectural choices that are incredibly time consuming and risky to change in an existing game. Given that the team was inexperienced in the relatively young shopkeeping genre, we had underestimated the interest and wishes from the community for us to continue to build and expand on the shopkeeping simulation experience. This meant that we had often implemented solutions that would ultimately limit the scope the community wanted us to reach.

We have succeeded in improving on foundational Winkeltje systems, such as pathfinding, but this turned out to be an incredibly monumental task in a game that in development was effectively treated as live service across multiple platforms.

Improving on things for Winkeltje like modding support, materials and lighting, and button remapping, turned out to be such foundational changes across multiple platforms and languages that it would change and destabilize the game to such a degree that it was a better choice for us to leave Winkeltje at its peak and try to surpass it in a new and better game.

What can you expect?

• Content
  In Faire Trade, models have been changed at a fundamental level to allow for faster creation, better performance, and more color variety. This overhaul required pretty much all existing Winkeltje content to be revisited and updated to reap the benefits of this new standard. The amount of content has more than doubled compared to Winkeltje.
  
• Gameplay
  Faire Trade has more complex mechanics with new ways of crafting, farming has gotten a significant upgrade, and there’s a dynamic economy running in the background to keep things interesting. In addition to this, we are working on enjoyable new side activities to complement your life as a shopkeeper.
  
• Mods
  Modding support was also a frequently recurring request from the Winkeltje community. Faire Trade has been built from the ground up with modding support in mind, making almost everything moddable. You will be able to add new content, modify existing content, add new art, or even build new features. Together with you, we very much look forward to exploring the exciting new possibilities that mods can bring to Faire Trade.
  
• Life outside the shop
  Faire Trade now has a village to explore! You can visit the tavern, unlock new decorations in the Guild Hall, talk to locals or buy new color variations from the local artist.
  
• Much, much more..
  Faire Trade opens up an exciting and overwhelming amount of possibilities and there is a lot more in the works that is currently too early to show. There is an invigorating challenge ahead to reimplement many Winkeltje features the way you loved them and strive to add a lot more exciting ones that we know you will grow to care for.

If you are as excited to play Faire Trade and help shape the future of shopkeeping simulation then we invite you to join our Discord to learn more.

The best way that you can support us right now is to wishlist Faire Trade here to stay up to date on developments on Steam.

That’s all for today, we hope that you will join us for another adventure!

This update tries to properly fix the problem where customers and employees are getting randomly stuck. This has been a long-standing issue and has been around in one form or another since 2022. This problem was caused by a combination of simple issues in our code, which were easily fixed, and issues with the pathfinding solution, which proved to be incredibly problematic to solve.

Winkeltje, as many have known it since early access nearly 5 years ago, uses the built-in navigation solution that is provided by the Unity game engine. This solution is also known as Nav Mesh pathfinding. Nav Mesh is short for Navigation Mesh. Unity is able to generate a Nav Mesh during gameplay which then returns a mesh surface area on which the agents, like customers, employees and the cat, can navigate. We use the term agent for any entity that uses the pathfinding system to navigate.

Here you see an old example of the Nav Mesh being regenerated when furniture gets moved.



Using the Unity Nav Mesh as our default pathfinding solution had several advantages:

• It is the go-to solution for pathfinding in Unity.
  
• It runs fast enough for Winkeltje.
  
• It is easy to set up and implement.
  
• It is easy to work with and adjust.

As recent years have shown, it also has some downsides:

• It may cause agents to get stuck in seemingly random places without clear feedback as to why.

Here you see an example of an agent getting stuck when using Nav Mesh pathfinding. This occurrence is super rare with a very high negative impact to the player experience.


In games, when there is a static environment that does not move, it is relatively easy to fix issues when a pathfinding agent gets stuck on the Nav Mesh by manually adjusting the Nav Mesh. It is also common in static environments to cover up the issue by placing a random crate where the agent would get stuck. It is a blessing and a curse that Winkeltje provides players with a lot of freedom in building and decorating their shop. So it is not unthinkable that sometimes, a player creates a shop that sometimes just.. breaks.

We have tried a lot of things to try to get to the root of the problem where agents get stuck such as creating a higher resolution Nav Mesh, having the agent calculate a more accurate path, simply checking if an agent got stuck and probably about a dozen other things. Sometimes a week and a half would pass without any reported issues for this problem to pop up again. And on occasion, it would rightfully earn us a negative review.

Many of our attempts fixed the symptom of the issue in singular reproduction cases. But then the symptom would appear again in other reproduction cases. None of our attempts fixed the actual root of the issue, and we could not manage to dive into the black-box Nav Mesh pathfinding system that was provided by Unity.

A Nav Mesh is made up out of triangles and here you see an example of how an agent could very rarely potentially get into a pathfinding problem on a randomly generated sliver of a Nav Mesh splinter.


Obviously, it's madness to rely on such an unreliable pathfinding outcome with such a big negative impact to the gameplay experience. And so we made the tough decision to replace the entire pathfinding solution...

A thought that gained more popularity as we got increasingly more frustrated with this problem, was to just throw the entire Nav Mesh pathfinding system out the window and replace it with something else. Internally, we have fought against this notion for a very long time, because replacing such an integral system of a live game that has shipped on multiple platforms after about 5 years of development is a very risky, substantially complicated, and potentially incredibly problematic idea.

After doing significant research for a solution that addresses our use case, we arrived at the very popular and effective A* pathfinding plugin. A* pathfinding has been around for a long time and has been used in hundreds of games. Fortunately, someone by the name of Aron Granberg has developed and maintained a Unity implementation of the A* pathfinding algorithm since 2017, which has been used by Unity games like Cult of the Lamb and Void Bastards.

Here you can see an example of how the A* navigation grid looks in a shop that we have created for testing the pathfinding replacement.


The biggest difference between the two systems is that the old implementation uses a mesh and the new uses a grid. This is currently proving to be much more consistent and reliable to work with and makes debugging generally a lot easier. Hopefully, this also results in fewer problems for us to solve in the future.

The main advantage that the A* package has over the Nav Mesh system is the reduction of complexity in the surface that an agent has to traverse. The A* grid squares simply have a certain size. If an object intersects with that square, that square simply can not be traversed by an agent. Smaller sized squares will increase pathfinding precision at the expense of computation speed. We have tried to find a middle ground between accuracy and performance with our current implementation.

You will notice the A* grid the most when you rotate rectangular pieces. In the example below, you can see how some areas in blue would previously be accessible using the old Nav Mesh system but are now blocked.


Replacing the pathfinding system can cause some shop interiors to become invalid depending on how dense players have designed their shop. Most shops that we have tested work just fine. But knowing Winkeltje players, some will certainly have pushed the building system to its limits and will find that those limits have shifted a little bit. All things considered, we believe this is an overall improvement to the gameplay experience when you consider that some players would sometimes lose a lot of progress due to a pathfinding agent soft-locking the game.

We hope to have given you a valuable glimpse into this issue that, until now, has plagued Winkeltje's shopkeepers and its developers.

• Gameplay - Interact radius now increases up to double the starting value at max shop level.
  
• Language - Updated all translations to reflect community feedback.
  
• Pathfinding - Replaced old pathfinding system with a new system because agents would get stuck.
  
• UI - The unlock menu would incorrectly show that unlocking walls at 30 appeal would increase the appeal cap.

• Cat - Relaxed the distance to destination requirement to address an issue where the cat could sometimes get stuck by not getting close enough to the target destination.
  
• Controls - Click To Move works again.
  
• Placement - Fix for all furniture becoming invalid.
  
• Placement - Wall mounted displays can now be placed while their access point is inaccessible for easier redecorating.

Hello dear shopkeepers,

We are thrilled to announce that the wait is finally over. The major free Winkeltje 1.1 update and paid
Cat Companion DLC is ready to be released on Windows PC and console editions. Let's have a look at what you can look forward to.


With the paid Cat Companion DLC, you will get a cat basket, food, and water to place in the shop as furniture. By interacting with the cat basket, you can customize your cat. The kitty will subject your shop to a thorough inspection, check that you are diligently keeping you shelves stocked, and make sure that the customers are not up to any funny business. To reward the cat, you can interact with it to pat it on the head.

Cat Companion DLC Steam page!


A cat companion has been requested for a long time, and by obtaining the Cat Companion DLC for only €2.99 (or your regional equivalent), you can show your support for the games that we enjoy making. There is a lot of free content for everyone to enjoy in this update, but if you are a shopkeeper that would like to get something unique and help out the developers, this DLC is for you.

This furry source of inspiration is exhausted from all the posing but happy she can has her hooman back and looks forward to the noms this DLC might afford her. 😸


This update almost doubles the structure sets increasing it from 6 to 11. The structure sets you can look forward to decorating your shop with are inspired by rennaisance, romanesque, timber framing, colonial, and industrial architecural styles.

By adding rounded and mediteranean furniture sets, you now have up to 8 furniture sets to customize your shop with.


A much requested decoration is a bed and night stand to create a more homely space for the shopkeeper to relax in. In addition, there is now also a water pump decoration.


With this update, there will now be 4 new seasonal music themes playing when you open the shop. This is in addition to the 4 seasonal music themes that play when the shop is closed.

The frugal shopkeepers among you enjoy counting coins and making sure the numbers add up. To help you keep track of income and expenses, you can now open the ledger menu and see where the coins are coming from and may confront you on your spending habits.


A sorely missed feature of Winkeltje 1.0 was the ability to set item prices. In this update, you can now set item prices up to 80% above or below the default sell price of an item. Lower prices will make customers more likely to buy the item while high prices will have the opposite effect.


The new default time of day is now set to dawn. This makes the game look prettier overall. This is purely a cosmetic change and does not affect how much time you have to sell your goods. A full day and night cycle will still take place between opening and closing your shop. If you prefer a different default time of day, then you can customize this in the game settings.

A common piece of feedback we received on Winkeltje 1.0 was the lack of explanations. Our design philosophy is to teach the basics and let the player figure things out at their own pace. Some of the more important concepts of Winkeltje 1.0 were not that easy to figure out unfortunately. To alleviate this, we have added menu tips which will show up when you open a menu for the first time. You can press F1 on the keyboard or the Start button on a controller while in any menu to bring up the tips again.

The number of things that can be unlocked in this update has increased. This called for an increase in the shop level cap from 40 to 50. This change will result in less unlock spam and more unlock feel good moments. The unlock order has been redistributed to feel better and make more sense.

• New Boy employee model
  
• 9 New hair colors
  
• Support for 16 languages (on all platforms)
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• Bug fixes
  
  
  Patch Notes
• Assets - The storage boxes in the Large Old Messy Cupboard were clipping through the back.
  
• Audio - Added new spring daytime music.
  
• Audio - Added new summer daytime music.
  
• Audio - Added new autumn daytime music.
  
• Audio - The post-bridge part of the winter night time music wasn't looping neatly.
  
• Characters - Added new employee model options.
  
• Characters - Updated the vertex colors and normals in the neck area of the female shopkeeper to fix a shading issue.
  
• Console - The flag outline on the market entrance did not animate and looked broken.
  
• Console - Fixed an issue where pushing the master volume slider farther left would ignore the volume setting.
  
• Crafting - Fixed an issue where the quality of an item could exceed the cap, resulting in game breaking errors.
  
• Crafting - Maxing out item crafting would not cap at a 100%.
  
• Customers - Added an emoji popup when the customer finds something too expensive or a good deal.
  
• Decoration - Added 3 new decorations.
  
• Events - Blacksmith Convention did not affect forging materials.
  
• Events - Tailoring Convention did not increase the prices of wool & leather
  
• Farming - Selling a farming plot with seeds in them will now return the seeds (if the plants are not withered)
  
• Furniture - Placing unique furniture using a controller would trigger the unique warning on placement when not applicable.
  
• Furniture - Tweaked the Large Old Cupboard, Lavender, and Vegetable Stew as these could cause items to clip through the backside of this display.
  
• Furniture - Displays now perform an item collision check to check if some sensible space around item spots are not colliding with anything which might invalidate it.
  
• Gameplay - Lowered the snapping distance from 1/8 to 1/32. This should make it easier to snap furniture close to a wall.
  
• Input - Letting go of the furniture rotation snapping will now reset the rotation velocity which should get rid of the annoying jerky spin.
  
• Language - Updated all languages, font assets, and credits section.
  
• Levels - Added 10 more shop levels to spread out the reward unlocks.
  
• Movement - Controller movement speed is now gradual which allows for variable walking speeds.
  
• Objectives - Removed the "Customer is King" objective since it's no longer relevant.
  
• Other - Increased crafting speed at night from, from 1s down to 0.5s
  
• Pathfinding - Inaccessible access points on displays will now make furniture appear invalid when placing them.
  
• Performance - Optimized NPC material generation which should result in less spikey performance during day time.
  
• Performance - The customer name plates, item requests, and happiness icons have been refactored. This should result in less spikey performance during day time.
  
• Performance - Fixed an issue that could cause the crafting point notification window to slow the game down to a crawl.
  
• Scenario - Fix for when the scenario grid size changed compared to the save file.
  
• Settings - The 'Run in background' setting will now be correctly applied when the game boots up.
  
• Structure - Improved the readability of hard to read wall anchor points.
  
• Terrain - Updated the terrains to split them from lighting and fix seasonal effects.
  
• Traders - Changed the pricing range of crafted items for the trader, increasing the probability of getting better deals
  
• UI - The Display Menu should now also let you use the right stick to switch between display slots.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where the background of the money GUI in the bottom right corner wouldn't update if this went exactly from one number of digits to another.
  
• UI - Fixed the feedback on the crafting repeater buttons in the Crafting Menu for mouse and controller.
  
• UI - The random item rotation setting was not applied on shop load.
  
• UI - The farming popup will now indicate the quality of the seed that was planted. This also works with the quality numerals preference in the settings menu.
  
• UI - The trader menu can now sort by the amount that the player has of an item. This should make it easier to find and buy items that you do not have in stock.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue in the character creator that caused the randomization button to not properly randomize the options.
  
• UI - Potential fix for the occasional empty trader menu.
  
• UI - Controller navigation in the crafting menu is now restricted while crafting is in progress as this could cause issues.
  
• UI - Added the 'upgradable' property to the unlock menu and buy menu to indicate that some furniture can be upgraded.
  
• UI - Moved the consent message at first startup to trigger after the scene load to ensure the confirmation background size is correctly updated.
  
• UI - Clicking on an item with nested options in the Catalog Menu now shows the nested options by default. This change also removes the item settings options.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where unlocking walls below the scroll fold would not refresh the layout.
  
• UI - The walls in the unlock menu have been reordered to make more sense.
  
• UI - Quickly moving the cursor over planters could leave the relevant items pulsating in the inventory overview.
  
• UI - The details panel in the manage tab of the employee menu will now indicate if an employee's happiness is increasing or decreasing with the salary the employee is receiving.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue in the employee menu where navigating downwards in the panel using a controller could cause the panel options to disappear.
  
• UI - Added position and rotation snap increment settings.
  
• UI - Updated the default and large terrain preview images.
  
• UI - Employee name plates now indicate if happiness is increasing or decreasing.
  
• UI - Added an accessibility option to change the default cursor to a brighter version.
  
• UI - The PlayStation d-pad left prompt had a minor offset in the atlas which looked jarring when comparing it directly to the other d-pad prompts.
  
• UI - New ledger menu where you can see a history of your income and expenses.
  
• UI - Added tooltips to the buy menu furniture properties.
  
• UI - Display menus now go up to 8 slots.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where changing to a different character type in the character customization would show the model in a t-pose for the one frame.
  
• UI - Added menu tips. These tips can seen by following the tutorial or by pressing F1 on PC, or the START button when using a controller, when in a menu.
  
• UI - Gaining a crafting skill point while the radial menu is open will now delay the skill point message until after the radial menu is closed.
  

Dear Shopkeepers,

We are excited to share that a big free update and a small Cat Companion DLC (downloadable content) is coming to Winkeltje. We are now in the final testing stage where we would like to invite you to try it out. The purpose of trying out this new update is to find issues that we can fix before we go through the arduous task of deploying to all stores and gaming platforms.



This big free update contains new features, content, and quality of life improvements such as:

• Ledger menu
  
• Pricing menu
  
• 10 additional shop levels
  
• Better level unlock distribution
  
• New furniture and structure pieces
  
• New music during shop opening for each season
  
• Early morning as the new default lighting
  
• New boy employee model
  
• New hair styles
  
• Several new hair colors
  
• Performance optimizations
  
• And much more...

The Cat Companion DLC is going to be our very first DLC for a small, yet to be determined, price. As you may know, we develop and publish our own games and updates across PC and gaming consoles. As our first ever DLC, this is both exciting and daunting. To try our best to deliver a smooth deployment, we are going to make the cat DLC free to try out on Steam for a week as of this posting. This will help us find and fix any issues, and give you a chance to enjoy a furry feline in your shop. Once a week has passed, the cat feature will be disabled again. From that point you will have to be patient until the big free update is deployed and the Cat Companion DLC will officially be made available on all platforms. You can wishlist the DLC over on its store page over here.



Trying out the new update is easy!
Just head over to Steam and find Winkeltje: The Little Shop in your Library.

From there:

1. Find the settings button or right mouse click on Winkeltje: The Little Shop
   
2. Go to 'Properties'
   
3. Go to 'Betas'
   
4. Select 'Unstable'
   
5. Play Winkeltje

To automatically notify us of error messages and crash data please opt-in to sending data in the settings menu. For any other issues or feedback, we are very active on Discord at: https://discord.gg/winkeltje
On Discord, hit the "Click Me!" button to become verified. This obstacle is unfortunately necessary to make it harder for spammers and scammers to join.

This is also an excellent moment to update the community driven translations.
Click here to find out how you can participate in community driven translations.




We hope you will enjoy the update and very much look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Hello dear shopkeeper.

With this post we would like to give you an update on what the future holds for Winkeltje and let you know that we have not forgotten about this game. It has been a little over a year since Winkeltje: The Little Shop has launched on PC and console. The community has been great and the reception truly heart warming.

Post-launch, our focus has been on fixes and performance improvements across all platforms and regions. Subsequent updates were an attempt at introducing unique scenarios with the Halloween event and the Winter event which introduced a couple of new assets and outfit recolors. But meanwhile, we have been chipping away at a larger update which is shaping up nicely.

There are a lot of cool things coming and It is still a while before we can go into full testing for this update or go into more detail about its exact contents. But rest assured, it's coming. :)

Happy holidays, Shopkeepers!

For this holiday season, we cooked up something special for you. In this update you can try out a new playable scenario called 'Saving Winter's Spirit'. In this update, you manage a winter shop with a solstice tree as the center piece. Grow the tree in size by making offerings to save the Winter's Spirit and unlock new cosmetics that fit the season!

Stay frosty and happy holidays! 🕯️🎄


In this custom scenario you are tasked to provide the solstice tree with offerings to help it grow.


Complete objectives in Save Winter's Spirit to earn new outfit colors.

• Audio - Added day time winter music.
  
• Audio - Replaced the night ambient sound.
  
• Audio - Fixed an issue where the first looping bit in the closed shop winter music would transition awkwardly.
  
• Input - Using the Dpad/Left Stick in the Trader Menu or the Right Stick in the Crafting menu would sometimes not register input correctly.
  
• Scenario - Added a new and frosty Christmas game mode. Enjoy the winter holidays!
  
• Scenario - Some of the bushes in the Halloween terrain were not updating their seasonal appearance.
  
• UI - The crafting target side menu will now show how many of this item you have in your inventory.
  
• UI - Both crafting side menus will now show how many items you have displayed in your shop if this option is enabled in the settings.
  
• UI - Poor item quality color is now brown instead of grey.
  
• UI - It's now also possible to use the right stick to add/remove items to the shopping list.
  
• UI - The Employee Menu would not correctly reset back to the Hire tab when reopening the menu after leaving it on the Manage tab.

This is the first time Winkeltje: The Little Shop is on discount since Winkeltje released on all platforms earlier this year. This is also the biggest discount so far, even bigger than the launch discount. If you haven't tried Winkeltje yet, or you would recommend it to friends or family, this is the time to pick it up.


While we are realistic about our chances, we couldn't help but participate in this year's Steam Awards. If you like what you played and look forward to updates as much as we do then please consider dropping us a vote. Much appreciated. :)

Hey Shopkeepers,

Just a minor patch this time around, we fixed some issues that we wanted to get out to you as soon as possible rather than wait for a next bigger patch.

• Achievement - Achievement for getting all crafting stations to level 10 should work again.
  
• AI - Fixed an issue where customers would sometimes refuse to leave.
  
• Build - Changed the nav mesh obstacle size of entrances so that the navmesh is more centered.
  
• Performance - NPC pooling wasn't correctly returning objects back to the pool, this should reduce some jitter when the store is open.
  
• Scenario: Added more floor options & decorations to choose from in 'The Harrowing' scenario.
  
• Scenario: Reduced difficulty of the Harrowing scenario.
  
• Trader - Fixed potential issue for the bag to not correctly show.
  
• UI - Receiving a loan would not update the objectives HUD layout.
  
• UI - Closing the crafting skill point prompt window should now reset the timescale as it was before the prompt window showed.

Dear Shopkeepers,

Thank you for participating in the Harrowing event, we hope you had a spooky Halloween.

This Halloween we also tried to run a community contest where we challenged shopkeepers to build a spooky shop and show this off.
Unfortunately this contest did not see a lot of participation.
The winner of this contest is Melandari who submitted her spooky shop to Discord.
We hope the community will keep showing off their shops as we love seeing them.

Here are a few screenshots of Melandari's harrowing shop:





Feel free to check out more of Melandari's shop, or post your own at: https://discord.gg/Winkeltje


Stay tuned for future updates!

Dear Shopkeepers,

This Halloween you can enjoy some new thematic additions to Winkeltje. In this update you can try out a new playable scenario called 'The Harrowing'. In this scenario, you can complete objectives to earn new theme appropriate outfit colors. Additionally, there are also a couple new decoration pieces to really scare the jeepers creepers out of your customers. Lastly, you can take part in our Halloween contest on Discord where you are challenged to create your best looking Halloween shop for a shot at eternal glory in the Discord hosted hall of fame.

In this custom scenario you are tasked with supplying the nearby village as they try to hold their ground.


Complete objectives in The Harrowing to earn new outfit colors.



Use these new spooky decorations to really give your customers the creeps this season.



During Halloween we will be running a contest who can make the spookiest and best Halloween shop you can think of.

Contest rules:

• The contest starts on the 25th October 2022 and ends on the 7th November 2022.
  
• You can participate by showcasing your shop in the #halloween-shop-contest thread in the #shop-showcase channel on the Winkeltje Discord.
  
• One post, containing multiple images, counts as one submission.
  
• The community may vote by leaving a 🎃 emoji.
  
• Voting will end 10th of November.
  
• The 3 unique users with the most 🎃 on a single post will be showcased in a Steam post after voting has ended and be eternalized in a new #hall-of-fame thread in the #shop-showcase channel on the Winkeltje Discord.
  
• Abuse or exploitation of this contest will be subject to moderation at our discretion to keep the contest fun and enjoyable for everyone.

Join the community on the Winkeltje Discord here: https://discord.gg/Winkeltje
Join the contest in the thread here: Halloween Shop Contest (Discord)

Winkeltje: The Little Shop is now fully Steam Deck compatible! While it was already playable, we fixed up a couple of minor issues to make the experience smoother.

• Audio - Added the option to set the master volume level.
  
• Audio - Slightly increased the base ambience volume level to better fit with new ambience audio.
  
• Decorations - Added new tombstone and pumpkin decorations to make your shop a little spookier.
  
• Employees - Removed hacky box carry implementation.
  
• Events - Fixed an issue where having no random events could crash the game.
  
• Fix - Fixed an issue where players could place furniture out of bounds.
  
• Fix - Fixed an issue where loading a super old shop does not have a shop level saved and would break the game.
  
• Language - Attempting to load a language file that does not exist should now default the translation back to English.
  
• Language - Added Japanese translations.
  
• Language - Updated all translations.
  
• Lighting - Increased the player's ambient light to fix an issue with the night time being too dark.
  
• Movement - Fixed an issue where the sprint button would be reset when an employee restocks a shelf.
  
• Scenario - Enabled the Halloween scenario.
  
• UI - A trader menu entry will now also show the total number of items regardless of quality.
  
• UI - Moved the lock icon in the details panel of the objectives menu more upwards to provide more space for long text.
  
• UI - The inspector panel in the catalogue menu will now have titles that adjust to the size of the text to adjust for very long titles.
  
• UI - Added word wrapping in the short and long scenario descriptions of the scenario select menu to prevent sentences from going out of bounds.
  
• UI - Rewrote the scenario select menu toggle switching to not use an animator and to fix an issue with showing the correct description when switching tabs.
  
• UI - It should no longer be possible to return from the shop select menu while the confirmation window to delete a shop is visible.
  
• UI - Added '~' and ',' to the excluded characters list when naming the shop.
  
• UI - Reworked the crafting skill HUD to allow for several levels to be gained in one go.
  
• UI - Updated the Credits section.
  
• UX - A customer queueing up to the counter while in the awareness radius of the player should now correctly highlight itself.

• Balance - Changed the collider of the Halloween pumpkins from a box collider to a capsule collider. This changed the footprint, resulting in the pumpkins being 5 silver cheaper and giving 10 appeal less. This change will allow players to fit this decoration more snuggly into their shops.
  
• Build - Fixed an issue where reverting a double width wall after replacing it with 2 single walls would not correctly destroy the visual aspect of the 2nd single wall.
  
• Console - Added more shader variants to include snow in cases where it's appropriate.
  
• Farming - Returned seed quality is now always the same as the quality of the seeds that you put in.
  
• Halloween - Halloween scenario would not correctly unlock items when reloading the save file.
  
• Input - Controller inputs should feel a lot more responsive now due to some inputs no longer being ignored in cases where HUD elements are deactivating.
  
• Save - Loading an old shopkeeper outfit could break the game by loading a material that does not exist anymore.
  
• Save - Submitted a character type converter which caused errors when loading employees from an old shop save.
  
• Save - The Halloween scenario would not correctly wipe shop rewards when reloading a save.
  
• Save - Added a check to the material name converter to check if the player appearance is not null. This could cause a crash on old shops.
  
• Scenario - Added a null check to prevent an error when reaching the appeal cap in the Halloween scenario.
  
• UI - The unlock menu would throw an error on the structure tab if the unlock level of a structure piece was null.
  
• UI - The inventory item presentation was called out of order causing the first time you take an item out of a furniture slot to cause a visual bug.
  
• UI - Added prompt support for PlayStation 5 controllers.
  
• UI - Increased the max shop name length to 30.
  
• UI - Updated the Name Shop window to allow for more characters to fit.
  
• UI - Updated the inline graphics asset to include the Halloween event icons.
  
• UI - Fixed an issue where the Halloween pumpkin and tombstone decorations had missing thumbnails.