Hi everyone!

As we've gotten quite a lot of new players with the Steam Summer Sale, I just wanted to let you know that we're still very much looking for feedback on the game! Any feedback we could work with is interesting to us, so if you have any, feel free to leave it as a Steam Community Hub post, or join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/soedesco to let us know!

Stay tuned for our next update post!

-Marten

Hello everyone!

You may have noticed the game had many tiny updates during the week. Those updates were fixing some bugs that you reported since the release of the 0.6.1 version. Here's a list of them:

• Some Sacis could be found multiple times.
  
• Sarah appearing on top of a fridge.
  
• Player could walk through the lumber near Raphael's house.
  
• Error when loading saves generated between versions 0.2.9.2 and 0.5.0.6.
  
• Devin events not triggered for new players.
  
• Affected area not updating when trying to place buildings.
  
• Graphic glitch under bridges during winter.
  
• Serge was not saying anything on weekends.
  
• Passage to the mountain top not working when riding a horse.
  
• Cindy was invisible when inside the inn.
  
• Some villagers were appearing on the forest map by error.
  
• Fatal Error when talking to Nathalia.
  
• Some seeds were lost when trying to use them too fast.
  
• Finding many Sacis without changing areas could sometimes crash the game.
  
• Fishing achievements were not being triggered.
  
• Raphael's Random Request was not being marked as complete and not rewarding the player.
  
• Some cutscenes were locking the player.
  
• HUD not refreshing when max fatigue increased.
  
• Saci disappearing without animation on his introduction cutscene.
  
• Brittany not saying anything.
  
• Interactions not triggering properly in some positions.

Other than those bugs, there have also been a few other minor changes:

• Moved some objects that were too hidden and hard to find.
  
• The game will now give you more information if a save file fails to load.
  
• Replaced the town sign boards that shows requests and festivals.
  
• Updated the festival list.
  
• Pause the game when Steam Overlay is active.
  
• Stop spawning items over player objects.
  
• Made cheat codes harder to trigger by accident.
  
• Show number of fish caught on the main diary.
  
• Show money made and spent on the main diary.
  
• Replaced town building signs.
  
• Updated female character picture on the character creation screen.

Hi all!

It's Marten here with some great news, because update v0.6.1 is live! This brings a LOAD of good stuff like new home upgrades, businesses, villages a completely new cooking system and much more! Here's full patch notes for this update:

• Send seeds to the farm storage when lacking inventory space
  
• You can now change items and tools while riding your horse
  
• Added the Sacis
  
• Added termite nests
  
• New house sprites
  
• New home graphics
  
• Changed Brittany’s house
  
• Changed Julia’s house
  
• Changed Rory’s house
  
• New general store
  
• New blacksmith
  
• New inn/restaurant
  
• New library
  
• New carpenter workshop
  
• New clinic
  
• Added a spa
  
• New tasks
  
• New villagers: Duke, Sarah and Thalia
  
• New house upgrade
  
• New cooking system
  
• New animal and friend list on the diary menu
  
• Improved save/load menus
  
• Changed the way crops die
  
• New conversations
  
• New heart events
  
• New furniture shop
  
• New sound effects
  
• Balanced ores, mines and tools
  
• Separate contents of each trash can
  
• Replaced town building signs
  
• Updated female character picture on the character creation screen
  
• Various bug fixes

Now, this is a BIG list and I hope you'll all like it. Let me know if you do, and if you have any feedback, feel free to share it in the Steam Community Discussions :D

Have fun!

-Marten

Hi all!

My name is Marten, and I'm Community Manager at SOEDESCO. I'm proud to announce that we've partnered up with Tropical Puppy to publish Fantasy Farming: Orange Season! I've got a message right here from the guys over at Tropical Puppy for you all:

----

Hello everyone, I'm here today to announce that Tropical Puppy is partnering up with SOEDESCO , who will be Fantasy Farming: Orange Season’s publisher!

SOEDESCO is a Dutch company that has published over 40 games worldwide on a variety of platforms, including PC and the main consoles. Their games offer a wide variety in genres.
I've been working with them for a few months now and I believe that they are a great fit for the game. Their team has shown to be great fans of farm-life games and their experience with publishing and the business side of development will be very valuable for the game.

We're looking forward to working with them and make the most out of Fantasy Farming: Orange Season together. We will continue to develop the game with the same drive and spirit as always!

----

Now of course, in the future you'll also be hearing from Tropical Puppy again, but I'm also here for you if you have any questions! By the way, to join the conversation you should join our Discord server to stay up to date at https://discord.gg/soedesco

That's all for now, thanks!

-Marten

Hello everyone! Orange Season update 0.6 is out now!

This update brings a lot of bug fixes and general improvements to the game, but more importantly it finally includes the option to date villagers.

If you want a list of requirements for dating each villager, there's one right here!

I'll keep this announcement short this time so you can go ahead and spend some quality time with your favorite Orange Town residents, but you can check the in-game changelog for detailed information!

Hello everyone! Today I bring you a new update, version 0.5.1. Here's what's new:


The beach was added back in the game, with a new layout, new graphics and a new location. There you can catch sea water fish and other exclusive items.
You can access the beach through a new area that was added to the right of your farm, or by going down from the town in the passage near Gabriel's house.
This new area between the town and the beach is mostly empty now, but in the future it'll be used for building a petting zoo, where you can keep all the wild animals you tame.

There's also a new shortcut from your farm to the mountains, making the mines faster to reach.





The layout of the mines has changed to be better manageable. Some areas may require an upgraded hammer to be accessed, while others are available from the start but can be accessed faster after you upgrade the hammer.
Blue and White crystals are now more easily dropped, but limited in quantity. The game will also boost the crystal drop rate every day that you don't find any, so you can hit the mines every now and then with an increased drop rate instead of going there everyday to try your luck.
There are also new kinds of rocks to be found on the mines and on the mountains, each one requiring a different hammer level to break.


The keyboard mapping screen was fixed to allow customization of the key controls. The gamepad mapping screen was replaced with the controller profiles screen, where the game will detect what kind of controller you are using and show what actions are mapped to it.
I've also implemented support for the nintendo switch joy cons, with different mappings based on which joy cons you have connected and how many. Playing with a pair will behave the same way as any other controller, while playing with a single joycon will have adapted controls for the smaller number of buttons.


You can now check the list of items you've shipped, as well as checking the detailed progress of the game.
There are also new keys to open the inventory screen directly.


From now on, you'll need to acquire experience with each tool before you are able to upgrade them. If you have already upgraded a tool that you don't have enough experience on, the game will temporarily downgrade it until you reach the required exp. You won't need to redo the upgrades.

This update also includes two Fishing Rod upgrades. The upgraded rod will attract fish that swim close to the bait, allowing you to catch fish that only swim far from you. The fish location, spawn rate and prices have all changes with this update as well.


Some graphics have been improved, while others were added in this update:

• New Fences
  
• New Town roads.
  
• Five New Villager Portraits
  
• New Weather Effects and Weather Announcement TV Channels
  
• Festival Announcement TV Channels
  
• New emotes
  
• Small changes on the town layout
  
• New graphics for weeds, tree stumps, logs and stones

• You can now buy ores from the blacksmith after you ship a certain number of them
  
• You can buy lumber from the carpenter
  
• The game will show what kind of crop is sown on your farm when you approach it
  
• The game will show animal names when you approach them
  
• The hay maker now turns wheat into hay as well.
  
• New tasks.
  
• The bank and debt systems were removed from the game.
  
• The miner's guild was removed from Orange Town. You now get access to the gold mine by upgrading your hammer.
  
• The mushroom people were removed from the game.

Since the mushroom people were underdeveloped, with no personalities and nothing but the promised ability to open passages on caves, I've decided to replace them with new unique characters. I'm writing a few new villagers that will show up in the next few updates and are going to be much more interesting.


The dating system is finally being implemented. It'll most likely be released in an update two months from now.

Buckle up everyone, as Orange Season v0.5 is finally here!

The changelog this time is much larger than usual, so I'll try to keep things short. Feel free to reach out if you want to know more about any change.


Playing with a mouse was too complicated before, but now almost everything is done with a left mouse click. The game will automatically determine what it should do based on what you clicked on. A few actions still have specific commands, like double clicking to remove a building / fence / machine / sprinkler. You can also right click an item or tool on the HUD to quickly use/consume it.


I changed the way the save files are stored. From now on, the game will generate a file with your character name that will hold all of your data. Those files can be opened and modified with any text editor (like windows' notepad) but be careful of what you change, because you can easily break the data structure too. The game will also sync your save files with Steam Cloud now, so you can play the same save file on multiple computers. Do make sure all of your computer clocks have the right time, or this feature may cause an older save to overwrite a new one.




The thick of this update is that every menu screen has changed: the game loading, title screen, main menu, storage, shipping bin, trash, item shops, animal shops, recipe list and probably more that I'm forgetting right now. I'm very excited to finally share all those new interfaces, because I've been working on them since last year. A few of them (like the tool list) may be looking incomplete because they are prepared for some new features that are not yet implemented in the game.




Probably the most requested feature of the game on recent times, the maps are finally in. Press the map key anywhere to load a map showing the whole area you're in and the location of any villagers within it. The villagers will appear inside their houses if they are awake there, but will disappear from the map if they are unavailable.




Press the map key on the title screen to access the game credits.


You'll need to befriend Annie and complete a series of tasks to receive the teleporter now. If you load a save file that already has the teleporter, it will be removed from your inventory.


You can now ask Viktor to build machines for you, like the mayo maker and cheese maker. Put an item in, get another item out of it. There are no timers, but with the exception of the hay and feed makers, you can only put in one item at a time.


Your own character and the first 10 marriage candidates now have a portrait picture that will be displayed whenever they say something. Some of those characters had their styles changed on this update as well. And since many people had trouble with her name, Cinth was renamed to Cindy.




Every character that received a portrait on this update also received dozens of new conversations. Only one of the new conversations will be triggered per day and it'll usually be the first thing the villager will say that day. Most of those are related to the beginning of the game, so don't mind if a character you've been talking to for ages suddenly act like they barely know you. Tasks and Cutscenes may require you to have seen some of those new interactions.
Some of them can only be triggered during spring, but it doesn't need to be on year 1.




Other than the tasks I mentioned on previous items, there are also new fetch quests. Nothing too exciting, but they can give you some extra friendship points.


Some tools will work in a different way now. The watering can will always be used on it's max level, so you don't need to hold the tool button anymore. The sickle will also be used on it's max level when cutting weeds, but it will only cut crops if you click on them (one at a time). When cutting crops with the sickle, there's a chance you'll receive back a seed for it. Cutting weeds with the sickle will also give you the weed item that you can now use to make hay. The other tools like the hammer, axe and hoe do not have an area of effect. The axe and hammer will always have the strength of it's max level, while the hoe will have a faster animation and a largely reduced stamina consumption when upgraded.


I've reduced the number of animals available for sale on the shop (for example: 8 kinds of cow instead of 32). Mostly because there were many animals that were only a couple pixels different from others. Now each animal is unique.




I changed the prices of several seeds and crops to rebalance everything. A few seeds also changed their growth time, but those changes were minimal.




On saturdays, you can find the salesman on the restaurant, where he'll be selling you random items that you've shipped before, as well as some very rare items that can fetch a high price.




Previously the game would only pause the time inside your own house. Now it applies to all houses. Many players asked for this and it also makes things easier on my side, as I no longer need to implement Serge kicking you out when you decided to sleep right in the middle of the store. Sleeping on the floor will not recover stamina and fatigue when if time is paused.


There has been a lot of other small details that I changed during all this time that this update was cooking. See if you can find anything.




This is not yet a promise, but version 0.5.1 is planned for August. It should include the portraits of the other villagers and some new festivals, among other things.
I'm also working towards completing the dating system, which will be included on version 0.6.

It's been nearly nine months since I released version 0.4 of the game. Version 0.5 was supposed to come only three months after that, but many things delayed it's arrival. It is finally going to be released on June 24th, with a lot more than I had initially planned.

The first big thing I started working on after the september release was an overhaul on the mouse controls. It was a popular complaint among players that those controls were too complicated. That happened because when I first started it, I wanted the game to have the same controls as the PSX Harvest Moon game. Mouse and Keyboard controls were only emulating a controller instead of being used directly in the game. That changed now.



The next change was one of the most requested features: a map. Yes, it's finally here! There are three maps available on the game now: the town, the mountains and the forests. You can see by the image above that the villagers will also be tracked in real time on it, simplifying the job of all stalkers.

While I added the map and changed the mouse controls, Ryan was busy drawing new menus for the game: title screen, inventory, calendar, shops, storage, trash cans... every user interface has been replaced with something much better. For example:





Other than all the visual changes, there is a lot of new content on the game: new tasks, hundreds of new conversations with villagers, new items to be found on the caves and machines. You can buy any of the machines by talking to the blacksmith, but they require rare materials and a decent amount of money. The machines that are already available are:

- Mayo Maker
- Cheese Maker
- Bird Feed Maker
- Hay Maker
- Seed Maker

If you have already played the game before this update and befriends Annie, you'll get an alert when you load your save file, saying that the teleporter was removed from your inventory. To acquire it again, you'll need to increase your friendship with Annie and complete a few tasks. Nothing too complicated.

Those were just a few spoilers about what's coming on this next update. There's still a lot more. Stay tuned.

Hello, everyone! Today I'm releasing Orange Season version 0.4, which changes a lot of things on the game:

The most important thing is that Rock Town and Orange Town were merged into one, with every Rock Town villager moving into Orange Town. While my initial idea was for the game to have three towns (Orange, Rock and Pudding), as I watched different people play the game I decided it was better to have everyone closer to the farm.

With the merge, Orange Town was redesigned to accommodate everyone. I also changed it so the whole town is loaded as a single area, to hopefully prevent people from getting lost on it (the map is still coming). Festivals are held on a special area on the north side of town, while your farm is now to the south (and bigger than before). The mountains and forests are on the same place as they were before, while the beach was temporarily removed.

The mountains and forests were also redesigned and are loaded as a single area now. Additional new forest areas were created to hold the special seasonal fields (all four of them are on the other side of the forest now, accessible only after the first fall season).

Those new huge areas may require a little more CPU power to run smoothly, so I took some time to make a lot of performance improvements to balance things out. I also added a new setting that will let you change the game to run at 30, 40 or 48fps if needed.

The art style was also improved, with changes to the grass, land and snow that reflect the changes made to the trees on a smaller update a few months earlier.

The fishing system and the way that the fish spawn was also changed. From now on, you'll see new fish shadows showing up and also disappearing as you walk by. If you use your fishing rod, they'll no longer swim towards your bait, so you need to throw it on their path. Bridges are usually the most effective places for fishing.

I've added many new conversations and cutscenes. I also changed some of the existing ones. From now on you'll start the game with a dog instead of getting one from Mia.

Due to some recent issues with the wild animals, this update will move all of them back to their original position. If you have already tamed any wild animal, you will need to pick them up again if you want them on your farm. The friendship level will not be lost.

Other than that, I've also balanced some item prices, changed spawn rates and fixed lots of bugs that had been reported.

If you haven't played in a while, there are also some more changes that were done on smaller updates that I didn't write any announcement for. Those changes include the possibility of crops dying, new hair and skin colors for your character, new types of fish and items, new options on the storage screen, new caves, new jewelry, a brand new database screen, the ability to jump over fences and a lot more. You can check the in-game changelog for a full list of changes.

Even though this update was huge, it is still not everything that I wanted to have ready for this version, so I'll be releasing a 4.1 update in a couple weeks to make up for it.

One last thing: yesterday the game completed 4 years in production. It's a very long time, a lot more than I expected it would take to finish the game, but things have been moving faster now, as I'm no longer working alone. While I'm still calling the shots on everything, I've three people helping me with the game now. They are:

• Marcos Freire (RyanKamos), who has been working on the game art for over a year now.
  
• Rafael Magnino (Rajuma), who's now helping me write the story, cutscenes and conversations.
  
• And Bruno Nicodemos, who has already played the game for hundreds of hours and is now helping test and analyze bug reports.

Since I'm no longer alone, I'll soon be changing my dev name from Hudell Tales to "Tropical Puppy", the studio name we picked. This is just a heads up so you all don't need to worry if the name suddenly change. It'll still be me behind the game! Thank you all for playing it and I hope you enjoy the update. As always, let me know if you find any issue!

Hello everyone! Have you missed me?

It's been nearly three months since I released version 0.2.9 of Orange Season, but there's finally a new major version here: 0.3. This post will highlight everything that changed through every small update since version 0.2.9:

The main reason why this update took so long to complete, is that the whole inventory system of the game was remade. The previous system was more complicated than it needed to be (and that was one of the most common complaints that I used to receive). This new system is similar to many other PC games and should be much easier to use.

The main difference, is that you no longer pick items out of your backpack when you want to hold them. Instead, you only need to select a backpack slot to be the one that represents the item you're holding. The button that used to move items from and to the backpack (default to F and PageDown) is now used to change the selected slot. You can also press Ctrl + F to deselect the slot (leaving your hands free to use any tool). When playing with a controller, you can change slots with the triggers buttons (press both at the same time to deselect).

Another thing that changed is that you can no longer drop items on the ground. Once you pick an item you have to either use it, discard it or put it on a container (storage, shipping bin, etc). Dropping items was a feature that was rarely used on purpose, but many people often dropped items by accident while trying to gift villagers and other similar actions.

If you're using the mouse to play the game, you now need to right click food items on the item bar if you want to eat them. Right clicking anywhere else on screen won't do anything for food items. This should prevent you from eating items by accident.

The max number of items you can carry also increased. You now start with 10 item slots and can expand it to 30 slots maximum. The screen will only show 10 items on the itembar, but you can switch to the next 10 by pressing Tab (or back/select on the controller).

The ribbon tool was replaced by two separate skills: sleep and teleport. They work the same way as before, but you can now equip each of them separately.


The changes on the inventory system required the interface to be reorganized too. I used this opportunity to redo the whole weather and health HUDs as well.


The Sleepiness and Hunger hidden variables were removed from the game, while the fatigue level is no longer hidden.

The new system is based only on the stamina and fatigue levels. Basically, stamina depletes fast but can be recovered with items, while fatigue is only a problem if you work too much but can only be recovered by resting. You can now pass out if your stamina depletes completely.


The game finally has a cooking system. With 6 different cooking utensils and more than 80 recipe variations for 50 different dishes, you only need to expand your house once to be able to access it.


Last year I opened a thread on the steam forums to ask everybody's opinion on pausing the time inside houses. After listening to the responses, I decided to change the game so that the time is paused, but only inside your own house. This way your house works as a safe space where the flow of time can't pressure you.

Many game elements received new animations: pushing barrels, sleeping, passing out, waking up.



For the next two months, I'll stop adding new features to the game to start working only on content. This means that I'll be adding many new tasks, conversations, cutscenes, items, recipes and secrets. I'll also finally start working on the game's main story.

I hope you all enjoy the new stuff and please let me know if you find any bugs. Until next time!