Hey everyone!

Another month has passed, a new year has started. Let's talk about what the team has been up to for Orange Season! Make sure to check out last month's dev update if you haven't already, some good stuff in there: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/416000/view/3121552948617618656
This time we'll talk about some brand new stuff that's been in the works. As we talked about last time, the game is currently being rebuilt in the Unity Engine which opens up opportunities. One of these is the way maps could be structured.

Map designs - New Mines
The previous engine limited the map structures to being square and having square borders. That's why currently, most maps in Orange Season are big squares with paths. The most prominent example of this are the mines. They're big, squared boxes fliled with clay and rocks, at all levels, from the surface to the bottom. Thankfully, level design can now be made in a more 'free' manner, like these brand new designs show!




Story improvements
This month there's been 30+ story arc drafts made. They include events and tasks for both the main story and characters you can interact even have relationships with. Check out these dialog examples:


The town ain’t big enough for both of these farmers. Billy promises farm-warfare to regain his position in the eyes of Orange Town.


Any day is the best day to fight the forces of destruction, specially if Pilot Lucas and Pilot Richard are using their mechas to save humanity and orangekind!


Phi always says that skirts are a sign of intelligence and wisdom. Devin needs to really think if he wants to impress whoever is going to receive his present!


Some families sit together to watch TV while others feud over fertile lands. Stella’s Family may be reaching a point of no return if her feud with her grandfather Rory is not resolved.

We also have new concept art for the new intro, that shows you the journey to Orange Town:


Summer Festival
In the last dev update, we shared some swimming characters. This was for the new Summer Festival! Check out how far it's come (also, peep the new music in this preview)
New OST in the works
Orange Season's composer, Jonas Zaggo, has been working hard to create new tracks that we believe deepen the game experience. We have a very little sneak peek of the new Spring Theme, one of the first tracks you'll hear in the updated version:
That's the update for now! We're progressing to a better, more stable new version of the game. At this moment we do not have an estimate for when this goes live, but of course this will be the first place to hear about it, along with the Discord server (https://discord.gg/DtykZfFTGn or https://discord.gg/soedesco).

-Marten, Rafael & Kazz

Hello everyone,

So... It's been a while! The last big game update (v0.6.2) was back in August of 2020. In the meantime we haven't been sitting still, but what is going on?

Behind the scenes a lot has happened in terms of the team. The project's original lead developer who you might know as 'Hudell' on the Steam Community Hub and the Orange Season Discord server is no longer affiliated with Fantasy Farming: Orange Season. No, nothing happened. He's just off to do other things! Thank you for everything, Hudell!

The team that was working on Fantasy Farming: Orange Season under Hudell is still there, and a veteran from the team has taken over the lead role. Introducing: Rafael & Kazz! Them and I will be the main points of contact both here and on Fantasy Farming: Orange Season social media/Discord.

In the meantime, a lot has happened on the development side behind the scenes, check this out!

When summer comes, some villagers like to test their skills in the water

Updated day/night cycle

The mines are getting expanded. New maps and system are in the oven

BUT, what about game updates? With this change in management, another decision came. Fantasy Farming: Orange Season was built on an engine that does not fit with our plans for the title. This is why we decided to start a porting process to the Unity engine. We expect this process to be done around May of 2022 and it'll come as a free update right here in Early Access on Steam. This also means that in the meantime, we will unfortunately not have any game updates for you in the meantime.

However, what will we have? From now on every month, we will post development updates to show you what kinds of new stuff we're adding to the game, that will become available once the Unity version of the game launches once we're ready!

If you have any concerns, please let us know through the Steam Community Hub! We'll see you in the next development update ;)

-Marten, Rafael & Kazz

Hey all!

Another patch just went live, which means we are at v0.6.2! This patch introduces new villagers, a new fishing system, sheep and animal petting! Check out the full patch notes here:

• Improved the graphics of trees, animals and mountain areas.
  
• Redesigned festival locations
  
• Added 4 completely new villagers to Orange Town: Gary, Yumiko, Shinnosuke and Kaori
  
• Expanded possible interactions with Orange Town Villagers: Martin, Mia and Prince
  
• Added portraits for every villager
  
• New brand fishing system with dozens of new fish
  
• Changed the way wild animals behave once tamed. They now have a regular routine and they sometimes will leave gifts for you
  
• Added new barn and coop interior
  
• Added sheep to the game, which introduces wool
  
• You can now pet farm animals and talk to them as your voice soothes them
  
• Implemented changes to the way farm animals are managed
  
• Added wind animation on trees
  
  
• A lot of bug fixes and improvements to general usability
  
• Changed game zoom level
  
• Added A few new sound effects, including footsteps
  
• Upgraded internal engine code
  
• New way to load and manage gamepad profiles

I hope you all like it! Please let us know any feedback you may have on the Steam Community Hub ;)

-Marten

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.