We all neglect things they really shouldn’t. Maybe it’s a hard task you don’t know how to start. Maybe it’s just cleaning your room.

For me? It’s the mushroom gardening hobby in Village Monsters. It’s “technically” been in the game since releasing in Early Access 6 months ago, but you wouldn’t know it. I’ve barely touched it since then and most players aren’t even aware it exists.

That changes now. Let’s talk gardens, and then afterward let’s clean our rooms!



What was onceMushroom Gardening will now be known as simply Gardening. Yep, you can now cultivate all sorts of new plants beyond just fabulous fungi!

But don’t expect to be planting boring crops like turnips or corn. No! Instead, you’ll be growing suitably monstrous plants: man-eating pitcher plants, never-ending creeper vines, fruit that glows eerily in the dark, and yes: mushrooms.

To help you with growing all these new plants, garden management has received a complete overhaul in both look and design. Check it out:



Each garden now has its own plot (above) that you can interact with to manage all the plants inside. From this screen you can plant new seeds, view the status of growing plants, cultivate the soil, and eventually harvest any mature plants.

You’ll be able to purchase multiple plots of varying configurations, but at the start you’re limited to the basic 2×2 model.

Your garden won’t require a lot of attention if you only care about the basics. You may need to weed it on occasion, and cultivating it with water and fertilizer will definitely help it grow faster, but gardens are otherwise self-sufficient.

After all, gardening is meant to be a passive and relaxing hobby. Of course, there are all sorts of benefits if you want to be an active gardener – let’s look at them now.

I’m super excited to talk about the new plant breeding mechanics! That’s not weird, right? You’d tell me if that was weird??

In all seriousness, I love breeding plants in video games. I’m not sure why – it’s not like I have much interest in real life botany – but I always get really into it whenever it’s offered. Adding this feature to my own game was a no-brainer.

In Village Monsters, getting started with plant breeding is actually super easy. You just need a male plant, a female plant, and an empty space. Nature can handle the rest!

Your experience as a gardener governs how fast plants grow and crossbreed, and in the beginning of your career it will be pretty slow; plants take several days (and in some cases longer) to grow, and new starter packs are quite expensive and sometimes hard to find.



Don’t fret, though! Gardening is designed for exponential growth, and over time a skilled gardeners can completely outpace the other hobbyists.

Hybrids are a very rare type of crossbreed where two plants combine to form a brand new plant.



As you can see from the chart above, hybrid plants generally inherit the shape of the mother plant + the color / design of the father plant.

It takes a lot of skill & patience to successfully breed a hybrid; they’re often considered the end goal for most gardeners. There are dozens of unique hybrid combinations, so you’ll be plenty busy trying to discover them all.

The uniqueness of a hybrid makes them highly sought after, and Pishky will pay you very handsomely when you’re ready to sell. Better yet, you’re almost guaranteed to win any Garden Festival if you put one of these guys in your display.

There are two more big features I’d like to add to gardening, but they won’t make the next release (v0.70). Still, this is a dev diary, so I may as well talk about ’em.

The first feature is something I’m tentatively calling Symbiosis. The idea here is that gardening should provide benefits to all your other hobbies – and vice versa! Everything is connected.

For example, you should be able to use certain plants as bait to catch rare fish or critters. Other plants could help you see hidden treasure in the dark. Maybe domesticated critters could provide fast-growing fertilizer for your plants (don’t think about this one too much.)



It’ll take some time to get it all sorted out, but you can expect this in a future update before release.

The second upcoming feature is called Mutation. Mutations will be similar to hybrids with one key difference: they are completely random! Randomized names, randomized look, randomized benefits, and so on. Procedurally generated plants!

This’ll take some time, and it may even have to come in a post-launch patch. I’ll keep you updated.

Yes, almost certainly!

I really love playing video games, and I’m proud to wear my inspirations on my sleeves. I’ve borrowed tons of elements from games like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, even Cookie Clicker and Monster Rancher. If you recognize a gardening element from one of your favorite games then it almost surely is on purpose.

Video games rule.



Very soon!

Everything I described above will be available in Village Monsters v0.70, which will be releasing in the next couple of weeks. Look forward to playing it then!

How're your gardens doing this year? My physical garden has been shamefully neglected (per the usual), but as for my virtual garden...?



It's literally never been better!

Since my last update I've working super-duper hard on the next version of Village Monsters - which, incidentally, will feature a brand new Gardening hobby for you to enjoy.

It should be ready in a couple weeks, but before then I have a bit of bad news to share.
Save files created in the current version of Village Monsters (v0.65) will no longer be compatible with this upcoming version, v0.70.

This means you will need to start a new game once the update is released.

Yes. I will continue to make v0.65 available for those that don't want to start a new game:

• Steam players will be able to opt into a beta channel running v0.65
• Itch.io / GameJolt players can simply download the older version

In addition, I'm working on a Save Import feature where certain items from your old save are carried over into a new game. I'm not sure yet what exactly I'll be able to bring over, but you won't need to start fully from scratch if you don't want to.
Your save file is a snapshot of what's going on at a given time, and in a game like Village Monsters there's a lot to keep track of. This becomes a big risk for a game in active development - large changes to the game can cause older saves to become incompatible.

It's something I've been able to avoid so far, but the changes I'm making to the game are only getting bigger and grander.

For example, I've completely revamped the Gardening hobby so much that any mushroom gardens in your current saves are no longer compatible. There are mushrooms you planted that don't even EXIST anymore, man!

So the question for me was this: do I continue to break things feature by feature from now until release, or do I rip it off like a band aid and get it over with? Well...

[/figure]
Save files should not break again while in Early Access. The point of breaking them all at once now is so that we don't need to go through this again later.

There is the question of what to do about transitioning from EA to 1.0, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

Until next time. Stay safe, keep cozy, and have fun!

Well, there's no denying we're living in some strange times right now. I know some vague platitudes from a no-name indie dev won't do you much good, but I promise you that this isn't forever.

If you're feeling stressed, panicked, depressed, whatever - that's normal. Give yourself grace and patience. Just chill out at home and play some relaxing games - I can think of a few :D

On a personal note, although I live in one of the hardest hit US states (Washington) I have no plans on suspending work on Village Monsters. One benefit to being a solo indie dev working from home is that I've been following all these social distancing requirements for many months now.

Anyway, enough doom and gloom. Time for some patch notes!



Since November I've received a steady stream of feedback that the game feel isn't quite right yet. This is to be expected for any unreleased game, but I don't want to wait to the end before polishing things up.

Here are some changes I've made to improve the game feel of Village Monsters.

• Drastically adjusted the inspection range to improve behavior and make it easier to inspect the object you mean to
  
• Player movement now has acceleration and friction, meaning movement should now have more "weight" to it and feel less swim-y
  
• Improved interaction points with merchants / services NPCs
  
• Improved the deadzone when using a gamepad
  
• Made camera a bit more dynamic and smoother
  
• Added support for changing the camera speed to account for fluctuation in FPS
  
• Lowered player's default max speed slightly (sprint is unaffected)

Every update brings more features and systems online. Here's a few of them new to v0.65

• Villagers now reply to your letters. Their response depends on what they thought of your letter / gift
  
• Your mailbox is now properly saved on game exit - you will no longer miss new mail if you quit the game before reading it
  
• A new Odd Job for Treasure Hunting (Tutorial) has been added
  
• Sending Feedback / Reporting Bugs is now accessible via the main System menu
  
• A number of new gifts have been added to the store
  
• Added a large number of new potions. The most useful might be the Potion of Agreeable Affections which makes it easier to befriend people
  
• New entries for villager profiles have been added
  
• Added a large number of new effects for the Dr. Klaus Human Experimentation job
  
• Added a huge number of new treasures to find, including new rings, amulets, and more
  
• Added or improved description and lore of existing treasures
  
• Each region now has their own distinct list of treasures to find
  
• Added a new message for unlocking post office boxes and added more items to discover inside
  
• Dig spots now spawn at a slightly higher rate

Village Monsters now has cutscenes - it's finally like a real video game!

Most of my time was spent creating the infrastructure itself to support cutscenes, so there aren't many in the game yet, but that'll change soon pretty quickly.

• Added the concept of cutscenes to the game
  
• There's a new intro cutscene involving the mayor when starting a new game
  
• There's a new cutscene that plays when encountering the glitched bridge in Firetree Forest for the first time
  
• In general, story cutscenes will only trigger for new game files. In the future, other cutscenes - like for villager relationships, etc. - will trigger for existing files
  
• Cutscenes currently can't be paused or skipped, though that will change in the future
  
• Cutscene conditions are saved between sessions - meaning you'll never risk missing one before bumping into its trigger

I improve the graphics with every release, but for this one in particular I spent a lot of extra time with art assets that have been around since the early days - this includes UI elements like the timepeice, many villager sprites, critters, shadows, and more.

• Improved the sprites of many villagers, notably Umbrae, Edmund, Bugs, Trundle, Lindwyrm, Mayor Ludo, and others
  
• Added movement sprites to a number of villagers
  
• Added a brand new clock & calendar UI element and retired the old one
  
• Added a new "virtual keyboard" for gamepad users
  
• Completely redid the exterior and interior of the village library
  
• Added an enormous amount of new furniture and decoration
  
• Greatly improved Dio's home interior
  
• Greatly improved Zigi and Bug's room
  
• Improved the Active Effects page + descriptions for each effect
  
• Improved various tiles in the spring tileset
  
• Improved the look of several critters and fish
  
• Changed (and standardized) a large number of fonts
  
• Improved the look of a large number of buildings in the village
  
• Improved a number of "flat" sprites by adding proper outlining or shading
  
• Upcoming World Modifications are displayed in the End of Day summary
  
• Added new & improved keyboard and gamepad icons
  
• Updated a number of portraits for non-NPCs
  
• Improved journal fonts across the board
  
• Most list elements (like the main menu and dialogue choices) now properly loop

As usual, I took the time to fix an absolutely shameful amount of bugs. The following will no longer plague the land.

• Further reduced memory footprint by booting unused data structures to the curb. Get a real job, losers!
  
• Fixed text formatting issue with the Donkey Fly
  
• Fixed name and description of the Mail Key treasure
  
• Fixed issue where player character could interact with objects during the end of the day transition
  
• Fixed a number of instances where Zigi was incorrectly referred to as Zero
  
• Fixed a large number of typos hiding in some new idle dialogue
  
• Fixed an issue that could result in infinite confirmation boxes when performing Odd Jobs
  
• Fixed villager relationships not increasing the proper amount when receiving gifts
  
• Fixed portraits for a number of inanimate objects, like mailboxes
  
• Fixed rare issue when the mayor would erroneously send cancelled holiday letters in the mail
  
• Fixed issue where fish would not bite in the ponds of Firetree Forest
  
• Fixed a number of missing words and typos caused by Valentine's textual glitches
  
• Fixed a collision issue with ladders and other rotated objects
  
• Fixed coloring issues in Vara's house
  
• Fixed some furniture weirdness in Mock & Birdie's house
  
• Fixed wallet display issues
  
• Fixed collision box surrounding player mailboxes
  
• Fixed tile issues in Saley & Stapes home
  
• Fixed issue where UI elements would overlap objects in Saley & Stapes' home

Stay safe, keep cozy, and have fun!

Happy Day-After-Valentine's-Day, villagers! This is one of the best days around if you like discounted chocolate and red-and-pink colored tchotchkes.

This is yet another big update addressing basically every facet of the game. However, the main focus was on villager relationships (to go along with Valentine's Day!) so you'll see a common thread throughout the update notes below.

Have fun!



One of the larger updates this time around is to the village post office - in the sense that the village post office actually has a function!

• You can now send mail to villagers from the Post Office located in Town Hall
  
• Sending nice letters will improve your relationship with the villager you sent it to
  
• You can also attach gifts to your letters to increase your relationship
  
• The General Store now stocks a variety of gifts to send to villagers
  
• Villagers now have simple letter parsing and gift preferences, so try to be nice!
  
• A new UI was made for picking villagers (eg., sending them mail)
  
• A max of 5 letters a day can be sent
  
• Fixed an issue where social networks would cause you to "meet" a villager before you actually met them
  
• Stopped relationships from going into the negatives

The Critter Catching hobby was in need of some love and improvement, so I dedicated a bit of time this update to making it more fun to catch & tame creatures. I also was able to fix a large number of bugs.

• You can now pet critters that you've tamed
  
• The happiness level of a critter is now displayed in the interaction dialogue
  
• You must now add one food item per tamed critter per day
  
• Failure to keep tamed critters fed will result in them running away
  
• Critters must now reach a certain happiness level before they'll follow you
  
• Changed critter fleeing to be percentage-based depending on how "aggressive" (speed) the player is moving
  
• Critters may now flee even when you're stalking them, so act fast
  
• Critters will now permanently flee (disappear) a bit more quickly than before
  
• Added helpful text to the critter trough to help you manage your critters' food needs
  
• Added a new indicator above the critter trough when it needs to be filled with food
  
• You can now permanently dismiss critters via an interaction option
  
• Fixed: Resolved crash related to the Boo Bee critter
  
• Fixed: Critter poop will no longer spawn so dang frequently
  
• Fixed: Redid critter food code to resolve a large number of logic bugs
  
• Fixed: Food added to the critter trough will now be used
  
• Fixed: The critter trough now has a name
  
• Fixed the critter collection display in your journal

• A new system of daily bonuses called World Modifiers has been added to the game
  
• World Modifiers add bonuses to one or more areas of the game - for example, "Jumping Fish" makes fishing easier, while "Good Vibes" allows you to build friendships faster
  
• Several item and creature descriptions have been updated with new lore
  
• A number of new flavor critters - like squirrels and jackalopes - have been added to the game

• (Request) Your available silver is now listed while in a merchant's shop
  
• The Villager section of your journal has been overhauled. In general, most info starts off hidden and becomes revealed over time
  
• You'll gain more knowledge and gradually fill in your journal as you get to know each villager
  
• Each villager page now lists their likes, dislikes, and where they're generally located
  
• Icons have been added to the villager list
  
• Fixed: Solved a problem where villager text and icons appeared over non-villagers

The journey to improve the look and feel of Village Monsters is never-ending. Here are a few things I worked on this time.

• A number of Valentine Day's items and furniture have been added to the game
  
• As usual, a large amount of new furniture and decor have been added and sprinkled throughout town
  
• A number of villager sprites have been improved
  
• A number of villager homes and other buildings have been improved
  
• More color changes and improvements. I'll get there one day

• Made fishing a bit easier by slowing down fishing marker and altering its initial spot
  
• Slightly lowered the default fish spawn rates, but increased fish spawn rates during the morning, evening, and while its raining
  
• Resolved a crash related to selling all your items down to zero and pressing up / down
  
• Cleaned up a number of data structure issues that could potentially cause crashes or mismatched data
  
• Improved memory footprint in Linux and Mac versions
  
• Corrected a number of typos and awkward text
  
• (Request) You can now cancel and leave in-progress Odd Jobs by pressing Escape or Start
  
• Stopped bad artifacts from appearing in the identification process
  
• Fixed a rare issue where you could go out of bounds when exiting the residential section of the village
  
• Fixed an issue where the shrine outside of town expected 100 bits in some situation

Hello hello! Are you all having a good new year so far? Has anyone abandoned (or maybe completed?!) their resolutions yet?

My 2020 has thus far been full of snow and sickness, though thankfully both gradually disappeared earlier this week.

I'm very excited to release update v.0.55 - aka the first update of the year! It's a real big one this time, so I've decided to make this update a bit more fleshed out than usual.

The march to v1.00 gets ever closer! Thanks for stickin' with me.



A number of new relationship systems have been added to the game. This is to make building friendships with villagers more interesting and consist of more than just talking to them until their hearts increased to max.

The two primary features are social networks and Lockhearts.

• A behind-the-scenes "social network" feature allows for your interactions with villagers to influence other villagers related to them
  
• Villagers now have relationship values with each other as well as the player
  
• You can now negatively impact your friendship with a villager with actions they dislike
  
• Several villagers now have Lockhearts that prevent your friendship from deepening until they're cleared
  
• (Note that many methods for unlocking Lockhearts are not yet available)
  
• Relationship values have been rebalanced
  
• New dialogue has been added for every villager, especially for higher friendship values
  
• New visitors have been added

Players now earn experience as they perform hobby actions. Experience is earned on a per-hobby basis; this means that fishing makes you better at fishing but it won't make you better at growing mushrooms (like in real life!)

I had hoped to also add ability trees but ran out of time. You can still gain experience and ranks in each hobby, but for now it's mostly superficial.

• Players now earn XP and rank up their skills based on their actions
  
• Stamina has been re-balanced - generally, most actions require more stamina than before
  
• Stamina restoration from food has been increased
  
• Lowered sickness chance
  
• Added a number of new dialogue interactions related to your experience and hobby rankings

My never-ending war on art rages on unabated. This time I tried to focus on colors and interiors.

Beyond improving the look of the overall game, the main goal has been to reduce the overall number of colors to make things feel more consistent.

I also added a huge amount of new furniture and decorations to give rooms more interesting and completed looks. Houses are still a bit generic, but it's improving quite significantly.

This will be continue to be a constant point of emphasis leading into the final release later this year.

• A number of trees have received seasonal sprite changes
  
• The spring tileset is overall more spring-like
  
• The summer tileset is now more saturated and colorful
  
• Colors in general should skew more pastel
  
• Lighting has been adjusted in a number of spots
  
• Adjusted a number of bad shadows
  
• Added tons and tons of new furniture items and decorations
  
• Color and dimensions of more furniture items have been standardized

Improving the UI is as important as improving the overall art of the game. I've made a series of small but important changes this release.

• Most notifications now appear as a proper UI element on the side of the screen instead of over your head
  
• Notifications now persist between screens
  
• The opacity of several UI elements has been adjusted so it's easier to read
  
• A few areas of text aliasing have been removed
  
• The End of Day screen has been reworked and should flow a bit nicer
  
• IMPORTANT: The game is not saved until it tells you the save is complete, so don't close out until you see that!!
  
• Certain text and phrases have been standardized

For this update I tried to break out each major feature into its own category. These are items that are still important but don't otherwise fit anywhere.

• Added a number of new "flavor" creatures throughout the world
  
• Fish health bars now reflect their remaining HP (before it would decrease at a set value)
  
• Added a number of few fish, treasures, and critters to collect
  
• Added a number of new forage items (herbs and flowers)
  
• Flavor creatures now have more complex behavior
  
• A number of villagers without homes are no longer homeless

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) the majority of work I've done in the past few weeks has been under-the-hood type of stuff. It's not glamorous or even interesting work, but it's necessarily to set a strong foundation in order to launch v1.0 later this year.

The more immediate upside to this is that I've surely (though inadvertently) fixed a number of bugs, performance issues, and other technical snags in the process.

• Fixed a rare crash related to thunderstorms and blizzard weather types
  
• Fixed rare crash related to selling some usable items (like food or medicine)
  
• Fixed a large number of collision issues, particularly with interior furniture items
  
• Fixed performance issues for lower end Mac and Linux platforms
  
• Improve randomization elements
  
• By request, I've added a new feature to Three Wall Island that lets you enable Dev Mode
  
• (Dev Mode) Press Page Up while in Dev Mode to advance time
  
• (Dev Mode) Press Page Down while in Dev Mode to advance season
  
• (Dev Mode) Press F2 while in Dev Mode to bring up debug teleport
  
• Added a message to the Three Wall Island raft to make it less abrupt
  
• Steam icon now links to forums, not the Store page
  
• Fixed camera weirdness when trying to cast your rod
  
• Fixed a few issues with Glimmer collision and layering while in the mail room
  
• Fixed several embarrassing typos
  
• Cleaned up a huge number of other bugs I didn't bother to document because I am a bad developer

This is a small update - so tiny I thought about skipping notes entirely - but I suppose that's to be expected with the holidays sapping so much of my time.

I ended up spending most of my time hunting down a crash bug people had been reporting since launch. Turns out it was related to toggling full screen for certain situations and resolutions (like 1366×768 using integrated video cards)

I'll be back at it sometime after Christmas. I may try to squeeze in one more release before the end of the year, but if not then I'll package up everything with a release in 2020. Have a good holiday break!

• Added several new furniture items and display knick-knacks
  
• Improved the look and feel of the date display
  
• Improved the loot found in waterlogged chests in Bonfire Beach
  
• Fixed: Solved an issue with full screen causing a crash for some resolutions
  
• Fixed: Solved a bug that prevented certain treasure chests from spawning
  
• Fixed: Corrected tutorial description which incorrectly referred to the wrong key binding for Use Tool

Today (12/12) marks the one-month anniversary since Village Monsters was released! Thank you all so much for your support, bug reports, love, and feedback! This is still early on our journey together, but you can start to make out a distant outline of what the end looks like.

And I think it looks real dang cool. Anyway, onto the patch!

This update is mostly focused on improving the look & feel of the game. Instead of improving any one specific area I just threw a (metaphorical) dart at the board and improved whatever it (metaphorically) landed on. You'll see many improvements to furniture, vegetation, weather, and more, but there's still a lot more to do to many other areas of the game.

The game's visuals will contentiously improve throughout its time in Early Access.

Important Note 1: In order to fix some player home bugs I had to alter your saves. This means you may lose ownership to your home upon loading the game. Don't fret! There was actually one particular bug we can all take advantage of: the game never deducted any money when you bought the house the first time! (oops)

It's a complete coincidence, but this means that even if you lose your home you'll still have the funds you had before to buy it. Just buy it a second time... no harm, no foul.

Important Note 2: There is now a dedicated key for using your active tool (ironically X on both keyboards and gamepads). Don't forget!

Improved Look & Feel

• New furniture assets have been added to each home and building
  
• The initial homestead interior has been altered and improved
  
• New exterior props have been added throughout town and the surrounding areas
  
• While trees are still geometric ( a thematic choice), they now are spikier, more leafy, and overall more tree-like
  
• Added a large number of flavor critters and animals throughout the world
  
• The look and feel of the dialogue box has been improved
  
• A new option exists to switch between multiple dialogue box styles
  
• Improved the look of various weather effects
  
• The item description font is now much more readable for all resolutions
  
• Many furniture items have been standardized in size to give a more consistent sense of scale
  
• The player character now has a mild idle animation to match villagers
  
• Improved System menu's look and feel

Hobbies

• Using a tool is now mapped to the X key (Keyboard) / the X button (Gamepad). This will prevent issues such as accidentally swinging your net at a villager when you want to talk with them
  
• Fishing while low on energy is now much harder. Consider napping or eating food to restore energy
  
• You can now earn multiple levels in certain hobby-related goals
  
• New fish, critters, and treasures have been added to the game

Odd Jobs

• The Critter Catching tutorial now allows you to try and catch all 3 critters
  
• The Fishing tutorial now requires 2 fish to be caught
  
• Villagers have been added to each tutorial offering additional tips and info

Other New Stuff

• An ATM has been added to the general store which allows you to access your brand new bank account! Deposit, withdraw, and even earn interest on your hard-earned Skully!
  
• Interest is earned on a weekly basis and increases with town prosperity. Check your mail for statements! Wow, just like real life!

Secrets

• Secrets

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a crash related to removing an effect when you have multiple active effects
  
• Fixed major (and often unpredictable) issues related to purchasing a homestead
  
• Fixed major crash related to an audio memory leak. Should finally fix the longstanding crash in Agrarian Acres
  
• It is no longer possible to erroneously dismiss Odd Job dialogue in a way that traps you
  
• Resolved a rare situation where you could have 2+ "Low Energy" malus effects has been resolved
  
• Fixed issue where you couldn't purchase some items if you entered the store without the required silver, even if you later sold items to afford it
  
• Fixed music volume issues for seasonal tracks beyond Spring
  
• Fixed issue where your new home's door would stay locked even after purchase
  
• Purchasing the home deed now actually deducts silver from your wallet
  
• Fixed large number of furniture collision or layering issues
  
• Fixed issue with deleted spaces in trophy descriptions
  
• Player sprites / states now properly reset to normal at the end of the day
  
• Improved overall performance for extremely low end laptops
  
• The trophy screen was incorrectly cloning the caught fish or critter. This has been fixed
  
• A number of incorrect or strange tree collision issues has been fixed
  
• Some white assets were incorrectly colored gray in certain situations. This is now fixed.
  
• Fixed wall collision and layering in the player's home
  
• Fixed issue where toolbelt selections would occur in incorrect places + improved the code in general
  
• Powering up a longer rod cast no longer shakes the whole camera
  
• Stopped tool UI from disappearing while in relevant Odd Jobs
  
• Fixed the "Uh oh!" description when buying a house. It was not a proper Uh Oh Moment!
  
• Resolved a few performance hiccups and random misc. bugs
  
• Fixed various typos

Hello villagers!

Today marks the release of the first major update to Village Monsters. You'll notice the version number is now set to 0.5 - is this officially the halfway mark?!

This update was guided by players like you! Last week I asked what I should work on next and you weren't shy in giving me an answer: bug fixes, quality of life improvements, and improvements to Odd Jobs.

Part of these changes were already released last week, so this week's patch is meant to cap that one off!

The next planned major update is for Friday, December 6th. I've yet to send out a poll on what that should include, but I should have that out later this week.

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow US villagers!

NEW

• Something is causing villagers to suddenly misplace items. If you find a lost item you should return it to its owner for a nice relationship boost.
  
• A large number of new villager conversations have been added to the game
  
• Fish and Critter ratings now alter their price - the higher the rating, the higher the sell price
  
• Tutorial Odd Jobs have been added to the game.
  
• A new option has been added to make dialogue text instant

IMPROVED

• Made the first attempt at re-balancing the economy. In general: individual items are worth a great deal more money, but you'll see fewer of them per day. For example, critters spawn less, it's harder to fish, and so on.
  
• System Options (Music levels, sprint toggle preference, etc.) are now properly saved
  
• Caught critters are now given a rating like fish
  
• Doubled the rate in which you gain relationship points with villagers
  
• The day and season of your save is now displayed under the Continue option
  
• The dialogue box now fades away a bit slower when you walk away from the speaker, and fades up a bit faster when you walk back toward them
  
• Notifications now trigger for additional actions (like giving away an item from your inventory) to make it clear something triggered
  
• Stamina only decreases during the Attack phase of fishing. Bad attacks expend more stamina, while critical attacks are free
  
• It now requires more stamina to clear weeds from overgrown garden plots
  
• All available Odd Jobs are now listed at the Job Board. You can still only take one one job a day (for now)
  
• Odd Jobs that have a timer will now give out partial rewards when the timer runs out
  
• Certain Odd Jobs will stick around for a bit instead of changing out each day to give you a chance to take them

FIXED

• Fixed issue where music levels would reset themselves when changing areas
  
• Fixed crash related to checking Critter / Fish traps after loading your save
  
• Fixed crash when placing a Critter trap
  
• Fixed crash with the Weeding job
  
• Fixed issue where mushroom plots would appear to "switch" on area transition
  
• Fixed issue with trap visibility
  
• Fixed issue with music sometimes changing to the wrong track on area transition
  
• Fixed potential performance issue in Town Hall
  
• Prevented occasional issue where you can act (and cause errors) as an Odd Job finished
  
• Adjusted controller deadzone to prevent certain movement errors
  
• Fixed notifications from spawning in strange spots
  
• Stopped casting your fishing rod when fishing traps are equipped
  
• Stopped controller rumble while fishing when a keyboard is being used
  
• Fixed issue preventing a few fish types from spawning
  
• Tweaked collision of a number of items to make them easier to pick up
  
• Fixed a few issues related to foraged items spawning incorrectly
  
• Cleaned up collision on Three Wall Island
  
• Cleaned up collision on a number of external objects
  
• Stopped fish from incorrectly stating you could eat them for stamina
  
• Stopped Seaweed from appearing in freshwater
  
• Fixed Komatoa collision in Overflow
  
• Fixed collision issue in Baba's Bakery
  
• Fixed issue with Odd Jobs not sending you back to the right place
  
• Fixed flavor text issue for tamed critters
  
• Fixed issue with "flavor critters" spawning in incorrect locations
  
• Fixed occasional issue with teleporting home at end of day
  
• Stopped critters from spawning when time is paused
  
• Improved Odd Jobs in general to be less error prone
  
• Usual misc. fixes, performance and stability improvements
  
• Usual misc. typo corrections

I was originally slating for an update this Friday, but I've seen quite a few bug reports that would be fixed by the version I'm currently working on. I figured there was no reason to wait - being in Early Access means I can be flexible!

Starting with this version your game will now automatically backup your saves. Here's how it works:

- Upon selecting "Continue" the game will load the data in your save
- At the end of the day your old saves are moved to the "bak" subfolder. Only the previous day is kept as a backup
- The game then saves the new data and the next day begins

This won't impact many users, but if an update breaks your saves then this is one way to get them back. It's still a good practice to manually backup your saves if you want to be extra super sure they aren't lost

NEW

• Your save files are now automatically backed up before each day's autosave
  
• Inventory items now group themselves together when possible. This does not apply to items that can have unique attributes, like fish or critters
  
• You can now view your Patchling and Battery balance directly from the inventory screen

IMPROVED

• Odd Jobs board is now located by the inn
  
• Greatly improved look & feel of Odd Job: Weeding for Valentine
  
• Added concept of timers to some Odd Jobs to reward quick completion (and penalize layabouts)
  
• Various graphical changes and improvements

FIXED

• Fixed major issue in which the items in your inventory would appear to change into other items or objects. This fix only applies to new items. Old items should be safe to sell or use despite their strange appearance, but you may want to dump them if they give you problems
  
• Fixed major crash related to the last item in the Patchling Goal section
  
• Fixed various crashes related to the Capricious Cumulus critter
  
• Fixed crash when going to sleep when a critter is following you
  
• Fixed critter names resetting themselves each day
  
• Fixed collision issue with the "Sleep" / "Nap" prompt
  
• Fixed large number of collision issues with geometry
  
• Fixed various typos
  
• Fixed various technical issues
  
• Disabled Buzzsaw Mode which was erroneously available

Today's patch brings a whole host of fixes and improvements. My focus was mostly on Goals and Patchlings (aka how you progress through the game), but also I changed plenty of other things based on player feedback.

The next patch is planned for November 22nd. You can vote on what you want to see included in this patch right here!

NEW

• Many big changes have been made to the Patchlings / Goals system
  
• All successfully completed Goals grant a minimum of two Patchlings
  
• Many Goals now have levels and grant even greater Patchlings as it "levels up"
  
• Several new Goals have been added to the game, including Patchlings related to hobbies, meeting all the villagers in town, and more.
  
• All unearned Patchlings now display a description so you can find out how to unlock them
  
• Added new notices for unlocking Goals and earning Patchlings
  
• You can now sort your inventory by Item Name by pressing C (keyboard) or X (gamepad). Press again to reverse the sort

IMPROVED

• Improved the loading of various data structures to make them more robust
  
• Improved the look of Main Street
  
• Added a number of schedule changes for rainy weather
  
• Double the rate relationships improve
  
• Added a note to better explain why holidays won't working
  
• Various economy tweaks
  
• Various fixes to villager placements
  
• Various misc. graphical and UI improvements

FIXED

• Fixed occasional crash related to opening your inventory
  
• Fixed issue preventing villager schedules from updating
  
• Fixed issue preventing some stats from being saved
  
• Fixed issue that sometimes resulted in notifications overlapping each other
  
• Fixed issue related to relationship levels not properly being calculated
  
• Fixed issue with scrollbar placement in the inventory
  
• Fixed holiday description placement
  
• Stopped the mayor from sending you blank letters in the mail
  
• Fixed scheduling issue that occasionally prevented Mock from showing up
  
• Further fixed issues with "meeting" Jaclyn
  
• Fixed various typos etc.