Hey there you rascals. We've got another update for you fresh out the update oven. For this one we've added in a number of new and improved recipes for you obtain. We also took care of quite a few UI quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes that we've been wanting to check off our to-do list for awhile. If you run into any bugs or simply have some brilliant feedback to share then don't hesitate to let us know in the community or you can even drop us a mail at Bugs@Kynseed.com. See you all again soon, cheers!


🔷 Quite a few new recipes added to the game
ᅠᅠ• These are obtainable from exploring, spending, and some are unlocked rewards as well!
🔶 Burial Grounds in the Vale has undergone some reworking (some assets awaiting custom replacements)
🔶 Stove/baking interacts work differently so that a recipe is required and random ingredients cannot be used
ᅠᅠ• The star rating of items can be picked and affects the result quality
🔶 Show known likes/dislikes in the gifting screen
🔶 World map has bounds and scrolls when the cursor is close to the edge
🔶 Added a "Return to Title" menu option
🔶 Region name now displays when entering a level
🔶 Options menu rearranged into sequential order with sections
🔶 Choosing a volume on the SFX slider should play a sound to test audio levels
🔶 Some small changes around the early game tasks to not require home offerings in the first season and dandelion task until after the father is spoken to
❌ Fixed a few infrequent issues with shoppers getting stuck
❌ Melee combat skills now acquired the same way as other skills to fix recent issues with them
❌ Prevented lost items in Simplewood
❌ Wedding spirit benefit is random rather than appearing to come from the top
❌ Prevent exploit of levelling slingshot from hitting permission locked bushes/trees
❌ Prevented slight exploit of cooking involving multiple items of the same type where you previously could get away with only one
❌ Fixed bug where skill progress wasn't shown in the skill menu
❌ Fixed attempting to drag proverbs in the inventory causing it to hang until a different tab was chosen
❌ Fixed issue loading a save game taking the customisation options from another save game onscreen
❌ Cutting wheat shouldn't sometimes give apples
❌ Fixed multi-line intros only showing one line in the chat system
❌ Fixed old gate in Willowdown for old saves
❌ Favours in the first season limited to available items in that region
❌ Fix for Hazel not giving out a task due to recent changes with intros going via the chat system
❌ Poops no longer magically appear at a location in the current level if the animal actually isn't in that level


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
ᅠ

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Well hello again and welcome back! There's been some interesting developments since last we talked.

Regarding game developments, Charlie has been busy doing another pass over the Evergreen and Woemarsh regions. He's also been working on some new Reputation systems that'll determine how the player accrues Rep for not just their shops but also their family. As usual, check out the individual updates below for the details.

Regarding other developments, we're rather excited to report that we've recently begun looking to add another coder to our team! Doing so will no doubt have sweeping benefits to the game's progress and we're both happy and humbled to have reached a place where we can expand our small team. So read on below and we'll tell you all about it!







It's been a bit of a full-on time since our last posts. As Neal will go into detail about, we set about trying to recruit a coder and conducting some interviews. It was really interesting, though sometimes a challenge for me to understand what on Earth they were talking about with all their coder jargon.

What is clear is that there are many really talented people out there and I am jealous of their skillz. I was part of the meetings as a 'gauge of character' and to see if they would fit into the team as a whole. We have a very close team with great camaraderie and that does need to be considered as well as coding prowess and a bit of flair.

Aside from that I have been finishing up a pass of Evergreen, starting Woemarsh, and finally trying to sort out the Reputation system. It was a challenge as we don't want to force the player down certain paths. In summary, we have two Rep systems: one per shop and then one for all shops, friendships, and deeds (called your Family Rep). The former will unlock Perks that help your shop and the latter unlocks benefits beyond just shops. Both Reps come with tiers of renown, from Unknown to Legendary. The UI for this then needed mocking up in Visio, which was slow going. I find I always forget one thing here and there.

Got potentially exciting times ahead and hoping we can get the coder onboard and get more features out. We appreciate your patience with this game. There is lots to do, but lots of good stuff, and you will only benefit from more updates. Stay safe everyone!







Another month zips by with a slower pace still as we start on the process of hiring an additional coder. It's a decision we've been thinking on for a few years now where we actually came very close to getting somebody prior to Early Access but timing just didn't work out. Though in connection with recent business developments, it has become a possibility again and so we opened up applications and were pleasantly surprised to see such a large response compared to our expectations!

There's also been a bunch of feedback requests from candidates which I've been trying to go through one by one to give specific advice to each person's submissions. That said, it feels like maybe there are some common threads I could mention here on the off chance anyone is reading and interested. (A small disclaimer that this is my first time recruiting a coder so my experience is limited to what we are specifically looking for, but hopefully there is something of use still!)

Note from the Editor: For any non-coders who want to follow along, I've added explanatory links for some of the terms used below.

#1 - GETTING TO THE GOOD STUFF
The first important bit is about presentation and minimising the time it takes to get to the good parts. While most applicants did include portfolio or itchio links, there were quite a few that relied on links to web games to play rather than any video reel or brief articles describing the work they did. Chances are that people hiring aren't able to play most of these web games because of time constraints; the more applicants the less practical it becomes and the more you'll lose the chance to impress quickly. It's similar to advertising a game I guess in that sense. You need a sizzle reel of a minute or two that gets to the point quickly and some screenshots that helps gauge the quality. In a related sense, linking the presentation to the role being applied for is helpful too for showing relevant skills. For example, many people who applied have a background in Unity which is fine for roles using that but presents a challenge in our situation where our code uses the MonoGame framework. The clearer it was from the covering mail or website that their experience ran deeper on having worked on their own engine, used XNA/MonoGame in the past, released commercial games, demonstrated more advanced Unity usage (maybe developing their own plugin/editor), the better. Such applicants moved towards the top of the pile, as it demonstrated existing experience that would suggest they could do well in the role and that they understood the role they were applying for.

#2 - EASILY VERIFIABLE CODE
Second is seeing source code and github usage, which gives me a good sense of how a person has worked on prior projects. Lots of bonus points to ones where there is a project with a bunch of commits for the project. A surprising amount of applicants I found included repos where there was an initial commit and that was it (the only repo updated was the website portfolio one). Personally I found this a bit disconcerting as it just leaves a big project to scour through with no true sense of how it was worked on (including the sceptical wondering of knowing if it was one person's sole work). It also links in with #1 that scouring through means it is taking a lot of time to try and find the good parts. First impressions are really important cause you just don't know the circumstance of when it'll be seen and how much or little time might be spent looking at it.

#3 - PORTFOLIO POLISH
Third is about quality of the portfolio. Once you've caught my eye enough to look through video/screenshots (and maybe play if time permits), the next thing I'm looking for is how polished/solid/creative/innovative each presented bit is. A lot of 'professional' game development is about spending the time on those details. Perhaps some examples might help illustrate some common features of projects that don't catch the eye:

• A character jumps in a platformer and looks weightless.
  
• Standing on a slope and feeling like it has no effect (again, from a weightless point of view where you'd perhaps expect sliding, friction, different animation, etc.).
  
• The camera being fixed on the center of the player the whole time.
  
• Power-ups collected that just disappear without any visual/audio cue.
  
• Menus/levels/UI being really static and not guiding the eye at all.
  
• Clones of things like Tetris/Snake/Asteroids where there's no difference to the originals. (Funnily enough, part of my application to Lionhead was from a Tetris clone but I had included an extra twist of bomb pieces and adding falling blocks to the menu screen to liven it up which managed to do the job some 17 years ago!)

Hopefully the list above gives a few ideas of the ways of making the difference in quality that helps show understanding of what it takes to finish a game. If we were in the first year or two of development maybe we wouldn't be quite as picky on this front, but this role is all about helping us finish the game. Basically, every little bit helps in terms of showing attention to detail and persistence in effort. So to be efficient on a portfolio it can be about choosing the right parts to concentrate on, as obviously completing every piece to commercial quality would take too long (and you might as well be looking to sell the game at that point!). I find making a short video or GIF of something I work on, then reviewing just that video or GIF, often helps a lot on that front as it creates that distance of perspective where you can look at the game without being immersed in the controls.

As other advice on this point, I'd recommend checking out the best games that are the same genre to what you are making for ideas of the little touches. Seeking out tutorials on YouTube or various game dev sites can also help with the implementation details and providing pre-packaged research. (Game Maker's Toolkit on YouTube is particularly useful for this I think.) The challenge in just following the lead of others though is it shows a level of competency but there is a lack of flair/innovation to make your own mark. So it is also important to consider how you can show your own originality in combination with polish as it will help stand out and reach the top of the pile.

I think those three points probably cover the basics to go over so I'll leave it there for now! It's been really humbling/inspiring seeing all the applicants and having the chance to interview some as well. For now we're still in the final stages of the hiring process and handling the business developments but hopefully we'll soon have more to announce on all that!

To wrap up quickly on actual game development progress (as time permitted amongst the coder hiring process): since the update in the middle of August I've been working mostly on items and recipe setup along with some bug fixes. I've also started work on the player children setup, which is exciting. (To set expectations, this is early days stuff so will take a few months to reach a public build.) Apart from that, work is continuing on all the polish/improvements for the relationship update which is now starting to see long-standing in-progress items ticked off but there's still plenty to do which I better get back to. 'Til next time, wishing everyone all the best!







As my cohorts mentioned above, the lion's share of our time in these recent weeks has been spent on looking for another coder to add to the team. As is often the case, focusing on the business side of this project always tends to require a fair amount of our available time and focus, thereby causing game development to take more of a back seat than we'd like. (If it were possible I imagine we'd prefer to never stop working on the game, living in some sort of perpetual business-free utopia.) Yet this time we don't terribly mind it cause the business at hand is to find someone whose sole job is to help code.

This is incredibly exciting for us, because up 'til now we've been chiefly running as a skeleton crew. As such, most of us share multiple roles on the team which forces us to divide our time and focus between the various (and often large) workloads of each role. For example, Neal has been not just our one and only programmer but he also manages much of the business and finances. (Taxes, payroll, expense management, and so on.) So adding another person to assist purely with code will have a huge impact for a small team like ours. Ultimately, it'll help improve the quality of the game and the efficiency with which we make it.

Originally, my plan for this Post was to collate some interesting community stats for you all to check out (sourced from overall community analytics as well as our recent player survey.) Though as often happens with best laid plans, my focus got diverted elsewhere due to us recently starting this hiring process. Hiring some help for the code has always been something we've considered since before Early Access, but as a small team just starting out we often didn't have the resources to make it happen. Yet it always stayed on our minds as a "maybe one day" type of goal.

Thus, it seems that day has arrived. So once we decided we were finally at a good place to expand our little team, we wanted to move on it rather quickly. The first order of business was that I needed to create a new jobs page on our website along with posting the position itself. We wanted to not only explain the job adequately but also show a bit of our personality as a studio. Making sure we hire someone who "got" our vibe and culture as a developer was super important to us. (Here's how that page turned out, for anyone interested.)

In addition to this, I helped set up a sort of pipeline for our application process. Namely this just meant setting emails up to funnel applicants to some designated areas of our master inbox on Outlook and to help provide Neal with any support or assistance he might need (because as a coder, he's ultimately the one who'd need to be replying to and organizing coder candidates).

From there, we then shared the job post in a few spots around the community as well as other social channels. We didn't really know what sort of response to expect, but I do know we were keeping our expectations pretty conservative. Yet the quantity (and even quality) of responses received were well above anything we had anticipated, which was encouraging and humbling. Of course, the more responses there were the more initial work this represented as it meant there were more candidates to go through, reply to, and interview. (We were also very keen on not being a sort of cold silent company during this process and so it was important to us that we took the time to not just view every candidate's response but to also give an individual followup reply to each regardless of our decision.)

I found that during this process my mind was very much put into the mode of thinking about how our game and company might seem to a new-hire joining for the first time. What internal processes might possibly need polishing or updating? Is all our project's internal file sharing still up to snuff, for example? What other such areas might need attention? In addition to this, working on the new jobs page of our site got me thinking about how some of our website was in dire need of updating, both on the front end and back. Similarly, adding yet another email address to our server's already long list (addresses for team members, bug reports, community accounts, job applicants most recently, and so on) reminded me of our myriad of server-side email forwarders I have set up and how our master Outlook inbox could probably stand to get somewhat reorganized.

This then sent me on a bit of a twisting path in which I assessed such areas and found there were many things I felt needed updating. That said, I've rattled on a fair bit already for one update, so I'll graciously save you all from enduring a detailed explanation of all these individual updates I got into. Perhaps I'll touch lightly on it in the next issue for anyone particularly interested. Long story short, I've had my hands unexpectedly full with such work these past number of weeks.

Still, the time we're spending on these business things now will yield rewards for the game later. Once we finish the final remaining steps of this hiring process, we'll finally have some extra hands helping out on the code - something which will no doubt have a significant positive impact on the game. It's a most interesting time for our team to be sure and I look forward to offering more updates on these things in our next issue of The Post. Until then, much love to you all!

Time for another changelog, with this one featuring all NPC's in Vale and Summerdown now reaching old age! If you experience any issues or get any bug bites, feel free to report them in any of the usual community places. Thanks everyone!


🔷 All NPC's in Vale and Summerdown will reach old age in looks!
🔶 Level improvements
ᅠᅠ• Moved the Vale's blacksmith house and made the mine more pronounced
ᅠᅠ• Bigger houses for the Poppyhill blacksmith, Weed's, and Crust's
ᅠᅠ• North Gate now leads directly into Candlewych Village
ᅠᅠ• Cuckoo Wood now leads into Candlewych West
ᅠᅠ• Cowpat Farm now leads into Candlewych Cottage
ᅠᅠ• Numerous navigation, collision, and layer fixes throughout many levels
ᅠᅠ• Lots of prettying and level design tidying thoughout the Vale and Summerdown
🔶 Chat UI presentation improved
🔶 Character's intros now flow directly into the chat system
❌ Fix for birthday showing the wrong date in some cases during chat
❌ Fix for pig balloon minigame using the wrong intro line
❌ Fixed circumstance where tavern entertainment didn't end at night
➕ Various behind-the-scenes work on balance that should surface in the next build


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Hello again and welcome to yet another issue of our dev log in which a few of us check in to tell you how things are progressing along. The past couple of weeks have been spent tending to some business-ey odds and ends as well as making some needed improvements to the beginning bits of the game.

Work has also been coming along in regards to better connecting the player with NPC's as well as our ever-continuing task of adding more aging characters to the world. We also revealed a new character that we'll be adding to the game in some future update, which you can take a gander at below. Though to keep within the spirit of these short reports being short, we'll let the individual dev logs below get into all the details. Thanks for reading and playing and we'll see you again soon!











Been a strange few weeks with business distractions and an emphasis on planning. I also got whacked by a painful toothache and some sort of bug (nothing viral thankfully) that put me out of action for a few days.

Work-wise, we had some discussions to make the start of the game better. Currently it doesn't really set up the story or world, has little excitement, and the first tasks are boring. We went away and brainstormed and now have a new start that doesn't deviate wildly - you still wake up and meet your sibling, etc. We designed a little section before you wake that is very interesting and the whole first day or two are much better for it (though this is all yet to be put ingame).

Additionally, I changed the start area to be a little wider and a bit prettier so you get to run through more lavender. Mr Weekes (our environment artist) and I are also sorting out the recipes and we'll be putting some of them in the shops, some with Hubbard, some in family chests, and some in houses (though they will need permissions to gain). There are quite a few new recipes and hopefully most will be useful as we continue to get effects in.

Neal and I also discussed visual variety in the levels so I will be looking at easy wins there...plus I'm tempted to tweak the layout of Burial Grounds and Cuckoo Wood, which are a bit messy in places. Evergreen to finish first though!

Exciting times are ahead and we will of course share any news as soon as we get it. Stay safe!







The last few weeks have passed by in a bit of a blur. Intentions of dialogue work were put aside as some pressing needs occurred for a business focus that meant writing some documents, investigating various options, and putting together some exciting plans. It was funny how much writing the documents reminded me of writing reports for school with some nostalgia given how long has passed since having to work on that kind of info. At the moment can't really say anymore details about what it was for as it is an ongoing bunch of work at the moment that has yet to be finalised, but it is exciting for the future of the game.

Though I can say some of the plans were about gauging all the remaining work for the full launch version of the game and putting together some estimates of how that might pan out. In doing so I was struck again by how hard it is to estimate these things between not really knowing how long anything will take and the way that the estimates often come out based on the expectation of 100% efficiency from start to finish. I tried a few different approaches to the plan but am still not entirely satisfied with it - feels like a case where the available tools could be better. The plans will be something we can share more on with the finalising of business.

Now that the business focus has reduced somewhat, things are ramping back up on game progress. The break probably did me a bit of good as I've found it a bit easy to get lost in the details and now coming back to it fresh I can see ways to conclude some outstanding work and allow me to move along for everyone's benefit onto the remaining new areas.

Recently I've added NPC letter gifts as an initial step towards more NPC connection with the player. These should be getting some more improvements in the coming days to be more flexible for use. I've also spent some time setting up all the aging characters for the Vale and Summerdown as a small further step toward aging work. Next up I've got remaining item setup work to do plus dialogue and NPC stories to start looking into, so plenty to go on in addition to picking away at business ends! 'Til next time, wishing everyone all the best!







Due to a small mountain of tasks I'm chipping away at I'll be keeping my update this week short but sweet, like a haiku to your crush. It's sometimes easy to forget that our little venture here is, by all accounts, a small business. So every now and then we find ourselves having to catch up on business-related odds and ends. This helps us keep the gears of this development machine well oiled but also helps us adequately plan for the future.

Between all that we have still kept ourselves busy with game-related progress as well of course. (Which my cohorts talk a bit about above.) On my end, my hands have still been busy with some community related tasks such as wrapping up that player survey I recently discussed - namely on sorting and organizing the final results. Our next dev log I'll probably give a brief look at some of the survey's stats, for those interested.

In other news, I've been getting various parts of our website and community channels updated on the back end servers, which can sometimes make for rather unexciting work from the outside but is still a necessary and important part of having an online presence such as ours. Additionally, Discord has recently made deeper server analytics available and I've been having a fair bit of fun going through it all and seeing what insights they may hold for how our team and our players use that particular corner of our community.

Perhaps I'll also piggyback a few of our Discord stats onto the survey stats the next time we talk. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other. Cheers!

Time again for another update! Today's changelog contains a fairly standard batch of things including some improved UI, more aging characters, and fixes for some bugs that players recently reported. Cheers!


🔷 Any time the player sleeps at the farm it should autosave progress
🔷 Can now receive gift mails from NPC's in certain circumstances
🔷 New ambience for one of the Fae realms
🔷 Several more characters in the Vale now age further
🔶 The mailbox has had some presentation improvements (and you can now delete shop mails from the archive section)
🔶 Tool level-up presentation improved
🔶 Friendship rating presentation improved when gifting NPC's
🔶 Rating now shown for all picked up items
🔶 Inventory category highlights improved for mouse
🔶 Improvements for the task list to now have filtering and slightly improved presentation
🔶 Monument stone UI comes up on first interact
🔶 The proverb for discovering the Gassy trait is no longer required to find gassy apples
🔶 Expanded pool of gossip to have more variety (including per haven)
❌ Prevent certain NPC's walking away while being talked to
❌ Fix for combat where the level-up box would get stuck onscreen
❌ Stopped the clock's Sun/Moon position from moving while in the Options menu since time should pause in that menu
❌ Time no longer changes when visiting certain Fae regions which allowed the player to loop in time
❌ Prevent riding in combat areas
❌ Can put slingshot in combat hotbar while in combat area
❌ Prevent exploit in combat for quick gaining of XP from projectiles
❌ Prevent duplicate recipes from showing up in shops
❌ Fix for shop worker status not being cleared when selling a shop
❌ Fixed the selling box's left/right mouseover star ratings from being offset
❌ Fix for the mouse cursor disappearing on interact while over the hotbar (the mouse has to be outside the hotbar to trigger an interact now)


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Hello and welcome to another issue of The PixelCount Post! For those of you joining us for the first time from the Steam sale, this is our regularly released Dev Log where we ask a few team members to write quick bite-sized updates on what they've been recently working on. We like to keep these fairly casual and conversational, so in addition to sharing Kynseed development progress we'll also occasionally chat about things like how we're navigating the world of indie development, ways we try to stay productive, recent challenges or successes we've experienced, stories from back in our old Fable development days, and so on.

As you've probably noticed this section is called "The Short Report", which is our no-fuss summarized version of recent development progress for those of you who aren't keen on reading all our team's ramblings. So with that said, let's dive right into things!

Most recently we released a new update which contained a decently sized chunk of improvements as well as new content. Highlights include more player customisation, a ton of new UI improvements, a revamped Goddess offering system, more NPC aging, as well as the oh-so-important work of adding new visual effects for poop. Hop on over to the recent announcement to see the full list of everything the update included.

In the weeks since, the team has been keeping busy with our usual gambit of work. Neal (our programmer) has been working on how items are setup, UI improvements, as well as doing some preliminary brainstorming on potential localization logistics. Translations are still a ways off of course, but there's a surprising amount of code-based technicalities needed to get multi-language support working and it's important that we make such considerations now to save ourselves potential headache in the future. Meanwhile Charlie (our lead designer) has been knee-deep in game text adding new dialogue in addition to doing level designs on a new enchanting region called Evergreen. Also, Matt (our production manager and community developer) has been going through and organizing all the results from a recent player survey we ran. (We'll be leaving it open for a couple more weeks, so check out the survey here if you'd like to participate before it closes.)

Lastly, to give a quick update about art: Gary (our character artist) has been making more progress on all the aging art required for the literal hundreds of different NPC generations that will inhabit the world. It continues to be quite the undertaking, but if anyone can do it it's Gary. That fellow's a pixel whisperer.

Though occasionally we'll give him a break from that huge NPC undertaking to work on other things the game also needs, such as some new frightening monsters that we're keeping secretive about until we sneakily add them into the game one day when you're not looking. Another thing he recently made was a new impressively animated wagon to help make our trader character more prominently visible when on-screen. I think it's safe to say the trader will be rather hard to miss now. It's quickly become one of the team's new favourite pieces of animation, so take a gander down below and see how it turned out. And yes, that is in fact an enormously gigantic pig pulling the wagon...











A lot of exciting things have happened in recent weeks. We had to prep for the Steam Summer Sale and were piling in lots of QOL (Quality of Life) improvements for the game. I have been on playthroughs, design, Evergreen (a new region), and designed a minigame for that Fae realm which is a creepy variant of a popular game. I hope you like it when we eventually get it in (though quite a while yet, sadly).

There was a flurry of interest in the game and we seemed to rise up quite nicely. There is still a long way to go to gain visibility before we can join those big names like My Time At Portia, Moonlighter, Graveyard Keeper, etc, and be a household name. We do feel like if we can keep improving the game and nurturing the fantastic rapidly growing community then we will eventually be big enough to bring Kynseed to other platforms and even more languages so others can enjoy the experience.

It is great to see the gameplay loops starting to come together with the proverbs, traits, and star ratings. But there is still much to do, especially when it comes to goals and clarity of what the player should be doing. We constantly analyse player feedback and do our own playthroughs to tweak the UI and experience. There are some big things coming to help the overall experience, from NPC stories to combat improvements to UI upgrades and better teaching of mechanics.

It is an exciting time and we love having you all in our little valley. Hope you are all staying safe!







Been a few weeks since the last one of these! I've been keeping busy with a number of areas mainly still focused on items. The last few updates have concentrated quite a bit on the item setup to have more ratings and proverbs determining the conditions of when they show up. The type of fish in different ponds also underwent quite a big change related to this. Fortunately it now makes it compatible with both the way ratings/proverbs work where there is simple condition data that can be layered together to create quite a variety of setups very easily. It's something we'll be watching the balance of and probably tweaking throughout the remainder of development.

Most recently I've been working a bit more on UI to improve their presentation and usability. It's still a work-in-progress and somewhat laborious to work through. The main challenge is the sequence of events all being done via code. This makes it all a bit slower trying to map out where elements go and any elaborate animations.

With the relationship update in mind, the friendship rating is one of those aspects where we've tried to improve the visuals of it to be clearer. This ended up with a 10 stage animation all done via code in about 500 lines. It took a solid 10 hours over a few days to set up and get results I'm somewhat happy with. Weighing it up, it's possible within a week I might be able to put together a sequence editor to handle it well (there's a bit of dynamic values at play because the rating can be between 1 and 7 hearts which changes the visible number of elements and their colour) but the cost of that time felt a bit too large at this stage. I'm thinking that perhaps that editor (and other ones relating to UI) do need to be slowly assembled as there is going to be a longer-term benefit to them where they aren't quite as disruptive to the immediate flow of work.

My more immediate next focus is going to be on dialogue as we're starting to put together more for the NPC's to say things in various situations (and a system to edit/add to that with our ingame editor tool). So 'til next time, wishing everyone all the best!







Hello again! It feels like it's been a while since we chatted, though for some reason the past few weeks have felt like they went in the blink of an eye for me. As the team's resident wearer-of-many-hats, I've had my hands busy with all manner of various things. For this last week specifically, it was finally time for me to start sorting and organizing all the results from the recent player feedback survey we ran.

We figured we'd give it about a month to accrue results and give everyone a chance to respond before we had a proper dive into the data. That said, we'll be leaving the survey open for a couple weeks more for any folks who still want to get in on it. Just head to the survey announcement if interested.

This was the first player survey that we've done, so I kept the questions pretty general overall when making it. It was fairly standard stuff as far as surveys go - nothing fancy really. Though some questions asked players to rate how they felt about certain game elements and, as some of you pointed out to me, these didn't always have a 'middle' or 'neutral' option available as an answer. This was an intentional design on my part, as it was recommended to me by a fellow community manager who said that they never include middle answers in their player surveys in order to "avoid fence-sitting and force people to choose a stance".

I figured it was worth trying for a few questions at least, but I'm not entirely convinced that I'd do it again in future surveys. Namely because I do feel like there's legitimate reasons as to why someone might not have a strong opinion about something one way or the other. Plus, I figure data is data. If the data indicates that some players don't have a stance about something in particular, that's still potentially useful information to have. So all in all this survey proved to be a useful learning experience, not just from the actual survey results but also from finding out which sorts of questions to ask and in which ways.

Though speaking of the results, I was rather surprised at the amount of participants we had. We weren't really sure how many replies to realistically expect, but in total we ended up with just over 1,600 individual responses! That may not seem like a high number at first glance, but for a small self-publishing indie team it's not a bad turnout at all.

Of course, the more participants there are the more data there is for me to sort through and to subsequently organize into a digestible format for the rest of the team to read (complete with written analysis and fancy charts). I'm still going through all the results presently, but perhaps in the next PixelCount Post I'll share some of the actual stats and numbers. Though for me, the absolute best part about sorting through these results hasn't been the numbers. The best part has been reading everyone's personally written replies to two of the survey's open-ended (and optional) questions.

The first question basically asked what one aspect of the game they'd like to change if they could and the second question just broadly asked if there was anything else they wanted to tell the team. I was honestly blown away at how the sweeping majority of people took time to write out very detailed and personalized replies to both those questions. The answers to the first question in particular were incredibly helpful and had a nice healthy mix of positive feedback as well as very useful critical feedback, the latter of which has given the team a great list of tangible suggestions and improvements to begin working on. As for the answers to that broad second question, we received an overwhelming amount of incredibly kind and supportive personal messages. So many of the replies were from players rooting us on and saying how much they've been enjoying the game and our approach to open development.

That's one of the things we set out to do when we first chose to make an Early Access game: to be as open and accessible a team as possible. To be real approachable people, not some pseudo-mythic devs who put up a sort of wall between themselves and the players. All of that to say, I can't adequately convey how utterly surprising and humbling an experience it was to read so many lovely comments from folks expressing their support for what this quirky little team of ours is doing. It's not that we don't see encouraging comments from around the community of course, but to suddenly have over a thousand (literally!) encouraging comments to sort through all at once feels pretty crazy.

So allow me to give a big heartfelt thank you to everyone who took time to leave personal replies. Whether it was positive feedback or critical (or both!), it all helps us make a better game and it means a lot to us. Not counting any additional responses we may get in the survey's final two weeks ahead, we've currently got 1,584 individual replies (some of which are many paragraphs long!) to read through. I've transferred them all to a consolidated document to make it easier to read for myself and altogether it's 78 pages in total. So I've certainly got my weekend reading cut out for me!

I'll let you know how it goes the next time we chat here in The Post, but until then I wish you all a lovely weekend and hope you enjoy any new games you may've scored during the recent sale. (I've personally been getting addicted to the newly remastered Command & Conquer. Such a deliciously cheesy game.)

See you 'round the community everyone. Cheers!

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Hello again from all (seven) of us here at PixelCount! It's been a few weeks longer than usual since we last chatted and there's been a hefty batch of six individual new updates to catch you all up on in that time. So pull up a chair and warm yourself by our virtual fireplace as you enjoy a brief respite from this crazy ol' world of ours.

Over the last month-plus of work, we've had a flurry of seemingly small but impactful polish improvements that we've rolled out across various areas of the game. It's a bit of a balancing act really, because we have to ensure we work on adding 'new stuff' while simultaneously applying gradual polish to 'existing stuff'. For a complex game like this, it'd be a huge cobbled mess if we were to only ever add new bits and never polish.

It's a challenging balance to strike though - one we're constantly adjusting and learning from. There's a slightly exponential component at work too, which is to say that the more we add to the game the more we'll have to eventually polish. That's why it can be hard to fully predict the timing and scope of major content milestones (like our upcoming relationship milestone, for example). To put it another way, there's an oft-used proverb you'll sometimes hear in game development that asks, "How long is a piece of string?"

But of course, we've still got to do our best in predicting those metaphorical string lengths and ensure we don't get tangled in development knots. These are the sort of things we've been recently mindful of as we worked on this latest batch of updates. To nobody's real surprise, it turns out there's a ton of deeply interconnected game systems that underpin all relationship-based mechanics.

So our focus was to not only continue paving the way for that next milestone but to also apply some important polish as we go. Read on below for some examples and highlights or feel free to just jump straight into our game update thread for a full look at the six recent changelogs.

CHANGELOG HIGHLIGHTS

One of the things we've been keen to continue adding is additional player customisation, so for the last few months our programmer has been working hard to rig all player graphics (every single tile and/or frame of animation) to a system that allows for per-pixel color grading. This has been an ongoing project for a while now and so we're happy to report that we've just recently added our first pass at these new customisation options. Of course, there's still quite a bit of work left to do for this new system (and player customisation in general) and so we'll continue refining it in future updates as well as taking in whatever feedback you good folks throw our way.

You'll also find a slew of new UI graphics and tweaks have been made. Experience has taught us that UI is something that tends to lag behind in many game's development, and yet it can have such an important impact on how polished a game feels. So in the spirit of that balance we mentioned in the section above, we've taken some time during this last month to make improvements to UI where possible. So give that scroll wheel a tickle and check out some highlights below.

More Player Customisation

We've spent the last couple of months adding in a new per-pixel color grading system to allow for additional player customisation options. Much of this is still just an early pass but we'll be gradually refining and adding to this system as we go along.

New Proverb Setup

We've done a slight adjustment to how proverbs work. They've now been standardized so that relevant items will have exactly three findable proverbs - two to hint at the item's location and one to hint at the item's effect. As such, we've redistributed proverb's placements around the game world (in addition to adding some new ones here and there).

Higher Star Ratings

Making higher star ratings attainable for growables and fish is something we've been keen to do, including updating parts of the star rating UI being used. Across current items, approximately 140 of 260 possible extra stars are now obtainable through certain conditions being met (with more to come of course).

Growable Indicators UI Improvements

Some of the information displayed for growables when viewing Status Mode (accessed via CTRL or Left Trigger) have been given a new coat of polish and now have less of a 'programmer-art' look.

Auctions/Races/Markets Now Drawn on Map

Work continues on adding to the world map. Most recently, the maps will now show indications for various events and info. (The visual presentation is still fairly work-in-progress at the moment.)

Additional Goddess Offering Balance & Setup

Goddess offering saw a number of changes and adjustments in the recent updates. It now has slightly new functionality, updated UI, and better overall balance. (Though feedback on this particular mechanic is still very much appreciated, by the way!)

Improved Status & Skills Screens

Viewing your current progress for your various skills should now be easier with these new UI changes.

Continued Work on NPC Aging

Progress continues at a gradual and steady pace as we work to add aging to our expansive cast of characters. Most recently you may notice that Ash and Boots now age (which also makes Ash eligible for dating once they reach adulthood).

Improved Inventory Organization

Sometimes it feels like RPG's are actually more like Inventory Micro-Management: The Game™, so we've added some new categories to help make your time in the inventory a bit easier to navigate.

Poo Effects

We've enhanced poo's visual effects in our ongoing quest to polish turds.

Full Changelogs

As always, there's vastly more additions and fixes made than we can list here. So jump on over to this recent changelog of ours to check out the details or just drop by the game update thread itself to check out all six of the updates we've recently released.

NEXT ON OUR JOURNEY

As we continue to work towards that hefty relationship milestone, our next steps ahead will be to turn our attention to adding various spouse behaviors and other similar spouse-related mechanics. We'll be sure to let you all know how it's coming along in our usual community spots (such as Discord), so feel free to pop in anytime and hang out with us while we work. Take care everyone and we'll see you all again very soon. Cheers!

Love,
PixelCount

Hello again! This is just a quick patch to followup from the larger update earlier this week. Thanks to everyone who helped squash these bugs!


🔷 Gossip and secrets can now give out info on how to obtain higher star rated items (this info gets recorded in a summary in the inventory)
🔶 Bees now hibernate in winter
🔶 Updated icons for inventory subcategories
🔶 NPC's given food can get buffs from them similar to the player
🔶 Updated a few proverbs to show up in the right category
🔶 Tweaks to improve delivery box setup and the player status screen
🔶 Some small tweaks to buildings to improve their setup for layering and tiling
❌ Preventative fix for crash interacting with growables
❌ Handling shoppers consistently of them not stopping for target by the player
❌ Corrected order of text for boons and blessings on offering
❌ Fixed circumstance where extra weekly reports could be made for shops
❌ Hooked up some proverbs to the correct items
❌ Fix for extra sprites drawing above the heart for NPC's when they are at values in excess of the cap
❌ Fix for transaction log showing the wrong season in a certain situation


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Time for another update to grace your download queue. This time we've got some UI improvements, proverb adjustments, further fish setup, new player customization, and more fixes. Check it all out next time you launch the game and let us know if you run into any problems. Cheers!


🔷 Player skin tone options now available on the intro screen
🔷 Proverbs are now standardized to contain either a hint for item location or a hint for item effect/use
ᅠᅠ• Many proverbs have also been spread across the levels to find
🔷 Fish setup has undergone a reworking to match their proverbs and split them up into appearing in rivers/pools/ponds
🔶 Seasons and timings for growables and fish rebalanced according to proverbs
🔶 F1 help key now remappable for keybindings
🔶 Added in an all star item filter as default for various screens
🔶 Altered equipping via inventory for gamepad to initiate via A to equip and accept like on pickup, so B isn't treated as both assignment and closing the menu
🔶 Various minor tweaks to presentation across the UI's
🔶 Various level changes
🔶 Some price data balance adjusted
🔶 Home/End keys as shortcut for transaction log if not otherwise used as a keybinding
🔶 Can gift multiple of the same rating item at once for the delivery box
🔶 Gossip can now tell other NPC birthdays and the rate of mentioning their age is reduced
❌ Fix for softlock when Hazel interacting when no cats to buy
❌ Fix for crash on trying to gift when no item is selected with an active noticeboard cooking task for the same NPC
❌ Prevent double yield from fishing rod by picking it up while it is on the line
❌ Fix for new rootway to be a both-way teleport
❌ Prevent certain UI elements sticking when forced to sleep
❌ Shrunk animal shadows and layering adjusted
❌ Fix for hair color not completely changing on player due to customisation changes
❌ Lantern offset on pig fixed
❌ Rain shouldn't cause funflower animation to stutter
❌ Should be able to buy up to 3 animals for the farm of each type as intended


🔷Additionᅠᅠ🔶Improvementᅠᅠ❌Fixᅠᅠ➕Internal
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Hello again from Castle PixelCount! Seems it's already time for yet another issue of this devlog of ours, but before diving too far into things we wanted to quickly let you know that we just put a player feedback survey up! It's a pretty short survey which can be completed in about 5 minutes, so hop on over to the survey announcement for some quick info and the survey link itself.

In other news, we've been keeping busy over these past couple of weeks with some much improved goddess offering mechanics as well as some newly added star ratings to many items. Our last update was pushed out just yesterday in fact, so feel free to visit the changelog for the full list of improvements and fixes.

In addition to the recent build's work, we've also been preparing some new content for the updates just ahead. Charlie, for example, has been adding tons of new dialogue for NPC's so that they can start saying more unique dialogue based on various factors. Neal has also begun work on providing different skin tones for players to choose from and it's been coming together nicely over the last number of days. Read on below for more details from Charlie and Neal as well as other updates from the rest of the crew. Take care everyone and we'll see you again soon!







Been trying to get back on to levels recently. I made some tweaks to Tir Na Nog and added a path to the unreachable cave in Crumblechalk. Also want to get E'ergreen finished off and expand the mines in various regions.

On top of playing the game I have also been doing tons of dialogue, NPC stories, and 'rumours' - which are a mix of clues, news, and steaming piles of nonsense.

It has also been great seeing the star rating stuff and worship system start to bring out more of the gameplay loops. Plus the UI improvements. I am admittedly addicted to levelling up tools such as the sickle and rod and seeing the effects that gaining levels have. It does feel finally that the glue is settling and now we need to expand on the stories and reasons for doing lots of this stuff.

To that end I have been writing more NPC letters and a very special one...

I still get excited about what lies ahead for you all to see and experience. Plus this week Gary, our character artist, delivered another amazing knockout punch that we will only reveal when you find it ingame. And trust me, you won't miss it.







Looking back at my notes from the last two weeks it seems there's been a variety of work keeping me busy! First up there was more goddess offering work taking it towards that 100% done mark. In terms of my list, I was content I'd actually made it to that point but it turned out I had a bit of a blind spot when it came to the sound effects and the results screen. The sound effects are getting there thanks to Tice's help and making some recordings of the screen in action. Though the results screen is still in need of a pass but for now I'm compromising to leave it as is while there are bigger wins to be found in the consequences of the offering setup, but more on that in a bit...

Next up I've been setting up an indicator for growables to show how they are doing. It's now functional but undergoing some alterations for its look so will need a followup. It is reasonably straightforward, though there's a few aspects showing their age (4 years old code) for the old bushes and trees where it uses a less robust setup. My thinking is to revisit that once the art is ready to implement, as again there are bigger wins.

After this I've been looking into customisation. The focus was mainly on looking at being able to provide different skin tone options, but I felt like it would be worth investigating outfit colours as well. To that end, I've created a testbed for evaluating the setup which has found a bit of a tangle to unravel! All 4 versions of the player character (the two kids and two adults) have different colour palettes with around 70-120 different colours. With this proving a bit daunting, I ended up sticking to just the skin tones and getting that all figured out. I've reached the point now where it should all be ready to add in different varieties and a bit of testing before then being available in the build.

One other practice I've been starting to put in play is to do two mini playthroughs each week. In the past I've always felt like my best results in work (on the scripting side for the Fable games) came from this quick daily iteration cycle of playing>fixing>testing>repeat. It's a demanding cycle though and one where I got a bit too caught up in the need to just make things work and move on because there's always more to do. This twice weekly pattern though seems to serve me well in keeping on top of bugs and spotting improvements to be made which help refine the experience. In some ways it is perhaps more noticeable when something like the goddess offering work takes place, as the high quality bar of that makes other inconsistencies stand out more! There's definitely a lot of UI work which I'm slowly working my way through based on these playthroughs.

The final area I've been working on is item ratings. Linking back to the goddess offerings this was one consequence of our quite light initial pass on ratings which, apart from fish (and a few skills/tools/boons), there wasn't much available to get even two star rating items. With the design in place for the ratings, I've started implementing it all in earnest such that even some five star ratings are now possible. It's quite exciting to get this in as there's potential to add a lot to the gameplay experience in terms of player discovery as they gradually uncover the overlapping conditions leading to getting the best items.

In doing the item ratings though, there then is the question of uncovering the info for them and also the actual item effects which currently are also lightly implemented. So that's the next consequence to unwind and one that'll again bring more to do. On top of that, Charlie's been working on dialogue which I'll be putting into the game soon along with other relationship update improvements. That's certainly enough to keep me more than busy for the next few weeks, so 'til next time wishing everyone all the best!







Ah...good to be back! And immediately after returning, I was able to get started on the redesign of the worship system. A lot of its sound effects had already been made and could carry over from the previous iteration. Only a few new additions needed to be made for now, until further polish is done to the mechanic.

We also now have a new internal channel in our team's Discord where we keep track of everyone's progress. This made it very smooth to return to work and be all up to date on things quickly. Matt Weekes also made a full design document for the mechanic which noted where sound effects would probably go. Me and Neal then discussed what was feasible and what we could still use from the old system. What we ended up with is still subject to change, so at the time we put it out on the experimental branch first so people could feedback on it.

I suspect some of the sounds will be too long for how quickly one can operate the interface, especially with a controller. If that's the case, sounds will overlap and it could all turn into a loud mess. Neal tells me that under the wrong conditions, quickly stacking sounds can even crash a program.

The trick for me is to see what 'normal' use of the mechanic will be when using the various controls available. At what speed will people go through the mechanic and what sounds sound right at that speed. The current sounds for getting jinxes and boons are rather long, but they were originally intended to be heard as the last sound before a player is finished with the mechanic so as they walked away the sound could play out and not conflict much. But as it is now, you can hear those sounds while still operating the interface. Time will tell what this'll do for the user experience. Of course without your feedback we'll never know, so please do give us your feedback!







Things have been going well over here at Chateau Matt. In the past couple of weeks I've gotten into a fairly nice work rhythm and have been enjoying some nice productive momentum. Some of this is partly due to refocusing my energy on better schedule habits and health habits. I've no doubt some of it is also due to the recent organization efforts we've implemented on the team alongside some recent productive team-wide meetings.

For example, the new channel I added to our team's internal Discord server has been proving useful. We'd been finding that between all our internal channels dedicated to the different departments, all the lengthy discussions in each were making it difficult to ever get a broad overview of where the team was on various tasks. Thus, the new channel was made in order to serve as a strictly no-fuss location for team members to share high-level info with each other. This includes things like new design documents getting posted, new build release candidates that need signing off on by each team member, or even just simple things like whenever I post a new community announcement. Overall we've been finding it very helpful.

This last week I also made a player feedback survey which I posted and shared just earlier today. I've wanted to do a survey for the past couple of months but it seemed like other work was always getting my attention instead. So recently I decided to finally make sure I carved out some time to get it up and also set myself a self-imposed deadline to get it done by.

Since this is our first survey, I kept many of the questions relatively broad and general. This way we can get a sort of baseline of results which will then serve as a jumping off point for future potential surveys. I'm interested to start looking through the results and seeing if our internal predictions line up with what the survey is telling us. I'll let you know how it goes the next time we talk, but until then I hope you all have a great rest of your weekends and I'll see you lovelies around the community. Cheers!