Hi there folks! It's been a month since our last Dev Update which means we're here yet again bringing warm tidings and progress reports. This game update is yet another one of our monthly incremental build updates bringing us one step closer to the next major milestone on our roadmap: the relationship update.
For this one, we've added a few first passes of some crucial features for growing and managing your own relationships in the game. Much of it is all still 'first pass', which is game dev talk for saying it's our first go at implementing the feature in the code but that polish, presentation, and quality of life improvements are still yet to come. We have specific highlights and a link to the full changelog a bit further down below.
We've also been gradually working on the gargantuan task of creating all the necessary art for aging the NPC's of the world. We're not quite sure when we'll have NPC aging fully implemented and present in the game, but it's been coming along very nicely week by week - thanks in no small part to the tireless efforts of Gary, our character artist! Below we have a few more early previews of some of the latest NPC aging we've been working on. The topmost preview even features the life span of a father and his two sons.
As Charlie described the family: "Wurzel's sons were Jed and Ned. They looked alike and their hair was red. One was sweet and loved his mum. The other pointed and laughed at your bum."
Changelog Highlights
Below is an overview of some of the new systems and mechanics added in the latest build update. These are all highlights taken from the full changelog. Also, for those of you wanting to try out more frequent and experimental build updates, be sure to hop by our development branches thread.
Marriage & Wedding
First pass of week-long tradition of tasks before selecting a wedding date. You can also choose a venue (though only Loverwood is available right now). Failing the last step has serious consequences to your friendship rating.
Housekeeping Book
Like the other additions, the housekeeping book is a first pass implementation. With it, you can change and view settings related to the spouse (and eventually the overall family). Spouses can help around the farm with things such as watering crops, interacting with farm animals to keep them happy, filling the trough when necessary, and getting items from the larder to use as offerings. This book will be improved over time, as this is just an early glimpse of its setup.
New Region
New characters and the beginnings of a new haven...with new music and setting! Also includes some placeholder items to find right now.
Larder, Digging Minigame, & Fixes
There's a new larder for use by the player's family with limited stock which'll be upgradeable in the future. Additionally, there's a new digging minigame (first pass) that removes the luck in getting a reward. (Visual improvements are to come, as well as some variety based on the quality of the player's tool and skill level). Minor fixes have also been worked on, with some plans in the next few weeks to go over and add in even more fixes.
Full Changelog
Jump on over to the full changelog to check out the entire list of additions and fixes.
As always, a big thanks to all of you who've been tagging along with us on this game development adventure of ours. We look forward to getting ever-closer to checking the relationship milestone off of the Kynseed roadmap. If your appetite for dev updates is more than our monthly ones can satiate, we also do more frequent and laid back written updates in the form of The PixelCount Post, which you can find being posted regularly in any of our usual locations. Beyond that, you can also pal around with us on our Discord server, where we're easily found working on the game day to day.
Thanks again for all your support and we'll see you again very soon indeed!
Love,
PixelCount
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