Hello Villagers!

Welcome to version 0.72!

This release was originally going to focus only on home and village improvements, but I somewhat accidentally found myself hunting and destroying dozens of bugs instead.

Frankly, all this bugfixin' work was long overdue, so I decided to change gears and make it my new priority for this update. In total I fixed around 50 bugs which should go a long way to making the game feel more stable and professional. I'll continue working on home / town building in the next release.

Anyway, here are the full patch notes!



Home Improvement & Town Building

• Vastly improved the look of the player house exterior and surrounding area
• Redid the interior (tileset and furniture) of the player home
• Redesigned and moved shops on main street to prepare them for future upgrades
• New Homestead Upgrade: Clean out the polluted pond so you can use it for fishing
• New Homestead Upgrade: You can now move your garden from Agrarian Acres to just outside your house
• Added a new system that can change the look and feel of the village as it evolves over time
• The village is now evaluated and ranked each week. Speak with Jaclyn in Town Hall for more info

Graphics & UI

• Redesigned and improved many of the buildings and decor of Main Street
• Added chimney smoke effects to buildings in the village
• Added a large number of new external lanterns and street lights
• Improved interior lighting of many villager homes
• Improved the look and colorization of the interior tileset
• Improved the shadowing for trees and other vegetation
• Improved the look of "New Dialogue" notification
• Improved the look of room transitions
• Improved camera movement when used in cutscenes
• Improved dialogue box movement in cutscenes

New & Improved Features

• Modified the fishing minigame so that the hit bar doesn't shrink as much
• Drastically improved how 'flavor critters' (like butterflies, squirrels) look and behave
• It now takes substantially longer to unearth treasure if you're exhausted (eat or nap to get rid of it!)
• Added a number of new Critters and Fish to catch
• You are no longer able to move away from a conversation if there are dialogue choices coming up - this solves a few bugs
• You can now speak to an NPC during part time jobs to hear tips or quit early
• Drastically improved state management to smooth things out and prevent you from being 'stuck' in a specific state (eg., being stuck in the casting rod animation)

Game Feel

• Improved player collision. In general, collision should feel cleaner and less fragile
• Your energy is restored to full when starting a tutorial from the job board

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed crash related to UI elements dimming in cutscenes
• Fixed a crash relating to sending following critters back home
• Fixed crash related to certain cutscenes
• Fixed crash when backing out gift selection when writing a letter
• Fixed a major issue in which the camera could become "detached" from the player during some room transitions
• Fixed a major issue in which you could bypass certain areas by walking through them mid-conversation
• Fixed a major issue in which cancelling a letter would cause the gamepad keyboard to display and be unable to dismiss
• Fixed several major issues that resulted in becoming "stuck" after certain transitions (cutscenes, jobs, new areas)
• Fixed a large number of situations in which you could sequence break while performing an odd job
• Fixed jittery collision when performing a job or chore
• Fixed issue where exterior lighting would appear to change during a cutscene
• Fixed some jerkiness / stuttering during cutscene and job transitions
• Fixed issue where players could still move / act during a cutscene
• Fixed issue where players could move while during an area transition and cause it to abort
• Fixed incorrect door collision
• Fixed notes not having a dialogue portrait
• Fixed large number of state-related bugs
• Fixed large number of issues related to purchasing a new home
• Fixed a few weird issues (like orphaned pixels) in the interior tileset
• Fixed collision issues near the Balefire Beach entrance
• Fixed gaps in collision around the edges of Balefire Beach
• Fixed certain UI elements not dimming during area transitions
• Fixed a number of debug commands that were erroneously enabled
• Fixed player house from erroneously changing sprites at night
• Fixed issue where homestead upgrades could appear missing upon entering the area
• Fixed a number of issues with the interior of the player home
• Fixed an issue where the player house would not update to a "fixed up" sprite after purchasing
• Fixed issue where buying a house put you severely in debt
• Fixed layering of the Donkey Fly critter
• Fixed an issue where UI elements would appear partly transparent
• Fixed collision bug in Carefree Crossroads that would cause you to get stuck between a tree and a hard place
• Fixed issue where a temporary 'ghost' item could appear after making a purchase
• Fixed issue where players could release critters that are currently following them
• Fixed a number of discrepancies between gamepad controls across PS4 / Switch / Xbox controllers
• Fixed a large number of lingering issues with flavor creatures (like butterflies, squirrels, and other critters you can't catch)
• Fixed a lack of title on the Villager page of your journal
• Fixed an issue where placeholder items from the bakery, Pots n' Pies
• Fixed issue that was causing weeds to be surprisingly tricky to pick
• Fixed incorrect control labels
• Fixed issue where mail was still being delivered to the mailbox outside of Overflow even after moving into a new house
• Fixed a number of instances of text overextending beyond the dialogue box
• Fixed a number of typos
• Various other misc. technical and stability improvements