Hello Villagers!

Halloween is upon us, and what better way to celebrate than by staying inside and playing video games?

Village Monsters v0.81.0, also known as Bright Bonfires, is now available. It introduces real world holiday festivities (starting with Halloween, of course!), a brand new fishing mechanic, lots of bug fixes, and more.

To celebrate, Village Monsters is 25% off for the duration of the Halloween Sale!

Halloween Festivities

The Halloween Event is now live in Village Monsters! This is a "real world" holiday that is not celebrated by the monsters themselves, but that won't stop Jack, the Pun King Pumpking, from bringing the spooky festivities to town. Enjoy a number of Halloween-y graphics, music, items, and other fun things between now and November 2nd.

This update also lets me test a number of future features regarding real world and in-game holidays, so look forward to a much expanded version next month.

• Added support for real world holidays
• The first real world holiday is Halloween, celebrated between October 29th and November 2nd
• Enjoy talking with sponsor of Halloween, Jack the Pun King, at his location in the town square
• Certain Halloween-appropriate fish and critters will now spawn outside of their normal season during the Halloween event
• Spooky ghosts, black ravens, and terrifying(ly cute) spiders spawn throughout the day
• Special Halloween items have been added to the general store and bakery
• New Halloween-y music replaces the standard town themes throughout the day
• New Halloween-y weather patterns will now show up for the duration of the event
• The lighting at night is now ~~extra spooky~~
• Don't care for Halloween? Talk to Pun King Jack to disable Halloween effects. Note you'll need to do this each time you play the game during halloween days

Fishing Changes

The fishing minigame has been drastically overhauled to be both less tedious and more interesting.

Instead of waiting to mash the button when the marker is in the hit zone, you can now move the hit zone freely and simply hold down the button to reel it in. Fishing is now less about the speed of your mashing and more about your patience and timing.

I'll be tweaking fishing throughout the next few days to get it to feel just right.

• Fishing has been completely overhauled
• During the minigame, the fish icon will move back and forth across the screen. Line up the hit zone (Right / Left) with the fish and hold Z / Down / Up (Keyboard) or A / Down / Up (Controller) to reel it in
• You no longer need to mash the button. Simply hold it - though be careful about holding it outside the hit zone! That's an easy way to break your line
• Fish now move somewhat more erratically
• The fishing marker decreases with the fish's HP, making it more challenging to reel in as the fish thrashes around
• The HP of your current line is now displayed
• The HP of your line ticks down slowly after hooking a fish. Try to reel it in quickly and efficiently to give yourself the most time
• Pressing these buttons when the fish it outside the marker will result in damaging your line. Too much damage and it'll break

Other Additions & Improvements

• Traps no longer disappear when you don't have the relevant tool category selected
• Critters and fish received from traps are now properly ranked
• Guide books will now add 1-3 entries upon use, and they are all guaranteed to be new entries
• Re-added the concept of lunar phases. Each month transition from a new moon to a full moon and back to new
• Removed the Patchling and Map sections of the journal until the features are more finished

Bugfixes

• Fixed rare crash with traps loaded after v0.80.4
• Fixed rare crash in dream sequences
• Fixed rare crash with the Patchlings section of the journal
• Fixed broken date formats in some instances
• Fixed issue where players could go into a negative balance when buying multiple home upgrades
• Fixed broken spawn logic with dig spots and forage spots
• Fixed issue that could cause players to get stuck when moving between the Crossroads and Main Street
• Fixed issue where the top-most item in the General Store upgrade couldn't be purchased
• Fixed a number of collision issues in the northern part of Firetree Forest
• Fixed a number of bugs related to critter and fish IDs
• Fixed a number of grid issues with the fish and critter lists
• Fixed many fishing minigame bugs
• Fixed a large number of typos in critter and fish descriptions
• Fixed a large number of typos in villager dialogue
• Added a debug Item Add feature when Developer Mode is activated