Hello, everyone! This is a short but sweet update mainly serving as a way for us to inform you of some changes to the continued development of the game (it’s good news, so no need to worry). But first off, we’ll take a look at a short list summarizing the work that has been done since Full Game Progress Update 2 in July. This is what we have done since then:

• Expanded the character creator with new earrings
• Added new characters
  • Added and finished Islynor, Rocca, Amelie and Marla Geraldine
• Added new buildings
  • Black Market (includes generally better rates when trading), Vineyard, Bathhouse and a Town Hall (which reduces the number of months before you can lower taxes)
  • Added all of the other buildings as well!
• Added particle effects to unbuilt lots so that they are easier to spot when you aren’t interacting with them
• Added particle effects to all sorts of buildings in the town view
  • Chimney smoke (interactable and non-interactable buildings)
  • Window and lantern lights (interactable and non-interactable buildings during winter)
  • Unique effects for some buildings (Mage Tower, Alchemist Laboratory, Brothel, Bathhouse, Lighthouse)
• Added the option to turn off weather effects in the town view
• The game now starts in full screen the first time it is opened

New characters and buildings

The new characters that we have fully implemented since the last update are the following: the Black Market Supervisor, Islynor Ellona; the Wine Master, Rocca Riero; the Bathhouse Manager, Amelie Doneau; and the Town Secretary, Marla Geraldine “MG” Phavas. On our social media accounts, we have also revealed all of the 38 characters you can date and marry. There’s a picture of all 32 townsfolk for you to enjoy at the end!

Of course, the new characters come with new buildings as well. You can build the Black Market for Islynor, the Vineyard for Rocca, the Bathhouse for Amelie and the Town Hall for Marla Geraldine. The Black Market is sharing a lot space with the Marketplace, which we mentioned in the previous update. The Vineyard and Bathhouse also share a lot, whilst the Town Hall is on the same spot as the Bank. Now, this would usually be where I say we’ll add the Bank later, but we have at the time of writing already added the Bank and all other buildings! More on that later.

Building the Black Market opens up a new option in the trade menu, providing generally better trade deals over all, just as the Marketplace does. However, when you build the Black Market, you limit the town’s guard presence to medium at most, even if you have built both the Barracks and the Guard Tower. By building the Black Market, you openly invite traders of illegal goods to town and therefore accept a certain agree of criminal activity. This is further proven by the law which is signed upon building the Black Market. It might seem like this makes the Black Market automatically worse than the Marketplace, but I’ll leave it up to you to see its benefits in the game. The Town Hall also has a special feature, which is that the number of months you have to wait before lowering taxes is reduced from 3 to 2. These numbers haven’t been properly tested and may be adjusted in the future.

A change of plans

We have been saying for a long time that we are going to focus on fully implementing the remaining characters one at a time, starting with the townsfolk and ending with the foreign leaders, before moving on to monthly events, etc. This, however, will not be the case in the near future. Instead, we are going to partially implement the remaining 10 townsfolk simultaneously. By this, I mean that we will give them an inn-event, a negative reputation-event and hangouts 1 to 3. We will also add a third hangout and a negative reputation-event for all six foreign leaders. However, we will prioritize the townsfolk.

We have already started working on some of the other things we have planned in this shift of focus. Now, we have fleshed out the town view by making it possible to build all buildings. There are also some new visual effects that make the town look more alive. This is not the only non-character-related work we will focus on now. We also have plans to expand the character creator, and – probably most importantly – streamline the game’s intro. Streamlining the intro means shortening it, making it possible to skip certain parts entirely and making the tips-sections more intuitive by connecting the tips more to the free exploration of the gameplay than the game’s intro. We will also add new tips related to features that currently don’t have any, like marriage and taxes. These are just a few examples of what non-character-related things we will be working on in the upcoming months.

You may wonder why we’re doing this, all of a sudden. As you’ll probably see from the game’s page in a not-so-distant future, it’s partially about marketing. The game’s current trailer and screenshots show the original demo build, which was released over a year ago. A lot has changed since then. We want to make a new trailer and share new screenshots that better represent the game’s current state and the state it is fairly likely to be in when we get closer to release. As an example, we would like to include visual representations of the marriage and adoption features. We are also not that far from completing a fully 2D-animated trailer, featuring all the 38 romanceable characters, so we felt it might be neat to update all of our promotional materials in time for its release. That being said, I won’t confirm that the animated trailer and the other promotional materials will actually be released at the same time. We might hold on to the animated trailer a bit longer than the other materials.

There is also another reason why we would like to update the promotional materials, but we will stay silent about that for the time being. I can at least tell you that the temporary shift in our focus will result in a bite-sized trial portion of the game that is a lot better and more representative of the final product than the one that is currently in your hands. At the very least, it will feature more hangouts and all characters and buildings. We will of course inform you when that bite-sized trial is available, if you would like to get a feel for the game before it is properly released.

This is where I will sign off for now. Thank you for your support!

//LevUNknown, lead developer