Dear Players,
This update brings key Steam features that have been requested for by the game's wonderful players for long now!
Steam Achievements, Cards, Stats and Cloud Save have all been added!
Along with these comes several key improvements to the game itself, to help make your experience of enjoying these Steam features much better!
Steam Achievements
Complete all 16 achievements today!
The Life Of a Monarch" Achievement!
Complete the Monarch Butterfly Male & Female Lifecycles (both of which are different!),
"Mantis Metamorphosis" Achievement!
The game has been vastly improved to make it easier for players to complete these achievements.
Above: Chemical Vision reworked to make completing the Praying Mantis Lifecycle easier for this!
Full list of Achievements
To view all achievements, launch the game and open the Steam overlay (Shift-Tab)
Steam Cards
Trading Cards have been added at last!
Monarch Butterfly, Jumping Spider, Praying Mantis, Ladybug and Grasshopper are the five cards that can be collected (along with their foil card equivalents).
Badges that can be crafted include "Wee Sapling" (Level 1), "Swift Climber" (Level 2), "Verdant Riser" (Level 3), "Ready To Bloom" (Level 4), "The Glorious Sun" (Level 5) and "One With Nature" (Foil Badge).
Several Emotions have been made available including:
Monarch Butterfly, Viceroy Butterfly, Blue Mud Dauber, Dragonfly, Ladybird Beetle, Leafhopper and
Ant.
Steam Stats
Several interesting Stats have been added to Nature & Life - Drunk On Nectar!
These include:
- Nectar Drunk (in milliliters!)
- Num Hunts
- Num Escapes (from Predator)
- Number of Random Maps Generated
- Num Lifecycles Completed
- Num Moults
- Num Spring Survival Completion
- Num Items Planted
- Num Nature Items consumed (Pollen Grains, Beltian Bodies)
- Time spent Painting!
Future updates will make it easier for players to track their curious statistics!
"Nectar Drunk in milliliters"
Above: Nectar trails seen using the new "High Contrast" Chemical Vision!
Steam Cloud Save
Cloud save has now been enabled for DoN!
All your save files will be automatically synced across your computers using Steam's Cloud Save feature. ~
As a reminder, save files are located in the following location:
%localappdata%\DoN\Saved
Key Improvements for making it easier to complete Achievements
Random Map Generator Improvements
Lifecycles now has a new "World Generation" menu allowing players to enter Random Map Seeds.
Tooltips with detailed information are now provided to help players not familiar with the concepts of Random map generation and Random Seeds,
As a reminder, players can no longer change the "Ecology Preset" for Lifecycles.
You can still use Custom Ecology Presets for all other modes like Survival Sim / Create & Design - Nature (formerly Nature Sandbox) / Face Off / Free Explore.
"Regenerate Map" menu for all Game Modes
The Pause Menu now includes a new "Regnerate Map" menu which provides players with complete control over how you restart a new game.
Players can now choose to either Restart using the same World Seed (effectively regenerating exactly the same map again)
or they can set a new "World Seed" which will produce a completely new map altogether!
If you like a particular random map (eg: something with lakes, rolling meadows, etc) then you can remember that seed and reuse it again in any game mode!
Future updates will make it easier for players to Bookmark and manage your Favorite World Seeds!
Chem Vision Improved
To help players complete your Achievements more easily, Chem Vision has been dramatically improved!
It is now actually helpful in visually tracking prey that you would otherwise have missed.
Particularly indispensable for the Praying Mantis Lifecycle, where you are scouring the vast "Mantis Tree World" for extremely tiny prey.
Unlike the previous chem trails which were hard to see against the game's bright and colorful foreground, the new Chem Vision emphasizes the chem trails by isolating them visually, thus making it easier to find prey!
Blue Mud Dauber Survival
Spiders are now always tracked so long as they are in range, making it much easier to complete the "Three Nests Three Eggs" quest for the "Sweet Nectar Drinker" achievement!
Blue Mud Dauber Survival Quest, for Sweet Nectar Drinker Achievement is now much easier to complete and more fun to play!
Jumping Spider Locomotion & Camera
Achievement Alert! "Only the Agile This Path Can Take"
Adult Jumping Spiders now use exactly the same camera system as the tiny instars!
Previously the adults used a very different system that was originally designed for the "Lady Love" Creature Quests.
This in turn means that the "Lady Love" Creature Quest is a lot more fun to play and easier to control.
I managed to beat my all time score (now 38 seconds!) and secured #2 position on the game's leaderboard in just a simple casual run!
Why don't you try out the improved "Lady Love" Creature Quest for yourself, right now! :)
Ladybug Creature Quest
Achievement Alert! "The Plants Say Thank You"
The Ladybug Creature Quest is now so much more fun to play and easier to complete!
Stamina requirements have been greatly relaxed, allowing players to complete the "Plants Say Thank You" Achievement more easily, for which you need to complete the challenge in under 4 minutes!
Personally I managed to beat my all time best and reach #2 spot on the Leaderboard, just in a quick casual test.
Why don't you try bettering you Leaderboard score right now! :)
Engine-level CPU performance improvements for a smoother overall experience
This update features core CPU improvements to the underlying engine that should provide a smoother experience for all players across the board.
HUD
This update also features a cleaner HUD and improved fauna icons as well.
Importantly - It is now actually possible to understand the gameplay mechanics - such as how a prey saw/felt/smelt you / etc, simply by keeping your eye on the HUD's new Fauna Icons!
Bugfixes
The following bugfixes were made, among several other minor improvements as well
- Random map seeds fixed (was broken in previous build)
- Fixes to Benchmark tool
- Pause menu duplicate entries fixed (for Praying Mantis Lifecycle "Skip Tutorial")
Thank you
Thanks as always to the game's wonderful players for your support and enthusiasm through all these yerars.
It is deeply appreciated!
I sincerely hope that you enjoy this update of the game. Good LucK!
With Love,
Venugopalan Sreedharan
Developer of Nature & Life - Drunk On Nectar
