We now have a publicly-visible "beta" branch in Steam that anyone can opt into in order to receive the latest version of the game prior to it being officially tested and approved for broader release. This is very much a "do at your own risk" activity as we haven't completed testing of the builds that appear there. (How I wish we could do this for the consoles and Apple Arcade as well!)
Here's a list of some of the changes that are already tucked away in the beta branch, which will eventually find their way everywhere (including the main Steam branch) as part of an official update:
- UI improvement: snap decoration placement cursor to next point in pattern
- Unlock lower-tier repair tool badges even after upgrading tools, so people can't get stuck never earning that badge
- Improve reward from one of Jeremy's recurring quests which had potentially lackluster rewards.
- Reduced requirements for several quests that seemed overly difficult or time-consuming to complete. (Especially true for Lee Berry)
- Imps only drop imp essence.
- Mr Kit can now sell more essence.
- Fixed issue preventing rare shells from spawning correctly in the springtime.
- QoL: Increase stack limit to 50 on branches, greens, processed fruit, processed root, processed mushrooms
- Fix: some final bear quests weren't awarding loot properly
- Display error message when time travelling backwards, to help prevent players from harming their save files
- Repair polish: Play animations when repairing item
- QoL: Increase amount of early storage available to players
- Make sure all parts of arrow buttons are clickable on options menu
- Prevent opening badge menu when busy with an uninterruptable action, like fishing
- Only common and uncommon decoration recipes and non-pro and non-master food recipes will now drop in first 2 days of play.
- Performance optimizations (should be especially helpful for console users)
- Fix for some harvestable objects (like trees) not showing their correct harvestable state
- Compress days 1-4 of the new user experience into days 1-2, for faster ramp into bigger island
- Fix inconsistent treatment of flowers/trees with placement ui
- Returned the old item notification style behaviour to items you get from fishing
- Reduced tier-up costs for essences
- Reliability improvements for automatic iCloud saves
- Major polish pass on inventory UI; lots of community-requested improvements there!
- Warning popup when playing with in the past.
- Fixed some different flower types appearing to have the same color
- New art for burned root veggies and burned mushrooms, to differentiate from burned fruit.
- Other minor bugfixes and improvements
All of these changes are a direct result of your feedback. Thank you and please keep it coming!
To opt into the beta branch In Steam: right click "Cozy Grove" in your library, then click "Properties." Click on "Betas" on the left side of the menu that appears. Then click on the dropdown and select our beta. You can ignore the "Enter beta access code" field that appears beneath that - we do not have a secret code so that field is unnecessary.