Verde's Thoughts
It's been a long journey. About one year ago, Heliotropism was being conceptualised by two friends in a game jam. After all this time working hard on what we've got, building a small team and aspiring towards a great day. Today is that great day. Several things have been improved and now we are finally able to move out of early access and present you with Heliotropism!
The game will continue moving forwards and being updated further as we still plan on adding more and more content to it, but we believe we've got our foundation well-rooted and it is time to start moving towards the sun.
Now, without further redo, time for the patch notes:
What's new
Terrain
- Earth is no longer flat!
- Lakes and mountains now fill the landscape with challenges and opportunities
- You can place roots on lakes to get some water from them
New UI is here
- With a new rustic style, you can now adjust the position of several UI elements called widgets
- These new widgets are capable of changing the way you play quite dramatically, so take your time to try them out
Weather
- Now the clouds mean something instead of being static on the sky.
- It can now rain, rain makes your leaves consume less water, but also generate less energy.
- Weather is influenced by season and future crises, so if your summer is unexpectedly dry, you can bet there is a drought coming
Balance changes
- Several balance changes were made so that the game actually gets harder as the years go
- Now seasonal drawbacks scale with the current year, and be ready for some really harsh winters later on.
Quality of life improvements
- Added some widgets to improve quality of life, like automatic leaf replacement, animation speed regulator, weather indicator and more
- A game end screen was added, it includes some statistics about your run and some tips about how to improve your tree-building abilities
- New music for every season but winter, just to keep things fresh
Sigils
- Several glowing objects are scattered across the underground
- Once approached, they reveal a mutation
- Once touched, they give you that mutation
New Shop
- The shop can now be accessed at any time, allowing you to purchase things at any moment you so desire
- Its contents refresh during the winter so that you can buy new things by the spring
New mutations
- We introduced a grand total of 23 new mutations to the game
- 8 of them have to be unlocked to be used
Unlocks
- A new system in place that brings to the table some out-of-game progression
- As you do the determined tasks, you unlock new mutations to help you further improve your tree-growing endeavours
- Up until now, every single one of them can be obtained in every game mode
Game modes
- There are now 3 game modes, which modify various aspects of the game
- They influence how many days you got in each season and also how hard can the game be