Hey everyone,
First off, a huge thank you to everyone who participated in our SunnySide Player Survey! We received over 1,000 responses, and the insight you shared is already shaping the way we move forward. Your feedback has been incredibly valuable in helping us decide where to focus our efforts, and we’re excited to share what we’ve been working on!
Survey Highlights & Charts
We’ve gone through all the responses and compiled the data, below, you'll find some charts breaking things down visually. Here’s a quick overview of what we learned:
Optimization and performance improvements were the top request, so we’ve started addressing this right away.
Many of you shared frustrations with certain mechanics, and we’ve made some key quality-of-life improvements based on those, some included in this patch. We also saw some really thoughtful feedback on gameplay balance, usability, and general experience improvements, we hear you, and we’ll continue working on these!
Let's also take a look behind the curtain at the results of the survey:
Performance Improvements
We know that a smooth experience is key to fully enjoying the game, and from the survey results, it’s clear that optimization is a top priority for many of you. While performance improvements have been an ongoing effort, we’ve made major strides in this update, focusing on areas that needed the most attention.
Our goal is to make SunnySide feel better to play across the board, whether you’re farming, exploring, or diving into the depths of the caves. This update lays the foundation for future optimizations, and we’ll continue refining performance over time.
- Cave Level Performance: We focused on improving performance in all cave areas, with Lush Caves receiving an extra aesthetic overhaul alongside optimizations.
- Overworld: General optimization pass across various areas to improve stability and performance.
We’re not done with optimizations yet, but this is a big step in making SunnySide run smoother!
Quality of Life & Requested Features
Alongside performance fixes, we tackled some of the most requested QoL changes!
Summon & Dismiss Sparky Anytime!
You can summon or dismiss Sparky anytime from your inventory!
- We saw a lot of requests for this, many of you wanted a way to dismiss Sparky while exploring, and now you can! Just open your inventory and press the Dismiss Sparky button.
- Don’t worry, he’ll still appear when needed for cutscenes, cave navigation, and fights.
Animal Happiness & Needs Overhaul
We saw a lot of feedback about animals not staying happy consistently, which was frustrating for many of you. Pets and farm animals are an important part of the game, so we’ve reworked how they manage their needs to make them more reliable, responsive, and overall happier.
- More reliable: They now handle their needs much more efficiently.
- Better optimized: This should reduce weird behaviors and glitches.
- Happier animals overall!: Works for both pets and farm animals.
Cooking System Rework
We heard you, cooking has been a bit too difficult, so we made it more forgiving!
- Recipe detection is now more lenient: You don’t have to be as exact with ingredients and can put more than needed in the mixing circle.
- You can cook multiple servings at once: Just add multiple sets of ingredients!
- Be careful: If you use extra ingredients, they won’t be refunded if not used up!
A Personal Note from Us
We also want to take a moment to say something personal. Your messages in the survey truly meant the world to us.
SunnySide’s development has been a journey, filled with ups, downs, and some really tough moments. The kind, encouraging words so many of you shared in the survey were a huge boost to our spirits. We’ve been through a lot as a studio, and hearing your support, excitement, and even just kind words of appreciation reminded us why we do this in the first place.
Seriously, thank you. It means more than we can say.
If you want to make sure that you have the update, check the game version on the main menu or the pause menu, on the bottom right of your screen. It should read "1.20.2-Main".
We’ll be back with more soon! 💚
– Aftabi Games Team