Welcome to the January update for Cattails: Wildwood Story!
Happy New Year! 2023 promises to be a major year for Cattails: Wildwood Story because the Steam launch is scheduled for Q4 of this year. We're happy to report that we are still on schedule and excited to jump into another full year of new features, new content, and new surprises for Cattails: Wildwood Story.
This update is going to be a big one! First, we'll talk about the changes introduced in v0.99, the latest update available now on Steam for our alpha-tier backers. Then, we'll recap 2022 and everything that happened in this monumental year. Lastly, we'll take a look at the future and talk about what's coming next for Cattails: Wildwood Story.
Alpha v0.99 - Now Available
We’ve spent the past month working on a hefty new update with loads of new features!
The Influence System
Lead your colony to greatness by securing the lands around your town from the corrupted forces of darkness that lurk within the Wildwood. Send out squads to capture new territory or defend your lands while collecting powerful resources to aid the cats of your colony. Use your gathered resources to construct improvements for the betterment of all.
The world map of Cattails: Wildwood Story is divided into square chunks called regions. Each region has an Influence value ranging from 0-100% representing your colony’s claim on that area. You can capture a region by increasing your Influence there to 100%. But beware! If you lose Influence in an area you own and reach 50% or lower, the Wildwood will reclaim the region for itself. Influence can be gained in several ways, such as winning daily battles, assigning squads to attack a region, defeating Voidling enemies, or even just by spending time passing through, hunting, and gathering in a region.
Owning a region is advantageous in several ways: Enemies will be less likely to spawn there, making it safer to travel through, and the land will become more bountiful in the absence of corruption, meaning more herbs, prey, and bugs can be found in a region that your colony controls. Additionally, once you own a region, you can begin to collect its resources into your colony’s stockpiles by sending a squad of cats out to defend that area.
Assigning Squads
Speak with Talon to assign squads that can either attack enemy territory or defend your own lands. Sending a squad to attack will force a Daily Battle to spawn at that location; sending a squad to defend will prevent you from losing Influence in that region for that day and also allow you to gather that region’s resources into your colony stockpiles. At the end of the day all squads will return home and must be reassigned.
Colony Stockpiles
Your colony now has a number of stockpiles for various resources: Prey, Herbs, Treasure, Wood, Stone, and Sand. While you start with each stockpile at a value of 0, you can optionally choose to fill up these stockpiles to unlock special boons that will help you as you play. You can add to a stockpile’s value in one of two ways: by sending squads to defend a region you own, thereby also collecting that region’s resources, or by directly donating your personal items that you find around the world from your inventory.
-Prey: A well-fed colony is a happy colony. The prey stockpile depletes at a rate of 3 units per day. When this happens, you will gain a bonus to all friendship point gains for the rest of the day.
-Herbs: Powerful herbs are useful for keeping cats in good health. The herbs stockpile depletes at a rate of 3 per day. When this happens, all fighting cats that appear from your colony will spawn with extra health until the end of the day.
-Treasure: A wealthy society can focus less on survival and more on self-improvement. The treasure stockpile depletes at a rate of 2 per day. When this happens, you and all other cats in your colony will gain a bonus +1 point of XP every time XP is gained until the end of the day.
-Wood, Stone,& Sand: These stockpiles represent industrial resources used in construction projects. They do not deplete over time and are instead spent to build improvements.
Visit the Founder’s Stone or speak with Talon to view your colony stockpiles.
Construction Projects
Once you’ve funded your colony stockpiles with lots of resources you can spend them on construction projects, one-time purchases that provide a permanent benefit to your colony. Here are a few examples of construction projects:
-Barracks Upgrade (I/II/III): Allows you to assign 1 additional squad per day.
-Improved Roofing: Sleeping in your den grants additional healing and XP.
-Hunting Compendium: Legendary prey will be more likely to spawn in your colony’s owned regions.
-Cultivation: Herbs that grow in your colony’s owned regions will be much more likely to be rank ★★.
Map Expansion
We’ve greatly increased the size of the world map to better allow players to experience the Influence system! 14 new regions are now available to explore with plenty of surprises hiding within.
New Skills
8 new Skills can now be trained at the Scratching Post in your den. Botany, Diplomacy, Hunter’s Gamble, Kindly Purr, Lion’s Roar, Spectral Dodge, Sweet Melody, and Warding Scrawl may all now be learned, upgraded, and used to your advantage.
New Furniture
22 furniture items have been added to the game! Check at Ember’s shop, the festival shop, and Molo’s shop to find these fun new pieces of decor.
New Tasks
14 tasks have been added, bringing the count up to 64 total tasks.
Quality-of-Life
Plenty of bugfixes and balance changes have been implemented in v0.99. Additionally, we spent some time adding a couple small quality-of-life features to the game:
-Tabulated menu: Cattails: Wildwood Story is a game with a lot of menus. It’s easy to forget how to access some of the more obscure menu screens, so we’ve added a new feature that should help out. Most major menus are now unified by a tab switcher that will appear at the top of the screen. Use this new tab switcher to quickly access your inventory, task log, the map, pause menu, collections, and more.
-Furniture catalog filter: Search for specific furniture items with the new filter textfield.
-Crafting: You can now see the description of all output items without needing the necessary ingredients and prerequisites on hand. Simply hover over the “(?) Info” button next to the desired output and a tooltip will appear.
Ok, that’s all for v0.99! Now let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane…
2022 Year in Review
2022 was a massive year for Cattails: Wildwood Story. The game has come such a long way since the start of the year and we're very happy with the progress we've made over the last 12 months. Here's a quick bullet-point summary of some of the highlights:
(Screenshot from January 1, 2022)
-January 25: Started the year strong with the reveal of Cattails: Wildwood Story! Check out the announcement trailer over on our YouTube channel to see what the game looked like back then.
-February & March: Comprehensive pixel art touch-up and Kickstarter trailer production
-May 10: The Kickstarter campaign began for Cattails: Wildwood Story, which hit its funding goal of $30,000 in less than 2 hours 🙀
-June 10: Kickstarter wrapped up with over $240k in funding and all 7 stretch goals unlocked! 😺🎉
-July: Surveys sent and collected, providing the official names for the 2 stretch goal NPCs (Rosemary and Zephyr). We also began fulfillment on the physical reward bundles.
(Fulfillment begins! Our office was nothing but cardboard and plushes for a couple of months 😹)
-August 16: The first alpha version (v0.93) was released to our alpha-tier backers.
-September 1: Alpha v0.94 (Community Content API support)
-October 1: Alpha v0.95 (Rosemary, Zephyr, Alabaster, Gardening, Crafting, Skills)
-November 1: Alpha v0.96 (Colony Layouts, the Build Menu (colony customization), NPC schedules, autosave)
-December 1: Alpha v0.97 (Tasks, expanded NPC dialog)
What an amazing year! But what’s coming next for the project? We’re glad you asked…
2023 - Onward towards launch!
Last year was a big year, but this year is going to be even bigger! We’ve got 12 months of hard work ahead to bring the game from its current state (alpha v0.99) to full release. We’re continually energized and inspired by the passion this community has shown for our silly little cat game and we promise to put all our heart and soul into bringing you the game that you all deserve. ❤️
We’ll continue to provide monthly updates to keep you all in the loop on the latest development happenings as Cattails: Wildwood Story advances.
We’re definitely optimistic about our current plan to release the beta in March 2023. Around that time we’ll email all of our beta-tier backers and grant them access to the game, so you can look forward to that!
And of course the full release (on Steam) is slated for Q4 of this year! That’s when the rest of you can get your paws on the game, except for our Nintendo Switch backers (at this time that is still scheduled for next year, 2024.) Here’s to another exceptional year! 🥂
From all of us at Falcon Development, we hope you have a wonderful start to 2023. We’ll stay in touch! 🐾
-Tyler (@FalconDevelops)