Hey Autumnsfolk!
It’s been a while since the last Steam update - hope everyone is doing well! Like most people, I had a busy summer and the day-job has been pretty demanding too. However, I’ve kept up with Tales of Autumn daily progress, so even though I’m not pushing a release tonight I thought I’d drop an update anyway!
Nature reserve summary
I’ve spent nearly all my available time on the next major content update, which is the Nature reserve. You can expect a full writeup when release day arrives, but in summary:
- A new upgradeable area in the town where you can create Hal’s research dream of an open space for wildlife
- You’ll be able to donate creatures, or have them arrive naturally based on terrain
- Small animal displays as a new creature type to collect (and a cage & baiting system to do so!)
- Animal produce displays, museum-style
- A tourism score that can help with costs, and attract new characters to Autumn
It’s been quite the workload, but I’ve done everything except the Tourism mechanics, and then adding lots of character content. For example, once the nature reserve is open, many of the villagers will update their schedules to spend time there.
Of course there’s also then a long list of new dialogue, quests, bugs for Danica, cutscenes, and more. And of course, new creatures!
A roundup other changes that have gone live in the past weeks:
- Added 'Excited' and 'Annoyed' portraits for NPC dialogue, and painstakingly went through all existing dialogue to update them!
- A new player skill, Groundskeeper, which you can use to help stay on top of weeds!
- A bunch of code changes on the animals to benefit performance for busy ranches!
- Bugfixes
- Selecting a tool from your backpack wasn’t always unpausing time!
- If you skipped the sphinx intro scene, you wouldn’t be able to start the sphinx challenge
- Text fixes in the review scene
Finally, I picked myself up a Steam Deck. I’ve not done any special development for it, but from a quick test Tales of Autumn seemed to be behaving. If you play on one, or intend to, let me know and I’ll devote some proper time to it!
Thanks for your patience on the next update, it’s been a much bigger workload than I first anticipated! I’m always keen to share more details so get in touch if you’d like to hear more!
Scott