Hey, Buds!
We've got an important update from the Southfield team...
Our game has grown so much since the Next Fest demo back in February. We’re excited to show you all the hard work our devs have put into Southfield, with a fresh new Island, more crops, quests, construction options, and customisations.
You’ll soon be able to jump in and start building your own farmstead, meet the locals, and explore the unpredictable Island of Southfield. You’ll discover and grow your own chaotic crops, and invent new ways to automate your harvest.
What's happening with Multiplayer?
Growing this game has been a labour of love. And while we’re proud of our journey so far, we know there’s further to go - and we’re grateful to our community for coming along with us.
Southfield was originally conceived as a single-player experience, but as soon as we started playtesting the game, people told us that they would love to share this island with friends. We agree, and that’s why multiplayer has been a part of our roadmap for a while!
However, multiplayer engineering is one of the most complex things to pull off for a relatively small development team, meaning we’ve had to make some pretty tough decisions and one of those is to not include multiplayer at Early Access launch.
Southfield is a game with many moving parts, which are made more complicated by our physics systems. This means that, right now, it’s a real challenge to make multiplayer work and be a fun experience to share with your friends.
We’re committed to keeping you informed on our progress towards bringing multiplayer to Southfield, and when we have an update, we’ll let you all know via Discord, social media or our Steam community hub.
What's going to be changing right now?
Our original Steam store page mentioned multiplayer, and our art for the game also featured multiple Buds. We realise this could be misleading, so we will be removing the additional Buds and mentions of Multiplayer for now.
Southfield Early Access Plans
Our Early Access schedule has changed, with Southfield now aiming to leave Early Access sometime in 2025. Making games is difficult and stressful, but with this extended release plan, the team has more space and time to make Southfield an even richer and evolving single-player experience, and a genuinely fun-filled multiplayer game too!
We have brought some features forward to our Early Access launch to make sure that your first adventure into Southfield is even more jam-packed with ways to play and create, a few of these being:
🌱 The Shovel
A brand new tool used to gather new resources around the island… oh and you can surf on it, too!
🌱 Multi-resource Construction
Use the editing mode to take your constructive creations to the next level, with loads more building materials (e.g. glass, brick, etc.)!
🌱 Bombs, Bombs, Bombs
We have added many more bomb variations so you can discover all manner of explosive gameplay.
We're focused on making Southfield the best single-player experience we can for launch. We want to make this a place you will want to spend hours in, curating, cultivating and making your home! We want you to be free to explore and create, to meet the Islanders and discover their secrets and quirks.
And we want to know what you think, how you play, and what you love. We want you to come on this journey with us, through Early Access and full release. During that time, we hope to learn a lot, which will help us make sure that when we do launch multiplayer, it will be about sharing all the things you already love, and delivering new ways to play together!
More news to follow soon! And as always, thank you so much for your support.
Stay wibbly,
Flop and the Southfield team! 💙