🎬 New dev update video!
In this quick community update, we take a sneak peek at the new Island, from concept art to in-game landscaping and detailing, and we discuss how your feedback from our Next Fest demo has been implemented.
The Island of Southfield has changed a lot since our demo. A quick glance at the horizon and you’ll see new things… just everywhere! From mushrooms that glow in the dark, to waterfalls and winding rivers dividing the Island, Southfield feels entirely new (because it is).
Video Highlights
🌱 Upgraded Island (featuring ARCHES)
🌱 Windmills, waterfalls and rivers
🌱 The mushrooms GLOW IN THE DARK
🌱 Reveal: Crop Combiner (new machine)
🌱 Bud can eat crops now (but should they?)
📝 Player Feedback
Thanks to everyone who left us feedback when playing during our Next Fest demo period. All your comments were reviewed by our team, and we've been able to make changes and improvements based on your shared experiences.
👉 Camera movement sensitivity and motion sickness
The FPS drops and erratic camera movement definitely did not help things when it comes to motion sickness, but we’ve made improvements to the camera movement, and our options menu so you’ll have much more control over your experience. We’ve also improved our vehicles, with a directionally tied camera to reduce that floaty feeling when driving, and hopefully reducing triggers for motion sickness.
👉 Respawning vehicles on the go
It kinda sucks when you get your ride stuck on some particularly pointy rocks, or you happen to drive into a lake. We’ve now made the vehicle spawn platform portable, so you can respawn your ride wherever you are. All you have to do is hit it with an axe, and put it in your pocket.
👉 UI improvements to machines
We’re continuously working to improve our UI, and this has recently looked like improved communication for how to use machines (which proved an issue for some demo players). We’ve also made ALL machines interactable by either approaching and pressing a button, or the tried and trusted “lob it in” method.
👉 UI prompt to find Almanac
Players were also struggling to find the Almanac in our demo. We’ve now added a UI prompt so that every time you find a new crop, you’ll be able to jump straight to the Almanac and track your discovery.
👉 Control NPC volume
Players wanted to control NPC dialogue volume. We’ve added this so you can tweak it to your liking, and we’re continuing to look at ways to improve chatting with NPCs based on your feedback.
👉 Better balance to soundtrack
Players commented on the odd silences where there was just no music playing in the demo. We go deeper into our goals for the Southfield soundtrack in our dev update video. While the game will have more tracks and ambient sounds than the demo did, we still appreciate silent moments can be a problem for streamers who are relying on our music (and while this won't necessarily be added in Early Access, we're happy to add a setting so you can control the frequency in which music is played)!
✨ Axolotl Outfit Reveal ✨
We reveal our little pink Axolotl onesie in the dev update, but we've also been working to ensure a lot of our skins have plenty of colour variants to choose from.
📢 Community Shoutouts
Our very own Rhaps (a VIB and valued Discord moderator) kindly created this adorable emoji and sticker for our community, in celebration of the axolotl outfit reveal. Why not pop by our server and do a little flap?
That's all for now!
Stay wibbly,
Flop 💙