Hillshade Farm: First Harvest v1.5.3-2 update notes & Early Access Dev. news!
Hey everyone!
A new Hillshade Farm Demo update is now live, and it’s a big one! This patch focuses heavily on stability, performance, polish, and expanding the farm systems you can interact with. Here’s what’s new:
Animals polished, fixed and improved!
🐔 New Animal & Updated Models
New animal in game & Demo: Rooster!
You can now purchase a Rooster, complete with fresh animations and behaviour. Rooster will keep the hens together and lead the group, as well as increase egg production!
New Chicken Models + Animations
All chickens got new, higher-quality models and improved animations for more life and personality. Oh yeah, and the little chicks as well!
🐱 Cat & Chicken AI System improvements
Both the Cat and the Chickens received a full logic and polish pass:
Name Tags for each animal
Individual Stats you can view and track
Better behaviours and improved AI
Many bug fixes and better logic
More stable and predictable daily routines
Access Tag Menus by looking at the animal and pressing E
🔨Hammer Renovation System - Fences
Now fully ready; Fence Renovation!
Simply equip the Hammer, press Q to toggle to Renovation Mode and hit any fence you want to renovate! [LMB]
You will then see the Fence Menu pop up, offering you currently 3 different fence models. (classic white wooden fence, reinforced wooden fence and metal fence) Each require specific items to renovate.
Furniture store unlocks in Demo 2.0 with lots of new furniture & devices from EA game!
Quality of life improvements:
🔤 New Custom Font Across the Game
The entire UI now uses a brand-new custom font, giving the game a cleaner, more unique vibe!
🚚 Pickup Truck
Your trusty pickup has received a tune-up:
Faster acceleration
More responsive steering
Easier overall handling
Driving should now feel significantly sharper, easier to control, more efficient and fun!
Big performance and stability improvements!
⚙ Performance Improvements
This update includes major engine and logic optimizations:
FPS drops after long play sessions are fixed
Smoother overall performance with better framerate and stability.
Reduced hitching and stutter
The demo should feel noticeably smoother and more stable.
🛠 Tons of Bug Fixes & General Improvements
This update includes a huge list of:
Logic fixes
Animation fixes
Interaction improvements
Polished menus
Environment clean-up
Better feedback and smoother gameplay moments
The whole demo experience has been tightened and refined. The entire demo and all Quests should now be fully bug-free!
Finally with this stability the game is ready to fully implement the rest of the content for Early Access Release. More on this below.
📅 What’s Next?
The demo will continue to receive 2–3 more updates, including a major Demo 2.0 update. Demo 2.0 will be the fully polished, finalized version of the demo, releasing right before Early Access.
Early Access Release
Work on Early Access content is in full swing, learning so much from your feedback makes the rest of the development much smoother and ready for EA!
New systems, new animals, new zones, new quests, and much more! We've 60 days until the big day, so stay tuned until then!
The full game will be packed with content and the world of Hillshade will leave you speechless!
Early Access Release Date: January 28th, 2026
Thank you to the Community!
Thank you all for the support, feedback, and patience. This game has gotten so far since the beginning, and it inspires me just to think what will be in one more year ahead! So thank you all once again for supporting this project and being a part of the journey.
See you all on the farm soon! :)
New Acre Games 💚