Hey everyone,
Apologies for the long hiatus since I announced the next content update. 2026 has continued to be a garbage year... since the last update, my dog passed from cancer and my community got hit by an EF2 tornado. On the positive side, I got my first college degree and my schedule has opened up a bit to continue development on Woodswalker. I have some tangible progress this time:
Added an on-screen warning icon indicating when and where (relative to the player) the monster spawns. I realized that far too little was communicated about the monster's behavior, and find that this should greatly help the player gather information.
Updated (most) in-game achievements to have visible descriptions before unlocking. Continuing the trend of poor communication, a few reviews noted that the achievement system had literally no guidance whatsoever. While a few achievements are still hidden, a majority of them now have their description visible by default. This should especially help with exploring the story.
Added more realistic wind physics to the trees and monster. While a less important problem, I didn't like that the environment was intended to be the middle of a blizzard and the trees barely moved. Hopefully this should help with immersion.
To briefly summarize my last community post, here is what I'm still working on adding:
Large addition of features to the core gameplay loop. To make the current phone -> map -> light -> repeat cycle more engaging, the monster will have more ways of attacking the player. My current plans are to have the monster appear in the window, forcing the player to get out and around the cabin, and force the player to fix the cabin lights when they go out. I'm willing to add more if necessary, but also don't want to overcomplicate the game.
Allow the play to slightly skip into the night. Once players get a hand of the gameplay loop, the first couple minutes don't really provide much of a threat to the player. I'm not a big fan of boring my players, so I think allowing them to skip ahead slightly to get back into the action.
Hopefully these changes will up the quality of the gameplay and create a better player experience. I'll be hard at work to make sure this gets out sooner than later, and I might have some video updates to get feedback before the drop. Thanks for sticking around through the long wait.
Matt Karge