Update 0.7.1 is here, and it's quite a big one! As usual, Steam should download it for you soon. But before I get into the details of the update, there's something else I want to discuss first...
Effective immediately, I have reduced the price of Wrongworld to the 10.99 GBP/14.99 USD/14.99 Euros mark, and I've done that for a couple of reasons:
1) I'll hold my hands up here: I think I simply got the price wrong. As I think most of you know, this is my first time releasing a game, and it's been a big learning experience for me. Being from the UK, I understand the value of the British Pound, but it was impossible for me to know how people from other countries would feel about the price. Early access has not only been about gathering feedback about the game itself, but I've also been listening to feedback about the price point, especially from non-UK folk. Ultimately, I just want people to feel like the game is definitely good value for money, and I hope this new price point will help with that. I came to the conclusion that this was the price point at which I'd like to game to be upon leaving early access, but I didn't want to hold off reducing the price once I'd come to that decision, so I thought I'd do it now instead.
2) Since launching into early access, the overall difficulty of the game has been toned down in a few different ways, which I do think has made the game a more enjoyable experience in general. However, one of the side effects of this is that the average time it might take people to finish the game is a little less than it was back at the start, purely because they're not likely to die and have to start over as many times!
To anyone who has recently purchased the game at the previous price point and is still in a position to refund it and re-buy it at the reduced price, please, by all means, feel free to do that! To anyone who bought the game while it was on sale, you probably paid the new price anyway :) But to anyone who bought the game at the previous price but is unable to refund/re-buy, I hope you understand my reasons for this reduction and don't feel like this is a slap in the face. I appreciate all you early adopters and supporters so very, very much, and I'm going to try to figure out a way to repay you for your support, but I need to research things a little more and try to work out exactly how I could do something like that. Leave it with me :)
Anyway, enough boring price things. Time to discuss what's new in the update:
----- NEW BIOMES -----
When starting a new game, the world will now include a few extra biomes! Previously, we just had Grasslands, Rocky, Desert and Snowy, but you'll now also find Radioactive and Alien biomes, and maybe a Swamp or two as well. And who knows what ridiculous new beasties you'll find lurking around in them :)
Speaking of which, one of the new beasties may or may not be using a placeholder sound effect for now. Originally, I definitely added it as a placeholder sound effect, intending to replace it with something "better" in future, but it keeps making me laugh whenever I hear it, so I think it may have to stay forever now! I imagine you'll be able to guess which sound effect I'm talking about once you hear it! :)
I'll be continuing to work on these new biomes as well (most likely adding unique points of interest and events for them), but this is hopefully a nice start.
While I'm on the subject of biomes, it was previously technically possible (although incredibly unlikely) that a specific world might not include every single biome. Well, I've adjusted that now, so new worlds are guaranteed to include at least a bit of every main biome.
----- NEW CRAFTABLES -----
I won't spoil them here, but there are quite a few new craftable items and structures for you to discover now. You don't need to start a new game to take advantage of these, but you might struggle to find some of the new resources you need to craft them without access to the new biomes/beasties, so starting a new world would probably make more sense! :)
I have lots of questions for the community about these new craftables (and others I plan to add in future), but I'll wait a while before I ask them, just to make sure I don't spoil them for anyone in the process!
----- AUTO-SAVE FREQUENCY -----
Previously, the game auto-saved around every 12 in-game hours. I was actually using this auto-save to mask a few of the most intensive processes in the game (like randomly growing all the trees in the world), but I've reworked those systems now, which means I no longer need the auto-save to hide them!
So, with that in mind, the game now defaults to saving once every 24 hours instead, and you can customise this in the Settings > Preferences menu. You can set the game to auto-save every 1 - 5 days, or disable it completely (although I'd strongly advise against that... I'd hate for a power cut or random crash to wipe out hours and hours of your progress).
----- BRIGHTNESS/GAMMA SETTING -----
In the Settings > Graphics menu, you'll now find a "Brightness" option. Boring, I know, but hopefully useful for some people. Oh, and I also upped the default brightness of night, just a tiny bit. Probably not even noticeable!
----- LANDSCAPE COLLISION UPGRADES -----
I've gone through all of the landscapes in the game and carried out some more upgrades to the collision for them. If you were one of those people who suffered from fast-moving beasties going through walls (something I've never been able to recreate myself), please do let me know if the problem persists for you.
Once I'm certain this issue has been squashed once and for all, I'll be able to relatively quickly add a bunch of new variations to the landscape, but I've been holding off on that for now while continuing to investigate this naughtiness.
----- RANDOM UPDATES/FIXES -----
- Adjusted the rate at which Slug Beasts can spawn throughout the night, and added a maximum number that can appear per night (which both increase over time based on the in-game day). Previously, it was foolishly limited by the number of ACTIVE Slugs, so killing one effectively made room for another one to spawn, resulting in the potential for an almost-constant stream of them spawning if you were battling them all as soon as they appeared.
- Increased the range at which lit Campfires will force Slugs to despawn. And lit Smelters will now also scare them away too.
- Fixed a bug that potentially prevented attack from working when you used the little "X" to close the Inventory.
- Added smoothing to the camera control that's possible while the UI is open, so it isn't as quick and twitchy.
- You can now change the 4-digit number used by each Phone Booth to whatever you want. Just look up at each digit and Interact to cycle through the numbers. Should make them easier to remember!
- Smoothed the initial world generation system to help spread out the strain on your computer while the Loading Screen is shown. Probably not noticeable, but I'm hoping it helps out older computers a little.
- Fixed the tips that appear at the bottom of the Crafting Menu, so hopefully the text won't get cut off on certain resolutions any longer.
- Tweaked the weather system a touch, so you might see fog a little more often in future. What can I say, I like it when it's foggy :)
- When the Acorn Beasts have their little tree-shrinking ritual, you can now also stop it by destroying the tree stump they dance around. Oh, and the Acorn Beasts taking part in the ritual should have little leaves/feathers poking off their heads, which is something I actually added before early access began, but accidentally forgot to activate because I'm stupid.
- As mentioned above in the Auto-Save section above, reworked a few processes (like random tree growth) to stagger them a little over time, rather than all happening at once.
- Receiving damage due to using an item in your Inventory (like a poisonous mushroom) no longer closes the Inventory and Crafting Menu.
- Fixed an issue with the wonky Bait icon in the Fishing Help UI.
- Updated the collision for Pikachew's lair.
- Added some little walls around the edges of the Snake Pyramid event, because having to line up your attacks so carefully was pretty tedious!
- Updated the potential loot dropped by pretty much everything to include some of the new resources.
- Added a few new Steam Achievements.
- And, finally, just as a little treat for anyone who bothered to read this far, you can now press "S" on the Title Screen to view a bunch of pointless gameplay stats :) I'll probably add a "Stats" option to the Title Screen itself at some point, but this was just a last-minute addition to make sure it's working properly.
I think that's everything! Can't wait to discuss some of the newness with you guys.
Next up for me: Time to start preparing to leave early access, I think, depending on how you guys feel about the state of the game. Of course, leaving early access won't spell the end of development - far from it - I plan to continue working on the game for a long, long time yet either way. Anyway, short term, I'll be working on some new craftables (base-building stuff), and new points of interest and events based around the new biomes too. Oh, and at least one alternative way to get off the planet and head home. And hopefully Mac and Linux versions too, assuming I can get hold of some extra machines to compile and test on, but that might have to wait until post-launch... we'll see. So much to do, so little time! :)
As always, if you have any feedback or encounter any problems, just let me know. And don't forget: Wrongworld has a Discord now which is just getting started, so feel free to come and say "hello" there!