About 1,5 weeks ago we released Winkeltje: The Little Shop out of Early Access and introduced the game to consoles accompanied by new content and features. With this post we would like to give you an update on how this went and what you can look forward to.
Thank you!
Let's start off with thanking everyone who has played Winkeltje since it arrived all these years ago on Steam Early Access! The 1.0 launch has gone above and beyond our expectations. We want to take this moment to sincerely thank you all for all the feedback, comments, reviews, and support.
Bug Fixing
Currently our top priority is to reproduce and fix all the major bugs and issues that have been reported since the launch. These major issues will be rapidly fixed as soon as possible before we move. Some of you are finding bugs that have probably been around for years, and we'd like to get as much of that fixed before moving on.
Changes and fixes that make it into the game are listed as hotfixes in at the bottom of this post). For PC these were mostly small issues, though some of them very annoying (like the employees sometimes refusing to restock).
Console Stability
The main concern last week revolved around critical issues on consoles. Early on we got reports of save files being corrupted. We were unable to figure out what was causing this for a while, but eventually were able to track down the problem and roll out a fix. This is now patched on both Xbox & PlayStation, but is still pending validation by Nintendo for the Switch. We also saw some other issues, like the Planters not working or the Alchemy Station not being unlockable. The next Switch patch should fix the latter (the former is already fixed!).
Do note that this will not fix broken saves, as they are corrupted beyond usage. This will ensure that newly created save files will no longer get corrupted.
Languages
There has been some confusion on why the PC has more translations than consoles. This basically boiled down to timing. To pass certification on all consoles, the translations needed to be completed in time. We weren't able to lock our translation file until relatively close to the release date, so we opted to launch on consoles with only English & Dutch (as we are able to do those ourselves). The Nintendo Switch should have access to English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian & Simplified Chinese already. The patches for Xbox & PlayStation that adds these languages are currently in certification and should be done by the end of the week at latest.
We are still looking into the possibility of adding more languages to consoles, but have no new information on that at this stage.
The Future
Some of you have asked what our plans are now that the game has launched into version 1.0. Like mentioned, we'll be focusing on bug fixing for now. Most of these fixes will be pretty small (and some not so much), but we find it important to stabilize the game on all platforms before even considering new content.
Once everything is stable, we will be looking into improving areas of the Winkeltje experience that need more work or even an overhaul. In addition to that we are excited to add more content and features. Together with your feedback we have a lot of ideas on what to improve and and where to take Winkeltje from here but please don't hesitate to let us know if you have a cool idea or valuable feedback. You can reach us here on Steam or head over to the Winkeltje Discord.