Hello, we're still alive and kicking! After a very long hiatus in which I moved twice, started 2 new side jobs, and had a lot of other stuff happen, I'm finally back in a space where I can work on the game frequently. Sorry for the long break, but it's looking like updates will become more frequent again. Yay!

So what does 4 months bring you? Let's review.

• A new time cycle!
  • Time marches on while you play, each day starts at 7am and will end at 11pm, though you can go to bed before then.
  • Time will pause while you're in a conversation, have a menu open (such as crafting or your inventory), and during some other parts of gameplay.
  • Crafting and opening your shop will fast forward time a predetermined amount of time. Crafting each item takes 30 minutes, and opening your shop will consume 2 hours of your time.
  • The new time cycle also affects the world. Certain NPCs and stores will have opening and closing times, so don't expect to be able to talk to someone right at 7am or try to buy from the smith at 10pm. You can also only open your store during set hours.
  • There's now a daily recap at the end of each day, where Shawn can potentially take a cut of your profit. This is a placeholder for now, as there's a different design I want to use but will take a bit longer to code.
  • There are now daily resets for shops and loot. Shops may get new items as you do certain actions, and "natural" loot such as bushes, trees, and ore veins will move around and have different rewards every day.
  • Certain times of day will also trigger changes to the town, such as street lamps turning on.
• New animations and models!
  • The main character has a handful on new or redone animations. Let me know how they feel!
  • Trees, bushes, and some items have new models. 
    • This conflicts with an ongoing game design decision to make all intractable elements have an "outline" for easy identification at a glance. While these models can't have a decent looking outline without a lot of work, I did add other visual indicators so they are easy to identify still.
• New loot and shopping methods!
  • Before, looting an object would (mostly) cause a simple "loot window" to pop up. This felt impersonal, had a lack of charm, and was also the cause of a few bugs. Now all "containers" that have loot (trees, chests, bushes, trashcans, ore veins) will "pop" out the loot.
  • The smith shop is now also experimenting with a new way of selling items. Simply go up to the item you wish to buy and engage in a short conversation to purchase it. No more cold, boring vendor windows!
    • In the future, this system will extend to allow haggling, but for now please buy any items at face price. The Smith has earned that much I think.
    • The smith may also start stocking new items given your actions throughout the days you spend playing.
• Improved coin counting (increasing/decreasing your gold amount)
  • Slightly better animations and number handling during either increasing or decreasing.
  • Fixed an issue where the amount shown wouldn't reflect your actual amount of gold.
• Various small updates
  • Conversations will now blur the background slightly. This can be disabled from the Settings book page (Esc) if you're not a fan.
  • Some new and updated portraits have been put into the game.
  • Clarified the key/lock situation. The Traveler sells a *silver* key which will go to a *silver* lock. Check around town if you can't find the lock, it's a little hidden.
• Bug fixes!
  • Veggie Mom, the Traveler, and the Carpenter will now correctly increase and/or decrease your gold count when selling or buying.
  • When trying to buy an item, it will also check if you can carry any more before attempting to give you the item (and take away your gold).
  • Crafting (smelting/smithing) has been cleaned up a bit with a few bugs squashed. This is still something I wish to redo completely, but for now it works (better than it did before).

For now, the Forest level is disabled as it requires more work to bring it up to speed with everything else. My goal is to have the forest + any needed bugfixes done by next Friday. As always the discord is a good way to contact me if you have comments, questions, or just wanna talk. Cheers!

Easy link to game

Easy link to discord