Hello everyone - I'm pleased to announce that just in time for Steam Next Fest starting Monday 9th October we have just released an update for the Horticular demo, bringing all the latest gameplay tweaks and features to the demo. IMPORTANT - Saves from the old version of the demo won't work in this new update. We have created a branch of the demo called "demo2" which will allow you to carry on playing your old gardens if you so desire. Leave a comment if you'd like full instructions how to access this. Also, in case you missed it, we debuted a brand new gameplay trailer yesterday that shows off a more recent build of the game than the old trailer: [previewyoutube=qPr7ltluSVw;full][/previewyoutube] This release is about improving existing gameplay systems and making them more fun, easy to use, and prepare them for how the game will work when it's full of content in the future launch of Horticular. The headline items are:

• Upgrade system has been overhauled to support a wide variety of unlockable species, focusing on gathering energy to allocate for upgrades instead of having specific species. In particular, this makes sure you aren't punished for going with your favorite animals while adding prioritization between animals based on their energy value.
• Creature collecting experience has been overhauled, adding mastery of creatures, dedicated UI, and letting you earn animal information from visiting guests.
• Lots of work has gone into the first 15 minutes of the game to make the introduction easier for new players. This includes overhauling all tutorials and making sure the initial tutorial quests make sense and aren't in the way of getting introduced.
• World interaction has been overhauled, letting you make higher item stacks and move individual items between stacks. The game also only highlights the item/creature/object that will be interacted with instead of everything on the tily. Finally, lifting creatures doesn't require an exact tile but also checks the current cursor position, making it much easirer to do, especially on gamepad.

Full changelog

Added

• Player guides: Teaches new players about the verious UI elements in the game. Can be disabled with the tutorials setting.
• New upgrade system: Works better with a large amount of species. Each animal now provides energy that can be allocated in the upgrade screen. Allocation is permanent so you have to settle more animals to keep upgrading. This affects upgrade balance, so be mindful that loading an old save may net you a large energy deficit.
• Tutorial for the upgrade system.
• You can now move individual stacked items, letting you make changes to your stacks.
• Setting for disabling notifications.
• Hotkeys for overlays.
• Action wheel for held items that work the same as for creatures. This prevents accidentally reclaiming items and also allows you to reset an item position once held.
• Button (rebindable) to quickly reclaim an item without the aciton wheel.
• Guests: Animals you haven't collected yet but know about sometimes show up. When you interact with them, they give you some partial information on their species.
• Creature mastery letting you know the exact requirements for species that you have collected enough of in your garden. Once mastered, the status is not lost if the creatures leave.
• Creature collection UI: Popup for creature knowledge changes and collection information in the Creature tab of the Journal.
• Flags to language setting.
• Interaction circle icons for digging/lifting/interacting with the world.
• Center cursor when playing with gamepad, making interactions more intuitive, especially creature interactions.
• Peek through when working behind items, letting you see through them to whatever you are doing. Can be disabled in the settings.
• Visual effect for when decay state changes.
• Decay tutorial.
• Corruption wave overhaul. Corrupted now spawn in telegraphed waves, with an upgradeable advance notice affected by the difficulty. This lets the player prepare (the wave can be manually started). Day won't progress while in these events, so there's no risk of a Hortic Day interrupting any longer.
• Cycle notification button. This replaces the original notification button (spacebar) with keyboard and adds a button for gamepad. This new one cycles important events, such as notifications, but also alert locations (corrupted/decaying/curious).
• Corruption tutorial.
• Minor tutorial challenges to learn the action wheel.

Improvements

• When lifting a creature, the game now check if any creature is close enough instead of the exact tile. This makes it much more forgiving when trying to pick up creatures, especially when they move between tiles. This is also a huge improvement for gamepad players.
• World interact has been overhauled to only show highlighting/outlines for the item, creature, or world object (e.g. Nectar) that will be interacted with.
• Stack height limitation increased to 4.
• Notifications do not overlap anymore.
• Curb has new tech that automatically chooses the curb type based on the surrounding surfaces, essentially making curbs a divider between surfaces. This upgrade also allows you to place most items on a tile with a curb.
• Hortic Day quest can now be seen in the alert so you don't need to dig up the letter anymore.
• Losing creatures now take the reason into account. For instance, a creature leaving because of unhappiness or being sick are two different reasons. This means some better notifications and journal stats.
• Plot buying is now a hold action instead of a button, preventing accidental changes.
• Plot buying now shows a border for the affected area and items reclaimed when releasing a plot.
• Main menu background environment is now randomly selected from presets instead of a rolling day-night cycle.
• Occlusion shadows are now rendered between stacked items.
• Holding a stack of items now shows the combined values for all items instead of just the bottom one.
• Pitch torch animation is now faster in higher wind speeds. This tech will be used on items in the full game.
• Creature page in the Journal now sorts unknown creatures last.
• Notebook now has scroll cursors where applicable.
• Initial intro pan now shows a skip prompt on any input instead of a popup on escape.
• Removed "Recent item" icon in surface and item selector. No one knew what it was and it was just a confusing old icon from very early builds.
• HUD elements have been reorganized to be more intuitive, putting letters and quest next to each other. This also optimizes percieved space on the right side of the screen.
• Weather no longer affects day payout. Thematically it doesn't work and is not something the player can control anyway.
• Decay is no longer affected by rain (still is by wind) and does spread when an item goes critical.
• Made implication of difficuly settings clearer.
• Credits updated with more names.
• Creatures targeting other creatures (e.g. Keepers with healing) now only choses ones they can path to.
• Unlock UI element is now smaller to give space for other UI elements and not block too much of the player's view.
• All existing tutorials have been polished. They are now shorter, have input buttons, and have dedicated versions for gamepad.
• Various UI elements have been polished, either visually and/or their layout.
• Most letters have been made more concise.
• Lots of UI improvements when playing with a gamepad
• Ambient light now changes gradually, resolving jarring weather changes at the start of day
• New particle effect that indicates that a habitat was destroyed

Design

• Creatures get happier in their loved weather.
• Creatures don't need loved weather to show up. They still don't in hated weather.
• Animal info cost has been reworked to be consistent per species.
• Keepers now heal sick animals.
• Expansion costs have been rebalanced. Be mindful of that when loading an old save, as it can negatively affect your daily expenses.
• Creatures are no longer critically affected by friends leaving. This prevents extreme cascades where one creature leaving could mean most of your garden eventually leaving.
• Both habitat overlays have been merged into one.
• The quest to settle a bumblebee now awards two additional creature infos to give some early encouragement.
• Soil nomenclature has been polished. "Soil+" is now "Loam" and the Soil surface type is now "Flower Bed". Supporting this change, the "Bed" surface is now called "Raised Bed".
• Critical items no longer create moon nectar.
• Corruption darkness is not as intense at night.
• Corrupted Keeper renamed to Corrupted
• Corrupted only decays one tile now instead of all surrounding it.

Fixed

• Journal tab order wrong when playing with a gamepad.
• Keybind settings did not load the correct language font after changing language.
• Menu garden not reloading after playing a game.
• Moth could sleep in mid-air.
• Corrupted nectar would only spawn by the player banishing corrupted, not by the keepers helping out or other reasons.
• Added missing poisonous tag to the scattered ancient plants.
• Merchant notification for new wares triggered even if there were no new available (out of items to unlock).
• Healing or attacking keepers could chase their target too far away from their home, getting them lost in the process. They now stop chasing instead.
• Gamepad could fast forward even if the feature was locked.
• Wishlist button was missing the gamepad prompt