It has been a whole month since the nextfest happened in the beginning of February, and boy did we get a lot of feedback! We have been going through all the streams, system reports and messages you've sent and it has honestly been quite overwhelming! Good, but still a lot! First of all we want to thank everyone who tried the demo, reported issues, joined our discord, or gave us feedback on the game, pros and cons. We really appreciate the messages we got both on how much you loved the game, art style and nostalgia, as well as the feedback on how the game performed, issues you experienced and suggestions for improvements. A tip: if you've played the game and want to have a chat, remember that our Discord is quite active, so do join if you haven't already!

Folks coming to life

A key feature we haven't talked that much about is how we want you to feel the folks being alive, living their lives separate from - but dependent on - your decisions. To give them more personality, we have worked on giving the folks more animations, more traits that will present themselves during the game, and other details that we think you will enjoy. In the future, you will see folks giving you a quest or two, like going on a strike if they don't have food or work is too far away, or even start fighting in the street because they don't have anything better to do!

Money money money

Something that caught us a bit by surprise, but we've seen mentioned repeatedly during next fest and from people trying out the demo is how the money, taxation and income system really doesn't make sense in the world and settlement as it is now. Taxation and money will be a big focus in the upcoming builds to see how we can better incorporate this game mechanic in a way that works better with the games features. Some of the ideas we will be exploring is changing (or removing) the gold cost for buildings, focusing the money around trading and services instead, and a few other ideas. If you have suggestions, we're definitely interested in hearing from you!

QoL

As always, we are implementing a load of quality-of-life updates for the game based on all the amazing feedback you've given us. This includes new options in the build menu, day/night lighting, better performance on low and high-end systems, hotkeys overview, updates to the tips and quests system, and better insight into what is happening in your village. We're excited to share more about this in the coming months. On a related note, we've seen increasing feedback regarding performance and optimization issues on various hardware and configurations, causing the game to feel sluggish or unresponsive at certain times. We are working hard on identifying the causes of the issues and finding ways to improve this.

Options and Accessibility

The early access version will feature more options, both in terms of map generation (rivers, snow, map types), difficulty settings, disasters and more. We are also adding some accessibility features, such as mouse rotation / navigation options, UI scaling and several other options for people who need this. As always, we're super happy to hear from all of you, and we look forward to letting you know what the next months bring!