This is a major behind-the-scenes update, it includes:

• New Spanish and Russian translations (incomplete, head to https://weblate.lemuria.org/engage/black-forest/ to contribute!)
• Visual refresh, giving the 3D scene more clarity and a hint of a stylized look
• Added ivy to a number of buildings for more visual variance and interest.
• Added sound effects to bear, orc, tree
• Gave the stone gate collision detection more tolerance so it's easier to find a spot across the path where it's possible to build it.
• Fixed the "hire mercenaries" part in the Children's Tales story.
• Fixed: Maypole should now be properly removed when loading a game in the tutorial story.
• Started to add Spanish and Russian translation - still incomplete. Head to https://weblate.lemuria.org/projects/black-forest/ if you want to help with translations.
• Added some debug output to trace an elusive bug that apparently only occurs on some platforms.
• Updated a few libraries.
• Updated building shader (slightly improved visual clarity and less memory consumption)
• Added "dissolve-in" effect when selecting a building to construct
• and finally: Big engine update, to the latest Unity 6. This should solve some issues while also bringing better performance

I've uploaded a new build to the testing/beta branch. This is a major behind-the-scenes update, with a new engine major version and considerable code updates. It fixes a small number of bugs as well. Please test and let me know if you run into any problems. The sooner I get some feedback, the sooner I can send it live for everyone.

From time to time, players have asked if the game is available in their language. Until now, I always had to say sorry no. I speak English and German good enough. Other languages need a native or good speaker. I found one person to translate parts of the game to French, very happy about that. Now, you can all help translating the game into your language. Maybe just a few words, maybe a whole story block - as you wish. I've set up an online translation system here: https://weblate.lemuria.org/projects/black-forest/ Go there, select your language and start translating. The system has good documentation for all needs, and if you need another language, tell me and I'll add it. The game's texts are split up into a number of chunks, due to the way the export and import work, but the actual translation work is basically: It shows you the English original and you enter your translation. You can also make suggestions if you're not sure and other players can vote on them. I'll be happy to offer the game in as many languages as possible.

• Completed the "Darkest Nights" story (though it is now a bit shorter than I had hoped)
• Doubled the number of monster lairs that rangers will seek out before giving up for the day
• Night summary now shows temperature (to better understand when peasants need heating or die of frostbite)
• Made a number of changes to handle monster collision issues better
• A small number of additional translations
• Fixed a small pathfinding error
• Fixed a small error in construction assignment for walls
• Removed outdated code related to the map editor (code that might have caused false positive exception messages)
• Updated Unity engine
• Fixed a small library error in the build process

• Fixed: Storage display now updates correctly again
• Fixed: Eliminated peasant "follow ghosts" (by switching anti-aliasing from temporal to FXAA)
• Fixed two small script errors
• Added 3 ultra-wide (21:9) resolutions in the options menu

This update should fix all but one of the known bugs and includes a number of other improvements. I recommend that you install it as quickly as possible. Note: I have changed some parts of the save game files. The game should load old saves without any issues, but new saves made with this version will not be compatible with older versions of the game.

• Fixed: Market UI should be visible again
• Fixed: Market UI still listed weapons as tradeable (removed)
• Fixed: Death markers animation and disappearance
• Fixed: Camera Shake
• Fixed: A certain monster's kill text caused an error
• Fixed: Story mode dialogs should now correctly appear in German if you've set your language to German
• Fixed: French was not available in the options menu
• Fixed: Options toggles now update immediately when you change your language
• Fixed: Leaderboard for a few levels
• New: German translations for level names, descriptions, history, etc. (incomplete, working on it)
• Updated hitbox on kobold should solve the "phasing through walls" problem
• Small adjustments to monster timings
• Tents should now spawn more often inside the village and less often at the edges
• Improved options dialog
• Cleaned up a lot of small bugs and issues

Hot on the heels of the previous update, here are two more bugfixes:

• Fixed: Market UI still listed weapons as tradeable
• Fixed: Camera Shake

ATTENTION - this is part 2 of the major walls update, this one is destructive. Old saves (by now 3 months or more old) may not work or not correctly restore any walls built. This update also fixes a number of bugs, adds French translation and more. Here's the full changelog:

• Removed old wall section prefabs
• French translation (partial, dialog texts still missing)
• Wayposts now create paths to connect to the nearest existing path
• Improved the interaction between game speed and monsters during the night (less chance for you to miss monster attacks due to high game speed)
• Increased the hitbox size of small monsters (rats, kobolds, goblins) in order to reduce the "monster phasing through walls" issue.
• Fixed: Work summary now scrolls when there are too many projects for the view size
• Fixed: Walls should now again be enabled correctly in the tutorial mission
• Fixed: Text bug (smelter/smithy mixed) in the Krobory Story mission
• Fixed: Steward sent back to school to learn counting (damaged/destroyed numbers should now be correct)
• Fixed: Kroburg story no longer launches the intro dialog and quest when you load a save game
• Updated Unity engine and packages used

If you've been holding off, now is the perfect time to get the game into your collection. Black Forest will be on sale during the Steam Summer Sale. It's also a great time because the game just received a major update, and another (smaller) update is on the way. Go and defend these villagers, they'll be eaten without you !

I'm working on part 2 of the major update. This will have far fewer changes, but the important part is that I will be cleaning up old, no longer used things. So if you have any quite old saves (from before the last update), now is the time to finish those game. In the next update, I will be removing old walls and no longer used buildings. This might break old saves, meaning that those buildings won't exist anymore if you load a game where they were still present. In other news, the update will also include French localization. I know it's been asked a few times, it's finally coming.

Black Forest is on sale. Steam tells me that over 10,000 of you still have it on your wishlist. Now, with the sale and the big update that just came out, is the perfect time to get Black Forest into your library.

This is the first of a two-part major update to the game. I am re-focussing on the core gameplay and removing elements that distract from it. That includes the night watch option for villagers and the armoury, weapons and guard posts. The game was always meant to be unique in that you don't have combat as a serious option, and having these elements in the game creates the false impression that this is how you could (or should) defend your village, when it was only ever meant to be a small part of your total strategy.

• New building: Barn - you can't build it but most maps come with one set up already. It serves no purpose and is only for decoration (though it does block monster attacks)
• New building: Waypost - use it to guide the dynamic paths that some buildings automatically create.
• New building: Harvest stuff - a decoration item showing crates, sacks, etc. full of harvested fruits, grain, vegetables. Also added some of these to several maps.
• Gameplay change: When a building construction finishes and the building can have people assigned to it, the game will automatically assign workers. No longer do you have useless buildings because you forgot to assign peasants.
• removed the armoury and guard post from the buildable items. They will still exist in saved games, but will be removed with the next update
• removed weapons from smithy, market, storage and manual
• removed archers from the tavern. Rangers and Guardians remain.
• Walls have been reworked. More variety with procedural generation and reduced cost in resources and workers.
• Known issue: When building a wall with the new wall builder while the game is paused, the wall will show up as if finished immediately, then begin construction when unpausing
• Carpenter and Mason will now provide a construction speed bonus to wood and stone walls - 10% per Carpenter/Mason you have.
• Steward will now rebuild destroyed walls when you click the "repair walls" button
• updated manual and various UI texts to reflect the above changes
• Added a small random bonus to wall construction speed just to break it up visually.
• Removed the map editor
• Small updates to most of the maps
• Big update to the Schramberg (and tutorial) map, with new vegetation
• Peasant visuals update: Now using tools (hammer, bucket, etc.) when building, digging a new field, harvesting wheat or carrying water
• Major update to how Guardians work. They now target monsters directly, emerging from the tavern when a monster is spotted.
• Slightly extended the length of the day on maps Castle, Farmstead, Friedmarkt and Ziegwald
• Reworked the monster spawn timings to be more interesting and predictable
• Loading screen will now show loading progress instead of just pulsating
• Context menu will now stay over the building you selected
• Several small UI improvements
• Balance: Buildings recover their "soak" value slightly faster
• Balance: No monster spawns the first two nights on easy levels, or the first night on medium levels
• Balance: Increased the score for monsters
• Balance: Changed some monster spawnings on some maps, just small adjustments
• Balance: Slightly raised the amount of monsters on the doomed map "Calm Village"
• Balance: Slightly increased the amount of starting resources on easy maps
• Fixed: Kobolds attacking as orcs (damage and log texts)
• Fixed: Pathfinding monsters (such as rats and kobolds) should no longer walk through walls in some instances
• Fixed: Reduced volume of the chapel bell
• Fixed: Smithy sound effect
• Fixed: Made sure repairs can never require more resources than the initial construction cost
• Fixed: Herbalist should now actually go to the herbalist hut to work
• Fixed: Vegetation masks and dynamic paths now show up correctly when loading a game
• Translations: Added translations for Tavern UI and option toggles
• Translations: Added missing translations for monster spawns and construction completion
• Also updated the Unity engine to the latest version, which might fix some bugs and give small performance improvements

I'll be streaming gameplay of the new version today evening, showcasing changes and new features. Stream will be on my Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev/ If I can manage it I will upload a recording to YouTube afterwards. The time is 21:00 local time. Check here to convert to your time: https://www.zeitzonenrechner.net/at/2761369

Still preparing for the next update. Here is a teaser of what you can expect:

• New building: Barn - you can't build it but most maps come with one set up already. It serves no purpose and is only for decoration (though it does block monster attacks)
• Walls have been reworked. More variety with procedural generation and reduced cost in resources and workers.
• Carpenter and Mason will now provide a construction speed bonus to wood and stone walls - 10% per Carpenter/Mason you have.
• Added a small random bonus to wall construction speed just to break it up visually.
• Removed the map editor
• Small updates to most of the maps
• Peasant visuals update: Now using tools (hammer, bucket, etc.) when building, digging a new field, harvesting wheat or carrying water
• Major update to how Guardians work. They now target monsters directly, emerging from the tavern when a monster is spotted.
• Slightly extended the length of the day on maps Castle, Farmstead, Friedmarkt and Ziegwald
• Reworked the monster spawn timings to be more interesting and predictable
• Loading screen will now show loading progress instead of just pulsating
• Context menu will now stay over the building you selected
• Fixed: Kobolds attacking as orcs (damage and log texts)
• Fixed: Pathfinding monsters (such as rats and kobolds) should no longer walk through walls in some instances
• Fixed: Tavern UI was lacking german translation
• Fixed: Reduced volume of the chapel bell
• Fixed: Smithy sound effect
• Fixed: Made sure repairs can never require more resources than the initial construction cost
• Fixed: Herbalist should now actually go to the herbalist hut to work

I've been working on a major update for the game, re-focussing on the core gameplay and removing elements that distract from it. That includes the night watch option for villagers and the armoury, weapons and guard posts. The game was always meant to be unique in that you don't have combat as a serious option, and having these elements in the game creates the false impression that this is how you could (or should) defend your village, when it was only ever meant to be a small part of your total strategy. In addition to that, I have given several maps small upgrades, added tools to many of the villagers' jobs, completely reworked the way walls are generated (you won't see a big difference, but it's a lot easier for me to manage them now) made monster spawn timing more predictable and interesting. I'm still working on more bugfixes and improvements. Looking forward to putting this big update into your hands.

Hi everyone - if you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so.

The game will be 40% off from April 15th through the 22nd!

Hi everyone! If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Spring Sale! From March 14th until the 21st, the game will be on sale for 50% off! Make sure to check out Freedom Games' Steam Spring Sale page to pick up some great games to play. Get Black Forest here.

• Balance update: All gather tasks on easy and medium difficulty as well as most story levels are now more efficient, which means you get more resources from the forest
• Fixed a number of smaller issues that you probably didn't even notice.
• Fixed some remaining issues with achievements
• Fixed some translation errors
• Slightly streamlined the tutorial dialogs.
• Reworked backend handling (leaderboards, achievements) to clean up the code.

• Fixed: Steam integration should work properly again.
• Fixed: Onion field uses correct icon for harvest
• Fixed: Some monster flag positions on Refugee Camp
• Improved visibility of the "harvest in progress" indicator
• Reduced log amount
• Updated Unity engine and a few assets

For the holidays, here is a fairly big update with interesting new features for you:

• New feature: Map editor - currently only 3 maps for trying it out and pretty incomplete. You can make a village with all the buildings in the game, you can NOT at this time make a playable map (with monsters, etc.) - as I said, incomplete, testing, please post feedback to the forum to let me know if it's worth developing further.
• Fixed the village log notice when a building is finished (it was using the wrong text field, now the text says "construction of a cow pen finished" instead of "construction of a Cows finished" and similar)
• Fixed: Onion field now available in the tutorial
• Fixed: Trapper description no longer misleadingly mentions the watchtower
• Fixed: Rephrased "safe slaughter" to "sustainable slaughter"
• Fixed: The tutorial "hurry up with the food" dialog should no longer appear if you've already completed that quest
• Fixed: Requirements display of locked levels is now correctly aligned
• Fixed: Buildings built in sandbox mode no longer count towards achievements
• Fixed: Graveyard orientation in Refugee Camp map
• Visual improvement: Buildings now clear grass and bushes around their location when placed
• Watchtowers now show their spotting distance when you build them
• Watchtowers have slightly reduced spotting distances now that it's easy to place them correctly
• Increased visibility of the bear fireflies
• Game will no longer advise you to build a steward if the steward building is disabled (as in the first part of the tutorial)
• Added autopaths to Friedmarkt, Karenfang and Hellhafen
• Added more text variety and proper translation to monster wound and kill events
• Added (german) translations to the building descriptions
• Fixed art style of level selector images
• Increased grass rendering distance on Refugee Camp map

Hi everyone! If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Winter Sale through our publisher Freedom Games! From December 21st until January 8th, the game will be on sale for 50% off! Make sure to check out Freedom Games' Winter Sale 2023 page to pick up some great games to play over the holiday season. Whether you like to play alone or with friends, there are some great deals you won't want to miss out on! https://store.steampowered.com/app/523070/Black_Forest/

Hi everyone! We're excited to announce that Black Forest is part of the Turn-Based Carnival event on Steam and is available for 20% off until the event ends! Turn-Based Carnival will be live from November 14th to the 21st to bring together a bunch of exciting games for a delightful experience. Check out the event page here to discover some other amazing games! Don't forget to join our Discord community!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/523070/Black_Forest/

• Fixed: Animal pens' collect icons should now disappear when they are destroyed
• Fixed: Orc animations now correctly return to running after attacks
• Balance: In "Founding Kroburg":
• * wood and stone are now gathered faster
• * slightly more starting food
• * corrected infrastructure building to smelter (instead of smithy)
• Balance: Small changes to monster frequencies and selection in several levels.
• Improved forest click detection
• Improved pathfinding around gates
• Added a few more UI sound effects
• Construction sounds now stop when in pause mode
• updated achievement images for monster achievements
• added another (hidden) achievement
• fixed the walking tree achievement (you should properly get it the next time you encounter one)

• Fixed: Goblins flaming shots sometimes exploding at their feet
• Fixed: Banner context menu now correct
• Fixed: Steam no longer thinks under certain (rare) circumstances that you are running the demo when you are running the full version.
• Fixed: The maypole in the tutorial now actually gets taken down when the dialog says so.
• Small code change to make sure the "Demo" info in the main menu is always visible when you launch the demo, even if you have the full game
• Finetuning some difficulties in some levels
• Slightly improved a few texts and translations

Bugfixes:

• Fixed: Monsters should now always turn around from walls/palisades, etc. again - sorry for that, a previous update messed up some physics calculations
• Fixed: Onion field does not show up as a carrot field in the context menu anymore.
• Fixed: Mill can be built again (it self-intersected, so it was already red)
• Fixed: A few small text issues
• Fixed: Hard difficulty levels should now unlock if you won a medium game (it unlocked only on easy)
• Fixed: Banner construction now working properly
• Fixed: Banner default image should now be correct (a shield, not a flower)

• Small change: Banner no longer requires metal to build
• Added: Quick Start / Reference for impatient players

New Features:

• Added: Monster discovery panel
• Added: An exclusive castle level
• New icons
• Added: Onion field (small, slow-growing, undemanding)
• Added: The banner decoration is now available
• Added: Once you have discovered a certain amount of monsters, you can upload your own image and choose your own colour for the banner
• Hard and doomed difficulty now need to be unlocked by winning easier maps first
• Gameplay change: Walls and gates can now be rebuilt in place by choosing the repair option, even if they have been destroyed.
• You can now click on the forest to bring up the gather menu.
• New and improved windmill model

• Fixed: Smithy now correctly uses up 1 wood per spear produced
• Fixed: "Rebuild" no longer triggers the intro dialog when loading a save game
• Fixed a few small dialog text errors
• Fixed: Decorations such as the snowman will no longer be damaged sometimes (and can't be repaired).
• Fixed: Improved collision detection precision, so monsters should no longer warp through walls.
• Fixed: A few text and spelling errors
• Fixed: Gather button and menu now properly disabled at night
• Fixed: Story rats appearing properly in "Childrens' Tales"
• Fixed: Demolishing a building no longer leads to "x buildings were damaged" steward messages
• Fixed: Clicking on the status icons of walls now works properly
• Fixed: Dialogs now always show the correct portrait images.
• Fixed: Dialogs in the tutorial made more resilient against running over each other
• Numerous small bugfixes. In fact, I about halved the number of open issues and the ones remaining are mostly ones I can't reproduce

• A few visual and performance improvements to some maps
• Translations: German translation should be complete. If you find anything missing, please file a bug report on the forum.
• Translations: Removed unfinished french, spanish and russian languages. They may return if I find someone to complete them.
• Updated Unity to 2022.3.10 (latest version)
• Small visual improvements to a few buildings, such as the cow pen
• Monster action cam should now switch to the stronger monster if one appears while it is showing a weaker monster

Greetings, Resilient Survivors of the Black Forest, The moment we've all eagerly awaited has finally arrived! Black Forest 2.0 is now officially launched, marking a new era of survival. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to my dedicated community for making this journey possible. Are you prepared to face the horrors that dwell within the forest? Darkness reigns, and sinister secrets stir. Can you defend your village from the relentless attention of the woods' malevolent inhabitants? The darkness awaits, and its time to embark on your journey to survive the unrelenting horrors that await you.

Join Our Village and Support Us:

Greetings, brave villagers and survivors of the Black Forest! It's been a long, treacherous journey through the darkness of Early Access, but the time has finally come. I am thrilled to announce that Black Forest is stepping out of the shadows and into the light of its full 2.0 release! Prepare yourselves for a harrowing experience like no other, where danger, death, and despair are your constant companions. If you haven't been keeping tabs on the project, or just tried it out somewhere along the way, below is a quick recap of what Ive added to the game during Early Access. If youre curious to see all of the updates we have done through EA you can look back through the NEWS section here on steam! New Additions in Early Access:

• Expanded from 2 maps to 13 maps - and from one difficulty level to four, for a total of 41 playable levels!
• More dangers, 15 monsters to meet instead of 2 - and also added unique behaviours to the various monster types, background information and guards to defend against them!
• So many new buildings - when we started this journey two years ago, we had a handful of basic buildings. Now we have workshops, four types of walls, four types of fields, various animal pens and decorations.

• Monster Discovery Panel: Uncover the secrets of the forest with the all-new Monster Discovery Panel. Dive deep into the lore of the creatures that haunt your village.
• Exclusive Castle Level: Prepare for a new and exclusive castle level that will test your survival skills like never before. Can you withstand the horrors that lurk within?
• Onion Field: Tend to your onion field - small, slow-growing, and undemanding. A valuable addition to your resources.
• Banner Decoration: Customize your village with the new Banner Decoration. Make your mark on the Black Forest and claim it as your own.
• Personalize Your Banner: Once you've discovered a certain number of monsters, you can upload your own image and choose your own colors for the banner. Show off your unique style as you lead your village to survival.

• Rebuilding Walls and Gates: Walls and gates can now be rebuilt in place by choosing the repair option, even if they have been destroyed. Reclaim your defenses and fortify your village.
• Unlockable Difficulties: To truly test your mettle, harder difficulties such as Hard and Doomed must now be unlocked by conquering easier maps first. The forest demands a greater challenge.
• New Icons: A fresh look with new icons that enhance your gaming experience.

• Fixed: Two code bugs leading to minor errors
• Fixed: A few localization erros
• Fixed: Leaderboard for story "Rebuilding" should now work
• Fixed: No more duplicate paths for existing buildings
• Cleaned up dialogs and removed old lines from the removed storyline
• Continued translating the dialogs to German (currently: 243 of 769 entries translated = 31.6 %)
• Updated a few tools and packages used
• Updated a couple visual assets to fix possible shader and render issues

• Fixed: Swinvale / Mountain Village was broken. It should work again now.
• Fixed: Neudorf would load without homes and peasants, works now.
• Fixed: Peasants should no longer stand ON TOP of watchtowers.
• Fixed: Correct mixer assignment for a specific monster
• Fixed: Slightly reduced spawn delays in Rebuild story, to prevent problem of monsters getting into the gate
• Added a small random delay to the gate opening in the mornings.
• Added: Attack sound effects to some monsters (experimental)
• Added: Automatic path generations from houses to levels: Farmstead and Neudorf
• Added: You can now click on the status icons to access a building (started adding this some updates ago, but its now complete for all but the walls)
• Added some polish here and there
• Completed the translation of the manual to German.
• Started translation of quests to German.
• Started translation of dialogues to German, but it will take time (currently: 34 of 791 entries translated)
• Note: The German translation is the foundation for other languages, because while translating I also set up all the code and other details that are needed for translations in general, so once its done any future translations are much easier.

New:

• Reworked the stories. The incomplete "Betrayl" removed and replaced with "Rebuild" - a winter story focussed on resource management and supplying your village with very few attacks.
• Added the final sandbox level: Ziegwald
• New: Some levels have experimental setup for automatic paths. When you build houses, a path to the nearest road or other path will be added and peasants will generally follow these paths when going somewhere, except when cutting across grass is much shorter. The levels that have this set up now are Kroburg, Refugee Camp and Swinvale.
• Added a page about weapons to the manual.

• Fixed: The elusive bug that caused some monsters on some maps to spawn in the sky
• Fixed: Several bugs in "Children's Tales" where dialogs would repeat when loading a save game.
• Fixed: A bug where in the demo levels appeared to be available, but would never actually load.
• Fixed: A few tiny visual errors you probably didn't even notice
• Fixed: A bug that caused buildings not being available in some stories after finishing specific quests
• Fixed: A bug in the flow of "Children's Tales"
• Fixed: Old messages and events in "Founding Kroburg" should no longer repeat after loading a save game
• Fixed: Wording error when sending individual peasants (now correctly "a peasant is ..." instead of "a peasant are ..."
• Fixed: Rotation of fishing spots on the Antoburg map
• Fixed: Some manual pages were outdated, updated them.

• Considerably expanded the german translation
• Improved guards animations and logic
• Increase peasant character sizes and raised movements speeds accordingly - to make them fit the other models better and make them more visible when zoomed out.
• Shaved 700 MB off the install size of the game by optimizing. This should also reduce the RAM requirements and make the game run more smoothly on some low-end machines.
• Removed voice-overs and the voices audio setting. Voice-overs were incomplete and had no serious chance to be completed at a quality level that I would be happy with. If the game sells enough copies to hire proper voice actors, I'll be happy to do that and add them back in.
• Removed the ballista from the game. It was never finished and in testing just didn't add enough fun for all the complexity it brought with totally new game mechanics.
• Updated Unity and a bunch of assets to latest versions. Hoping for performance improvements and fewer small bugs.
• Updated the steamworks and Facepunch (the library I use to manage Steam things like leaderboards)

• Fixed: Finally, the game will no longer zoom when you scroll wheel through the peasant list, diary, etc.
• Fixed: Harvest/Gather tasks on fields/pens being demolished.
• Fixed: A few buildings were missing repair and demolish sounds, now theyve got them.
• Fixed: Detection error for guards that might have caused them to not see monsters
• Fixed: A number of small code fixes that you probably didnt even notice existed. :-)
• Fixed: A number of bugs in the Darkest Nights story.
• Fixed: The elusive bug that caused some monsters on some maps to spawn in the sky
• Fixed: Several bugs in Childrens Tales where dialogues would repeat when loading a save game.
• Fixed: A bug where in the demo levels appeared to be available, but would never actually load.
• Balance: Increased field-of-view for guards from 180 to 270 degrees.
• Expanded the Darkest Nights story slightly.
• Changed the way sounds are managed on construction, repair, and demolish - they are now per peasant, not per building. That means more peasants assigned to a task will make more noise, and the entire soundscape should have more depth.
• Added more randomness to construction, repair and demolish sounds and slightly higher 3D sound spread.
• Added a few more German translations
• Updated Unity engine to 2021.3.25

• Fixed a bug that prevented the armoury from being built.
• Fixed a dialog line in the tutorial.
• Fixed: Building a stone mason in the tutorial before receiving the quest should now count it correctly as already built
• Fixed: Game no longer zooms in/out when you use the mouse-wheel over scrolling lists like the peasants list or logs.
• Fixed an animation error in the main menu
• Fixed: Leaderboard entries will no longer show up multiple times if you rapidly press the "show leaderboard" button.
• Fixed: Can no longer assign peasants to harvest or collect eggs/milk when the field/pen is being demolished
• Fixed a small text bug in the manual.
• Change: The tutorial will now disappear from the main menu only after you have successfully completed it, not as soon as you started it once. (it will also be visible again for everyone now)

Version 1.9

• Monsters will now attack peasants that they encounter, so beware of peasants returning from the forest late.
• 2 new tables for the Cosmetics DLC furniture set
• Peasant Details window for every peasant - still a work in progress, post your feedback and comments to the Steam forum.
• The new peasant show button shows you the graveyard if the peasant is dead
• On the detail view, you can send peasants to rest for the day (so they heal and don't do dangerous work)
• On the detail view, you can assign adult men to stand guard during the night (and rest the next morning)
• New Building: Armoury - stores weapons that are produced in the smithy.
• New Building: Guard Post - where guardians or armed peasants will stand guard at night
• New Mercenary: Guardians are now available for hire
• New Monster: Giant spider (only on some maps and appearing fairly rarely)
• New font (minimal visible changes) to allow for Cyrillic characters.

Fixed

• Peasants are now assigned the correctly gendered visual model after loading a game.
• Manor house (in the Friedmarkt story "Darkest Nights") now loads correctly from save games.
• Buildings can no longer be both repaired and demolished at the same time.
• Correct gameObject names on peasants after loading a save game - was never visible to players, but will make my debugging easier
• Hellhafen initial dialog should have proper UI scaling now
• Hellhafen houses should be initialized properly now
• Correct icon on the "look into the manual" tip on the loading screen
• Reworked smithy and smelter: Smelter now allows metal gathering, smithy produces tools and weapons
• Forging tools and weapons now uses up metal.

Updates and Balance

• Added some more variety and beauty to the peasant models
• Updated tutorial dialogs and in-game help texts to reflect the new smelter/smithy roles
• Smithy now requires 10 metal to be constructed.
• You can now buy and sell weapons on the market
• Added smelter building to Friedmarkt and Ziegwald levels
• Moved the trapper from workshops to defenses
• Construction speed bonus of tools doubled to 20%
• Hellhafen fields updated (replaced 2 wheat fields with carrots and cabbages)
• Score now considers monster attacks, so if the dice roll against you and you get unusually many monsters, you also get a higher score.
• Some monsters do slightly more damage now
• Improved steward texts (was in a previous update, I forgot to put it into the changelog)
• Added some tooltips to various UI elements to make the game easier to discover for new players.
• You can now click on the status icons (damaged, destroyed, unmanned, etc.) and it will select the proper building
• Reworked the main menu a bit
• Updated Unity engine to 2021.3.22
• Some performance improvements
• Lots of behind-the-scenes improvements to make the game easier to maintain in the future

Hello everyone! I have a couple of different updates for you this week. Now that I have a publisher, I plan to swap to being a premium (paid) game. Current owners of the game will keep the game! This swap will occur later today Having a publisher has opened up new opportunities to do more with the game and Id like to take that opportunity and run with it! Aside from the usual bug fixing and polishing, the next upcoming main update is the addition of buildings, actions and code to enable night guards in the village. Peasants can be armed and ordered to stand guard (they will sleep the next morning) or mercenaries can be hired in the tavern. The code is still simple and will need player feedback and improvement, but its there now and will be continuously improved in the next updates. Also, I have added more peasant details, which can be opened by clicking on a peasant in the 3D view or on their name in the peasant list. This also allows players to send peasants to rest (if you want them to heal faster). Some upcoming minor changes:

• Fixed: Manor house (in the Friedmarkt story Darkest Nights) now loads correctly from save games.
• New: Peasant Details window for every peasant - still a work in progress, post your feedback and comments to the Steam forum.
• New: Peasant show button shows you the graveyard if the peasant is dead
• New: On the detail view, you can send peasants to rest for the day (so they heal and dont do dangerous work)
• New: On the detail view, you can assign adult men to stand guard during the night (and rest the next morning)
• New Building: Armoury - stores weapons that are produced in the smithy.
• New Building: Guard Post - where guardians or armed peasants will stand guard at night
• New Monster: Giant spider (only on some maps and appearing fairly rarely)
• Reworked smithy and smelter: Smelter now allows metal gathering, smithy produces tools and weapons
• Updated tutorial dialogs and in-game help texts to reflect the new smelter/smithy roles
• Smithy now requires 10 metal to be constructed.
• Forging tools and weapons now uses up metal.
• Balance: Construction speed bonus of tools doubled to 20%
• Added smelter building to Friedmarkt and Ziegwald levels
• Move the trapper from workshops to defenses
• Improved steward texts (was in a previous update, I forgot to put it into the changelog)
• Balance: Score now considers monster attacks, so if the dice roll against you and you get unusually many monsters, you also get a higher score.
• Balance: Some monsters do slightly more damage now

Hello everyone! I am pleased to announce that Black Forest is now being published by Freedom Games (freedom.gg) For those of you who may not know, a game publisher can take care of a lot of the business and marketing side of releasing a game. That includes managing our store pages, marketing and advertising the game, helping showcase the game at digital and live events, PR, and much more. Having Freedom Games as a publisher is pretty motivating as it will allow me to reach more players and make Black Forest the best it can be! The best thing about Freedom Games is that they are fully behind my creative vision of the game and Ill have all the freedom (heh) going forward to build the game in the way I think is best. In other words: I have complete creative and development freedom and thats exactly what Freedom Games and I want from this partnership. You may also be concerned about the stories of publishers ruining the vision of a game or forcing arbitrary restrictions on the dev team. For Freedom, that cant be further from the reality I have experienced with them. Freedom has been a great partner to me, only enhancing and supporting my vision. I was conscientious when considering whether to go with a publisher or not, and selected Freedom because they are committed to my vision of the game, and only want to see it reach its full potential as I see it. I maintain complete creative and development freedom, and Freedom (heh) wouldnt have it any other way! Weve got more updates coming, so stay tuned! Dont forget to join our Discord for sneak peeks and more.

• Updated geographical locations of villages, which slightly changes the sunrise and sunset times depending on the map.
• Fixed: "Children's Tale" can now be won by hiring mercenaries (3-4 rangers should do it)
• Fixed: Village names should now display correctly after loading a save game
• Fixed: Kroburg story no longer forces you to click on responses when there's only one response available (like in the intro)
• Fixed: "Darkest Nights" story should no longer make you go through duplicate dialogs
• Fixed a few minor dialog issues in the "Founding Kroburg" story, and added a filler quest to ensure continuity.
• Fixed ranger logic slightly, improving their chance to find monster lairs

Not everything I'm working on becomes immediately visible in the game. Some things just take a long time to work on. (cough, mercenaries, cough) One thing I've been working on for a while and am somewhat close to figuring out is dynamic paths. The following screenshot does not look spectacular:
...until I tell you that only the main village path near the right edge of the screen was placed by me during the level development. All the paths connecting the houses to each other and to the main path are dynamically calculated and placed when the house is built. They connect to each other, wind around other buildings, arc naturally, clear grass and other vegetation in their way and eventually end at a larger road organically. I still need to test these in larger amounts and make optimizations, figure out edge cases and other stuff, but I've wanted this for a long time, to make the villages look more real. Oh yes, and these roads will also disappear again when the house is demolished or destroyed.

It's been a while, and I'm starting slowly, so here's mostly bugfixes and small things such as balance changes:

• Major rebalance of difficulty levels - easy should be a bit easier now, hard a bit harder and doomed somewhat more hard
• Fixed: Several text errors
• Fixed: Animal pen fences and pathfinding - animals should no longer wander outside of their pens
• Fixed: Mill now correctly in the manual (on the page about fields)
• Fixed: Peasant log wrapping of long lines
• Fixed: Animal pens no longer show collection icons (milk, eggs, meat) when they are destroyed
• Fixed: A small error in victory calculations that also caused the victory sound to be played twice
• Fixed: Idle peasants now heal properly
• For most buildings, you can now click on the status icons (damaged, harvest ready, etc.) to open the context menu
• Updated a number of assets and tools

Attention "testing" users: With this update I'm inverting the branches. "Testing" now becomes "stable" for those who intentionally want to be behind the regular schedule or to go back to if the default branch breaks. The default branch will now always be ahead of the new "stable" branch.

• Updated Unity 3D engine (to 2021.3.16) and many packages and assets
• New decoration object on the winter maps.
• Experimental fix for cows escaping from cow pens. Please have an eye on them and let me know if it works, so I can apply it to the other animal pens as well.

Patching a few important bugs and adding a new level for teaser testing:

• Fixed: Antoburg vegetation should show up properly again
• Fixed: Startup error on Antoburg map for some quality settings
• Fixed: Voices volume control should now work for everyone
• "Betrayl" DLC Story first glance available now (just 5 days)

If you read the forums you know that I've got a broken finger right now and can't type or code well. So this is a small update, but know that I continue working on the game.

• Fixed: Positions of damaged and destroyed icons on the two stone house types
• Fixed: Building Stone Mason quest in Children's Tales now resolves if you built a stone mason before
• Voiceovers now have a slider in options to control their volume
• Updated Unity 3D engine version to 2021.3.15
• More work on the DLC Story "Betrayl" - but not yet ready for release

• New level: Mountain Village sandbox (with Content DLC)
• Fixed: Manor repair quest in "Darkest Nights" should now complete properly.
• Fixed a few minor text bugs in story conversations.
• Fixed some vegetation render issues on Kroburg
• Fixed: No fishery on Swinvale anymore (no river or lake)
• Balance: Slightly reduced milk amount in goat pens (now that cow pens exist)
• Updated Unity 3D engine version to 2021.3.13
• Increased pathfinding accuracy and resolution
• Opening gather dialog now cancels construction
• Added puddles and streams to Mountain Village
• Updated a few level descriptions
• Preparations for two new defensive buildings (guard post and balista)
• Cleaned out a few no longer used assets

• Fixed: Shader/texture issue with some house roofs
• Added more voiceover dialog to Children's Tales (first part now has audio throughout)
• Reduced wander distance on animals, so they don't go out of the pen so often
• Also added fence borders on animal pens, as well to stop animals from wandering outside
• Monsters now spawn a bit later in the night, for better dramatic tension and to give peasants more time to get home
• Minor text updates

• Fixed: Peasants no longer water fields in winter (except for winter crops)
• Fixed: Proper snow on all buildings again on winter maps
• Fixed: Correct animation for collecting eggs
• Improved dialogs a little bit
• Improved water rendering on Antoburg and Neudorf
• Trying out different animal icons (again)
• Removed Halloween decorations

• Fixed: Correct job descriptions for workers building houses
• Fixed: Should no longer consider dead peasants as injured for the in-game hint system
• Fixed: Graveyard should no longer be destroyable, not even by dragon fire
• Added voiceovers to the first few dialogs in "Children's Tales" - please let me know what you think of them so I know if it's worth the effort (and money) to create more for the remaining dialogs.
• Balance: Improved monster attack balance on Calm Village map
• Updated Unity engine to latest LTS version (2021.3.12)
• Improved many texts in the manual
• Idle peasants now get a very small healing bonus
• Reduced size of some icons in the game UI
• Reduced water emitters on Swinvale map

• Fixed: Animals wandering outside their pens (again, hopefully this time it'll stick)
• Fixed: Tracks and fireflies for the new monster
• Fixed: Cabbage correctly grows in winter again
• Fixed: "don't show again" now actually saves and doesn't show again
• Fixed a few small vegetation rendering issues
• Fixed a few minor code issues
• Fixed a couple minor dialog texts
• Fixed: "Children's Tales" now correctly enables the Stone Hut
• Balance: Some balance improvements for the new maps
• Balance: Increased the AoE effect of the burning pile
• New animal pens icons
• Content DLC activated
• Improved the in-game manual a bit

Mark the date and tune in. This Thursday (October 27th), starting around 8 pm GMT, the Content DLC pack will be released and we celebrate the release with a multi-streamer event. Tom, the developer of Black Forest, will be streaming around the release time, tune in on either YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO87uw8EBo4arsOS64iRuVw or Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev There will be a few more streamers as well, I invite them to post their channels and times below. And if you are a streamer, YouTuber or content producer and want to participate, contact me or post below.

• Fixed: Hellhafen intro dialog should no longer trigger when loading a save game
• Fixed a bunch of small text errors
• Fixed (again): Fields no longer complain about not enough water when it's raining (previous fix didn't work)
• Fixed: Peasants now also don't water fields anymore when it's raining
• Fixed: Orcs now attack correctly (they had an identity crisis and thought they're kobolds for peasant log and damage purposes)
• Added: A new monster (only on some maps)
• Added: Village buildings summary panel
• Some small balance changes
• Some small visual fixes

• Fixed: Peasant count on building tasks should now be correct after peasants are removed because of death
• Fixed: Story dialogs should no longer show the first dialog again upon loading a save game
• "Founding Kroburg" story infrastructure quest sub-quests are now more clear
• Improved graphics performance on Kroburg map by eliminating some rendering errors
• Added another quest and dialog to the "Founding Kroburg" story

• Fixed: Tooltips on build buttons
• Added one more new level and story (story not yet playable)

• Fixed: Peasant bar should now display correctly after loading a save game
• Fixed: Peasant list entries correctly sized for dead peasants
• Fixed: Context/Pie menu hints now show up correctly on top
• Fixed: Small bug in rangers init code
• Balance: Reduced the amount of resources required to start repairs
• Improved pathfinding near walls to reduce glitching through by monsters
• Improved framerate and start animation on new "Farmstead" map
• Swinvale map improvements
• Slightly improved the road blocker in "Children's Tales" to make placement of gates easier
• Re-sorted level selection list so people play not just Schramberg :-)
• Added some in-game hints for newer players
• Some minor visual improvements

• Fixed: A few minor dialog issues in Children's Tales
• Fixed: Environment day counter now correct on loading a game (matters for seasons)
• Fixed: Daily market price fluctuations should now calculate correctly
• Fixed: A few shader issues with the vegetation system
• Fixed: Harpies could get stuck sometimes
• Fixed: Outhouse and Manor should now save/load correctly
• Fixed: Harvest indicators no longer show on fields in winter (except winter crops)
• Balance: Considerably reduced the first troll strength in Children's Tales
• Night light on mouse now stays on longer in the morning
• Fields no longer show drought symbols while it's raining
• Expanded the "Darkest Night" story mission
• Updated Unity Engine and several packages and assets
• Improved text sizes on the Quest Log window
• Working on three new map (not yet in this release)

Fixed: Critical save game bug also includes the previous update:

• New decorative building: Outhouse - bring some sanitation to your village
• Fixed: Vegetation System graphics bugs (in Kroburg, Refugee Camp)
• Fixed: Code bug in construction assignment
• Fixed: Path finding around several buildings
• Added a bit more defensive code to prevent exceptions
• Added proper colliders (mostly for goblin projectiles) to all buildings

• New decorative building: Outhouse - bring some sanitation to your village
• Fixed: Vegetation System graphics bugs (in Kroburg, Refugee Camp)
• Fixed: Code bug in construction assignment
• Fixed: Path finding around several buildings
• Added a bit more defensive code to prevent exceptions
• Added proper colliders (mostly for goblin projectiles) to all buildings

• Fixed: Dragon should now correctly give you the achievement
• Fixed: Animal pens now start the game with the correct food settings
• Fixed: "build 3 new houses" quest should now count properly
• Fixed: Settlers in Childrens' Tales should now arrive correctly
• Fixed: Demolish/Repair work spots (again)
• Fixed: Chimney smoke effects should be working again
• Fixed: Building issues on Endraville
• Several dialog text problems fixed
• Improved dialog flow
• Improved some manual texts

• Fixed: Repair and Demolish workspots on many buildings (broke with the last update)
• Fixed: Construction dirt rotation on stone hut
• Fixed: Fishermen animation
• Fixed: number of assigned peasants on buildings now correctly displayed after loading a save game
• Added a few more variety to the Cosmetics DLC pack
• Added support for 1440x900 resolution - please again check your screen resolution setting to make sure it is correct for your screen.

BREAKING CHANGES Note that this update is incompatible with your old save games and will automatically delete them. If you want to complete a game, do so before updating ! Also: Contains new screen resolutions. Check and correct your resolution in the options menu. This big update contains tons of bugfixes as well as gameplay improvements and new features:

• New procedural houses
• New Building: Stone Hut (a smaller stone house)
• Fixed: Buildings no longer continue to be built during the night (something I broke in the last update)
• Fixed: Context/Pie menus should be proper again, with only one demolish action (again something I broke last update)
• Fixed: New monster from last update should now behave as it was intended
• Fixed: Kroburg Story code bugs
• Fixed: A few buildings didn't show up correctly after the last change (e.g. tents). Fixed now.
• Fixed: Construction sounds now turn off properly
• Fixed: Construction tools now disappear when construction is finished on new houses
• Fixed: Lights on hovels should work again
• Fixed: Build bar tooltips should no longer linger around occasionally
• Fixed: Visuals on new houses with corner frames are now correct
• Fixed: Visuals effects on Endraville
• Fixed: Construction sound effects fixed
• Fixed: Repair/demolish work spots
• Fixed: Tents should no longer spawn inside other buildings
• Fixed: Stone house incorrectly linkes as wood house
• A couple of smaller bugfixes in the code
• Balance: Made Ziegwald (doomed) a bit more doomed
• Balance: Made a certain flying creature a lot more deadly (it was way too harmless when it came to killing peasants)
• Balance: Reduced the strength of the first kobold attack in "Children's Tales"
• Added torches to the stone gate
• A bunch of small visual upgrades, new animations, etc.
• Smoothed pathfinding on some monsters
• Considerable behind-the-scenes code updates/refactoring. This might break a few things. I've tested it, but you never know for sure.
• Added support for 1680x1050 resolution
• Improved construction visuals on some buildings (the others will follow soon)
• Reworked a few levels to include new procedural houses (the others will follow soon)
• Tents are now removed from the map when they are vacated
• All levels are updated to new procedural houses
• The remaining buildings also have improved construction visuals now
• Villagers now have tools on some jobs
• New procedural buildings have received a small performance increase (mesh combining, for the nerds) and should now be more performant than the old-style houses were. More performance improvements are planned but I need to solve an issue with the generator first.
• Added tools to repair and demolish tasks
• Slightly more interesting goblin behaviour
• Improved pathfinding for the Hydra

Getting ever closer to being able to release 1.8

• Fixed a number of small code bugs with the new buildings
• Fixed the missing construction dirt issue on huts

This hopefully last RC before the 1.8 release contains a bunch of bug fixes.

This update includes a few but crucial bugfixes. I still have a small number of bugs I know about that I want to fix, please test this version and report any bugs, we are close to the 1.8 release.

• Fixed visuals effects on Endraville
• Construction sound effects fixed
• Repair/demolish work spots probably fixed (trying the fix)

If you are on the "testing" branch, you now get the next build that might become the 1.8 release. Please test it and report any bugs you find.

• Balance: Reduced the strength of the first kobold attack in "Children's Tales"
• All levels are now updated to new procedural houses
• The remaining buildings also have improved construction visuals now
• Villagers now have tools on some jobs
• New procedural buildings have received a small performance increase (mesh combining, for the nerds) and should now be more performant than the old-style houses were. More performance improvements are planned but I need to solve an issue with the generator first.

This update is only for the testing branch:

• BREAKING CHANGE - check and possibly set your screen resolution correct again
• Fixed: A few buildings didn't show up correctly after the last change (e.g. tents). Fixed now.
• Fixed: Construction sounds now turn off properly
• Fixed: Construction tools now disappear when construction is finished on new houses
• Fixed: Lights on hovels should work again
• Fixed: Build bar tooltips should no longer linger around occasionally
• Fixed: Visuals on new houses with corner frames are now correct
• A couple of smaller bugfixes in the code
• Added support for 1680x1050 resolution
• Balance: Made a certain flying creature a lot more deadly (it was way too harmless when it came to killing peasants)
• Improved construction visuals on some buildings (the others will follow soon)
• Reworked a few levels to include new procedural houses (the others will follow soon)
• Tents are now removed from the map when they are vacated

I'm getting ready to move into the 1.8 version, which is a huge update that will bring procedural houses to the game, meaning every hovel, hut and house looks different. To make this possible, I had to rework how houses are constructed, control their appearance and even set the work spots for their construction workers. Note that this is a BREAKING UPDATE - your previous save games will probably not work, and once I'm releasing it properly, it will break/delete your previous save games. Since this has so much potential to break things, I'm releasing it on the testing branch first. If you feel like helping all of us to get this quickly, switch to testing and report any bugs you find so I can fix them.

• BREAKING CHANGES - this update will invalidate your save games
• New Building: Stone Hut (a smaller stone house)
• Fixed: Buildings no longer continue to be built during the night (something I broke in the last update)
• Fixed: Context/Pie menus should be proper again, with only one demolish action (again something I broke last update)
• Fixed: New monster from last update should now behave as it was intended
• Fixed: Kroburg Story code bugs
• Balance: Made Ziegwald (doomed) a bit more doomed
• Added torches to the stone gate
• A bunch of small visual upgrades, new animations, etc.
• Smoothed pathfinding on some monsters
• Considerable behind-the-scenes code updates/refactoring. This might break a few things. I've tested it, but you never know for sure.

• New Level: Ziegwald doomed
• New Monster: Only on the new Ziegwald (doomed) level, not spoiling it here, discover it yourself...
• Fixed: Achievements should work again, I'm fairly confident I found the bug
• Fixed: A number of small text bugs
• Balance: Modified monster spawn times to spread them out more
• Balance: Added a fishery to Ziegwald on easy and normal
• Balance: Slightly reduced the number of monsters in the tutorial story Children's Tales
• Balance: Reduced the chance of injury for repair and demolish tasks
• Completely reworked and improved construction sounds
• Added sound effects to repair and demolish work to most buildings
• Some small visual updates
• Upgrade to latest Unity engine LTS release

• Fixed: Children's Tales, dialog around the hunters plus make sure the market is available
• Fixed: Proper attack calculation for some monsters
• Balance: Slightly increased chance of monsters eating peasants out of damaged houses
• Testing: Achievements were bugged, I'm trying a fix that might or might not work.
• Five new musical tracks for more background music variety

This update completes a list of bugfixes and additions I've been working on. With the new story level and new monster from the previous updates, and the new building and sounds in this one, you get a refreshed game experience. Enjoy your games.

• New building: Cow pen
• Fixed: Ziegwald dialog scaling issue
• Fixed: Farm animals walk animation
• Fixed: Animal sound issues
• Fixed: Cow pen placement issue
• Added some ambient sounds to chicken and goat pens

• Fixed: Kobold shooters should no longer be bugged
• You can now flip the palisade wall the other way around with the R/T (rotate building) keys
• The rotate overlay helper (with the two arrows) now shows the correct keys if you have re-assigned them
• Improved wintery look on Hellhafen
• Improve terrain looks on Kroburg (Microsplat, adds puddles, wetness and snow in winter)
• Improved pathfinding and collision detection around gates
• Some small code optimizations

• Setting change: The game is no longer set in medieval Germany, but in the fantasy world of Dragon Eye. The fantasy elements with monsters and dragons make that more believable, plus it allows me to tie it all in with the greater history and background there.
• New level: Kroburg story mode, long level with not much dialog, for those who want to really play through a village. It starts in late spring and goes into winter.
• New monster: Orcs - see setting change
• Fixed: Music change at day/night - this was in the game from the beginning, and apparently broke somewhere a very long time ago, and I never noticed.
• Fixed: Graveyard should no longer fill up more and more with every save/load
• Changes to the controls should now be saved and loaded correctly

• Fixed: Children's Tales - Troll hunters now actually take their payment
• Fixed: Children's Tales - Troll hunters now actually eliminate the trolls
• Fixed: Children's Tales - Bandits now take correct amount of resources
• Fixed: Rangers should now actually be able to find monster lairs.
• Fixed: The not-yet-written stories 3 and 4 no longer show a "delete save game" button for story 2
• Balance: Damage of some monsters adjusted
• Balance: Damage done by monsters is now reduced after each attack (exhaustion)
• Balance: Children's Tales - Bandits now ask for more food
• Children's Tales - several small improvements to the dialogs
• The 2nd story (Darkest Nights) has been slightly expanded (to day 15).
• Game now slows down to normal speed when the first monster of the night appears, so you don't get these "help, what's attacking me?" moments anymore
• Game no longer slows down to normal at nightfall

Here's a quick screenshot of what I have been working on recently. Procedural generation of houses. Instead of having 3 or so different houses, I will generate them procedurally, which means that no two houses are the same, but the algorithm behind it is a kind of predictable randomness, so when you load a game again, all the houses are the same as they were, and if I during level design put a specific house into the initial village layout (say, with the door a certain direction), then it will be like that in every game. The procedural generation is not just the walls, location of the door and chimney, but also windows and some props outside the house (stack of firewood, a table or bench next to the door, etc.). And it is all rule-based so that it makes sense - such as if the house has a bench, it will be next to the door, not on the other side of it. I also generate the construction tools and work places for the peasants building the house procedurally, so that again these are all different for each house. I've got the basic huts pretty much done, and hovels around 50%. Next up will be the wood and stone houses, but since I've figured most things out by now, these should be much faster. I have also started adapting my various game logics to the new setup. There is a lot that depends on how a house is constructed as a game object, such as the construction animation, the damage effects and lots more. The new houses are also more efficient on game performance, as I don't have to store all versions of a house (ghost, under construction, finished, damaged) but only one set. Speaking of which: One thing I haven't completed yet is the ruined house versions. These will also be procedural, but they are a bit more tricky to figure out. If I can manage it in time, this will be a big update for the one-year anniversary of the game, coming up next month. Yes, it's been one year and look how far we've come. Would you be interested in a comparison? I could make a new branch in Steam with a very old build so those who want can switch to it. Would that be something interesting? Comment below to let me know.

• Fixed: Stone gate collision/pathfinding detection issue
• Updated Unity version
• Tweaked difficulty of tutorial a bit (made it easier)

This update contains a lot of small fixes and updates. Note that the 2nd story is now available, but it is very, very incomplete. It is there purely to get a glimpse and for early feedback.

• Fixed: Should no longer be possible to build walls through forests and outside the village boundaries
• Fixed: A problem that could lead to some players not getting all Steam achievements they deserve
• Fixed: Food gained by slaughtering animals calculated correctly again
• Fixed: Refugees state should now be saved correctly (you can no longer load a save game to get more refugees)
• Fixed: Mercenaries are now saved and loaded in savegames.
• Balance: Slightly fewer monsters in "Children's Tales"
• Balance: Higher Wood and Stone yield in "Children's Tales" - both of these to make it easier to get into the game for new players.
• Balance: Small changes to several quests in "Children's Tales"
• Enabled Rangers as recruitable mercenaries to the tavern
• Steward now gets enabled during the tutorial missions.
• Tavern UI should now update correctly when hiring mercenaries
• Changed the AI pathfinding system, which should eliminate the issue of peasants and some monsters being stuck
• Mercenary prices should now be calculated correctly
• Some icons have been improved
• A couple small fixes all around

The testing branch now has rangers available for hire in the tavern. If you are on the testing branch, please try them out and post some feedback to the forum. If you are not, you can switch to the testing branch in your Steam options for the game. I generally keep testing in line with the normal branch and it is fairly rare for testing to be (more) broken.

Small but important updates, especially for the tutorial.

• Fixed: Hiring troll hunters in Children's Tales now completes correctly at 100 coins (not 200)
• Fixed: Conversation state in story mode should now save properly
• Fixed: Peasant Diary should now scroll properly
• Fixed: Mill quest in Children's Tales should now complete properly
• Small dialog flow improvements

• * Fixed: Building issue in story mode
• * Fixed: Wall place effect now works properly when game is paused
• * Fixed: Demolishing buildings does not count them as "destroyed" for the steward summary anymore

• Fixed: Story mode should work again.
• Gather menu now has its own button next to storage instead of being in the build menu
• Added achievement for winning a game on doomed
• Removed old tutorial
• Changed the way story mode handles difficulty levels - this might break existing savegames, sorry.
• Monster action camera is now an option (default enabled, can be switched off in the options menu)
• Streamlined and improved the "Children's Tales" dialogs a bit.
• Updated Unity Engine version

Something broke in the last update, I'm reverting it so you all can play.

• Gather menu now has its own button next to storage instead of being in the build menu
• Added achievement for winning a game on doomed
• Removed old tutorial
• Changed the way story mode handles difficulty levels - this might break existing savegames, sorry.
• Monster action camera is now an option (default enabled, can be switched off in the options menu)
• Streamlined and improved the "Children's Tales" dialogs a bit.

• Reworked main menu UI to provide a better level selection (was already in testing)
• Save/load for story mode is now enabled, though it might still be buggy (was already in testing)
• Fixed: allowed buildings in story mode should now save/load correctly. (sorry, existing save games aren't fixed)
• Fixed: Lamp post now enabled correctly in story mode even if choose to bypass tutorials

I've uploaded a patch to testing (only, at this time) to enable saving/loading for story mode. This comes with a rework of the main menu level selector. Let me know what you think of the new one.

• Fixed: Well added to the buildings available at start in "Children's Tales"
• Fixed several spelling errors in dialogs
• Fixed: tutorial now doesn't force you to build a 2nd field/pen when you repeat the dialog
• Fixed: - button now active on slowest speed (leads to pause)
• Fixed: "Children's Tales" harvest festival now correctly starts at 200 food, not 250.
• Fixed: "Children's Tales" troll storylines should no longer overlap sometimes
• Fixed: "Children's Tales" quests to build a Tavern, Mill, Market, Stone Mason should now succeed/finish correctly
• Refugees and settlers now have a personal diary entry indicating when exactly they arrived
• The harvest festival in "Children's Tales" now actually uses up some food (50 units)
• Monster info panel now gets out of the way at sunrise
• Balance: Slightly reduced number of troll attacks in "Children's Tales" 2nd part of storyline
• Dialogues now wait for you to click "continue" before they close the window, so you have enough time to read it all.

• Fixed: Bug that prevented the tavern from being built
• Fixed: Manual should now show the correct page on the first try

• Small balance update to "Children's Tales" - additional animal pen at start and troll showing up a bit later.
• Fixed: Building a trapper is now correctly shown in the work summary
• Fixed a few minor code bugs

• The "Children's Tales" Story is finally complete. It still needs polishing and probably some bugfixes, but you can now play it to the end and win!
• Families will now move into better homes if there are vacant ones available (e.g. from hut to wood house)
• Clicking "-" (minus) on the speed selector when you are at the slowest speed now pauses the game
• Improved collision detection for palisade gates to allow for better snapping to existing walls
• Fixed workspot assignment for a couple buildings, so they should now show up properly after loading a save game
• Tents now remember their location when loading/saving a game

• Fixed: Karenfang sandbox now correctly lasts 99 days
• Reduced fog density and glare, this should make things a lot better
• Greatly reduced the volume of construction sounds
• Added construction sounds for fields and lamppost
• Reduced doppler effect distortion for construction sounds
• Improved peasants pathfinding (should lead to less peasants stuck on construction sites)
• A few small UI improvements

• Fixed: One specific hut subtype sometimes wouldn't want to build (stayed red no matter where you placed it)
• Fixed another bug around loading a save game that could, among other things, this could cause monsters to spawn at dawn when loading a game
• Fixed a small bug that caused the tavern UI to not be updated properly the first time it is opened
• Several small UI and text improvements
• A few minor graphics fixes
• Greatly increased mouse zoom speed.
• New Level: Karenfang (Sandbox)

• Fixed several save game bugs. WARNING: This is a breaking change. Your old save games will no longer work.
• Fixed: Destroyed fields no longer show a "ready to harvest" icon sometimes.
• Fixed: Manual should now open to a proper page the first time you use it.
• Fixed: Demolish/Confirm finally works properly.
• Fixed: Market selling amounts correct
• Fixed: Market amounts changed correctly when selling resources
• Fixed: Context pie menu should no longer open right after placing a building
• Improved story and tutorial dialogs
• A few small visual UI updates

• Small archer bugfix
• "Children's Tales" story now correctly shows the village name
• Expanded the "Children's Tales" story to 35 days

• Fixed: Saving and loading should work again. Mea culpa, I broke it and didn't realize I had done so.
• Fixed: Score calculation should be correct again (starting with 0 on day 1).
• Updated Unity version to 2021.3.4f1
• Framerate should now be properly capped
• More backend work on mercenaries and the armoury (not yet available)
• Small bugfix in tavern code

• Fixed: Sometimes, a hovel would always be red. Made it less ashamed of itself.
• Fixed: Maypole in Story now actually does what it's supposed to do (and you can't just demolish it)
• Ziegwald: It should now be easier to find a place on the road where you can build a gate.
• Schramberg: Slight rebalance towards the end
• Quest log and last line of first dialog now remind you that you need 200 food by day 10.
• Removed incomplete voice-over in story mode (it was confusing that there is some and then it just stops)
• Now slightly more polite when talking to the player (capital Y in "you")
• Several small text and dialog fixes
• Added a bit more guidance towards the first quest goal.
• Dialog window now under instead of on top of the game UI
• Fields now have an icon indicating when they are ready to be harvested

• Kromberg (easy) should now properly load again
• Fixed: A bug where the "easy" difficulty level selector sometimes shows an empty list
• Peasant info list scroll handle now correctly sized.

• Fixed: Sometimes, a hovel would always be red. Made it less ashamed of itself.
• Fixed: Maypole in Story now actually does what it's supposed to do (and you can't just demolish it)
• Ziegwald: It should now be easier to find a place on the road where you can build a gate.
• Schramberg: Slight rebalance towards the end
• Quest log and last line of first dialog now remind you that you need 200 food by day 10.
• Removed incomplete voice-over in story mode (it was confusing that there is some and then it just stops)
• Now slightly more polite when talking to the player (capital Y in "you")
• Several small text and dialog fixes
• Added a bit more guidance towards the first quest goal.
• Dialog window now under instead of on top of the game UI
• Fields now have an icon indicating when they are ready to be harvested

• Kromberg (easy) should now properly load again
• Fixed: A bug where the "easy" difficulty level selector sometimes shows an empty list
• Peasant info list scroll handle now correctly sized.

• Fixed: Sometimes, a hovel would always be red. Made it less ashamed of itself.
• Fixed: Maypole in Story now actually does what it's supposed to do (and you can't just demolish it)
• Ziegwald: It should now be easier to find a place on the road where you can build a gate.
• Schramberg: Slight rebalance towards the end
• Quest log and last line of first dialog now remind you that you need 200 food by day 10.
• Removed incomplete voice-over in story mode (it was confusing that there is some and then it just stops)
• Now slightly more polite when talking to the player (capital Y in "you")
• Several small text and dialog fixes
• Added a bit more guidance towards the first quest goal.
• Dialog window now under instead of on top of the game UI
• Fields now have an icon indicating when they are ready to be harvested

• Fixed: Puddles were wrong on some maps
• Fixed: End of game now shows correct number of days

• Fixed: Should now be able to actually place the tavern
• Fixed: Saving/loading should now be much improved, with a lot of issues fixed (early morning monster attacks, visual errors, holes in walls and fences, etc)

• Fixed: Peasants no longer use up food right at game start
• Fixed: Market now has proper ruined state
• New level: Kroburg doomed difficulty

• Improved "Children's Tales" story and integration into game events.
• Several story mode bugfixes
• Expanded "Children's Tales" story by three more quests, story now goes up to day 20
• improved textures for carrots and cabbage

• Fixed: Some houses would always be red, especially in the tutorial, should be fixed now
• Added log entry when building construction finishes.
• improved building sounds for walls
• small balance changes to doomed difficulty Endraville
• several small text bugs fixes
• increased mouse zoom speed
• Schramberg fields start watered (after all, it's raining)
• the Steward is now available for testing
• burning piles fire animation now independent of game speed (looks better this way)

This update brings the main branch up with the testing branch since everything seems stable.

• Fixed: Some houses would always be red, especially in the tutorial, should be fixed now
• Added log entry when building construction finishes.
• improved building sounds for walls
• small balance changes to doomed difficulty Endraville
• a number of small text bug fixes
• increased mouse zoom speed
• Schramberg fields start watered (after all, it's raining)
• the Steward is now available for testing

It's been a long time, but finally, it is on its way. Right now, only the testing branch has only a short chapter (a few days of gameplay). This is for testing, so please, please post feedback. This testing case should contain a good portion of the tutorial, but in a different format, as well as a few quests and dialogs to guide you. Story mode is a different gameplay experience. It is much more guided, and at least in this first story that serves as tutorial quite restrictive in what you can do (more options open up as the story progresses). The most important thing for me now is feedback. Do you like it? Is it too much or too little dialog? Do you like the choices you are given or would you like something else? What is missing, what is too much? Known limitations:

• only the first few lines of the story have voice over so far
• only one story and it is only a few days long
• saving and loading in story mode does not yet work
• things may not work, break, misfire, scare your cat or upset the neighbours. Honestly, I haven't yet done much playtesting and it might break in interesting ways.

• fixed: ghost and entrance location on one hut variant
• added a second hovel variant
• added link to the Black Forest Instagram page to main menu

• fixed: difficulty selector from doomed to hard now works properly
• fixed: several issues around the market place
• fixed: dialog UI on Ziegwald (when the refugees arrive) now properly sized
• added puddles to Friedmarkt, Hellhafen and Refugee Camp (for visual effect when it rains)
• (testing branch only) - enabled the tavern and archer - this is for testing purposes, please post feedback!

• Updated Unity version
• Updated several in-game assets and packages
• several small bugfixes

• added night summary panel
• morning transition should be better now (less sudden darkness)
• updated Unity engine
• added camera shake to indicate damage by monsters
• several minor bugfixes and UI updates
• lunchtime limit raised - peasants now eat lunch only when they have food for 3+ days stored (not 2+ as before)
• balance: added 1 more field to Schramberg on easy

• Improvements to UI
• More clarification what sandbox mode does
• Added social media links to main menu

• You should now be able to close single-segment hole in walls, instead of having to demolish a neighbouring segment
• Fixed: Wallbuilder location indicator is back (it wasn't away, only sleeping - setting building speed to auto-pause disabled it, doh)
• Added an option to invert the zoom direction

• Fixed: Peasant name tags no longer linger around
• Fixed: Friedmarkt description.
• Reduced volume of the church bell (Karenfang map)
• Quality setting now defaults to highest quality - I've seen too many streams where people apparently don't even realize they can change it and leave it on "minimal" for the whole stream.
• Added a few more bits to the tutorial texts (but didn't re-record the voiceovers)
• Pressing the ESC (cancel action) key now closes the gather menu
• Increased the scroll speed of scroll views such as the peasant info or log
• Game no longer opens the context menu of a building the moment you construct it

• Updated the Unity Engine and several packages
• Improved visual fidelity
• Postprocessing now raises exposure and lowers contrast and saturation at night, for more visibility and a cool night-time effect.
• Building and pause should now finally interact properly (i.e. stay paused. Yes, that sounds so simple, but actually wasn't)
• Assign and demolish buttons should now show availability properly
• Some small bugfixes

• Updated the Unity Engine and several packages
• Improved visual fidelity
• Postprocessing now raises exposure and lowers contrast and saturation at night, for more visibility and a cool night-time effect.
• Some small bugfixes

• New Level: Refugee Camp in Sandbox mode
• Fixed: Sandbox levels can be started again
• Fixed: Friedmarkt (normal) no longer claims it needs a DLC pack
• Fixed a few text errors
• Balance: Made hunger slightly more unhealthy
• Peasants no longer prevent you from building something just because they're walking through the area

• Fixed: Tutorial should work again
• Fixed: End-of-game statistics should now be correct when you are defeated
• Fixed several small UI issues
• Peasant death markers (skulls) now correctly appear at home at night
• Three new background songs for more variety

• I heard some of you find the game too easy. Welcome to DOOMED difficulty. Try your luck. But please don't cry...
• Balance: Increased the points for buildings
• Balance: Improved some monster waves
• Balance: Bear damage reduced (it no longer breaks through palisade walls)
• Market prices set correctly for all maps
• Several small UI improvements
• Environmental sound effects should now respect your sound volume settings
• Night camera light now comes on/off with a nice fade instead of "boom, here I am, what's up?"
• Increased the visibility of monsters at night
• Fishing peasants now have a fishing rod

• New Level: Friedmarkt (normal difficulty)
• New map selection screen giving more details about the map before you load it.
• Monsters no longer attack and damage graveyards
• Fixed another action cam bug
• Fixed a small bug related to heating
• Wall builder handles collisions a bit more gracious now, which should make it easier to build sharper corners and close holes (it's still not perfect, but should be better).

• New Building: The market is now available for construction on all maps
• Fixed a number of typos and small UI issues
• Fixed the "close action cam" panel (again)
• Renamed "healing" to "injured" on the after-game stats breakdown to clearly differentiate it from the herbalist activity
• changed the zoom speed slider range (again)
• Lamp posts can now be placed on and near roads
• Gates now indicate which direction they open (i.e. what is "outside")
• Workers assigned to the well now don't stop working when all fields are watered, but stay assigned and keep checking.
• You can now toggle the bottom-of-the-screen peasants bar between showing how many peasants are assigned to tasks or how many are available for tasks, depending on which way around you prefer the math

• Hotfix for tents and the Refugee Camp map
• New Building: Herbalist (speeds up healing)
• Fixed: Destroyed fields no longer show a drought icon
• Improved location and visuals of building status icons
• The peasant list now shows with ice-blue color if someone is sleeping in a tent (cold)
• Vacant houses no longer turn on their lights

Here's a quick hotfix for a small main menu issue and to re-balance the (now a bit too powerful) large monsters. It also includes the previous largerpatch:

• Fixed: Animations for peasants assigned to depot, lumberjack and trapper
• Fixed: The story (dialog event about refugees) meant for Kroburg will no longer show up (with no effect) on the Refugee Camp map
• Fixed: Sound distortion on construction of walls
• Fixed: Destroyed buildings should no longer show the hand icon
• Fixed: Tent no longer shows an ugly red bubble when damaged or destroyed
• Fixed: Peasants bar now updated correctly upon peasant deaths
• Updated peasant bar visuals
• Reworked the way monsters interact with walls and buildings, which changes the dynamics of especially low-tier walls (high-end monsters will break through them more easily, but lose some energy doing so).
• Added fishing spots and fishing animation for the fishery.
• Improved the "close action cam" panel (delayed show and closing on daytime)
• Increased the range of the zoom speed slider, so you can set it to higher values (i.e. faster zoom)
• Changed the "drought" icon for fields, hope the new one is more clear
• Improved building bar tooltips
• Some more smaller UI improvements
• Upgraded Unity Engine version

Streaming Black Forest one hour from now (15:00 GMT/UTC) on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv--8Vtj1LLpJ9yXdwGE9u1hUU8QIc6oC

• Fixed: Animations for peasants assigned to depot, lumberjack and trapper
• Fixed: The story (dialog event about refugees) meant for Kroburg will no longer show up (with no effect) on the Refugee Camp map
• Fixed: Sound distortion on construction of walls
• Fixed: Destroyed buildings should no longer show the hand icon
• Fixed: Tent no longer shows an ugly red bubble when damaged or destroyed
• Fixed: Peasants bar now updated correctly upon peasant deaths
• Updated peasant bar visuals
• Reworked the way monsters interact with walls and buildings, which changes the dynamics of especially low-tier walls (high-end monsters will break through them more easily, but lose some energy doing so).
• Added fishing spots and fishing animation for the fishery.
• Improved the "close action cam" panel (delayed show and closing on daytime)
• Increased the range of the zoom speed slider, so you can set it to higher values (i.e. faster zoom)
• Changed the "drought" icon for fields, hope the new one is more clear
• Improved building bar tooltips
• Some more smaller UI improvements
• Upgraded Unity Engine version

One of the most common requests is the ability to fight the monsters. So I've used my break to start working on that, and I'm here to announce that it will come to the game soon. I have the first version working and here's an exclusive teaser screenshot:
Yes ! - as you can see, I have decided that instead of giving you NPC warriors, I am adding an FPS mode. At night, you yourself don your armour, take out your sword (or other weapon, depending on your smithy level, more on that later) and go defend the village ! Excitment, action, more defense - but also a right of injury and death which (on normal or hard) will end the game in defeat (if you are injured, the next day your camera view will be a bit blurry). Let me know how excited you are about this in the comments below!

A number of important quick fixes I just uploaded:

• Fixed: Save game bug that prevented fortified walls and stone gates from being saved and loaded
• Fixed: Griffins no longer suffer from identity crisis thinking they are harpies when they eat people (leading to a wrong death cause in the log)
• Fixed: Text on monster flags (when mouse hovering over them) now correctly scaled
• Fixed: Close button on peasant log is no longer partially hidden by scroll bar
• Fixed: Peasants can now get correctly wounded during monster attacks, not just eaten
• Balance: Yield of cabbage fields reduced
• Balance: Watchtowers now have reduced spotting distances on higher difficulty settings. In other words: You can't just plop down one watchtower in the center of the map and it'll detect monsters all around, you have to put several watchtowers somewhat close to the forest edges.
• Tents are now removed from the map when destroyed or vacant

• Fixed: Scrollviews (log and peasant list) should now scroll properly till the end
• Houses now have an arrow indicating the entrance in ghost mode, so you can place them correctly

Welcome our first level with castle-like defenses. And a unique challenge - keep the fragile market place working.

• New Level: Kroborg - hard difficulty
• Fixed: Confused Smelter thought it's a smithy, poor thing.
• Fixed: Stone gate now opens the right direction
• Fixed: Jerky dragon movement
• Small UI improvements
• Performance improvements that should help the frame rate at night a bit.
• Trying to fix an elusive bug in the heating-homes-at-night code
• Updated Unity engine, might solve some graphics bugs

• New Map: Refugee Camp - this is a unique challenge map, and another test of the new vegetation system
• Fixed: The smithy should now correctly produce tools
• Fixed: Action Cam close button should now actually work
• Fixed some smaller error on the monster flags of a few maps
• Fixed a bug where peasants would randomly pop to their working place on nightfall only to run home again, even though they were already home. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're right, it doesn't. So I fixed it.
• Fixed: Monsters should no longer attack their own flag
• Balance: Raised the threat level on Kroburg a bit
• Set quality defaults back to high
• Some performance optimizations to improve the FPS at night

• Fixed a critical save game bug that led to all kinds of strange issues
• Fixed: another save/load bug that sometimes loaded into false night (i.e. you couldn't play for the first day after loading) or triggered monsters in the morning after loading
• Fixed: all scroll bars now work in the same direction
• Sandbox game duration reduced to 99 days - I think that's long enough, and going above that could lead to all kinds of problems (in statistics and in-game value storage such as the gamelog - it's not a hard limit, 80 or 120 days would be fine as well, but 99 is a nice number)
• Fixed several bugs in how prices on the market are calculated (they won't change so quickly now, and will never go to zero)
• Fixed several small display and visual bugs

• New Building: Fortified Walls, the ultimate defense option (mighty expensive, too)
• Fixed: Unmanned status display (again, this time properly fixed. I hope)
• Fixed: Drought display on fields should now be better
• Fixed: Watchtowers could report more forest activity than there actually is
• Improved camera on Kroburg map
• Several small visual improvements
• Monster flags now have a mouse-over text telling you what kind of monster (if identified), just in case you can't spot the icon on the flag yourself

After testing it on beta and not seing any major issues, here's the large update for the default branch. Reminder of changes:

• New EXPERIMENTAL level: Kroburg (easy)
• New Building: Stone Gate - fit for a city or a castle
• New Building: Fishery
• Fixed: Damage indicators should now show up more reliably
• Fixed: Game no longer complains about unheated homes when an entire family is vanquished (technically, a grave isn't heated, but we don't want to be pedantic)
• Balance: Stone buildings made slightly less invulnerable
• Balance: Undead move a bit faster
• Balance: Kobold ranged attacks made slightly more damaging
• Visuals: Changed how the UI scales by screen size, which should solve the issue of some players with widescreen displays
• Visuals: vsync is now on, so the game doesn't run at 200 FPS on some systems
• Fields now have a status indicator to show drought (i.e. they need water, urgently)
• Reworked the manual visuals and added location-specific information and history
• Fixed a few small text bugs
• Options again exposes sliders for mouse speeds, plus the default zoom speed value raised because many people noted it's too low (and never noticed that you can also zoom in with PageUp and PageDown)
• Added an on-screen button to cancel the monster cam view (you could already do that by hitting the ESCape button, but some people didn't realize that)
• Repair action now shows if it can't be done due to lack of resources
• The in-game key config menu was wrong, put the right one

This is a big one, which is why I'm pushing it out to testing first. The main thing is that you can have a first glance at the completely new vegetation system in the new level Kroburg. Which is also a new level in many regards - the longest yet with 40 days, and much more focussed, with a different take and a fully fortified settlement. You can also find two new buildings in this build: The fishery (only available on levels with water) and the Stone Gate to complement the stone walls. Full list of changes:

• New EXPERIMENTAL level: Kroburg (easy)
• New Building: Stone Gate - fit for a city or a castle
• New Building: Fishery
• Fixed: Damage indicators should now show up more reliably
• Fixed: Game no longer complains about unheated homes when an entire family is vanquished (technically, a grave isn't heated, but we don't want to be pedantic)
• Balance: Stone buildings made slightly less invulnerable
• Balance: Undead move a bit faster
• Balance: Kobold ranged attacks made slightly more damaging
• Visuals: Changed how the UI scales by screen size, which should solve the issue of some players with widescreen displays
• Visuals: vsync is now on, so the game doesn't run at 200 FPS on some systems
• Fields now have a status indicator to show drought (i.e. they need water, urgently)
• Reworked the manual visuals and added location-specific information and history
• Fixed a few small text bugs
• Options again exposes sliders for mouse speeds, plus the default zoom speed value raised because many people noted it's too low (and never noticed that you can also zoom in with PageUp and PageDown)
• Added an on-screen button to cancel the monster cam view (you could already do that by hitting the ESCape button, but some people didn't realize that)
• Repair action now shows if it can't be done due to lack of resources
• The in-game key config menu was wrong, put the right one

• Fixed: Peasants assigned to the smelter, smithy and mill now can actually find a work spot there and won't hang around in some random spot in the village anymore
• Fixed: Stone wall construction now labelled correctly on peasant list
• Fixed: No more ugly sound distortion from the church noon bell sound
• Fixed: Peasants no longer walk straight through the church on Karenfang
• Fixed: Destroyed buildings should no longer cry that they haven't any workers assigned to them (serves you right, letting yourself get destroyed and all!)
• Fixed: Camera can now reach the east and west edges of the map in Karenfang
• Balance: Our griffins are all grown up now - and a bit stronger than before
• Balance: Stone walls now take slightly longer to build (16 instead of 15 hours)
• Balance: Tuned difficulty on Karenfang a bit
• Visuals: Increased light range of lamp posts by 20%, but only if they are undamaged
• Visuals: Raised shadow distance on lower quality settings
• Death is now more visual, so you can see more clearly if and where a peasant died

• Fixed: Wallbuilder could place walls into the air on maps with height differences
• Fixed: Death count at game end should be correct again (silly game was counting only the last day deaths, such an optimistic thing...)
• Fixed: Had a talk with the Input Config window in the main menu. It promised to be less shy and not hide behind other windows anymore
• Updated Unity game engine (might take care of the very rare crash bugs I see)
• Remove a few high scores from the leaderboard that were clearly caused by glitches and are impossible to achieve through regular gameplay

• Fixed: Walls and some other buildings not being built in sandbox mode
• Fixed: 5th peasant can now find a construction spot when building a mill

I've uploaded a small update that fixes a DLC buildings issue and some smaller bugs. If you are on the beta branch, please test it and post below if everything works for you.

• Improved shaders for carrot and onion fields
• various small bugfixes, including one for a day-not-beginning and one for a wallbuilder-not-working bug

This update includes a few behind-the-scenes changes that you won't notice, and a potential bugfix for a problem where loading a save game wouldn't start the day correctly sometimes.

• Fixed: UI should behave properly again when game is paused
• Fixed: Fields now stop growing in winter in sandbox mode (except cabbage, which grows at half speed)
• Changed one wheat field on Endraville to cabbage, which is a winter crop now
• Allowed construction of cabbage fields on Endraville
• Balance: Peasants now eat and heat in random order, so that it isn't always the same ones starving or freezing on shortages
• Balance: Homeless families now look for homes in random order, again to give those already dying a better chance of survival
• Small improvement to peasant pathfinding
• Updated tutorial with respect to wall building

bringing the main branch in line with the testing branch:

• improved visuals for building damage - instead of switching to a damaged version, the spots and darkening now happens dynamically, depending on the amount of damage (i.e. you can see how damaged a building is).
• improved wall builder
• enabled palisade and stone walls for the wall builder
• removed old wall pieces
• added a small indicator for the wallbuilder to show the snapping on starting points

bringing the main branch in line with the testing branch:

• improved visuals for building damage - instead of switching to a damaged version, the spots and darkening now happens dynamically, depending on the amount of damage (i.e. you can see how damaged a building is).
• improved wall builder
• enabled palisade and stone walls for the wall builder
• removed old wall pieces
• added a small indicator for the wallbuilder to show the snapping on starting points

• fixed several save game issues
• fixed the games' emo issue of claiming nobody survived no matter what the game's result actually was
• fixed the games' multiple personality issue of using plural for single peasants gathering ("a peasant have been sent... nono... HAS been sent!")
• fixed several more minor text bugs
• fixed the Griffin's mother issues (it thought it's a harpy, leading to wrong AI behaviour and animations)
• Balance: More starting resources on Endraville

This is an urgent bugfix update, tackling three serious issues related to starting a new game and to loading save games. Please apply this update immediately.

This update contains a couple of bugfixes, including one nasty bug that caused night to not end sometimes. There is also an experimental version of the new wall-building system included for you to test.

This build contains the first iteration of the new wall builder - build walls by dragging instead of by pieces. This is a test. It contains only the plank wall (to the very right of the defenses menu). Please test it, please break it, please tell me any bugs or problems.

This quick update contains only a number of small bugfixes. Recommended to apply it immediately, at least one fixes a game-breaking bug.

• fixed field and water calculations
• caught an escaped Griffin on the Endraville map
• fixed a number of save/load bugs

This update includes all of the beta updates of the past days, and a few more updates:

• New Monster: Griffin (only on some maps)
• New Building: Depot (food gathering)
• Fixed a bug that might cause text to disappear for some players
• Updated loading screen "did you know?" messages
• disabled most refugees in sandbox mode
• fixed several bugs in the slaughter animals game mechanic
• fixed a number of bugs around worker assignment, especially at the well
• fixed lumberjack wood production (I forgot to raise it when I raised other gather values)
• lots of small bugfixes
• Added voice-overs for tutorials 3 and 4
• Small text updates in the tutorials
• Fixed some Griffin animations
• Fixed Camera/Ground interaction on Ziegwald map
• Fixed refugees appearing multiple times when saving/loading on Ziegwald

Here is a couple of updates. I plan to move this build to the main/stable branch as soon as there's been a bit of testing and no major bugs:

• New Building: Depot (food gathering)
• disabled most refugees in sandbox mode
• fixed several bugs in the slaughter animals game mechanic
• fixed a number of bugs around worker assignment, especially at the well
• fixed lumberjack wood production (I forgot to raise it when I raised other gather values)

This update brings the default (main/stable) branch in line with the beta/testing branch, bringing you all these goodies that the beta users have tested for you:

• Change: Well and watchtower now also use the "assign/remove" game mechanics, instead of the man-for-one-day mechanic
• Fixed: Monsters spawning on top of each other bug
• Fixed: A bug that caused peasants to abandon tasks seemingly at random
• Fixed: Visual bug of insane speed of the active button indicators in the context menu
• Balance: Workshops (carpenter, mason) now add much more to gathering (+20% per worker plus a flat 10%)
• Balance: Villagers will occasionally return with twice the usual amount from the forest (lucky find)
• Balance: Damage caused by freezing now depends on the actual temperature
• force-despawning monsters on daybreak
• fixed several exceptions and small bugs
• preparing sandbox and doomed mode
• reworked cabbage field for more realistic harvest and damage displays
• Fixed: Monster flags should be colourful again now
• moving the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen now moves the camera view
• (beta) watchtowers and wells should be working again
• improved monster tracks on terrain
• New Level: Endraville (sandbox)
• Removed user issue reporting feature, because it was causing memory leaks
• Fixed: Market UI should be normal-sized again
• Fixed: Fields gain calculation bug that led to extremely low (and sometimes even negative) yield

• improved monster tracks on terrain
• New Level: Endraville (sandbox)
• Removed user issue reporting feature, because it was causing memory leaks
• Fixed: Market UI should be normal-sized again
• Fixed: Fields gain calculation bug that led to extremely low (and sometimes even negative) yield

• Fixed: Monster flags should be colourful again now
• moving the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen now moves the camera view
• (beta) watchtowers and wells should be working again

Here are some statistics from the analytics backend. If you haven't checked the privacy page: The game does collect a few analytics data, such as which buildings you construct, which levels you play, etc. - this is necessary for some of the achievements, and it also helps me to understand how the game is played. The data collected not for achievements is anonymous, so all I get is numbers. Here are some of these numbers:
Here are the levels played during the past few days. Clearly, Schramberg ist the favorite level to play, and in general easy levels are more popular than normal or hard. The large number of Tutorials being played (this number is large because they are 4 short levels and add up here) shows that a large number of new people are trying the game, which is probably why easy levels (where most people start a new game) are so popular. Here are the most popular buildings:
I expected palisades to dominate, from the videos I've been watching. For some reason, plank walls are not as popular. I blame this in part on the bad icon I'm using, but I simply don't have a better one. I'm surprised that lamp posts are so popular. Apparently some people like to light up their village. Nice. :-) What surprised me was that not one of the support buildings (workshops, etc.) even made it on the list. They are somewhere in "others", I'm sure, which all together is still a seizable number. Sadly, the backend doesn't give me a breakdown of that. I'd much like to see that. I'm also surprised that rabbits are the most popular animal pens. My money would have been on chickens. All in all, I find these things interesting. Anything that lets me understand a bit how you all are playing the game helps me to make it better. The very best feedback are gameplay videos. I make a point of watching each and every one that I can find. If you want to make sure I find it, post it on YouTube or Twitch and make sure to put "Black Forest" into the title, maybe also "Steam" or "Indie Game" or something.

• Change: Well and watchtower now also use the "assign/remove" game mechanics, instead of the man-for-one-day mechanic
• Fixed: Monsters spawning on top of each other bug
• Fixed: A bug that caused peasants to abandon tasks seemingly at random
• Fixed: Visual bug of insane speed of the active button indicators in the context menu
• Balance: Workshops (carpenter, mason) now add much more to gathering (+20% per worker plus a flat 10%)
• Balance: Villagers will occasionally return with twice the usual amount from the forest (lucky find)
• Balance: Damage caused by freezing now depends on the actual temperature
• force-despawning monsters on daybreak
• fixed several exceptions and small bugs
• preparing sandbox and doomed mode
• reworked cabbage field for more realistic harvest and damage displays

The latest update on the beta/testing branch includes an experimental sandbox mode, which has been requested many times. Features:

• no monster attacks at night
• can play an entire year (365 days) - visual season changes may or may not work
• achievements, stats and leaderboards are disabled
• new peasants will settle in empty houses (though it may take a few days - basically, 50% chance per empty home every morning that a new family settles in)

• loading a sandbox map is broken (no buildings are loaded)

After lots of bugfixing and testing, here is the 2nd attempt to bring this huge update to everyone. This update was tested on the beta branch, though as always some bugs may have slipped through. Please do report any issues you find.

Most Important Changes

• New building: Smelter - a cheaper alternative to the smithy to get metal (but produces no tools and is more dangerous to operate)
• New monster: Hydra - a terrifying late-game enemy that can tear right through a village if not stopped by massive defenses
• Added monster flags to the maps that were still missing them
• Watchtowers and well now have "unmanned" icons
• Threat level and reachable scores increased on all maps
• Balance: The well does not require metal anymore to be built
• added a small compass (optional, default disabled, enabled it in the options menu)
• Smithy now also grants a small bonus to metal gathering, depending on the number of smiths assigned
• Added a "task is active" indicator to the context menu
• Hide UI function added so you can take more beautiful screenshots
• Houses are now vacated if all family members die

Other Changes

• Fixed: Lunchtime was more of a full-out harvest festival using 5x the food it should. That's back to normal now.
• Balance: Slightly increased the range at which fire spooks monsters
• Refactoring the internal event system code to bring more stability (i.e. unrelated things shouldn't fail if something somewhere fails)
• Refactored monster spawning elements, for more stability and fewer bugs
• Refactored monster info display and monster controls, again for easier bugfixing and fewer bugs
• Refactored internal handling of various small components (status icons status, etc.)
• Fixed lights on a couple of the houses that didn't work properly
• Fixed Burning Pile and construction interplay in the rare case that construction isn't finished at nightfall
• Fixed a few peasant log entry texts
• Fixed another save/load game issue that caused the village population to double
• Added a few visual effects (construction of walls, etc.)
• Spiced up the main menu UI
• Spiced up the level start
• Peasants now reset at midnight, just in case (hanging issues, etc.)
• Wetness of fields is now properly averaged over the past 24 hours instead of my previous more naive calculation. The new one is also smarter and faster.
• Reworked the way different types of fields react to wetness
• Reworked wood use for heating in cold weather and properly calculate the temperature dependency of that
• Fixed manual link for animal pens
• Fixed unmanned display icon for market
• Lots of small visual improvements
• Fixed the construction sounds on various buildings
• Improved notifications for gather (and other) tasks
• You can now much more easily assign all (maximum) workers to a task
• Repair work now correctly updates the storage display
• Scroll view on game log finally fixed
• Slightly improved texts for log and notifications
• Big improvement to the night and dawn/dusk issue - should be a lot better now
• Fixed: Prices on the market should no longer go into negative values.
• Fixed peasant info display for dead peasants (not that they care anymore...)
• A lot of beautification was also added, and streamlining of gameplay.
• Fixed: Werewolves should no longer glitch through walls when attacking
• Balance: Food production of cabbage fields slightly reduced
• Fixed: No longer possible to assign more than the maximum number of workers to certain workshop buildings
• Some more code cleanup work
• Fixed: Gamelog was broken on some maps, should be fixed now
• Well now notifies explicitly if all fields are watered
• Tooltips added to options buttons
• score display on saved games is now correct again
• Fixed a crashbug related to pausing
• Fixed several save/load issues - ATTENTION, this will break your previous savegames and silently delete the incompatible ones
• Made keyboard shortcuts and controls configurable
• Changed the "ghost" (building placement) shaders to avoid issues with them going black sometimes (the new shader is also more performant, but performance isn't an issue here)
• Increased range of lamps
• Changed the way the camera works to rotate-in-place instead of rotate-around. This should make the camera work much better, especially around the map edges
• Made mouse zoom, move and rotate speeds independently configurable
• Cleaning out a number of unused assets
• Buildings no longer open the context menu as soon as you start constructing them
• Fixed an exception in the tutorial
• Fixed a possible issue with the main menu
• Should no longer build a building when you're actually trying to click on the X to exit build mode (or any other UI element)
• Replaced the level loading system, uncluttering the level and object hierarchy, which might also resolve some input bugs.
• Fixed a small typo in well construction
• added visible version display to main menu
• fixed an error in setting the camera speeds
• added code to reset camera speeds to default values if they are out of bounds (e.g. due to old settings which were on a different scale)
• fixed a small bug in the tutorial
• fixed a few small text and code bugs of minor consequence
• small improvement/fixes to saving and loading
• several small code fixes
• added user reporting feature
• fixed starting camera location on several maps
• cleaned up some terrain textures
• continue clean-up of terrain textures
• improved carrot and cabbage shader
• improved fields ground shafer
• fixed a small startup bug
• fixed a small layout bug
• some UI performance improvements
• moving over to Rewired to handle input, dropping Unity's "new input system" trainwreck
• added key controls to rotate/move the view with the mouse (left ctrl and left alt respectively)
• you can now hover over peasants to see their name, and click on them to get their personal diary
• several small bugfixes
• monsters now leave more tracks on more maps
• fixed a few animation and texture problems

With the latest updated I've uploaded to the testing/beta branch, I believe we are close to having a working game again. Remapping of keys is still incomplete, but aside from that everything should be working again. Please test and report so that I can bring it to the default branch.

This is the first update with the new Rewired input system and a bunch of things I improved on the way. Input remapping is still incomplete in many ways. The whole build is for testing purposes. Please let me know if it works or doesn't (both is valuable information for me).

• continue clean-up of terrain textures
• improved carrot and cabbage shader
• improved fields ground shafer
• fixed a small startup bug
• fixed a small layout bug
• changed scale of speed sliders a bit
• made the testing build a development build so I get better bug reports
• some UI performance improvements
• moving over to Rewired to handle input, dropping Unity's "new input system" trainwreck
• added key controls to rotate/move the view with the mouse (left ctrl and left alt respectively)

• continue clean-up of terrain textures
• improved carrot and cabbage shader
• improved fields ground shafer
• fixed a small startup bug
• fixed a small layout bug
• changed scale of speed sliders a bit
• made the testing build a development build so I get better bug reports
• fucking around with the input system once more...

I've opened a testing branch that will get future updates first. If you want to always have the latest update, and don't mind if there's a few bugs or it breaks a bit, then right click on "Black Forest" in your Steam library list, go to "Options" and "Betas" and switch to the "testing" branch. I will post new features and bigger updates there first, hoping that any issues that slipped through my testing will be caught by you, while the default/stable branch stays a bit behind but won't break. As a small goodie, the version uploaded there now is the latest version with all the recent updates and a new one, an in-game compass (off by default, switch it on in the options menu). I have applied the last input issue fixes to this, hoping that this eliminates the input issues. So if you were having problems with that (main menu not working, etc.) please go and try out testing. Thank you all for your support and kind words. It's been a rough two weeks with these game-breaking updates and bugs. I hope it'll be more smooth from here on, because I still have a lot of plans...

Due to all the issues the game currently has, I have reverted everything back to the December 18 build. That was the last build before the large code refactoring I added. Yes, old bugs are back. Yes, new features are gone. But so should the recent large input issues that prevent some from playing at all. Please bear with me. Come to the forum to find out how you can help, ESPECIALLY if you experienced game breaking bugs.

• fixed a small bug in the tutorial
• fixed a few small text and code bugs of minor consequence
• another attempt to solve the main menu input issue - now enabling TWO input modules, maybe one of them will work. :-(

• resetting the input configuration to possibly clean out more issues that people might be having
• fixed loading/setting of zoom/move/rotate speed
• added visible version display to main menu
• moved camera speed settings to the input configuration options
• fixed an error in setting the camera speeds
• added code to reset camera speeds to default values if they are out of bounds (e.g. due to old settings which were on a different scale)

My next attempt to fix the input issue that some of you are facing. My apologies for so many updates and tries, but as I posted on the forum: I tried many times to reproduce this bug and can't. Everything works for me. That makes it really tricky to figure out what's going wrong. If you still experience issues with input (nothing works, main menu not working, in-game something not working) please include your operating system (windows, mac, linux) in the bug report.

Another attempt to fixing the input problem. Please post to the forum if this makes the main menu (and other parts of the game) work again or not.

My apologies, but because I can't reproduce the problems some of you are reporting, it's a bit trial & error to fix them.

This update fixes lots of bugs that made it into the recent large update. There are likely to be a few left, please report them on the forum. Also, you can now configure your hotkeys and change your mouse move/rotate/zoom speeds (instead of just zoom).

• Fixed several save/load issues - ATTENTION, this will break your previous savegames and silently delete the incompatible ones
• Reworked the input handling, so it can be configurable
• Made keyboard shortcuts and controls configurable
• Changed the "ghost" (building placement) shaders to avoid issues with them going black sometimes (the new shader is also more performant, but performance isn't an issue here)
• Houses are now vacated if all family members die
• Increased range of lamps
• Changed the way the camera works to rotate-in-place instead of rotate-around. This should make the camera work much better, especially around the map edges
• Made mouse zoom, move and rotate speeds independently configurable
• Cleaning out a number of unused assets
• Fixed a lot of problems with monster spawns that had crept into the last update

Due to the vast number of changes in the major update, I half expected to introduce new bugs. But there's also new content here:

• New building: Smelter - a cheaper alternative to the smithy to get metal (but produces no tools and is more dangerous to operate)
• New monster: Hydra - a terrifying late-game enemy that can tear right through a village if not stopped by massive defenses
• Smithy now also grants a small bonus to metal gathering, depending on the number of smiths assigned
• Fixed: Werewolves should no longer glitch through walls when attacking
• Balance: Food production of cabbage fields slightly reduced
• Added a "task is active" indicator to the context menu
• Fixed: No longer possible to assign more than the maximum number of workers to certain workshop buildings
• Some more code cleanup work
• Fixed: Gamelog was broken on some maps, should be fixed now
• Well now notifies explicitly if all fields are watered
• Tooltips added to options buttons
• Hide UI function added so you can take more beautiful screenshots
• score display on saved games is now correct again
• Fixed a crashbug related to pausing

Happy New Year everyone ! This is a huge update, though most of the changes are behind-the-scenes and invisible to you when you play the game. However, with a large rework of the code, bugs should disappear and new bugs can be found more easily. A lot of beautification was also added, and streamlining of gameplay. This is a big update and it may break a few things. It almost certainly will break your savegames. Sorry for that, but there was no way around it. Here is the full changelog, and as always, please post feedback and report any bugs you find to the Steam forum.

• Fixed: Lunchtime was more of a full-out harvest festival using 5x the food it should. That's back to normal now.
• Balance: Slightly increased the range at which fire spooks monsters
• Refactoring the internal event system code to bring more stability (i.e. unrelated things shouldn't fail if something somewhere fails)
• Refactored monster spawning elements, for more stability and fewer bugs
• Refactored monster info display and monster controls, again for easier bugfixing and fewer bugs
• Refactored internal handling of various small components (status icons status, etc.)
• Added monster flags to the maps that were still missing them
• Fixed lights on a couple of the houses that didn't work properly
• Fixed Burning Pile and construction interplay in the rare case that construction isn't finished at nightfall
• Fixed a few peasant log entry texts
• Fixed another save/load game issue that caused the village population to double
• Added a few visual effects (construction of walls, etc.)
• Spiced up the main menu UI
• Spiced up the level start
• Peasants now reset at midnight, just in case (hanging issues, etc.)
• Wetness of fields is now properly averaged over the past 24 hours instead of my previous more naive calculation. The new one is also smarter and faster.
• Reworked the way different types of fields react to wetness
• Reworked wood use for heating in cold weather and properly calculate the temperature dependency of that
• Fixed manual link for animal pens
• Fixed unmanned display icon for market
• Lots of small visual improvements
• Fixed the construction sounds on various buildings
• Improved notifications for gather (and other) tasks
• You can now much more easily assign all (maximum) workers to a task
• Watchtowers and well now have "unmanned" icons
• Threat level and reachable scores increased on all maps
• Repair work now correctly updates the storage display
• Balance: The well does not require metal anymore to be built
• Scroll view on game log finally fixed
• Slightly improved texts for log and notifications
• Big improvement to the night and dawn/dusk issue - should be a lot better now
• Fixed: Prices on the market should no longer go into negative values.
• Fixed peasant info display for dead peasants (not that they care anymore...)

If you're following the discussion forum, you know I'm working on a large update and it will go live in a few days (I'm mostly done and testing / bugfixing now). There is a good chance that this update will break savegames. We are still in Early Access, remember. So if you have open games, finish them before downloading the update (or tell your Steam Client to download the update later). I'm trying hard to not break things, but this time I have changed so many things in the code that I cannot guarantee that savegames from before the update will properly load in the game after the update. Sorry for that, but the cool things that I've added and the improvements to the code I've made are well worth it.

• Fixed: Achievements probably work again now
• Fixed: Carrot fields can now be placed
• Fixed: A really stupid bug that caused a dozen different code pieces to fail

• New building: Windmill
• New field: Carrots
• In cold weather, the villagers now burn wood to heat their homes and you can see smoke coming out the chimneys. If they have no wood to burn, they freeze, just like in tents (tents cannot be heated).
• Scoring change: In addition to living peasants, buildings in the village now also give a few points. Different buildings contribute different amounts and damage is taken into account.
• Fixed a tent placement error on some maps
• refactored some resource-handling code
• another round of minor bugfixes

• fixed a number of small bugs
• improved peasant animation and behaviour slightly

just a tiny update to bring more of the new achievements online and fix a few small bugs.

oh, and also three new achievements, one of them hidden - for you to discover...

• rats no longer live on a seperate plane of existence and can no longer run straight through everything
• important information now available from the seeress (next to the clock)
• fields and animal pens now correctly update how much food is left while being harvested
• started to add some of the new achievements
• a few minor bugfixes

• Peasants now write a diary of their personal events, to make it easier to track what happened
• Better peasants list display, with buttons to show home, peasant and diary
• SAVE & LOAD are now availabler per-level, i.e. you can quit playing, go play another level, then continue the previous one. Each level has its own savegame slot now.
• Fixed rat behaviour (they were disappearing for no reason)
• Illuminated Friedmarkt
• Market now has limited supply of goods
• Loaded games should now correctly display the day immediately
• Save games are now encrypted to make it more difficult to mess with them

This is a hotfix that contains only one change that should enable load/save finally. Old code had kept the continue button disabled. Saving always worked since the massive update - so you should actually see the continue button enable now with whatever your latest game was.

• Fixed: Tutorial buidings should now show up (again)
• Fixed: Graveyard on Ziegwald finally showing up properly.
• Balance: Schramberg (easy) slightly more monsters
• Balance: Slightly increased the number of tools used up during construction
• Balance: Reduced stone wall requirements to 6 workers and 35 hours (from 8 and 40).
• Balance: Updated monster waves on Ziegwald map
• Added spoken dialog to Ziegwald mini-story event and fixed the tent spawning.
• Game log now reports if peasants enjoy lunchtime (3rd meal)
• Updated manual and fixed several manual links for buildings
• Improved pathfinding on Friedmarkt

• * I'm tracking a few cases where monsters glitch through walls.

• Fixed: Graveyard on Ziegwald finally showing up properly.
• Balance: Schramberg (easy) slightly more monsters
• Balance: Slightly increased the number of tools used up during construction
• Balance: Reduced stone wall requirements to 6 workers and 35 hours (from 8 and 40).
• Balance: Updated monster waves on Ziegwald map
• Added spoken dialog to Ziegwald mini-story event and fixed the tent spawning.
• Game log now reports if peasants enjoy lunchtime (3rd meal)
• Updated manual and fixed several manual links for buildings

• I'm tracking a few cases where monsters glitch through walls.

The little peasants being a success, I looked at the sales and decided that there's a bit of budget again and let's spend it on more peasant models with more variety and all. Plus a bunch of other improvements, such as:

• New level: Friedmarkt
• New building: Market - IN TESTING (only on the Friedmarkt map, can't build) - please try out the impact on gameplay and provide feedback!
• New: Small story event on Ziegwald finished and re-activated - this is a trivial test case for story mode going forward.
• Fixed: Camera bug on Ziegwald
• Fixed: Fog bug on Ziegwald
• Fixed: Tent placement on maps with varying terrain levels
• Fixed: Hellhafen intro dialog should no longer play when loading a savegame
• Fixed: Animals should no longer wander around the entire village, but stay in their pens.
• Fixed: Monster wall glitching (Kobolds especially) should be considerably reduced now.
• Improved water performance on Karenfang map.
• Various other performance improvements.
• Much more variety in peasant models.

• Fixed: Village log now displays all monster names correctly.
• Fixed: Disabled the unfinished dialog on Ziegwald (it will come back once it's finished)
• Fixed: The new monster should now actually appear. Oops.
• Balance: Some fields on Ziegwald map now ready for harvest sooner.
• Performance: Water on Ziegwald now follows the quality settings in options. If this solves the performance issues some people are having, I'll copy it to Karenfang as well.
• Removed distance mountains on Ziegwald map for now - they cost too much performance and caused me other troubles. Looking for a better solution now.

• The dialog on Hellhafen will start after loading a game, even if it's not the first day anymoe.
• There's a really strange bug with the "action camera" on Ziegwald that I've been unable to track down so far.

This is the largest update yet, with tons of new features and changes, see the full list below. The main highlight is that I am giving you a TEST version of save/load, the most requested feature. The game auto-saves every morning at sunrise and you can reload the last save from the main menu ("Continue"). Once save/load works properly, of course, there will be more than one save game. Please see this as a test. If something breaks, please report it. Saving is very complex in a game like this and while I have tested it, there may be details or small things I have missed. Let me know and they'll be fixed in the next update. You also get a new map, new monsters, more beautifications and the second major highlight that was a long time in the making: Villagers that actually go to their tasks, return home, walk around the village and all that. There are also a lot of bugfixes and a couple balance updates. Have a couple games and enjoy all the new things the game now has:

• Saving/Loading is available for TESTING - it does not yet work completely, but please test and report bugs. Games are auto-saved every in-game morning. You can continue the last game from the main menu.
• New map: Ziegwald, a mountain village with limited access routes
• New building: Trapper - get information on monsters and gather some food as well
• New monster: [secret,discover it yourself, only on some maps...]
• New feature: Peasants will now move towards tasks and back home when finished, giving much more life to the village. Also, I've exchanged the villager models I'm using.
• New feature: EXPERIMENTAL, only on Schramber map, some monsters leave tracks so in the morning you get a better picture of what happened at night.
• Fixed: Carpenters correctly displayed in peasant list now
• Fixed: New Game / Difficulty Selector window now closes correctly when the X button is pressed.
• Fixed: Harvesting from fields now yields the correct amount (instead of twice that).
• Fixed: Several monster behaviour bugs.
• Fixed: Hovering over under-construction buildings now correctly indicates that you can click and get the remaining construction time.
• Fixed: Buildings destroyed while under construction no longer block the place for new buildings.
• Balance change: Peasants will now have a 3rd meal at noon, only if the village has enough food. If they get this 3rd meal, they will heal a bit faster.
• Balance change: Number of starting peasants per map is now constant, no longer random
• Balance change: Many jobs are now dangerous and can lead to injury, especially construction jobs. The chance is higher at higher difficulty levels.
• Some families will now have grandparents living with them.
• Updated terrain on Schramberg and Karenfang (as a test) - it's more beautiful, has different trees and it reacts to rain with wet look and puddles forming.
• Karenfang got a new, more beautiful river that is also flowing properly.
• Monster count for end-of-game statistics now goes by monster strength, not just number.
• Monster spot chance of towers now depends on the level difficulty.
• Watchtower monster spottings now marked on the map with flags (currently only Schramberg map).
• Improved pathfinding around graveyards
• Improved statistics at game end.
• Updated several assets and tools I'm using for the game.

This might look like the standard map to you, but for me it is a big milestone. This is the first time a village was saved and re-loaded correctly.
This is not a complete save, yet. Right now it stores which buildings are there (built or demolished, etc.) and in which condition they are. I still need to add tasks peasants are assigned to, the growth status of fields, animal pens etc. So while there is quite a distance to go, this was the most difficult part. It seems to easy, but to track buildings where players can freely place and demolish them is quite tricky. After all kinds of issues (starting buildings duplicated, or the whole village loading empty) I've finally done it. The rest is relatively simple, as it is simply restoring state to existing objects. I just need to store how much eggs are in the chicken pen, etc. That is a bit of work, but not complicated anymore. So, fairly soon we will have saving and loading of games !

• Completely reworked the monster waves on the Schramberg map.
• A number of small bugfixes

• Fixed: There was a stray harpy in the test level... removed it.
• Better damage visuals for most buildings
• Removed a few behind-the-scenes issues with the graveyard
• Proper snow build-up on the winter map (Endraville)
• Houses, fields, etc. now get visually wet when it rains.

• New monster: Bear (early game)
• Fixed: Plank and stone walls were not always recognized as obstacles - they should now.
• Fixed: Large monsters now correctly ignore carrot and cabbage fields.
• You can now drag the peasant info and log windows to position them wherever you want on the screen.
• Added more analytics to support bugfinding and game improvement.
• Pause Game button in options menu disabled for now (needs a rework)
• Harpy now has wing flapping sound

• New building: Stone house
• Fixed: Monsters disappearing immediately after spawning
• Several minor bugfixes and code improvements

• Fixed: Problem in end-of-game display when no peasants died
• Fixed: Correct name on monster info window
• Improved bug tracking to collect more informative error messages

• New building: Cabbage field
• Improved field growing code (to allow for more varied fields)
• Fixed: Rabbit pen could lead to some errors, possibly causing other problems down the line. Maybe even the famous "game does not end" issue.
• Fixed: One of the houses should no longer have a solid roof in ghost/placement mode
• Improved ghosting code leading to fewer errors.

• New special building: Graveyard
• Update to Unity 2021.2 (out of beta)
• Fixed a number of small details (goat positioning and animations, wall colliders, etc.)
• Fixed animal pathfinding - chickens, goats and rabbits should no longer leave their pens
• Code cleanups in the background
• Status icons now show up correctly even on lower quality settings
• Correct assign icon on carpenter and mason
• Activated diagnostics to find errors faster and better

It happens, sorry. That's why we are still in Early Access.

• Hotfix: Build buttons should no longer disappear
• Game now starts with status icons visible.

• New Building: Rabbit Pen
• New Building: Stone Tower
• New Building: Carpenter
• Fixed: Game now detects intersections with existing buildings even when game is paused.
• Fixed: Church in Karenfang caused some weird problems, should be gone now.
• Fixed: WASD move the camera even when game is paused now.
• Buildings under construction can now be selected and will show how much construction time is remaining.
• Improved water, forest and landscape on Karenfang map
• Build buttons no longer linger around greenish
• Can now cancel constructions with a button, not just with ESCape

• New Level: Karenfang on hard
• Changed: Karenfang now lasts for 30 days, for those who want to play a bit longer than the standard levels
• Fixed: Level description of Hellhafen
• Fixed: Collecting eggs/milk and slaughter no longer available on destroyed buildings
• Fixed: Animation of male goat
• Fixed: One hut variant didn't build correctly
• Damaged animal pens now show fewer animals inside
• Slightly reduced time before defeat/victory panel appears
• Manual now explains that peasants can be eaten if house is DAMAGED, not just destroyed (but smaller chance)
• Tweaked graphics a bit here and there
• Added game highlights display to end-of-game statistics
• Fixed: Tutorial now has the chicken pen and wheat field set up properly
• Completely redone the trees on the Schramberg map, in order to get more performance
• Updated pathfinding on several maps, which should eliminate some of the issues of monsters getting stuck in the forest or on returning to the forest.
• Reduced some texture sizes to reduce memory and disk space usage (disk size now 1.8 GB - down from 2.0 GB last build and 2.7 GB that the largest build ever had)

• New advanced resources: Tools and Coins
• Added tools production to smithy
• Reworked how the storage display works behind the scenes
• Fixed: 4th tutorial didn't have metal in storage, making it impossible to complete
• Optimized texture sizes, for smaller game and better performance

• New building: Mason
• New monster: Kobold warriors (they are really nasty critters - thankfully they only appear on normal or hard difficulty, and only on some maps - Hellhafen, Endraville, Karenfang)
• Changed the way the game calculates resource gains internally.
• Improved firefly visuals to indicate monsters, and added them to the monsters that didn't have them yet (harpies, rats)
• Fixed field watering status display
• Added attack/damage sound effects to monsters
• Fixed monster action cam

• Completely reworked the way the game handles time, which should solve many animation and AI issues related to accelerated time or pause
• All buildings now have construction sounds
• Smithy has a sound effect when work is being done there
• Church now rings the bell at noon.
• Balance: Defending the church in Karenfang now more difficult
• Fixed unintended refugees in Hellhafen
• Fixed watchtower directions for good, finally.
• Fixed: No longer possible to man destroyed wells or watchtowers
• Fixed: Peasants eaten calculations, especially if building is destroyed

• Fixed the Hellhafen intro
• Fixed watchtower monster reporting

• End-of-game statistics and leaderboard display added.
• Begun to add story features - Hellhafen now has an intro. That's just a test, but I hope you enjoy it. :-)
• Hellhafen now also in normal difficulty
• Werewolves now also have fireflies
• Improved pathfinding near the forest edge
• Fixed: Kobolds now can be clicked on and show up in the attacking monster list.
• Fixed: Victory/Defeat sounds should now respect your audio settings.
• Fixed: Game finally knows how to correctly count the days.

Hellhafen is a unique map showing off some of the flexibility of the game. It lasts only 15 days and is pretty brutal. The village of Hellhafen has survived hell already, and much of the village is damaged or destroyed. Rebuild before more enemies arrive - and you have received a warning that a week or so from now a large kobold tribe is going to arrive in the area... This map features timed waves of attacks, and a set-up based on an actual game in the predecessor game, which some fans here still remember fondly... also:

• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to not end on the final day under some circumstances
• Intelligent monsters (rats, kobolds, harpies) should no longer pick destroyed targets
• Added loading screen tips
• Fields now display how much food is going to be harvested
• Demolishing a not destroyed building now needs a confirmation
• Monster display now includes their names, for less confusion

• Graphics settings now applied in start-up, this might help some players who experience FPS issues in the menu.
• The options menu now has graphics quality settings, for those experiencing low FPS.
• Fixed a really stupid bug that caused tents not to appear on easy maps.

This update contains a ton of changes, as you can see below, including two new monsters and a lot of new monster intelligence. Also lots of bugfixes (and probably a whole lot of exciting new bugs). It also contains a DLC which you can find on the store page. The DLC is only cosmetic, does not change the gameplay, and its main purpose is to create some income for me that I can invest into more stuff to add to the game, especially better villager models and icons.

• New Monster: Giant Rats
• New Monster: Troll
• Big update: Completely reworked all building placement and colliders, making it possible to place them closer together, correctly represent the non-rectangle shapes of some (like the animal pens) and enabling much improved monster and peasant pathfinding.
• Big update: Added pathfinding and AI behaviour to monsters. Right now, kobolds, rats and harpies use complex behaviours, other monsters will be updated to the new system over time. KNOWN ISSUE at this time: These critters don't speed up or slow down according to your chosen game speed.
• Can zoom a bit closer than before now, for more beautiful close-up views and screenshots
• Improved chicken and goat animation and behaviour (i.e. they walk around now, looking for food)
• Fixed a potential bug that could cause the game to not end on day 20 under some circumstances
• Peasants are now guaranteed to look for new homes at least twice a day
• Game should no longer exit pause unless you manually do it.
• Monster action cam now triggers the first time you see a type of monster PER GAME.
• Improved wall snapping function
• Can now cancel the action cam by pressing the ESCape key
• Fixed a bug that caused monsters to appear and immediately disappear again on the Karenfang map
• Game now actually ends on day 20, not day 19.
• Slightly improved smith graphics

Join me today evening as I'll be playing a bit, developing a bit, and talking about upcoming features and the upcoming DLC. There will be exclusive information, things you see here and only here for the first time, and an opportunity to chat with me and ask questions. To watch and check your local time, visit my Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev/schedule

• Options Menu now also has a close button.
• Balance: Smithy now needs a smith assigned to function.
• Balance: Gathering now has reduced efficiency when you send lots of people the same day
• Balance: To compensate for depletion, initial gains for food and wood gathering are slightly increased.
• Balance: Multiple manned towers now have a slightly increased gather bonus
• Reverted status display back to icons, as nobody said that they are fans of the flags, and the icons are more clear and versatile
• Peasants can get attacked by wild animals while in the forest now. The chance is quite small, and they will usually escape with some injury.
• Monsters should now completely miss the village less often.

• Zoom speed (mouse scrollwheel) is now configurable.
• You can now speed up and slow down the game with the + and - keys on your keyboard.
• Peasant Info and Log Window now have close buttons
• Event log now much cleaner as gather results are reported in accumulated form.
• Re-enabled Apple Silicon (M1) support.
• Updated Unity engine and Steam integration library.

Here are some thoughts to share about what will be the next few updates and where I want to take the game. I'm working hard on making more and more interesting enemies. The "wolf-rockets" as someone called them are just the first step. Harpies are already more refined as are the kobolds, which use actual pathfinding to go through holes in your defenses. I want a good number of different creatures which work in different ways, and when there's a good selection, then maps can have only a subset. So on one map you need to focus on those creatures and that means you need these kinds of defenses. Anything to reward strategy and thought. This is also the requirement to start developing the story mode of the game. Some of the next buildings will also bring more automation, at the cost of semi-permanently assigning workforce. I also watch every stream and video of the game that I can find, checking on how you play, what features you don't spot, which parts are frustrating, and adapting the game to address those issues. All of these things are there to make the game more interesting, more challenging and to give different experiences to different maps. The old "Test Village" is where I throw most things in just to test them, but other maps will get their individual flavour. Already Endraville plays very different from the other maps and this will continue. I won't be adding a new map in the next few updates, but I have a few plans for some very interesting new maps that will come soon. One is the mountain map which will be boxed in by cliffs on two sides, so that attacks come not from all around - you will need a more concentrated defense there. I also plan to have attacks in waves on some maps - where many nights are quite calm and you have several days to rebuild what's left after the nights with very intense attacks. So those are some thoughts for the near future. Stay tuned, check the update news, and see you in-game.

• New monster: Harpy - a flying critter hungry for fresh human meat
• Balance: Increased cost of palisade
• Balance: Slightly decreased the speed of wheat harvest, assigning more than one person is now worth it
• Peasants now start the game at full health. I thought it more realistic if they aren't 100% fit, but it seems to confuse people and they think there's a deeper reason.
• Fireflies now have slighly different colours for different creatures
• More variety and colours in villager models
• Temporarily disabled Apple Silicon (M1 etc.) support so that macOS Intel works, waiting for a bugfix from upstream to re-enable it.
• Lumberjack and other workshops with assigned workers now display in the context menu how many work slots are filled
• Lumberjack (and soon other mannable buildings) now shows a status icon when nobody is assigned to it

• Fixed: random cloud effects when placing fences no longer showing up
• Fixed: Can no longer assign workers to a destroyed lumberjack
• Fixed: Village name displaying correctly again
• Balance: Karenfang end-game made slightly more challenging

• New: Leaderboards are here - compare yourself to other players and see how they are doing.
• Fixed: Smithy can no longer have workers assigned (they don't do anything anyway)
• Considerable re-write of Steam integration and some backend code handling - this might add new bugs, so let me know if something breaks that used to work.
• Slightly improved fireflies, and added them to kobolds/goblins, too.

• Fixed: Monsters should no longer be glitching through walls.
• New gameplay option (check options menu) to automatically set the game speed to "slow" whenever peasants become available for work again.

• New building: Stone walls - finally something that will stand up to the large monsters
• New monster: Goblin throwers (only on the test map, and they're not fully functional yet, just a preview)
• Fixed: Several buildings were wrongly considered living spaces (lumberjack, church, etc.)
• Fixed: Clicking on peasant names in peasant list now shows their home again
• Fixed: Housing (peasants moving to empty homes) should now work properly
• Balance: Raised starting resources on Endraville (hard)
• Improved sound handling (you mostly won't notice, but it's more consistent and easier for me to code)
• Known bug: On fast speed, wolves can glitch through walls. I'm working on it.

Steam Support was so kind to fix the mistake I made, and the game is now officially back in Early Access, as it should be. Sorry for the confusion and all. You all see how much is still in progress.

• New building: Smithy
• Metal now not possible to gather without smithy
• Balance: Length of both walls considerably increased (about doubled)
• Fixed: A bug in the background music that could lead to songs not playing to the end and changing way too often
• Fixed: Peasant availability now displayed correctly when removing workers from lumberjack
• Fixed: Palisade gate now exits construction mode after you place one (it's not a wall, you don't want to place 5)
• Fixed: Chapel in Karenfang is now correctly identified as a chapel
• More beautiful chapel
• If you have a chicken pen, the rooster will now announce sunrise - the first sound effects are coming.
• Better placement of buildings on Karenfang map
• Added a lumberjack to the easy Test Village map.
• Improved attacking monster display

• Balance: Length of both walls considerably increased (about doubled)
• Fixed: Chapel in Karenfang is now correctly identified as a chapel
• Better placement of buildings on Karenfang map
• Added a lumberjack to the easy Test Village map.
• Metal now not possible to gather without smithy (which doesn't exist yet - but you also don't yet need metal for anything)
• Improved attacking monster display

• Fixed: Tutorial now actually lets you place buildings. Sorry, I messed that one up.
• Added voiceover to second tutorial.

• New building: Palisade gate
• New Building: Hovel
• Fixed: Hut building time was wrong in the last update
• Fixed: Fixed chicken/milk display numbers
• Fixed: Lamp post placement should now work properly
• Can now pause the game, either by pressing "space" or by going one minus on "very slow".
• Housing phase implemented - peasants living in tents will now automatically move into vacant houses
• Ent renamed to (walking) tree, because of legalities
• Attacking monsters are now surrounded by fireflies, making them more visible (in the future, you will have to build a firefly building to get this effect)
• Better attacking monsters icon display (top of screen)
• Damage camera effect disabled
• Field construction time raised (to compensate for the really low resource cost)

• New Building: Hovel
• Hotfix: Hut building time was wrong in the last update
• Hotfix: Fixed chicken/milk display numbers

• New building: Palisade gate
• Fixed: Lamp post placement should now work properly
• Can now pause the game, either by pressing "space" or by going one minus on "very slow".
• Housing phase implemented - peasants living in tents will now automatically move into vacant houses
• Ent renamed to (walking) tree, because of legalities
• Attacking monsters are now surrounded by fireflies, making them more visible (in the future, you will have to build a firefly building to get this effect)
• Better attacking monsters icon display (top of screen)
• Damage camera effect disabled
• Field construction time raised (to compensate for the really low resource cost)

• New building: Palisade gate
• Fixed: Lamp post placement should now work properly
• Can now pause the game, either by pressing "space" or by going one minus on "very slow".
• Housing phase implemented - peasants living in tents will now automatically move into vacant houses
• Ent renamed to (walking) tree, because of legalities
• Attacking monsters are now surrounded by fireflies, making them more visible (in the future, you will have to build a firefly building to get this effect)
• Better attacking monsters icon display (top of screen)
• Damage camera effect disabled
• Field construction time raised (to compensate for the really low resource cost)

Experimenting with a new way to display building status - it looks like this:
please let me know what you think. Is this better than the icons? (currently it is active only on wheat fields and one type of hut)

• New action: Slaughter animals for a quick boost in food
• New game speed "very slow" added
• New hotkey: Press "i" to toggle the status display icons on/off
• Experimenting with waving colour-coded flags as a new status display - please let me know what you think about it.
• Game automatically switches to slowest speed while you are in construction mode, and back to your previous speed when exiting construction mode
• You can now configure the display brightness to fit your screen settings better
• Slightly improved game over screen
• Reduced size of status icons
• Fixed initial huts healths status in test village
• TestVillage now starts with a goat pen in easy
• Improved colours and post-processing

• New building: Goat Pen
• New building: Lamp Post
• Preparing more buildings, to get closer to the final set (all not available yet)
• Chicken pen building time slightly reduced
• Watchtowers now correctly grant a small bonus to gathering

• New building: Lumberjack
• Buildings destroyed while under construction should now behave correctly.
• Balance: Walls are now slightly longer, for the same price. A bit less resource use and construction work.
• Chicken animation improved
• Tents now disappear when destroyed
• Building actions menu no longer opens when you are in construction mode
• Cursor now shows that you are in construction mode
• Bugfix: Wolf animation issue fixed
• Balance: Slightly updated starting resources for some levels
• Balance: Reduced wolf numbers for the first days on the test level

this hotfix patches two errors that slipped past me:

• Fixed the winter/snow graphics in Endraville.
• Building status indicators fixed.

• Tutorials added - not perfect yet (don't always auto-continue and don't yet highlight buttons to click, etc.) but a good step forward
• Added better restrictions on buildings, mostly for the tutorial but also in the future for story maps
• The resolution and fullscreen options now actually do something - nobody told me that they don't work...

Throwing down the gloves here: The last update included a brand-new map set in winter, Return to Endraville. This is the toughest map I have designed so far, and the inability to use fields makes even food a struggle. Who can beat it? Show me. Stream it or make a screenshot (F12 in Steam) of the victory screen. I myself will be streaming my attempt to beat the map today evening (European time) on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCO87uw8EBo4arsOS64iRuVw/live Join me there to watch, or stream your own and let us know when and where!

Do you want a challenge? Is the game too easy for you? Do you want a bit more of the city-building and expansion feeling? Try the new map "Endraville", and see if you can survive the winter. This is a hard difficulty map, with no fields due to the weather, in which you are rebuilding a demolished village before your peasants freeze to death in their tents - can you do it? Also in this update:

• Walls now snap to each other, for that perfect placement
• Game now shows you small icons of the monsters attacking. It's not very beautiful yet, but some indication. Let me know what you think about it or if you prefer it without.
• Windowed mode now available
• Added menu items for the next large updates, containing more buildings, tutorial and story mode - these aren't active yet, just put them in place already.
• Improved peasant info list
• Made it more clear which features are simply not done yet
• Started to add the tutorial
• Balance: Slightly raised the amount of wood gathered in the forest

What I am currently working on: Snapping already works, look here: [previewyoutube=WpuZ0cwabnk;full][/previewyoutube] And I am working on saving and loading games. This is the most complex single feature so far, and it is taking quite a bit of effort. I hope to have it ready in the next update.

• Some large monsters now walk through fields (without damaging them).
• Chicken pens now tell you how many eggs are waiting to be collected.
• Chicken pens now lose food when attacked by creatures.
• Fields now use up 2 food (seeds) for construction.
• More explicit difficulty selection on new games.
• Action cam is now less volatile.
• Monsters will now less often run past the village and concentrate more on where buildings actually are
• Peasants who are seriously wounded or starving (low on health) are now too weak to work and must be nursed back to health first.
• Some more manual pages added
• Bugfix: Difficulty now correctly controls which buildings and monsters are active
• Bugfix: Issue where defenses become impossible to build after some days should now be resolved.
• Bugfix: correct wetness display on fields
• Bugfix: destroyed fields will no longer claim they are growing or ready to harvest
• Bugfix: Fields finally grow and change colour properly
• Bugfix: Day counter now actually jumps to day 20 before it announces victory

• Building buttons now also explain why a building is not available for construction
• Improved monster spawning
• Working on improved performance, please report to the Steam discussion forum if you see an improvement (and on which map(s)).
• Fields now show their current status (planted, growing, ready to harvest) as well as water status (drought, too dry, too wet) - so you know if you need to add a well.
• Bugfix: Workers now removed from buildings upon destruction (no more floating watchtower people)
• Bugfix: Remove a rare occasion where you could simultaneously win and lose a game.

Watch me play the latest version, looking for bugs and things to improve, or just for fun. Follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/tanaziel if you feel like it.

Pushing this one out despite it has not as many changes as I wanted, but there are a few important bugfixes inside.

• Peasants assigned to wells will now stop at nightfall and not spend the rest of their life hauling water :-)
• Task buttons (the ones in the pie menu) will now tell you why you can't do a task
• Q and E now rotate the camera view. Rotate buildings with R and T now
• Game can now be paused/unpaused by pressing the space bar
• Game now starts in pause so that you can read the intro / manual in peace
• Bugfixes, including one that caused all buildings to suddenly disappear.

• UPDATED GAME ENGINE - this might cause some unexpected bugs, please report in the Steam discussion forum if anything breaks.
• Fixed manual pages navigation
• Families can now be childless
• Game now pauses if you task-switch away from it
• Game now has different difficulty levels
• New level added: Karenfang - a river-side lengthy village with a church you need to defend
• New level variation for the test level: easy and hard difficulty
• More variation in models for houses
• Applied a bunch of performance optimizations to the buildings (not yet all of them)
• Better description for buildings not yet implemented
• Better description and placeholder image for levels not yet implemented
• Better visual indication of which fields are ready to harvest (they now turn yellow when ready to harvest, not the day before)
• Added little indicators so people don't miss that you can rotate buildings with Q and E
• Started work on functionality to save and load games (very early and incomplete, not enabled in the public version)

After being away from home for a few days, I'm starting again to work on the game. The main items on my list right now are a few more levels and challenges, and more buildings.

More Levels

More Buildings

Other Improvements

last but not least...

• Wolves now attack in packs.
• Building task menu now has a link to the in-game manual
• Fields/Rain interaction considerably improved

• Scoring and game end (in case of victory) moved from midnight to dawn
• In-game manual added
• Pause option added
• ESCape will now cancel the building task menu (the one that opens when you click on a building)
• Various UI improvements
• Fog density reduced somewhat - let me know if it's now good for you or it needs more tuning
• Updated forest graphics, should solve some of the night-time lighting issues

• Can no longer repair destroyed buildings - you have to demolish the rubble and build a new one
• Fields now grow better (more food) if it rains or they are watered from a well
• Added the well common building
• A few bugfixes
• Added a quick link to the online manual to the start menu because people apparently don't realize there is a manual on Steam
• A basic intro explanation window for those who missed the manual on Steam
• Made it more clear that some buildings are simply not yet available.
• Clicking on monsters now brings up an info panel.

• Audio options fixed (i.e. actually working now)
• Options menu available on the map as well now
• Harvest in fields now depends on the weather
• Bugfixes

• Options menu added
• Can now hold Q and E to rotate (not just press once)
• Bugfixes

• Fixed a small placement bug that affected mostly palisades
• Better building menu with proper status info and better visibility for disabled actions
• Families whose home has been destroyed now relocate to an empty home, or pitch a tent when they cannot find one (sleeping in a tent reduces health, so you want to get them back into a proper home ASAP)
• Game now switches to normal speed on nightfall and daybreak
• Fixed several bugs related to day/night transitions
• Raised the monster threat on the test map somewhat, to make it more challenging
• New defensive building: Burning Pile
• Build button tooltips now tell you the construction time of the building
• Added a special event happening in some games between day 8 and day 12

* Constructing fences/palisades/walls now easier - they will not exit construction mode, but spawn a new ghost, so you can easily build multiple ones in a row. * Chicken pens now produce eggs (send a peasant to collect them) * Can no longer start tasks at night. * A few more model variations * Game Over screen now correctly displays your score and results. * A few minor bugfixes * Personal high-score display added * Monsters now eat peasants when destroying or seriously damaging a house * Peasant info panel now correctly displays dead peasants

We have reached that point - the current version of the game is playable. You can download and play it again, and please do post feedback.
Changes to last internal build:

• Game over conditions added
• Werewolf added (spawning in the later game)
• Steam leaderboard integrated (not yet visible in-game)
• Added two more day songs
• Added new monster: Ent (late game)
• Starting to add animated villagers to construction sites
• More Steam achievements
• All buildings rebalanced (in general, more workers and longer construction times)
• Villager models added so you can see them working

• Fixed graphics glitch with the chicken pen
• Fixed new buildings not opening context menu
• Fixed plank walls not showing deconstruction effects
• Fixed fields, which were growing all wrong
• Added camera light at night
• Construction projects now pause during the night
• Game speed controls added
• Fields can now be harvested for food

• Updated online manual and Steam page information
• Fields are now growing
• A number of small UI improvements
• Game now starts at 9 in the morning, not 12 (to give more time on the first day)
• Building up the Context menu for actions on finished buildings
• Implemented action to demolish buildings
• Implemented actions to repair damaged buildings
• First Steam achievements and statistics added
• Added side-poles to walls to make building a proper wall easier
• Added wolf spawners so that there actually are nightly attack waves, at least for testing purposes
• A bunch of bugfixes and general improvements
• Added music (a couple of really great tracks from Kevin MacLeod, filmmusic.io)

This is a big update, containing a ton of small changes that bring the demo version fairly close to being a playable game:

• Wood House now available
• Wheat Field now available
• Random wolves spawn and attack at night (no effect on anything yet)
• Damaged and ruined states for buildings added
• Monsters can now damage and destroy buildings
• Peasants are generated in the village
• Random name generator (based on real medieval german names) added
• Peasants are correctly added and removed from tasks
• Peasant info display added
• Level selector added
• Hunted down an evasive bug that lead to a Unity crash, making debugging it really tiresome :-)
• Gathering actions implemented
• Peasants now consume food (1 unit per peasant twice a day - at sunrise and sunset)
• Peasants can starve from lack of food

Much improved preview version, including the following changes:

• proper ghosts when placing buildings
• building mode / selection panels interaction improved
• peasants are assigned to constructions and their availability is checked
• not yet implemented buildings are now disabled
• pop-up info for buildings including their construction costs
• support for macOS Catalina and up (64 bit macOS)

This is a Preview-Release of the single-player re-write. There is no gameplay yet. A single map where you can build some buildings (most buttons simply build a hut, but house, wall, palisade, tower and chicken pen already work). Don't expect much. Wait for the next version unless you really, really can't wait. But yes, it's coming.

Long thinking and a few updates to my Unity assets, as well as a few fan-mails have led to a re-imagining of the game. I am currently working on single-player standalone relaunch of Black Forest. The core gameplay will remain the same, but a lot of the details as well as the visuals will be completely redone. In fact, I am re-writing the whole game from the ground up. Below is a screenshot of the current development status - very basic as you can see. Building construction is the first element I am adding. But the new game will be so much better in many ways, so stay tuned.

A new client build has been uploaded to Steam. This build should hopefully solve the various issues that trouble windows players. Gameplay has been kept the same, this is mostly a bugfix release.

I've released build 31, trying to fix the recent bugs that some players suffer from. If you have any issues, please switch to the beta branch and update to build 31, then let me know if it helps. If you have no issues, there is no reason to update, no features were added, this is purely a bugfix build.

I've released build 31, trying to fix the recent bugs that some players suffer from. If you have any issues, please switch to the beta branch and update to build 31, then let me know if it helps. If you have no issues, there is no reason to update, no features were added, this is purely a bugfix build.

If you experience problems with the current build, I have made Build 30 available on the beta branch. It is built with a beta version of the Unity player and may or may not be stable. If you can currently play without problems, no need to switch to beta build 30 (no changes to the game). To switch to beta, right-click on the list in Steam and in the game properties enable beta.

If you experience problems with the current build, I have made Build 30 available on the beta branch. It is built with a beta version of the Unity player and may or may not be stable. If you can currently play without problems, no need to switch to beta build 30 (no changes to the game). To switch to beta, right-click on the list in Steam and in the game properties enable beta.

A new client build has been uploaded. It has been compiled with the latest Unity version, which might solve some of the recent crash bugs. As there are no other changes, the version number has not been increased. New client should auto-update through Steam.

A new client build has been uploaded. It has been compiled with the latest Unity version, which might solve some of the recent crash bugs. As there are no other changes, the version number has not been increased. New client should auto-update through Steam.

The build bug of the last release should be fixed. If you update your client now, it should work again. My apologies for the issue.

The build bug of the last release should be fixed. If you update your client now, it should work again. My apologies for the issue.

The new beta version, build 28, has been sent live. Server is updated. Changes: * instant action added * games are now force-started after 6 days instead of 9 days * games can start if there are at least 4 human players * in-game purchases have been removed The main new thing is "instant action". With this function you can jump right in to an already running village, taking over a randomly selected NPC family. This also means that if you are playing a game, NPC families can suddenly "come alive" as players at any time. The game will always select families that are in good condition, with no immediate starvation and all family members still alive. It will select games up to day 10, not later.

The new beta version, build 28, has been sent live. Server is updated. Changes: * instant action added * games are now force-started after 6 days instead of 9 days * games can start if there are at least 4 human players * in-game purchases have been removed The main new thing is "instant action". With this function you can jump right in to an already running village, taking over a randomly selected NPC family. This also means that if you are playing a game, NPC families can suddenly "come alive" as players at any time. The game will always select families that are in good condition, with no immediate starvation and all family members still alive. It will select games up to day 10, not later.

We have a Discord channel to gather, discuss and also to find players for games: https://discord.gg/uYdCf7E Meanwhile, a new version is being worked on. There will be a few bugfixes and resource plundering from dead families.

We have a Discord channel to gather, discuss and also to find players for games: https://discord.gg/uYdCf7E Meanwhile, a new version is being worked on. There will be a few bugfixes and resource plundering from dead families.

The game is not dead. Hey everyone! So here is my thoughts on how to complete it, given that my time available has dropped dramatically: Planning Mode is shelved for the moment In-Game Store is shelved for the moment, probably coming back but with in-game currency only (i.e. no real money transfers) I want to add more competitiveness to the end game, so a new feature will be that if a family is defeated, its resources are distributed, equally, remainders are dropped. That means in the early game, typically nothing will be left (family dies with 12 wood, 16 families still in the game - nobody gets anything). But in the end game, killing off someone can ensure your survival (family dies with 10 stone, 3 families still left in the game - everyone gets 3 stone, 1 stone is lost). Later on, I want to add a few special events to the deep forest, to raise both risk and reward. Once a couple bugs are fixed, the game will also need a polishing and marketing drive to restore the player base to something more serious. For this I will need a small team. Not programmers (though one more wouldn't hurt), but artists and social media people.

The game is not dead. Hey everyone! So here is my thoughts on how to complete it, given that my time available has dropped dramatically: Planning Mode is shelved for the moment In-Game Store is shelved for the moment, probably coming back but with in-game currency only (i.e. no real money transfers) I want to add more competitiveness to the end game, so a new feature will be that if a family is defeated, its resources are distributed, equally, remainders are dropped. That means in the early game, typically nothing will be left (family dies with 12 wood, 16 families still in the game - nobody gets anything). But in the end game, killing off someone can ensure your survival (family dies with 10 stone, 3 families still left in the game - everyone gets 3 stone, 1 stone is lost). Later on, I want to add a few special events to the deep forest, to raise both risk and reward. Once a couple bugs are fixed, the game will also need a polishing and marketing drive to restore the player base to something more serious. For this I will need a small team. Not programmers (though one more wouldn't hurt), but artists and social media people.

As written before, I moved to another country over the year end, started a new job, bought a house, all in a few weeks. Naturally, that put Black Forest on the back burner a little. Meanwhile, as you can see here my new desk has arrived and I've finally set up my working room. Cat is already sleeping on it, so it will not be long until I start up development again.
The main project on my list is the "planning mode" that I wrote about in the forum. This will dramatically lighten the pressure of logging in every turn, making the game much more playable especially over weekends, etc. Expect more news to follow soon.

As written before, I moved to another country over the year end, started a new job, bought a house, all in a few weeks. Naturally, that put Black Forest on the back burner a little. Meanwhile, as you can see here my new desk has arrived and I've finally set up my working room. Cat is already sleeping on it, so it will not be long until I start up development again.
The main project on my list is the "planning mode" that I wrote about in the forum. This will dramatically lighten the pressure of logging in every turn, making the game much more playable especially over weekends, etc. Expect more news to follow soon.

Earlier than planned, Beta Build 27 has been released.

• Tents are in. If your family has no home, it will build a tent. Very fragile, but can store resources.
• Limited homes. Houses can now be home to no more than 2 (huts) to 3 (wood and stone houses) families
• Take in Coop limited. You can take common ground, but you cannot take land from other players
• Dark Rumors. There are rumours, but they're just superstition for sure. Of new terrible monsters. Pah, peasant talk.

  
  

Earlier than planned, Beta Build 27 has been released.

• Tents are in. If your family has no home, it will build a tent. Very fragile, but can store resources.
• Limited homes. Houses can now be home to no more than 2 (huts) to 3 (wood and stone houses) families
• Take in Coop limited. You can take common ground, but you cannot take land from other players
• Dark Rumors. There are rumours, but they're just superstition for sure. Of new terrible monsters. Pah, peasant talk.

  
  

The newest release, beta build 25 is out.

• Diary day numbers are now correct
• New map models (henhouse and kennel ruins)
• Drought is now considered a negative event (red bubble)
• Much improved epilogue (previously called diary reader)
• Gold Store is working in sandbox mode

The newest release, beta build 25 is out.

• Diary day numbers are now correct
• New map models (henhouse and kennel ruins)
• Drought is now considered a negative event (red bubble)
• Much improved epilogue (previously called diary reader)
• Gold Store is working in sandbox mode

I've sent a small update live bringing the client to build 24. This is a backwards-compatible update, so you can update or not, as you wish. Changes: * private game joining is fixed * "gather food" button no longer visible during winter (anyway you would gather nothing) * game now automatically pre-selects the first idle peasant on actions - less clicking * market will not allow you purchases if you can't store them (no home) * a few small bugfixes

I have released Beta 23, which includes statistics and many bugfixes and also the first release of private games: Beta 23 Changelog * can no longer set sleeping home to other peoples homes * action to harvest foreign fields no longer showing up (it wasn't working anyway, just a display bug) * some statistics are now available, both in-game (check right-hand edge of screen) and after-game. * dragon damage to stone buildings has been reduced to 1. * private games are partially working. You can play around with them, but there might be bugs left. * visual updates * several small text fixes * lots of small bugfixes

There was a bug with the dragon achievement. I had to reset it after fixing the bug, because those who got it will have noticed that it had nothing to do with any dragons.

Beta build 21 has been released with the following changes: * plot actions updated - can now attack common and own buildings and repair others buildings * updated visuals * number of wolves now displayed correctly * improved turn notifications * bugfixes

The latest beta build has been released, including these updates: * Watchtower model slightly updated * Bugfix for the new reinforced walls * Better game mode indicators * Small visual improvements * Conflicts are now visible on the map * Your coins are now displayed among your scores in the menu * XP system replacing old scoring * games can now be 12 hours instead of 24 per turn, for those who want a more active, faster game. * higher starting resources for smaller families

This is a small update, which is why I'm posting it only on Steam where you download a patch and not the whole client. Changes: * Watchtower model slightly updated * Better game mode indicators * Small visual improvements

A short change list, but a big update. Build 16 is going live while I write this, and it contains two big changes, which complete the core gameplay. The first is the kennel, already posted yesterday. This gives you one more building option and a more risky forest experience. The second is the market, which will be semi-operational in Build 16. By semi I mean that there will be no real money store, but everyone will get three gold coins to play with, and of course you can earn more during play. With this you can test the market and check if everything works and how it works.

Sneak preview of the last building that I had on my drawing board, and that will be in Beta 16: The Kennel.
Once you built this home for your dog, you can explore the deep forest, where a trip will bring you random resources, with a good chance of gaining more than normal gathering actions can. But there is a risk. A risk that you find less or even nothing. But also a risk that you meet your doom in the forest. A small risk, but a risk. And if the tower is not manned, it is doubled.

While the client-side updates come together with new builds, a lot of updates also happen server-side. One of them just went live: Better turn notifications. If you have turn e-mails turned on and a confirmed e-mail address, you will now receive much better turn notifications. If you haven't, now is the time to update your e-mail address, which will send you a new confirmation mail, confirm that, and enjoy learning everything important about the turn as soon as the turn is done!

Beta Build 15 has been released. Changes:

• can now change e-mail address (new confirmation required)
• fire animations are better
• diary reader final result text fixed
• attacks with 2+ peasants prevented
• slightly better family selection screen
• graveyard indicates number of last nights deaths
• improved registration text
• several small bugfixes and improvements

A new build has been released. Beta 14 is a small update containing mostly bugfixes and minor improvements. There are also several backend updates in preparation of the next steps.

I have added a support site for questions, problems, bug reports and everything related: http://lemuria.org:8080/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 If you open an issue there, I will get informed by e-mail, making it more likely that you get a fast response. Also, it is easier to check if someone else has the same problem, and maybe a solution or a workaround.

The influx of new players is overwhelming. Thank you all ! On the downside, this might result in short periods where no games are available. I am starting new games regularily, so if you don't see any available games, simply come back a few hours later. I am at this time working on so many different things at the same time, from fixing bugs to setting up a proper support site and knowledge base, to putting the final gameplay elements in so it all comes together to fielding questions, adding more Steam integration and a hundred other things. I am a one-man indie developer team, so I hope you are all patient with me if things do not all work immediately. Thank you all again for your interest so far, let's complete this game together! Your feedback is much appreciated.

The new beta version is live. Here is a list of changes:

• AI: now clear ruins from their land
• Steam: first steam integration (achievements) is under way
• Tower manning fixed
• Games now start automatically when full
• Turns now run every hour instead of every 2 hours, so the "< 1 hour" display is actually correct
• New wall type: Reinforced Wall
• The amount and type of resource gained from clearing land now depends on the building that used to be there
• Diary Reader now contains the village chat as well
• Cinematic View added
• Market place is getting operational, slowly
• New wall type: Reinforced Wall
• better damage display (in % as well as absolute numbers)
• many small bugfixes and visual improvements

Due to an outdated in-game message, there is currently some confusion over confirmation mails and what to do if they do not arrive. You can still play the game ! The only thing that will not work without a confirmed e-mail is that you won't get e-mail notifications when a game starts or a turn has run. The game itself can be played without. However, you should confirm your e-mail address anyway because if the game can not send you e-mails, one of the things it can't send is a reminder e-mail if you forget or lose your id/key.

I have been a bit overwhelmed by the interest and number of new players coming in. Thank you all. As a result, the mechanics for automatically creating and starting games are not yet running well. If you see no open games, just wait for some hours and they will appear as I check constantly. If your full games are not starting, the same.

The beta build has finally been approved and we are now live in Early Access. Join the game, post your comments, screenshots and reviews. Let's get this party started!

The Steam build is still waiting for approval, but the beta builds are available for download from the official Black Forest website. Three games are waiting for additional players at this time. One of them will start very soon, last chance to join.