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Chinatown Detective Agency is a cybernoir point and click adventure inspired by the classic Carmen Sandiego games, blending stunning retro design with innovative mechanics. Manage your detective agency and use real world research to solve cases as you unravel a global conspiracy.
About 3 days ago, we launched our Kickstarter campaign to amazing support from both those who have been following the game's development the past year, as well as from the game industry. Right now, we're sitting at 43% funded!
If you like the idea of the game, please do visit our Kickstarter page where you can watch our trailer, check out screenshots and learn about the world and the characters of the game!
We've also got links to our free alpha demo on itch.io and to our Discord server where you can join in the conversation.
Thank you all for the continued support!
MARK
Happy Holidays, winemakers! We bring you new content and tweaks -- behold! A quick note to our Chinese and German speaking players: we are currently localizing the new content as I'm writing this, so please stay tuned for updates.
We've been getting a lot of positive feedback about the music, so we decided to release the soundtrack to you: absolutely free of charge. We'll make it so that you can either download the tracks via our Steam store page, or a link to our website for a direct download. A lot of work went into the soundtrack -- it was composed and recorded by a quintet of very talented musicians just for the game, so of course we'd be super happy to let you include the tracks in your music library! Just another way to show how much we appreciate you guys! MARK et JENNY
Winemakers! We missed you! We apologize for such a long period of silence. We were busy working on another project which took more time than we planned. But even during those months, we had the community page perpetually open on our screens. We continue to read your suggestions, and we continue to enjoy keeping track of your screenshots, guides and videos. And what we've done is we've taken a few of those suggestions and made tweaks to some in-game mechanics -- things we felt would improve the game and make it more competitive. And we have also created two new grape varietals which offer a new challenge -- we won't spoil it, but let's just say they'll take a little more patience and work (much like how Semillon and Grenache introduced a new way to make wine). We'll release the update by the end of this week, so do stay tuned! Very many thanks to all of you! MARK et JENNY
Hello winemakers! It's been a while since we last spoke, and as usual, it's because we've been scouring through the forums on the lookout for bugs or errors, and other areas of improvement. In this new update, we've got the following changes:
Winemakers! It is so encouraging to see our community grow larger everyday. Please note that Jenny and I are always listening in at the discussion boards and reviewing your feedback. We learned early today that there was a bug affecting the CIVO menu, causing it to not function properly -- it had to do with our last update to the Unity engine. We've managed to fix this issue, and thr menu should be fully functional. Should you continue to experience any problems, please let us know at the discussion boards or at dev.team@generalinteractive.co We also added more tweaks and fixes to the German localization, which we are progressively trying to improve. Thank you all so much for your continued support! MARK et JENNY
Hello, German-speaking winemakers! At long last, we have finally finished German localization of Terroir. You can now choose German as an option in your language settings. We are continuing to improve on the localization, with a few minor additions and possibly tweaks in the next coming weeks, but by and large, it's now playable in German. Danke! Mark und Jenny
Hello winemakers. We've been receiving a small number of reports of a bug that affects certain players who play on Mac systems, which shows large random text all over the screen, rendering it non-interactable. One of our players managed to send us an output log file, which points to the root of the problem: a Unity bug related to a the engine's video decoder, which is unable to play the tutorial videos. We've reached out to Unity, who have admitted that it is indeed a bug within the game engine, and have asked us for help with sorting it out. Since we can't really do anything much about that bug, we did manage to create a workaround. When the game detects that Unity can't play the tutorial videos, they will be disabled, and only the text and voice over will appear in the tutorial pop-ups. Also, if it's taking too long for the videos to load, they will also be disabled (the threshold for this is set quite high, so it will only affect the small number of players experiencing problems with Unity). We're hoping that once Unity sorts this out, the problem will be fixed with a simple update on our part, and the tutorial videos will play normally for the unfortunate number of Mac players experiencing this problem. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and continued support! Happy gaming, MARK et JENNY
Hello winemakers. We've been receiving a small number of reports of a bug that affects certain players who play on Mac systems, which shows large random text all over the screen, rendering it non-interactable. One of our players managed to send us an output log file, which points to the root of the problem: a Unity bug related to a the engine's video decoder, which is unable to play the tutorial videos. We've reached out to Unity, who have admitted that it is indeed a bug within the game engine, and have asked us for help with sorting it out. Since we can't really do anything much about that bug, we did manage to create a workaround. When the game detects that Unity can't play the tutorial videos, they will be disabled, and only the text and voice over will appear in the tutorial pop-ups. Also, if it's taking too long for the videos to load, they will also be disabled (the threshold for this is set quite high, so it will only affect the small number of players experiencing problems with Unity). We're hoping that once Unity sorts this out, the problem will be fixed with a simple update on our part, and the tutorial videos will play normally for the unfortunate number of Mac players experiencing this problem. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and continued support! Happy gaming, MARK et JENNY
Hello Winemakers! I'll keep this brief: some players have reported a few bugs, and we've released the fixes to smoothen those out in this new version. They include:
Hello Winemakers! I'll keep this brief: some players have reported a few bugs, and we've released the fixes to smoothen those out in this new version. They include:
Hello once again, winemakers! Good to see our community continue to grow and interest in the game continue to spread to every corner of the known world. While you guys were trying to keep your estates afloat amid a somewhat unpredictable market and against competing wine estates who think they've got you figured out, we've been working on some minor tweaks, as well as straightening out a few more bugs. Here's the full change log:
Hello once again, winemakers! Good to see our community continue to grow and interest in the game continue to spread to every corner of the known world. While you guys were trying to keep your estates afloat amid a somewhat unpredictable market and against competing wine estates who think they've got you figured out, we've been working on some minor tweaks, as well as straightening out a few more bugs. Here's the full change log:
Hello, winemakers! First thing's first - a belated happy new year to everyone! Both Jenny and I have been very busy taking care of our year-end stuff (including, at least on my part, the consumption of copious amounts of wine!), but continue to keep tabs on all your feedback in the discussion boards. As soon as we got back to work, we hit the ground running, and have released a new patch last night that was meant to address some of the issues you've encountered recently. There are still a few issues that we're doing our best to get to the bottom of, and in those cases, we've enabled more information to be printed onto the output_log so we can get a better understanding of an issue or bug. Here's a more detailed list of all the new changes in this week's update:
Hello, winemakers! First thing's first - a belated happy new year to everyone! Both Jenny and I have been very busy taking care of our year-end stuff (including, at least on my part, the consumption of copious amounts of wine!), but continue to keep tabs on all your feedback in the discussion boards. As soon as we got back to work, we hit the ground running, and have released a new patch last night that was meant to address some of the issues you've encountered recently. There are still a few issues that we're doing our best to get to the bottom of, and in those cases, we've enabled more information to be printed onto the output_log so we can get a better understanding of an issue or bug. Here's a more detailed list of all the new changes in this week's update:
To our amazing Terroir players,
We hope that the holiday season finds you well (and if you don't subscribe to the relevant belief system, we hope you're doing just as well). We've got a huge update for you, and one that we kept under wraps this whole time. See, we've announced in the past that the next update after the last was going to have one simple addition: the Blending feature. But Jenny and I really thought this one through - sure, adding the Blending feature would add another activity in the winemaking process, but would it really enrich the game beyond just having new choices and decisions to make? Actually, yeah, maybe. But what we felt would truly add a whole new dimension to Terroir, and bring much more replayability and value to the game was to introduce some form of competition - it would be more fun to run your own wine Estate while competing with others.
So, after 2 weeks of nearly non-stop work (except for the occasional lunch break), we present to you Terroir 2.3.
Let's begin with the biggest new feature: A.I. competitors. Yes, that's right, you can now choose to play with up to 3 A.I.-controlled winemakers (or none at all). You can choose how many to play against in the difficulty settings menu that pops up before you start a new game.
A.I. competitors will spawn near your own vineyard, and will compete with you for new land. You can buy their tiles at a cost (or buy them off completely by purchasing their estate tile), and they can send you offers to purchase your own tiles. They grow at a steady rate, depending on the weather (too much rain and their Yields will suffer), and once they've accumulated enough money, they will purchase a new tile every year to add to their vineyard. Playing against A.I. competitors will give you a bonus to your final score.
Another new feature in 2.3 is Market Saturation. Simply put, it's a measure of how much supply of a particular wine there is in the market. This affects that wine's base price - too much of a certain wine, and its base price drops. Too little, and it increases. A player directly affects Market Saturation by the amount of wine he sells, and random small changes occur every year to the market saturation levels of each wine type. Noble Rot Semillon and Grenache Rose are exempted from the effects of Market Saturation.
You can open the Market Saturation window by clicking on the newest icon in the icon tray, shown below:
In addition to this, we've made a few more tweaks and fixes:
To our amazing Terroir players,
We hope that the holiday season finds you well (and if you don't subscribe to the relevant belief system, we hope you're doing just as well). We've got a huge update for you, and one that we kept under wraps this whole time. See, we've announced in the past that the next update after the last was going to have one simple addition: the Blending feature. But Jenny and I really thought this one through - sure, adding the Blending feature would add another activity in the winemaking process, but would it really enrich the game beyond just having new choices and decisions to make? Actually, yeah, maybe. But what we felt would truly add a whole new dimension to Terroir, and bring much more replayability and value to the game was to introduce some form of competition - it would be more fun to run your own wine Estate while competing with others.
So, after 2 weeks of nearly non-stop work (except for the occasional lunch break), we present to you Terroir 2.3.
Let's begin with the biggest new feature: A.I. competitors. Yes, that's right, you can now choose to play with up to 3 A.I.-controlled winemakers (or none at all). You can choose how many to play against in the difficulty settings menu that pops up before you start a new game.
A.I. competitors will spawn near your own vineyard, and will compete with you for new land. You can buy their tiles at a cost (or buy them off completely by purchasing their estate tile), and they can send you offers to purchase your own tiles. They grow at a steady rate, depending on the weather (too much rain and their Yields will suffer), and once they've accumulated enough money, they will purchase a new tile every year to add to their vineyard. Playing against A.I. competitors will give you a bonus to your final score.
Another new feature in 2.3 is Market Saturation. Simply put, it's a measure of how much supply of a particular wine there is in the market. This affects that wine's base price - too much of a certain wine, and its base price drops. Too little, and it increases. A player directly affects Market Saturation by the amount of wine he sells, and random small changes occur every year to the market saturation levels of each wine type. Noble Rot Semillon and Grenache Rose are exempted from the effects of Market Saturation.
You can open the Market Saturation window by clicking on the newest icon in the icon tray, shown below:
In addition to this, we've made a few more tweaks and fixes:
Winemakers! It's so good to see our community grow day by day. In our journey to providing you with as rich and fulfilling a game as we can make, we are happy to announce a big new update in Terroir v2.2 today. So here's a quick rundown of what you'll find in this new version:
Winemakers! It's so good to see our community grow day by day. In our journey to providing you with as rich and fulfilling a game as we can make, we are happy to announce a big new update in Terroir v2.2 today. So here's a quick rundown of what you'll find in this new version:
Hi everyone, We are extremely happy at the positive feedback we've been getting from players and the press, and incredibly motivated to keep making the game better thanks to the critical feedback from some players. To anyone who has stayed with us since the early days when the game was still on Early Access, you'll know that we are committed to making Terroir better through your feedback and continued support. Having said that, we believe you guys deserve at the very least a sneak peek into the content we're working on for future updates. First thing's first - the next update. Some time next week, hopefully before the 21st or 22nd of November, we'll be releasing a very large update with a lot of new content and features. These include:
Hello winemakers, We hope you're having an awesome halloween. Jenny and I continue to grapple with the forces of evil (late nights and never enough coffee) as we introduce more optimizations and features to Terroir, and are happy to share with you the latest version. In version 2.1.3, you will find the following changes and additions:
More updates and fixes! Aright, so we've got 2 new additions:
Hello everyone, Jenny and I have been working on some more new content, but have recently made some fixes to some issues that were spotted in the release version. Here's a list of them:
Thinking about getting Terroir but can't decide until you try it? Well, good news - we've just released a demo where you can play a game for up to 5 in-game years, which is ample time to get an idea of the gameplay and the features on offer. Do give it a try if you need a little more information before diving into the world of Terroir full on. Happy winemaking! MARK
Hello everyone, We are happy to announce that Terroir has left Early Access with the current version 2.0 build. This build introduces quite a lot of new features, the most important being the new in-game tutorial, with VO and video - which complements the more detailed text tutorial already introduced in an earlier version. Another major new feature is the introduction of Automated Tile Workers, which allow you to set your vines to automatically be trimmed according to your settings by assigning a worker to a Planting tile. There also a few other changes, some of which are tweaks that improve balance, as well as other features that help the Player progress - namely, the tip that comes with wine reviews of less than 5 stars, which will tell the Player what went wrong with their wine. Here's a complete list of the changes in the build:
Dear winemakers,
On September 20, Terroir v2.0 will be released and the game will leave Early Access. In just 4 months, what was a very basic, buggy and frustratingly unbalanced game has turned into one that has improved to the point where we feel we have met our objectives for the base game. Terroir is much tighter, less buggy and is much richer with new content. Yes, there's more that can be improved upon - there always is, no matter how far you've come in developing a game. But in whatever way Terroir can improve now will simply be us building upon a foundation. And of course, we have plans for releasing new updates even after launch (not just bug fixes, but actual new content). Terroir has always been a long-term project for us, and there's so much more ground we want to cover. All the new stuff coming your way in the coming months are all from you, our players. Your suggestions and feedback will always be an integral part of Terroir's continuing development.
So this is us saying thank you. Thank you all for supporting us and sticking by Terroir through the thick and thin. The game will release some time on the morning of the 20th of September in Europe, the Americas and Africa (afternoon in our part of the world). It will retail for $14.99. It will continue to be updated - our priorities are:
Hello winemakers!
Long time no see, and for good reason. We've been working on several new features that are sure to add some depth to the game.
Firstly, there's the Wine Awards organized by the Castelfiore Institute of Viticulture and Oenology. It happens every four years, and awards the best wines across several categories. Winning awards grants an increase in the price of your wine, as well as Renown bonuses. And also, medals!
The other major addition is, finally, a text tutorial! All you need to do is click on the Text Tutorial icon (seen below) in your icons tray at the upper edge of the screen, and you can access a full tutorial that teaches you everything you need to know about succeeding in Terroir.
Also, the full soundtrack has now been integrated into the game -- 4 pieces inspired by each of the first seasons, as well as new ambient tracks to set the mood.
Here's a full breakdown of the new additions and fixes:
Winemakers, hello again! Okay, some cool stuff. First thing's first -- a new patch. Biggest thing about this patch is the game now has difficulty options. You are given the chance to choose your difficulty when you start a new game. You get three modes: Easy, Normal and Challenging. Each mode will give you a different starting budget, and the chances that pests, rot and overexposure occur also differ from mode to mode. The modes will, however, affect your final score. Playing on Easy will apply a penalty to your final score, while playing on Challenging gives a boost to your final score (playing on Normal means your final score will be calculated in the regular way). Here's the patch notes:
Hey everyone,
I was testing the latest build earlier today just before Jenny uploaded it to Steamworks, and I was just amazed at how far the game has come. I was testing out the new major update, Chance & Circumstance, and as I watched the wooden chest animate and the two cards jump out, I felt just a slight pinch of pride -- pride in the continuous evolution of Terroir, and thanks in no small part to you, our Players.
The Chance & Circumstance feature is the game's mission system. I guess you could compare it to Monopoly's Chance and Community Chest (and I'd be lying if I didn't say we were inspired by it), but replace the latter with missions. These missions can lead to some pretty great rewards if accomplished within the deadline, or significant penalties if you fail them. The Chance card, on the other hand, simply spawns a random instant event with either a positive or negative outcomes.
We're really excited to hear what you think. We'll be introducing more missions in the future, and we're even thinking of opening up a call for entries for missions in our discussion boards - we'd love to include maybe two or three player-made missions in the game.
Here's a full list of features and changes that come with this new update:
Hey winemakers, So good to be back -- such an awesome sight to see our player base growing every day and our discussion boards humming with activity. Well, after a week of reacquainting ourselves with the Chance & Circumstance mission system, we're glad to announce we've finished it! As Jenny and I are are pretty much the only ones actively testing the new build, we felt we need more testers to try it out across all the platforms. Usually, we'd turn to our Reddit community for testers, by we'd rather go straight to our gamers this time around. So, if you're interested in testing the Beta build with the C&C feature, by all means, please do. Activating it is simple: go to your Steam Library, right-click on "Terroir" in your games list, click on Properties, then proceed to the "Betas" tab. Select "openbetas" in the drop-down menu, and you're all set! I'm starting a new sticky thread in the discussion boards for any comments on crashes, bugs and other stuff. We hope you enjoy the new mission system - it was a lot of fun designing the missions. And do note that with the system in place, we'll be introducing more missions and random events in the future! Many thanks and happy gaming, MARK
Hi winemakers!
Great news: version 1.07 is here and it brings lots of small but nice new features. Least among them is Steam Achievements -- finally, some extra challenge to your virtual winemaking career. We've also done quite a few improvements for performance, and *drum roll* are now releasing the Linux build!
We've also added a new wine distributor: Kruppe Foods. This new distributor is more like a bulk buyer, and was a suggestion from our awesome community of gamers.
Made a bad batch of wine? Don't clog your other distributors with bottles that they'll struggle to sell -- just sell it to Kruppe, who will buy it at a reduced rate of 15% of your wine's Retail Price.
Here's a complete list of tweaks, changes and additions (many of which are suggestions straight out of our discussion boards):
Hello everyone,
In this new update, we see yet another new building.
The Caste Ruins building is the latest addition, and is meant to be a support building for your Tavern(s). Any Tavern that is adjacent to Castle Ruins has its bottle purchase limit increased to 1,000 from 600. This bonus doesn't stack, so a Tavern adjacent to two Castle Ruins will still have a bottle limit of 1,000. A player can only have 2 Castle Ruins.
This update also has a few other changes, the most important of which is the way wine price is calculated. Previously, this was how a wine's price was calculated (after it's initial retail price was determined after a wine review):
Final Price = Retail Price + [Retail Price * (.20 * Distributor Relations)]
This means that at maximum distributor relations, the final wine price could be double the actual retail price. We've had to adjust this to:
Final Price = Retail Price + [Retail Price * (.05 * Distributor Relations)]
This now means that the maximum price for a wine with a distributor will be considerably reduced. With Manhattan, it will still be a considerable discount. But to truly maximize a wine's price, you'd have to take it to the Tavern.
Here's the rest of the updates:
Hi everyone,
Every time we roll out a new update, it's always exciting to see how the players will react. We spend every day working on new features, new tweaks and new content, and we only release the ones we personally love.
In version 1.05, the Tavern building has finally arrived. It's an alternative means of earning money -- you can sell your wine directly to Tavern customers, which are priced higher than selling to the larger distributors, but the maximum quantity one can sell to a single Tavern is much lower. Well, then just build more Taverns! Oh, and they also generate Renown if you sell high quality wine - something I'm sure many of you will be happy about.
We've also introduced a start screen, which has been a long time coming. Aside from that, there are also several significant additions and changes.
Here they are:
Dear Winemakers, We are excited to share our latest and largest update so far -- one that includes new features and changes that were requested by you, our incredible gamers.
Hey everyone!
While we continue to fine tune the balance of the game, we also thought of giving you the means to customize your wine estate. So we're rolling out the "Ambient Items" feature, which allows you to buy decorative objects to personalize your estate -- you work hard to keep your company afloat, so it's just right that it at least looks the way you want it to. Two of the objects, the Wind Turbine and Lake Lighthouse, even give you instant Renown, but come at a pretty hefty cost.
Please use the Z and X keys to rotate. You may pick up a placed object by clicking on it. You can sell it by clicking on it and pressing the Right Mouse Button.
We've also introduced a few changes:
Hi everyone, Six updates in ten days -- the game is evolving at a head-spinning pace, and we like it that way. We like to think the game gets incrementally better with each new version. In this new update, we're responding to player feedback by easing the difficulty of the game quite a bit. We're getting a few reports about the unmanageable onslaught of Fungal Rot, so we're introducing a few adjustments that should make managing your vineyard a bit more forgiving. Here are the patch notes:
Hi everyone, After an entire week spent on trying to figure out a major bug that caused the wine distributors to get stuck, we figured it would just be easier to re-write the whole thing. So we re-wrote the code, tested it, and so far, the bug hasn't re-appeared... so far. Aside from that, we also made a few more fixes and a few changes here and there. Here are the patch notes:
Hi everyone, In light of some new bugs that popped up with the last patch, we've managed to fix a few more issues:
Our dear winemakers, We know you've been waiting for this, so we finished it up as soon as we could. Here are the patch notes: BUG FIXES
Dear Terroir Players, I'm Mark, one of the members of the team working on Terroir. It's been an incredibly busy week leading up to the launch day, but we made it, and in just under 24 hours, we've already got a great community of Terroir Players. I'd like to tell you what to expect in the coming weeks, but first just a short message on behalf of General Interactive Co: Thank you. All of you. You took a chance on Terroir, and are very understanding of the works-in-progress in many of the game's mechanics and features. Your support means we get to continue making this game better. We've got massive plans for Terroir (oh, if you only knew...), and it's your incredible feedback and patronage that will make it possible. So, with that out of the way, and while we're on the topic of plans, we'd like to share with you a roadmap for Terroir in the coming months. First, let's talk about some immediate fixes and additions you can expect in the next week or so:
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