Hello Elders! Time indeed does really fly when you are having fun (or you are too old)! DotAGE celebrates its first birthday on the 4th of October, one year from the Steam release! Happy birthday dotAGE! To celebrate this important milestone (and the fact that my leg is finally working fine), and to thank you for your support for this year, a new update is now live! I'm pushing this a couple of days earlier as it has a (very small) in-game celebration, which you can see if you play on the 4th of October!
Now, let's take a look at what this update has to offer!

A new VIP is in town!

The Merchant joins the cast of Very Special Pips that can interact with the village, with three new fun events tied to his appearance! The Merchant comes from somewhere far, and always brings some interesting trades to the village, it's a good way to get some extra resources, and even resources you cannot produce in your current village! If he's content with what you do, he might even want to join the village!

A life of quality!

As anticipated in the last experimental news, several new QoL options are now in the game, some of which have been requested for a while! I'm happy to have finally added them to the game too! Here are some highlights:

• Advanced Building Mode option: place the Bivouac anywhere, build even if requirements are not met yet, and place building blueprints outside of the village
• Upgrade with right click
• Replant All Plants & Repair All Buildings buttons
• Icons to show what research section (i.e. tab) you are currently using, and whether you have completed it
• Improved Pip-Picking function
• Improved Controller support
• Many new hotkeys to speed things up, like building selection and popup opening/closing
• Copy Building & Copy Action keys for quicker handling of larger villages
• Copper Bar does not look anymore like bacon when you are hungry
• More information in the Agepedia
• Although the game already runs quite well, in this version a lot of work went into optimizing the game for low-end devices as a direct consequence of working on a certain small console, so you will find it a lot snappier, especially with large villages and many Pips!

Check the complete changelog below for more!

New localizations!

Thanks to the help of some super fans, the game now has Russian localization! In addition, the game now can be played in Japanese, thanks to the work of Masaru Funahashi! Last but not least, the game is now fully playable in Spanish thanks to the help of a great group of fans! We will do a few tweaks to the localizations, but you can try them out and they should work fine for the most part, as always, let us know if you have any feedback about the localization in this thread here. And now, for the big reveal...

The game is coming to the Nintendo Switch!!!

A dream come true! While working on the Steam version these last months, I also on the side worked on a Switch version, and we (me and my friend Nintendo) just announced that it will be live on the 24th of October! Now you can play dotAGE from the comfort of your bed or sofa, making it even harder to put it down (sorry about that)! Check out the game's eShop page here! Now then, let's go get a real cake to celebrate! And you, you have fun while I eat that! - Michele

Complete Changelog

V 1.4.0 Content

• Added new Memory: The Merchant, with a new VIP and three new events!
• Added a special celebration mode if you play the game on its birthday, on the 4th of October!
• Added Japanese localization
• Added Russian localization
• Added Spanish localization

Balance: General

• Pavements are now built first thing when placing a combo pavement & building
• Upgrade: You can now Upgrade buildings directly skipping tiers in-between

Balance: Events

• Mini-events can now appear post-Apocalypse
• Flower Lover: Max level from 4 to 5
• Personal Garden: Max level from 4 to 5
• Wild Expansion: Tiles reduced from T*1 to 1
• Territorial Expansion: Tiles reduced from T*2 to T*0.5
• Wild Critters: Tiles for Hares reduced from T*2 to T*0.5
• All otheer animal spawn events: Tiles reduced from T*1 to T*0.5
• Invasive Carrots: Now a Nature event instead of a Heat event
• Bird / FIsh / Beast Migration: Max level from 2 to 4, value from 1 to T*1

QoL

• Advanced: Added new "Allow Building Everywhere" option in the settings. This allows placing the Bivoauc anywhere, building even if requirements are not met yet, and placing building blueprints outside of the village.
• Upgrade: After an Upgrade, buildings will mantain their active/inactive status (i.e. springs won't be turned off)
• Upgrade: Workers will now keep being assigned to upgraded buildings
• Upgrade: You can now Upgrade a building by right clicking on it
• Global action: Replant All Plants
• Global action: Repair All Buildings
• Research: Added icon that shows whether we researched everything in that tab
• Research: Added icon that shows in which tab you are currently researching something
• Controls: Pip-Select (Shift) now requires a left click instead of a right click, and you can no longer click on buildigns while performing it
• Controls: Pip-Force (Ctrl) to pick patients will now allow picking only Pips that are assigned to simple actions, to avoid confusion
• Controls: Pip-Pick (Alt) revised to use the same UX of Pip-Select, thus making Pip picking easier to perform
• Controls: When performing Pip-picking, Pips will move so to avoid being grouped together
• Controls: You can now press Escape to abort Pip-picking
• Controls: You can now zoom during the pass-turn time
• Controls: Spacebar will now trigger the event roll
• Hotkeys: Added hotkey to open Agepedia
• Hotkeys: Added hotkey to open Village Recap
• Hotkeys: You can now use TAB to cycle tabs (changed default binding)
• Hotkeys: Pressing a hotkey again will now close the corresponding menu, if open
• Hotkeys: Added hotkeys to select building type (1,2,3,etc), and building subtype instead if the menu is already open
• Hotkeys: Added hotkeys to navigate tabs (1,2,3,etc). Works for research tabs, prophecy pages, and Agepedia tabs.
• Hotkeys: Added new hotkey to copy a building blueprint
• Hotkeys: Added new hotkey to select an action as "contextual", allowing it to be copied on other buildings
• Choices: Added a button to go back to the village during a Choice event to view the village's status
• Accessibility: Added grid options to show the underlying grid on the map, with two values for thickness
• UI: When building a pavement alongside a building, the build action will show that on hover
• UI: Building stages left on buildings now better reflect the current amount of turns
• UI: Set in-game UI size to roughly 80% of the older size
• UI: Memories screen now shows icons when you have something to unlock out of screen
• UI: Agepedia access is now the last button among building side actions
• UI: Agepedia back button moved above
• UI: Improved resource UI spacing
• UI: improved feedback when buildings produce on pass turn
• UI: Redrawn the Copper Bar so it looks less like bacon when players are hungry
• UI: Creatures and Building Variations now tell how they work when you unlock them to avoid confusion for new players
• Hints: Added a "hint" small icons when right clicking will send you to hints
• Hints: Added new hint to explain advanced Pip controls
• Hints: Improved visual clarity of various hints
• Hints: Unavailable hints are now hidden
• Hints: Overpipulation hint and UI now appear 5 Pips before you reach the threshold
• Localization: Improved non-English language font rendering
• Settings: Reordered settings
• Controller: Improved animation when opening radial building menu
• Controller: Improved following cursor when moving on the grid
• Controller: Camera movement is 2x as fast
• Controller: Miscellaneous minor improvements to streamline the experience
• Agepedia: Ailments will now list the resources that can cure them
• Agepedia: Buildings now list how much Knowledge is needed to research them
• Agepedia: Added new tooltips to several Agepedia items
• Agepedia: Added button to toggle showing descriptions in Agepedia
• Agepedia: Added scrollbar to Agepedia description
• Agepedia: Agepedia now lists alternative buildings
• Agepedia: Herd buildings now list what food is eaten
• Agepedia: Ailments and Conditions now list what events can add them
• Agepedia: Buildings that can be upgraded now list what they can be upgraded into

System

• Huge performance improvements!
• Upgraded engine from 2022.3.15f to 2022.3.34f
• Huge optimization work (thanks Switch!)
• Moved all data to Addressables

Bugfixes

• Fixed BlueBerries being able to spawn where they would be abandoned
• Fixed profile reset not resetting hint unlocks
• Various fixes to Alt-pick aborting
• Fixed arrows on production not being shown anymore at pass turn
• Fixed color of WIP structure on load, and signposts not being shown
• Fixed output resources not being shown when using a controller on the first hovered tile after a building is selected for build
• Fixed some tooltips not appearing anymore
• Fixed roads disappearing on load or remaining on new game
• Fixed Escape button often opening the Pause menu when you just wanted to close a menu instead
• Fixed bug with trying to Pip-pick for a Cure action when only self-curing Pips are available
• Fixed trying to cure using Pip-force sometimes picking Pips that were already being cured elsewhere
• Fixed hovering on map still being available while performing Pip-only actions
• Fixed shift-clicking on Pips not being removed when you stop holding shift
• Fixed Tier 2 Hunters blocking after a few uses if they think they found a hare but haven't
• Fixed not being able to click on a hint after search if there is only one instance
• Fixed force-hold not working on Build actions
• Fixed research instances sometimes not appearing until clicking on them
• Fixed Magnanery giving back Seeds when dismantled
• Fixed duration of baloons during cutscene at default speeed being too fast
• Fixed skipping the animated score addition delaying too much the appearance of the highscores screen
• Fixed Ice House and Ice Maker wrongly showing that they produce water
• Fixed upgrades sometimes showing zero turns instead of one
• Fixed search input detecting inputs on other game items
• Fixed highscores showing experimental version scores
• Fixed research arrows sometimes being generated in wrong positions
• Fixed being able to build outside of the village borders if you first removed signposts
• Controller: Fixed UI sometimes getting stuck during tutorial
• Controller: Fixed game log UI not closing on each pass turn
• Controller: Fixed not being able to focus on different items in the prophecy
• Controller: Fixed bonuses not appearing when you hover the first time after selecting a building
• Various localization fixes
• Various minor UI scaling fixes
• Various UI consistency fixes