Ahoy, Mayors! Our beta update today features some brand-new amenities that we hope you'll soak up the sun with. Also, performance improvements.
Here are the patch notes:

Version 0.0.57.2 ALPHA

Features



• Added new waterfront amenities: Beach, Marina and Waterfront Amusement Park.
• Neighborhood Affinity: People now prefer to work, shop, and visit friends close to home rather than across the map. When a person wants to engage in an activity, the Route Broker searches for a destination in a spiral pattern. CBrokerSearchDistance determines the maximum search distance.
• Very Hard difficulty now works. Money, density, crime, and pollution are harder, people can move out of the city and business can close in Very Hard difficulty.
• The Building Selection Panel now shows the minimum value and density for the design.
• The Modpack Menu now shows preview images.

  Improvements

  
  
• The performance of terrain rendering has improved. This will speed up load times and speed up the game in large cities when unpaused.
• The newspaper now won't publish the same article day after day.
• Density is now easier and less car-dependent.
• Easy difficulty now has easier density, amenities are cheaper, and eminent domain is very cheap.

  Bug fixes

  
  
• Fixed a bug where statues wouldn't render.
• Fixed a crash when opening the modpack menu.
• Fixed a bug where modpack and workshop designs would not show the preview panel in the load menu.
• Fixed a bug where the image in the preview panel would not update when saving a design.
• Fixed a bug where music didn't play.
• Farms no longer glow at night.

We plan to have these new waterfront amenities implemented in the official release once 0.57 arrives in the official release branch. Remember to check out this update via the Betas tab. Right-click NewCity in your Steam Library and select Properties. Click the dropdown under the Betas tab and choose the "test - Testing branch". You can opt-out by choosing "NONE - Opt-out of all beta programs" instead. Going from one to the other will trigger an update as Steam fetches you the desired branch. We really appreciate all the feedback and bug reports here on Steam and Discord! Please keep posting your thoughts and touching base with us. Please follow us on Twitter for more upcoming announcements. Surf's up, Lone Pine Games