Hi everyone! It's been a while. But before we start happy pride! As you can probably tell from the fact that this update, which was planned for Q1 of this year, was released in June things got delayed. So unfortunately we will have to reshape our plans for the future updates and the full release of the game. But I'll give more details about that in a separate post soon. For now, let's focus on this update! But before we start there is one more thing. DevLife is available for -50% off during the Steam Summer Sale 2022! There's never been a better time to get your hands on the game than now!
The most important feature added in this update is pets! You can now own 4 different types of animals each with its own unique Interactive Events that will tell stories of their shenanigans. You can own a dog, cat, fish, parrot, or all of them at the same time! We also introduced a new trait for your characters - Animals Lover - that will drastically increase your chance of getting a pet. So definitely add it to your characters if you want to see as many of them as possible!
Additionally, we implemented a new tooltips system that allows for nesting and provides much more flexibility for us, so expect a lot of improvements and new data in them in the coming updates. Under the hood, we optimized a lot of things that should make the game run a bit smoother and have fewer hiccups during opening/closing windows. There are still things to improve and they will roll up in the next planned smaller update with Interactive Events about diseases.
Of course, we also fixed a lot of bugs and made some improvements to the game balance and you can find the full changelog below. If you find any new problems or have suggestions about the game, you can leave them at our Discord server or on mestoegames.com/bugsreport ;)

Changelog:

New Features:

• Added pets
• Added Interactive Events related to pets
• Added new furniture and variants for existing ones
• Added new tooltip system
• Added UI scaling option
• Added an option to continue gameplay after the natural death of the player character
• Added a game time date to the save slot description in the Main Menu
• Message about unlocking new furniture now shows all unlocked variants separated by furniture category

Mechanic Changes:

• From now on, own projects will give 20 times more experience than commissions when working on their components
• From now on, working on higher-level components will provide more experience points for the characters
• From now on, selling a piece of furniture won't set back the progress of the company goal to buy them
• The "Company Not Profitable" mood modifier is now checked quarterly (previously every 2 months)

Game Balance:

• Increased the amount of experience gained for characters when working on components
• Rebalanced furniture prices and mood modifiers, as well as the timing of unlocking them
• Reduced thresholds required for some achievements
• From now on, the death of a player character in a car accident will be treated as winning the game and will unlock the DevLife achievement
• Increased the chance for bigger project success depending on the component distance from the skill tree root
• Decreased the time of blocking the possibility to renegotiate employee salary to 1 month (previously 2 months)
• Doubled the removal speed of the "Company in Debts" employee mood modifier after getting out of debt

Corrections:

• Optimized game-saving process
• Optimized game loading process
• Optimized capturing screenshots
• Optimized outline of furniture in build mode
• Optimized memory usage of audio files
• From now on, sales graphs of own projects will refresh only when the game time is not paused.
• Moved permanent notifications related to employees to their workstation trackers
• Improved sorting of projects in the panel on the right side of the screen (projects in distribution will appear at the bottom of the list)
• From now on, search filters for available components/skills won't reset after closing the search window
• Improved order of furniture in build mode
• Changed the way of switching character stats in tooltips and panels
• Blocked the ability to activate Interactive Events when going to the Main Menu.
• Blocked the ability to add mutually exclusive traits in some Interactive Events
• Added hover highlight for reward buttons in messages for achieving company goals
• Fixed the formatting of the list of components in commission summaries
• Improved UI animations in the Build Mode
• Improved selectors animations in the Character Creator
• Fixed animations of some UI elements that were dependent on the time scaling
• Improved display of dropdowns in Settings
• Added window scrolling in Settings
• Added dropdown for changing language (instead of the horizontal selector)
• Added missing Polish translations
• Corrected some Polish translations
• Added achievement icons in higher resolution

Bugs Fixes:

• Fixed the game not starting on MAC computers with Apple silicon
• Fixed bugs with loading ongoing skill learnings
• Fixed the ability to buy not unlocked furniture after loading the game with an earlier date
• Fixed not refreshing character avatars in the project and search panels after changing their appearance
• Fixed not counting automatically completed commissions towards company goals
• Fixed the incorrect counting of profitable and unprofitable own projects
• Fixed the incorrect display of a component's unlock status after creating a learning project with it
• Fixed the possibility of the Interactive Event window not appearing due to rechecking random conditions
• Fixed a bug that corrupted the game save when an employee assigned to the Interactive Event could not be found
• Fixed not adding/subtracting money/fans in some Interactive Events
• Fixed not canceling the "Company in Debts" Interactive Event when the company balance was increased by taking a loan
• Fixed a bug that allowed the same random Interactive Event to be activated multiple times when it should have been blocked after the previous activation
• Fixed not blocking some Interactive Events from reappearing too soon
• Fixed a bug that allowed employees to be continuously sick with COVID-19
• Fixed not blocking employee interactions when they were taken to the hospital due to COVID-19
• Fixed a bug that made it possible to pay the ransom twice in the Interactive Event "Hacker"
• Fixed taking money from the personal account instead of the company's account in the Interactive Event "Terrorist Attack"
• Fixed the display of a wrong employee in the "Employee Mood Improvement" Interactive Event
• Fixed the display of a wrong employee in the "Employee Mood Improvement" Interactive Event
• Fixed the mood modifier being added to the player character instead of the employee in the Interactive Event with salary reduction
• Fixed the display of the wrong price for photovoltaics in the Interactive Event text (the cost itself was correct)
• Fixed a bug with not automatically deleting expired fan commission messages
• Fixed the empty message about the lack of found commissions
• Fixed the text message not showing after the end of the search for employees that resulted in no employees being found
• Fixed bugs related to marking the currently open message
• Fixed the appearance of the company goals panel after loading the game when the player didn't own a company
• Fixed the inability to send an employee on vacation while they were working from their workstation tracker
• Fixed the lack of interactivity of the text tutorial after entering Skill Trees
• Fixed a bug with loading automatic settings on the first game startup
• Fixed the incorrect display of employee energy bar in their panels
• Fixed the display of expired orders in the Commissions Manager when the Show All option was unchecked
• Fixed bugs with the incorrect assignment of groups to selectable buttons in component/skill search filters
• Fixed the lack of symmetry in one of the car models (this caused clipping of one of the wheels)
• Fixed bugs in the car animations (wrong position of the wheels, staying after changing the location)
• Fixed the lack of tooltips in the skill stats
• Fixed the slower regeneration of employees' energy during vacation than while resting
• Fixed the wrong price of the "White Worktop with Two Lockers and Sink" after selecting its variant
• Fixed the lack of time panel after creating a new game after returning to Main Menu
• Fixed a possibility for the summary text of the own project to stick out of the creator window (added the possibility to scroll the window)