After releasing our biggest content update yet, we've had a few priority fixes and improvements we wanted to get out before we get started on our next adventures.

Improvements

• Added post-game progress summary screen on game over
• Request reward and upgrade cost balanced for early game progression
• Balanced satisfaction excess event spawn rate
• Capped food modifier to 5

Bugfixes

• Fix for a loading crash when migrating from some older save files. If your game was getting stuck on the opening logo screen, you should be able to play again now.
• Fix for a game crash when placing buildings at certain orientations at the edge of the map.
• Prevent events from displaying on game over newspaper.

We want to send out our special thanks to Steam users Nuklearriese and Knox, who kindly alerted us to a migration crash, and the building placement issue - they were instrumental in tracking down the culprits! As always, please let us know if you encounter any further issues and we'll get to fixing it as soon as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2023-08-19 02:28:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

[previewyoutube=L_dUBijjNOM;full][/previewyoutube]

Hail Traveller!

Guild Co. has notified us of some changes you might notice around town. With major content updates and mechanical improvements from player feedback, there's just too much to mention it all, but we'll be giving it a go below!

Major Content Updates

Over 100 New Events

Fresh off the press, the town paper has been working hard to find us the hottest scoops! With over 100 new articles, you'll encounter all manner of monsters, magical food reviews, and that loveable scoundrel, Gorath. To catch you up on a few recent events:

• The travelling merchant business has been booming, and everyone from fortune tellers to genies have been getting in on the action, offering their mystical services... for the right price.
• Our scouts have heard reports of new enemy camps appearing on the outskirts of town. Necromantic nerds, helpful hiveminds, and viking houseparties are right at our doorstep.
• The guilds have started getting creative with their requests for favours. Test out their matter manipulators, prepare feasts, and harness chaos to get your hands on some nifty upgrades.
• Our editors have brought out the red marker, and we've done complete rewrites of all our old events with updated styling and magically enhanced humour.

New Questing Locations

You may notice a few new additions to the world, with new world questing locations having popped up across the map as new events may take you out to sea, off into the forests beyond or even deep below the mountains!

Tutorials and Accessibility

Field Guide

To help new or returning players get to running their best towns, we've included a quick start guide of most of the important mechanics in a new book tab.

Upgrade Tutorials

Improved introduction to upgrades and requests at the beginning of new games.

Colorblind toggle

We've added a toggle in the settings for red/green colourblind players. If you're colourblind and/or otherwise visually impaired, we would love to hear your feedback on how to make this as accessible as possible moving forward.

Adjacency Bonus Cheat Sheet

You can now quickly remind yourself of your unlocked adjacency bonus in the book, plus, if you do the Diviners a few favours, they might be willing to give you a new upgrade that highlights the grid for positions that will give adjacency bonuses.

More Stuff!

• Major systems re-balancing, including adventurer spawn rate, wealth generation, event chances, and building cost scale
• Updated quest system, with both the adventurers and duration sliders now affecting the scaled cost
• Improved Card List in the reports page of the book to order cards by playable/ unlocked status
• Improved Notifications system, with more reminders and better visibility on the progress of your guild requests
• Included stat icons across the newspaper and tooltips
• A fancy new effect for the town stability bar
• 4k resolution support for our interface
• Added some new and tantalising achievements
• Various improvements, bug fixes, and wording updates from our fantastic community members over on our discord. Thanks to everyone who has been reaching out!

This update has been quite the beast for us, and having finally slain it, the team rather eager to have it sliced, sauted and served to upon our finest of platters as what we felt was a much needed second helping of our quirky, card-based fantasy satire. Originally this update was just a little optimisation work and some QoL improvements, but it snowballed through the year into a chaotic detour into the "major content update" territory. To celebrate the milestone, we've gone ahead and put the game on its deepest discount yet for the next week, so be sure to pick it up during that week-long deal! As we always say, thank you so much for your patience and support! Please let us know if you encounter any issues and we'll get to fixing it as soon as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2023-06-18 22:01:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

All done with a huge week down in Melbourne for PAX Aus, forcing our hand in getting a new patch out and into the world! This patch update adds a number of QoL features and a bunch of great bugs:

Improvements

• Added save reset button to options menu We needed this one BADLY for running the PAX demo.
• Added new adventurers display in the newspaper each turn
• Added stat bump animation each turn
• Fixed up UI and tooltips to keep better track of adventurers

Bugfixes

• Adventurers actually come back from quests now So this pretty massive issue may have been present since the game was released, but here we are quietly patching it now (don't worry, PAX gave the fix a pretty good workout last week).
• Fixed up building descriptions
• Green dots on upgrades tree set correctly
• Fixed tooltip info for base stat upgrades (i.e. food/housing/spending say +5 instead of +1) A special thank you to Illdiaze for noticing that one!
• Cursor doesnt remain invisible when switching to mouse from controller

NEW ADVENTURERS

RESET SAVES

Getting to meet a whole lot of old and new players face-to-face was incredibly energising and we're keen to get a lot more changes out over the coming months, starting with actioning the feedback we got from PAX. Stay tuned because we'll be doing another hot content injection soon along with some more features to match! As we always say, thank you so much for your patience and support! Please let us know if you encounter any issues and we'll get to fixing it as soon as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-10-11 13:07:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

So as it turns out, FTRM was nominated for The Australian Game Developer Awards' Excellence in Emerging Games category this year (yes, that feels super cool and weird to type out). If you're at the event, please come grab us and give us a good shake to bring us back down to reality, but if you're comfy at home, please tune in and show your support for all these amazing Australian games and developers (plus we're also a little nervous about how weirdly legit this feels and could use a good 'attaboy or equivalent show of encouragement). You can watch the awards online here: https://www.twitch.tv/igea_au And definitely go check out the other finalists here: https://agdas.com.au/2022-finalists-announced/ Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-09-30 12:11:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

After a disappointing cancellation in 2021, PAXAUS returns this year along with, for the first time, exclusively, Fantasy Town Regional Manager... IN-PERSON! If you're at PAX that weekend, make sure to swing by and check out our booth in the Indie Rising section and play the game. The devs will also be there to chat about the game, dev, art, open-source, D&D... life and stuff? PAXAUS will also be featuring an online stream with content about or from indie devs in some nondescript manner that will presumably be revealed to us at a later stage? We may or may not also be running a secret competition to tell us about something dumb that happened in your TTRPG campaigns to put in the game in exchange for trinkets and game keys, but we'll see. Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-09-30 12:03:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

For all our fellow game devs, the Caps Collective team will be headed to GCAP22 in Melbourne! Whether you're a student, looking for a fun side-project, or interested in open-source dev, come chat with us about what we do and how you can involved with the team on our upcoming projects. If you want to book a meeting, just go ahead and book a meeting with us in the conference application and we'll sort something out. Otherwise we're around all week until PAX and we'll be going to as many MIGW events as we can fit in! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-09-30 11:56:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Aaaand... we're back! What have we been up to lately? Aside from a lot of boring internal upgrades and bug fixes, we bring controller support, a new in-game stats page, and Steam trading cards! We've added a few other things along with a whole bunch of bug fixes, optimisation and QoL improvements so let's get into it:

Features

• Full controller support: check the settings page of the menu for a list of control bindings
• Stats and secrets page tracker: find them in the reports page of the logbook for an in-game view of your progress and achievements
• Steam trading cards and community items: check out all the cool badges, emotes, and profile backgrounds we've cooked for them
• Additional tutorials: we've added two brand new sections to better explain quests and building unlocks/upgrades for new and returning players
• New achievements: we've added two new achievements for our favourite easter eggs in the game

Improvements & Bugfixes

• Massive engine upgrade to Unity 2021.3 alongside a switch to its Universal Render Pipeline Performance should increase across the board, but will be specifically noticeable on low-end devices
• Updated the design of fishing spots to give them a cartoony look that's more visible through the seasons
• Quests are now focused on the turn they initially spawn after closing the day's newspaper
• Added SSAO options to the settings menu
• Added keyboard controls to settings menu
• Upgraded adventurer rendering settings
• Fixed hard-lock issue on tutorial completion for some devices
• Fixed structure outline flickering on certain devices

SUPER AWESOME BUBBLES

Controller support has been on our radar for some time (and was even partially implemented in our last release), but it ended up taking a lot more energy and planning than once thought. We originally designed the game to be playable with mouse only, and while it was simple - the mouse gives you a lot of flexibility and assurances that a controller just didn't have. It's taken a good few months to truly kick v2.1 out the door, but I can't stress this enough here: the engine/render pipeline upgrade was a huge effort and we are very proud of getting through that one with minimal disruption (although as you can tell we're already on patch #3 with all the little issues we've been fixing since initial release candidate). Thank you to everyone who's given the game a play-test this past month - we'd have nothing but a buggy mess right now without them. As always, with deep sincerity, we want to thank everyone so much for their patience. If there's ever a question you have or a bug you run into we'd be hugely appreciative if you could send it our way so we can have it fixed up ASAP. Feel free to join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly; we're keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-07-17 11:12:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

New year, new patch update! This patch update resolves some minor bugs, improves some visuals, and addresses some QoL issues:

Bugfixes

• Camera control not framerate independant for keyboard and controller input

Improvements

• Made birds fly at varying heights
• Added preparatory changes to outlines for upcoming updates
• Performed MASSIVE refactor to codebase structure and file content This is in preparation for upcoming updates that we're keen to start working on.

As always, thanks everyone so much for your patience and if you see something, say something. We'll get to fixing it as so as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2022-01-03 11:22:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

In our latest instalment of patch update season, we bring you yet more bug fixes and a few little updates to sound effects and audio issues. This patch update resolves a number of bugs and addresses some balance and QoL issues:

Bugfixes

• Quit to menu button blocking raycasts across book This would stop players from being able to interact with brawler unlocks while in-game.
• Ambience volume being too high during credits/mistimed
• Closing and reopening quest menu with different buttons causes soft lock
• Updated credits with new asset info
• Regenerated event and quest content for data sanity
• Cleaned map data for sanity

Improvements

• Added page turn & book open sound effects
• Updated dog bark sound effect
• Added the event with the little guy

We are now very seriously looking at content and feature updates again - just a few more minor bugs to go! As always, thanks everyone so much for your patience and if you see something, say something. We'll get to fixing it as so as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2021-11-21 10:27:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Part two of yesterday's patch as promised! This one brings with it fixes to a couple more of those critical (but non-game-breaking) bugs we've seen. This patch update resolves a number of bugs and addresses some balance and QoL issues:

Bugfixes

• No adjacency bonus for bathhouses
• Missing adjacency bonuses It was only being triggered on placement of a bonus building.
• Roads generating and adventurers questing across lake We needed to fix the way we exclude vertices from the pathable area.
• Buttons across UI having slightly different design and interaction
• Book tabs not playing click sounds
• Unpluralised guild request events
• Fixed typos across articles and quests

Improvements

• Added indicator for affordable upgrades This will probably get a fix to look nicer, but we wanted to make it clearer which ones you could afford.
• Rebalanced levelling costs for guild affinity upgrades

ROADS AND ADVENTURERS PATHING NICELY

For now that seems to be the lot of major issues we have reports for, so we can finally start to turn our attention to adding more content and features in again!! As always, thanks everyone so much for your patience and if you see something, say something. We'll get to fixing it as so as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2021-11-11 13:54:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Almost a week in and we have another hit of bug fixes coming through. This is part one of two, which we'll hopefully have out in the next day but this one covers some input-related issues we've seen. This patch update resolves a number of bugs and addresses some balance and QoL issues:

Bugfixes

• Wandering adventurers take a while to spawn
• Wandering adventurers fly in from the sky This one was an in-house favourite that we never fixed because it was rare and funny, but sadly it had to go. It will be forever immortalised in the gif below the patch notes.
• Wandering adventurers do not go on dock quests
• Controller input has no deadzone This one would cause plugged in controllers with stick-drift to block mouse input.
• Spamming buttons between turns would cause game state to freak out
• A more robust solution has been implemented for pluralisation across most of the game's UI
• Fixed typos and missing copy across articles and quests

Improvements

• Reversed order of wealth display in newspaper choices It used to be /, which was added due to a momentary lapse in reasoning.
• Rebalanced the cost of rats to make them more affordable through the entire game

AN ADVENTURING PARTY DESCENDS FROM THE HEAVENS!

Once again, thanks everyone so much for your patience and if you see something, say something. We'll get to fixing it as so as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2021-11-10 12:14:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Ok, so we've been live for two days and here's our first update for all the little bugs and usability issues flagged by our amazing community so far! This patch update resolves a number of bugs and addresses a few QoL issues:

Bugfixes

• Bakery UVs on door being roof colour
• Broken state from guild hall destroyed during active quest with no other buildings This one (while a real edge case) was a bit nasty because it would mess up your save file so if you're a victim of this one you may have to reset your save file.
• Guild hall being destructible during tutorial Big oversight, because you'd have to start the tutorial again, but with no way to ensure you'd be able to progress - also if you did this, you'll may have to reset your save file.
• Guild hall destruction not playing sound
• Terrain regeneration on end-game causing loud "pop" Basically EVERY tree playing its pop sound at once can be deafening.
• Click playing during loading screen
• "librarys" not pluralised correctly in guild requests
• Controller input fighting with keyboard People with a controller device plugged in may have found they had sluggish mouse or keyboard controls.
• Book canvas disabled on start
• Broken game state from multiple input sources
• Diviner request events missing copy

Improvements

• Escape key now deselects selected buildings and cards
• Some updates ahead of controller support for UI navigation

Again, thanks everyone so much for your patience and we're so fortunate to have players that take the time to report bugs and give us feedback. If you see something, say something, and we'll get to fixing it as so as we can, so join us on Discord where you can chat with us directly! Keen to hear any of your feedback! Cheers, The Caps Collective Team

[ 2021-11-07 15:52:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're only a few weeks away from release, so hear from the developers in the last days of polish and writing.

[ 2021-10-21 11:42:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

With the days counting down to release and a pinboard full of uncharted, free-wheeling ideas, we've reached that sad part of development where we finally have to tell each other "no" more often than we can say "yes, and..." That being said, during these last few months we've packed in so many new features that even our team has trouble keeping up with them all (looking at you Olly)! So before I deliver any more exposition...

We come bearing GIFs!

Requests

One theme we felt we didn't really nail down as much as we truly wanted to for the Steam Next Fest Demo back in August was juggling the five adventuring guilds (brawlers, outriders, performers, diviners and arcanists). They all want different things and their interactions should feel like the constant competition and bickering of the classic D&D party: The wizard, who frowns upon the brutish warrior, wants more books that are decried as heresy by the holy man, who's pious pomp is ridiculed by the bard, whom the ranger thinks is just "a bit too much sometimes". This is where "requests" come in. The guilds will ask you to complete various tasks in exchange for their favour later down the road.

Adjacency Bonuses

Early on in development we were got plenty of feedback about wanting building placement to matter more. The reason why this wasn't pursued earlier was that we didn't want the player to feel creatively constrained by chasing some optimal min/max. It turns solution is actually quite simple if you have several months to argue about it; allow the player to tailor their experience to their own preferred play style. How that works exactly is the topic of our next exhibit.

Perks System

The idea was to always have some kind of meta progression (it is a roguelite after all), but we didn't really imagine a skill tree originally. This is where it all comes together. You can build up your own preferred style of play by cashing in on your favours with each guild to get perks that persist between playthroughs. It's been great for pushing us to explore new ways to play and trial some of the more experimental ideas we've had along the way for bonuses.

Pretty Lights!

Yup, we've made it prettier! That's the feature. But like goddamn does it look pretty! Olly, how did we do that? Probably something really cool and technical-sounding like "s h a d e r s".
We still have a bunch of new features waiting in the wings for our next post, so be sure to stay on the lookout for updates. With our charming yet deceptively complex town builder finally coming to maturity, we're absolutely psyched to get the final game into the hands of players very soon! Until then you can follow more regular updates on our Twitter (@Caps_Collective) and chat to us directly on our Discord here.

[ 2021-09-26 23:35:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

We've released a fix to our demo that was preventing loading for operating systems with certain languages. If you had a very bare town last time you played (or it didn't work at all) you might see something new! Thanks for the patience while we've been fixing this!

[ 2021-06-21 13:24:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Come join us play a bit of FTRM, a turn-based city builder about managing the chaos that comes from running a town for adventurers. We'll be having a developer commentary, and answering any questions you send our way!

[ 2021-06-21 10:37:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Come join us play a bit of FTRM, a turn-based city builder about managing the chaos that comes from running a town for adventurers. We'll be having a developer commentary, and answering any questions you send our way!

[ 2021-06-19 01:28:22 CET ] [ Original post ]