The Tenants News

Hello there, Landlords!

Happy Holidays to everyone! Today we're releasing this year's last update as we're reliving all the exciting stuff that happened since last December. We released The Tenants in Early Access back in March to an overwhelmingly warm reception from you, and since then, we've managed to follow it up with two major updates (the Tenancy Update and the Renovation Update) with a great deal of smaller patches sprinkled in between the major releases.

We've decided to spend some time on this special update to tie up 2021. Among a number of smaller fixes and polishing, there's also some jolly time-limited content to spice up your winter holidays. We're also putting The Tenants on a -30% sale, so if you haven't gotten yourself any gift yet, now's your chance!

[h2]Santa Is Back[/h2]

Just like we mentioned in the teaser, Santa is now back in town, and he needs help building a new Toy Factory to start delivering Christmas gifts on time. The job is a special one, as you and your design can also take part in a community event to compete with other landlords for prizes!

Santa's Helpers is a community contest organized to celebrate the winter holidays and the return of Santa! In order to participate in the event, all you have to do is play the game, complete the new Elite Contract at Arctic Circle 24/01 in the Slums, and take a few screenshots to submit your entry.

Example design by our long-standing community member, vritto.

To learn more about the winter community contest, go here: Santa's Helpers - Community Contest

[h2]Time For Some Music[/h2]


Winter holidays are all about spending time with people, and some of your tenants might be running a bit low on them! Chances are they'll come to you asking you to come to hang out, giving you a unique opportunity to play the new music mini-game built specifically for this update. Try to take them on in this battle of ears and see if you can have a flawless run yourself!

[h2]Photo Mode[/h2]


Since Wondersville is going through some changes this snowy season, we thought it'd be appropriate to get you some tools to properly capture the new scenery! The in-game phone got updated with a new Camera app that implements the long-awaited photo mode. Zoom in on your favorite, or the least favorite, tenant and take embarrassing pictures of them to show your friends and family!

And that's it for today! On behalf of everyone at Ancient Forge Studio, we'd like to wish you a fun-filled holiday season and best wishes for a happy New Year!

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Features[/h3]

• Added a new in-game phone app: Camera.

[h3]Content[/h3]

• Added a time-limited Elite Contract: Toy Factory.
  
• Added a time-limited tenant request: Wonderful Time.
  
• Added a time-limited tenant event: Singing Carols.
  
• Decorated the main menu and the district maps for the time-limited Winter event.
  
• Added two new loading screens.
  
• Added an item set designed by the Halloween community contest winner, @vritto.

[h3]General[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where overlapping furniture slotted on the shelves and similar spots wouldn't detect collisions between each other.
  
• Fixed an issue with furniture being placed outside apartment boundaries in some cases.
  
• Fixed an issue with calculating agent work days in a given time period.
  
• Fixed a host of issues related to sound effects.
  
• Fixed a few issues with item placement.
  
• Fixed an issue that occurred when changing the target room mid-negotiation with a tenant.
  
• Fixed an issue with job clients rating items from a different room.
  
• Fixed an issue with the rendering of corners pieces for exterior walls.
  
• Fixed an issue with tenants getting stuck on certain actions.
  
• Fixed an issue with the missing game mode tooltip in the main menu.

[h3]UI[/h3]

• Hidden the duration of the tutorial Pedro babysitting task.
  
• Fixed an issue with displaying nearby item connections after leaving renovation.

Thank you,
The Tenants Team

Hello there, Landlords!

What are everyone's plans for the winter holidays? If you're still on the fence or are perhaps looking for a game to spend your cozy evenings with, playing The Tenants might be just the right move! You might enjoy that the game is now 35% off starting today as part of the House Flipper Franchise Sale. If you've been looking for an opportunity to snatch a cheap copy, this is your chance! Moreover, you may want to mark your calendar for the next week as winter is finally coming to Wondersville!

[h3]Santa Needs Help[/h3]


Did you know that to deliver gifts all over the world, Santa goes down to the mayor of each major city to get a building permit for his workshop there? Well, Wondersville is no exception! Christmas Pops decided to settle down here with his elves, and the word through the grapevine is that he'll be looking for help to set up his new factory. The stakes couldn't be higher!

Santa's Helpers is our next community event that will begin on December 22nd, along with the launch of the Winter Update. Aside from the new elite contract, in which you'll be able to submit your design to compete with other landlords for exciting prizes, the update will bring more seasonal content. Snowy weather will make tenants needier than ever, and as such, they might ask you to hang out with them for Christmas. Some might also ask you to do renovation work in preparation for the big day. Oh, and to properly enjoy the views, you'll have a chance to play with the new photo mode, which of course, will stay here for longer.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1009560/The_Tenants/

We hope to see you around for the new update! More details will be shared once the update goes live, so stay tuned!

Thank you,
The Tenants Team

[h3]Content[/h3]

• Added a host of new entry animations for Elite Contract clients.
  
• Added dedicated Hunter client assets for one of the Elite Contracts.
  

[h3]General[/h3]

• Fixed an issue with large wall mounted items being impossible to place down.
  
• Fixed an issue with the apartment reset feature breaking the room detection system (thanks @vritto!).
  
• Fixed an issue with the new Elite Contract intros behaving erratically when the game was paused.
  
• Fixed an issue with the intros being sometimes overlaid with tutorial sequences.
  
• Fixed an issue with the billard table being required in one of the jobs.
  
• Fixed an issue with lacking skill points for older saves.
  
• Fixed an issue with pedestrian animations in the main menu.
  
• Fixed a visual wall glitch in the Suburbs.
  

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Lowered item spam penalties for Outdoor items. Achieving higher prestige scores in gardens should now be easier.
  

Hello there, Landlords!

We're excited to bring you another update that addresses a lot of the concerns mentioned by the community. On top of the many QoL changes we're introducing, we're also adding a brand new feature in the form of Elite Contract Intros that aims to bring more depth into the jobs you'll be undertaking. Let's get right into it!

[h2]Steam Awards[/h2]

As you probably already know, the voting for this year's Steam Awards has already begun and we'd like to invite all of you to vote for The Tenants in the "Sit Back And Relax" category. The interesting part is that initially we had actually aimed for more tycoon-like gameplay, but thanks to the players' feedback we ended up going in the more chill direction that focuses on unleashing your design creativity instead of comparing tax rates and graphs all day.

We're extremely happy with the community that's gathered around The Tenants and we're looking forward to developing the game further with your continuous support and feedback. Not to say that we're not looking forward to your votes :tt_wink: Oh, and make sure to join us over on Discord (click here) if you ever need help with the game or simply want to chat!

[h2]Elite Contract changes[/h2]

We've always strived to make Elite Contracts truly elite and as such today's update brings changes that introduce more personality to them. As of now, each contract will start with an additional step of having you inspect the property you're about to work on and the actual job will start once you uncover the roof of the building. Do so and your client will appear to give you a bit of background and talk more details about the job at hand! In the future Elite Contracts will also feature new and exciting permanent item unlocks.

[h2]Skill Tree upgrades[/h2]

It seems like almost everyone wanted Uncle Steve to move even faster and so we had him work out a bit these last few weeks! Movement speed upgrades have been buffed and additionally a few new skills have been introduced pertaining to the tenant research feature. You'll now be able to increase research speed as well as add an additional research slot to make your landlording that much more expedient.

[h2]Tutorial revisions[/h2]

As the game keeps growing, new features and mechanics end up being added with pretty much every bigger update. Some of them, however, haven't been properly explained by the in-game tutorial and with today's update, we went back and made sure to cover them all! Placing and demolishing windows, item proximity bonuses, the skill tree, item tags and color variants have all gotten a much-needed in-game debriefing.

[h2]QoL tweaks[/h2]

Small quality of life tweaks are sometimes equally if not more important than new features and this update brings a few very much needed ones. The item checklist in the renovation UI got spruced up and will now merge multiple instances of the same required item into one list entry by providing the required amount right next to the item name. The in-game music will now fade out when you're watching musicians jam it out, and tenant item tag preferences have finally made their way to the UI. We've also heard your feedback regarding trashing and all tenant archetypes will now be a bit less keen to mess your apartments. Not only that but a few lingering bugs have been also smashed and should be now gone for good!

[h2]Halloween Contest results[/h2]

Around a month ago a mysterious man from afar called Dracoola invaded Wondersville and offered a one-of-a-kind job that attracted many aspiring landlords. Dracoola's Call was our first ever design community event and we're extremely satisfied with its reception and impressed by the quality of your submissions! It got close, but in the end in the final voting on Discord one entry prevailed and @vritto became our official winner! Congratulations to the winner and with vritto being our long-time community member we'd like to take the opportunity and thank them for their continuous support of the game.

The main prize of the contest included designing a new furniture set and below is a sneak peek after a session of brainstorming with our victor!



And that's it for today's announcement! Next up we'll be gearing up for the Winter Update which will be followed by the next major update from our roadmap. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the new version of the game and we can't wait to hear your thoughts!

[h2]Full Changelog[/h2]

[h3]Features[/h3]

• Implemented Elite Contract intros.

[h3]Content[/h3]

• Added new skills in the Skill Tree that increase research speed.
  
• Added a new skill in the Skill Tree that unlocks a second research slot.

[h3]General[/h3]

• Added a few new tutorials to explain new mechanics introduced in previous updates.
  
• Added new steps to the remodeling tutorial that cover placing and removing windows.
  
• Tenants will now send their text message responses to apartment events only after Uncle Steve leaves the property.
  
• Tweaked the way item smart snapping works.
  
• Revised proximity bonuses for a great deal of items.
  
• Fixed an issue with moving back to a district with an active tenant request for a tenant that had their contract run out.
  
• Fixed an issue with Open House guests being uninteractable.
  
• Fixed a host of issues with overlapping sound effects and music.
  
• Fixed an issue with time scaling in Creative mode.
  
• Fixed an issue with players having too many available skill points for the number of available skills in the game.

[h3]Jobs[/h3]

• Added a new step to perform in the Elite Contracts where the player first has to click on the building to hide its roof and start the job.

[h3]UI[/h3]

• Merged multiple instances of the same item into single entries on the renovation checklist.
  
• Fixed an issue with skills on the Skill Tree looking like they can be unlocked when they weren't.
  
• Changed the default tab in the Skill Tree to "Tenants".
  
• Tenant tag preferences are now displayed in their context menu.
  
• Added a close button to the tag filter panel.
  
• Tweaked the renovation checklist elements to be clickable (and searchable) while in the Remodelling or Finalize tab.
  
• Fixed an issue with the room context panel not always refreshing on room layout changes.
  
• Fixed the position of negotiation indicators.

[h3]Balance[/h3]

• Increased the speed boosts for Uncle Steve's movement speed skills.
  
• Decreased the pace at which tenants generate garbage in their apartments.
  
• Lowered the required tag scores for the tag category ratings.

Thank you,
The Tenants Team

[h3]General[/h3]

• Fixed an issue that bricked the game on save load for some players.
  
• Fixed an issue with one of the jobs requiring special furniture.
  
• Fixed a few misplaced descriptions in the skill tree app.