We Are The Caretakers News

Another continous improvement update, version 0.73, is up! Take a look at the exciting changes below and give the game a spin.

[h2]Revamp and Polish of the Era 1 End Boss Mission[/h2]

• All new post-combat cutscene sequencing and visual effects for polish and improved narrative clarity.
  
• Boss unit no longer spawns on top of the [redacted] pod.
  
• Intro camera for boss changed and removes poor visibility.
  
• New sound effect for Boss ability "Beholder".
  
• Water Supply blocks fire hazards from burning units passively when held.
  
• Fixed bug where extinguishing a Fire Hazard would leave your unit burning until you left the territory.
  
• Fixed bug where the Burn Effect from the field would leave an icon visible in combat.
  
• New icon for fire hazards.
  
• Added status icon (fire) to Unit Callout when burn is being applied to a unit by a fire hazard.
  
• Added side notification about units on fire.
  
• Fixed incorrect reputation values displayed in some notifications for Fire Hazard interactions.
  
• New Supply tip and tip image that helps players discover the Water well in the field and water supply in their unit's inventory.
  

[h2]QoL and Sound Changes[/h2]

• New sound effects for Beholder, Silence, and Sniper Shot abilities.
  
• Additional sound effect "Voice" set added that plays randomly when a unit is selected on the field. Classes that have this voice will play it when they are the leader of the unit.
  
• Changed and improved Idle animations and ability animations across many classes. New VFX for "Weaken Slash" ability.
  
• Volume fixes and balance for a number of ability sounds.
  
• Fixed bug with being able to navigate to change leader button in Conductor's group with controller.
  
• Fixed some additional situations where the controller cursor can be made invisible in combat.
  
• Baby Raun now finishes instantly instead of animating out, fixing glitch with its hair model not disappearing!
  
• Added fixes for benign error messages that could show up in the debug console.
  

Thanks so much for the support! It helps us out a lot to receive positive reviews on our store page, so if you like the game and this update, we'd greatly appreciate it! Please let us know if you have any feedback on or bug reports in our official DIscord Server.

A new update is live featuring all new sound effects, bug fixes, and improvements to audio across the game. There are still a number of sound effects changes still to come, but this update gets us a lot closer to a polished audio treatment for the game!

[h2]All Changes and Updates For Version .72 Early Access:[/h2]

• Added all new sound effects for combat abilities! Big Shot, Stress, Regen Serum, Focus, Lock On, Praise, Praise All, Foresight, Meditate, Incapacitate, Treaty, Antidote, Sniper Shot, Demoralize, Power Module, Takedown.
  
• Added new sound for selecting buttons/targets with the controller.
  
• Fixed bugs where ambient audio and sound effects were not following the volume setting set by the player.
  
• Fixed ambient audio in the field to be about 1/6th of the Music volume. Fixed the night-time ambient audio not being changed and always being at 100% volume.
  
• Made most sound effects have their volume changed programmatically to match the sound effects volume setting. Generally raised the volume of sound effects.
  
• Adjusted timing for many ability vfx and sfx.
  
• Fixed bug where Cover Fire and Wild Shot ability VFX were rotated away from their targets.
  
• Added handling for "All" and "Row" abilities to not play multiple overlapping sounds, causing volume spikes.
  
• Fixed no sound effects playing when advancing dialogue with the controller.
  
• Fixed edge cases where some characters would have the wrong models when reloaded from a save game.
  
• Fixed baby Raun bugs with walk animations during Rush and Raun Kick ability sequences.
  
• Fixed a bug where some character slots in the Unit UI could not be clicked on for stat inspection.
  
• Fixed edge case bug with cursor not resetting to a button after closing the Character Info View during encounters.
  

We love hearing from players, so please send us your feedback on our Steam forums or official Discord Server. It's also a huge help to get more positive reviews on our Steam Store Page. Look out for continued updates!

Fresh off of our major v.70 release earlier this week, we've just pushed another small update full of additional bug fixes, and some all new combat sound effects.



[h2]Change List for Version v.71:[/h2]

• Fixed soft crash in Era 2 Repair mission and other missions featuring the "Drone Specialist" enemy class.
  
• New Sound Effects added for Poison Cloud, Rally, Menace, EMP, and War Horn abilities. Expect many more new sound effects to make their way into the game in future updates (we're aware a number of abilities are missing sfx at the moment).
  
• Fixed Drone Specialist "Drone Orb" Accessory floating below the ground sometimes.
  
• Fixed some damaging abilities not displaying their base damage range in tooltips. Fixed some will healing abilities displaying their heal amount as stamina damage in tooltips.
  
• Peeking to view stats in encounters no longer hides the targeting cursor once the stat UIs are hidden.
  
• Updated a number of text strings throughout the game to fix formatting and grammar errors.
  
• Fixed bug with cursor placement/navigation in the HQ Atrium when tutorial messages were present previously.
  
• Fixed a number of issues where hidden screens would trigger input mistakenly when trying to interact with message boxes or HQ dialogue.
  

We've just released a new update (version 0.70 Early Access) that includes a massive list of fixes and new features across the game. The team has been working to address the community's feedback while getting brand new content ready for our 1.0 launch later this year. Take a look at all of the changes below, from QoL features in combat to full controller support, and more!



[h2]Change List[/h2]

1. Added a "Skip Round Break" feature. In the "Command Panel" in combat, there is now a button that will prevent the game from pausing between combat rounds.
   
2. "Skip Round Break" and Auto-Battle settings now save and stay across missions.
   
3. End of combat results screen now animates in, and XP gain bars are animated. Sound effects added here as well.
   
4. Characters in the back row receive less damage from Stamina damaging attacks targeting them. Characters using physical (stamina) damaging abilities from the back row deal lower damage to the target. Will damaging abilities are not affected by row.
   
5. Demoting a character's class in the job tree no longer resets their Will stat. Class changes no longer change a character's "Region of Origin" stat.
   
6. Drone Specialist class abilities now have new visual effects (Mind Ray, Cover Fire, Lock On)
   
7. Town rewards/tributes are altered by your reputation at the time of securing. A new UI will appear with the modification to the coin total based on reputation in parentheses (+10).
   
8. Added helper UI in combat to expose the combat fast forward keys, and the stat "Peek" feature. Helpers change to match controller buttons as well.
   
9. Fixed duplicate inputs firing when using a controller. There should be no jumping cursor between UI buttons, for example.
   
10. The Joystick can now be used to select targets, in addition to the LB and RB buttons.
    
11. Game download size reduced by ~2.5GB! The game takes up less space on disk and updates will be smaller in the future.
    
12. Fixed a number of bugs with the transition between mouse & controller modes in the UI.
    
13. Fixed incorrect button images displayed in the UI for some platforms.
    
14. Fixed errors related to the placement and "parenting" of the controller cursor.
    
15. The controller cursor now follows your target during target selection mode. The chance-to-hit text follows the cursor.
    
16. Fixed the joystick axis sometimes moving to the bottom left in the RTS view.
    
17. The "Command Button/Start Round" button can how be navigated to directly with the cursor, in addition to its button trigger. The Finisher Enabled slider is now controllable with the joystick as well as a button press.
    
18. Fixed issues with controller focus when tutorial message boxes appeared in encounters.
    
19. Fixed issues with controller focus throughout the title UI. Added a fall back button press in the unlikely event the control cursor gets unfocused with the UI (LB) in controller mode.
    
20. Unit supplies/items list is now accessible and usable with the controller. Unit actions list (Sprint button, etc) is also now navigable with the controller. Use the D-Pad to navigate the Unit UI and press L3 to inspect characters, use supplies, or sprint.
    
21. Cleaned up some UI placement and text formatting issues in the main menu.
    
22. Fixed issue where input wouldn't work at the start of a mission if the control device was changed while dialogue was present.
    
23. Fixed controller focus handling on the "Baby Raun Name Choice" panel.
    
24. Input is now blocked after starting a new mission to prevent bugs with button mashing during the transition.
    
25. Fixed bug with missing cursor after exiting combat, due to the UI element receiving a 0-scale.
    
26. Adjusted some character class data, including ability adjustments and balance tweaks.
    
27. Fixed error when returning to the HQ after the first mission, causing overlap of dialogue and game UI in the moment, and issues with save/load later. Issues was with how save data was stored in memory during gameplay.
    
28. Fixed some memory leaks and optimized some features for faster responsiveness.
    
29. Load times reduced when loading existing save games for the first time.
    
30. Fixed a crash when older save files had missing tutorial progress data.
    
31. Added a "Press Start" landing screen and menu flow for other platforms that require user detection at start up.
    
32. Hid some elements of the UI throughout the game that were redundant with controller-accessible ui items, when playing with the controller.
    
33. New game icon.
    
34. Many more bug fixes and tweaks.
    

[h2]Behind The Scenes work (not visible in build):[/h2]

• Implemented an Xbox platform class and made many Xbox-specific platform changes to save games, graphics settings, and more.
  
• Implemented console versions of existing feature such as achievements and leaderboards.
  
• Refactored a variety of game features to work with AOT platforms.
  
• Simplification and optimization of code and tools to improve development iteration time.
  

News: We were nominated for a Unity Award! We Are The Caretakers was recognized as a Best Social Impact game by Unity. Take a look at the other nominees and look out for when the winners are announced during GDC next week.

Looking forward, we're working on a lot of exciting things, including the final missions of an all-new 4th Era of the campaign, and a full sound effects pass from our sound designer Gaby. We'll be detailing our remaining work in an upcoming roadmap post in our Steam Forum. Thanks again for your patience as we worked on some big changes and put the game back together to get this update out.

We hope you like it! Be sure to send us your feedback in the forums if you get a chance to play the update.

-Scott

Another early access update (version .55) just went live, and it focuses on improving the survival mode and laying some ground work for dynamic difficulty/settings in future updates. In addition to our in-depth story campaign, we want to have a highly-replayable version of the game that you can come back to even after you've finished the story. Our hope is to iterate on and expand the Survival Mode to be that, and we're excited to get your feedback on how we can improve it after this update.

Here's the full list of changes, and we hope you'll check it out and let us know your thoughts in our Steam Forums!





[h2]Survival Mode Changes[/h2]

• Added the new Poacher "Waves" UI, showing when opposing units will enter the park. This helps you plan your unit movements and anticipate when you'll need to be ready for encounters. It also makes it less confusing about what to do when there are no poachers active in the park. The new UI bar is visible just above the mini-map.
  
• The waves UI shows which unit entering the park is the boss (crown icon).
  
• Enemy characters and Raun are now dynamically increased in level as you progress through survival missions (all characters were lvl 1 previously).
  
• Reduced the XP received by player characters for actions in encounters, as they were leveling too fast before.
  
• Raun start with a random starting health value, causing them to get "Hungry" sooner. This makes feeding them and managing their location on the map more of a factor. Inspect Raun units for the Hunger trait to see when they could use some food!
  
• Mission 2 (Edgelands) has a graveyard territory now, to offer a Will healing opportunity for your units.
  
• All missions have their survival day goal reduced by 1 (6 days).
  
• Some Tech Tree options, such as Elite Training, were Era Locked and thus inaccessible in survival mode. Those requirements are now removed and all tech tree options are now accessible.
  
• Adjusted spawn time for poachers.
  

[h2]General Changes[/h2]

• The Character Slot UI for characters that have been finished now shows a finished "skull" icon to avoid confusion about which characters are available in encounters.
  
• Will healing sources now show the "+" feedback on the unit callout icons similar to town healing.
  
• Some rare unit personalities have specific handling when/if they are detained.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Encounter results screen would display negative values incorrectly (ex: "--1").
  
• Now show the "Loading" spinner sooner when loading a game from the title screen. On some machines there would be just a black screen for several seconds before this UI appeared.
  

These changes are just the start of a larger set of features and improvements we want to make to survival mode. We look forward to developing this mode alongside you during Early Access. As always, we appreciate any positive reviews on our store page, and you can follow us on Twitter/Discord for the latest development updates.

-Scott