Garden of the Sea (VR) News

We can't keep this super exciting news to ourselves anymore(!) We now have Garden of the Sea t-shirts and stickers!!! (yaaayyy!!!) They are being made by the talented folks over at TheYetee so please go over to their store and GO GET EM!!!

The dev team on Garden of the Sea has been working hard on making the new Save System, Fishing, Painting, and all our other new little systems look and feel as good as possible, but we still need your help on a few things! To access this new patch before it goes live on the game, you will need to opt in to the beta branch called "experimental":



We have implemented the "bare-bones" of some of these systems and made them functional, but are now hoping to get a bit more feedback from you, our wonderful Gardeners, on which parts of the fishing and painting feel great, need a bit more tweaking, or anything that feels like it's just missing that lil' something. We'd love to hear from you here on our steam forums, in our Neat Corp Discord channel or via support (at) neatcorporation (dot) com. Here's a list of the changes in this patch:


[h3]Bigger stuff[/h3]

• Save system overhaul (now built to be far more robust for future updates).
  
• Fishing mechanic first version implemented (yay!).
  
• Fish system for pools of fish in the ocean of varying types.
  
• Quest-line implemented for unlocking the boat.
  
• Painting system for customizing crafted items implemented.
  
• Quest-line added for paint blob recipes and functionality.
  

[h3]Smaller stuff[/h3]

• New pot-pot animations added and implemented.
  
• Art polish and tweaks on several plant types and textures in-game.
  
• Fishing pond added near home to house new fishies.
  
• Fishing rod island for acquiring fishing rod implemented.
  
• Seagull creature added to indicate fish regions.
  
• Cave area added on back side of tallest island.
  
• Colors for all crafted items implemented.
  
• Colors for tools now implemented.
  
• New VFX for fishing, painting, and potpot anims implemented.
  
• Pre-populated planter box recipes added.
  
• Several new fish types added with dynamic fish colors for fishing system.
  
• Sound and music for new mechanics and systems implemented.
  
• Updated to latest version of gestrument.
  
• Rumble haptics fixed for most hardware.
  
• Index grabbing functionality tweaked to feel better.
  
• Good to know
  
• Save files are now saved in %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/Neat Corporation/Garden of the Sea/Saves instead of your Documents folder
  
• It will not be possible to load your own save files, even if you copy them to the new directory
  

[h3]Known issues[/h3]

• Loading screen doesn’t work properly
  
• Some plants might look strange/buggy when growing, since we are in the middle of reworking the plant system (but this will be fixed in an update soon)
  
• Fishing is currently not “explained” in any way, so we are hoping to get feedback from you all on which elements of the minigame are clear and which are confusing.
  

If you encounter issues with saving/loading:

Please zip the whole folder %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/Neat Corporation/Garden of the Sea and send it to support (at) neatcorporation (dot) com


❤ Thank you so much for all your wonderful feedback and support with Garden of the Sea so far! We really couldn't do this without you all ❤

The dev team on Garden of the Sea has been working hard on making the new Save System, Fishing, Painting, and all our other new little systems look and feel as good as possible, but we still need your help on a few things! To access this new patch before it goes live on the game, you will need to opt in to the beta branch called "experimental":



We have implemented the "bare-bones" of some of these systems and made them functional, but are now hoping to get a bit more feedback from you, our wonderful Gardeners, on which parts of the fishing and painting feel great, need a bit more tweaking, or anything that feels like it's just missing that lil' something. We'd love to hear from you here on our steam forums, in our Neat Corp Discord channel or via support (at) neatcorporation (dot) com. Here's a list of the changes in this patch:


[h3]Bigger stuff[/h3]

• Save system overhaul (now built to be far more robust for future updates).
  
• Fishing mechanic first version implemented (yay!).
  
• Fish system for pools of fish in the ocean of varying types.
  
• Quest-line implemented for unlocking the boat.
  
• Painting system for customizing crafted items implemented.
  
• Quest-line added for paint blob recipes and functionality.
  

[h3]Smaller stuff[/h3]

• New pot-pot animations added and implemented.
  
• Art polish and tweaks on several plant types and textures in-game.
  
• Fishing pond added near home to house new fishies.
  
• Fishing rod island for acquiring fishing rod implemented.
  
• Seagull creature added to indicate fish regions.
  
• Cave area added on back side of tallest island.
  
• Colors for all crafted items implemented.
  
• Colors for tools now implemented.
  
• New VFX for fishing, painting, and potpot anims implemented.
  
• Pre-populated planter box recipes added.
  
• Several new fish types added with dynamic fish colors for fishing system.
  
• Sound and music for new mechanics and systems implemented.
  
• Updated to latest version of gestrument.
  
• Rumble haptics fixed for most hardware.
  
• Index grabbing functionality tweaked to feel better.
  
• Good to know
  
• Save files are now saved in %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/Neat Corporation/Garden of the Sea/Saves instead of your Documents folder
  
• It will not be possible to load your own save files, even if you copy them to the new directory
  

[h3]Known issues[/h3]

• Loading screen doesn’t work properly
  
• Some plants might look strange/buggy when growing, since we are in the middle of reworking the plant system (but this will be fixed in an update soon)
  
• Fishing is currently not “explained” in any way, so we are hoping to get feedback from you all on which elements of the minigame are clear and which are confusing.
  

If you encounter issues with saving/loading:

Please zip the whole folder %userprofile%/AppData/LocalLow/Neat Corporation/Garden of the Sea and send it to support (at) neatcorporation (dot) com


❤ Thank you so much for all your wonderful feedback and support with Garden of the Sea so far! We really couldn't do this without you all ❤

We are a group of VR gamedevs that live and work in Stockholm, and we now have a Creator Page on Steam! (wow yay!)



We believe that by being excellent to one another and embracing all the weird quirks that make us human we can create some neat games (hah see what we did there?), and hopefully have some fun while doing so! There's a huge passion for Virtual Reality at our studio, and many of us are die-hard tech enthusiasts who can't wait for the latest&greatest hardware to test and play with.

Although we've all individually made plenty of games and tools before we all joined Neat Corp, our debut title Budget Cuts is what brought many of us together for the first time. After that, it was inevitable that we would put our heads together and create Garden of the Sea and now Budget Cuts 2!

We couldn't have built all these games without all you wonderful VR gamers who believe in exploring worlds with the full immersion of virtual reality! Thank you!



We look forward to providing you with more updates on our games as we continue to build great experiences with you! Speaking of which, we would LOVE to get your feedback on our games, so please feel free to join our discord and help us make these games the best they can be.

Cheers from all of us at Neat!

Hey everyone!
I wanted to give you a lil peek into the work we've been doing on the upcoming Fishing patch for Garden of the Sea!



First things first - we made sure to add some fish.



We've got several types of fish now, and variations within each type, so you will have plenty of fish in your sea! Each type of fish will create resources for you once you have put them in your pond. One of the resources that you can get is a lil jelly ball from the jellyfish (you dont wanna know how you get it... it just.... appears. trust me) which can then be used to craft paintballs for customizing all your crafted items! We're definitely gonna start seeing some wacky color combinations soon.



It hasn't all been fun and games though - we have run into a few "happy little accidents" along the way, like that one time we accidentally got giant tomatoes when we were refactoring the plant growing code...



or when we accidentally built Fortnite in VR...



We have also been fixing a few smaller things you've been asking for though. For instance, if you toss an object into the water it will now (in most cases) float back to shore so you can grab it again.



We aren't done yet with all the tweaks to the fishing system, but we are gearing up for an open beta of that patch soon, and would love to get your feedback on it. If you'd like to give the new mechanics a try before they go live on the main branch on steam, join us over on our Neat Corp Discord! We look forward to chatting and hearing your thoughts and ideas.



We can't wait to share fishing (and all the other updates this patch will contain) with you all! Stay tuned for the patch release, coming "soon" (when it's ready!).



Warmest wishes from the GotS team!



oh... and cat tax (one of our developers cats "tribble" attacking the new in-game seaguls)