Snacko News

Wow, how is it the end of the year already? Wild, isn't it? Before 2024 starts, here's our last gift to you of 2023:



Yes! Now 10x better on gamepad/deck, and 10x smoother to operate (scientific numbers determined by Me)

We added a new "camera mode", allowing you to seamlessly transition between placing and moving items to looking around the world.



This new camera mode also has less limitations, you can take it up high and really far!
Or really close. Up to you.



It would be nice to eventually port this camera over to our ancient camera tool to let you take pretty screenshots without UI in the way. Until then, just crop it ;)



[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• Opening/using the Builder's Kit to bring up the tray is now also the button on gamepad to close the tray - much better UX!
  
• Use left trigger or shift to toggle camera mode on and off
  
• No longer differentiates between quick place and menu on Steam Deck: pressing A/Interact while hovered over an object will bring up the context menu
  
• Control prompts now centered neatly~
  

You should just update and try it out! Right meow! It's a lot comfier to play with once you get the hang of the new buttons. So, we hope you have fun. Happy new year!

[h2]UI[/h2]

• Crafting recipes you should've learned but didn't show up in your list will now be there
  
• Overflow storage will now scroll if items exceed slots
  

[h2]Fishing QoL updates[/h2]

• Fish now actually care if your lure is close to them
  
• UI made larger for smaller screens
  
• Reaction window for initial reel scales with fish value: higher value = react faster!
  
• Fixed issue where sound or VFX could play multiple times when reeling in fish
  

[h2]NPCs[/h2]

• Fixed issue where some NPCs were repeating same lines every day
  
• Fixed issue of Riku drowning during shop
  
• All carpenter, grocer, chemist, and static (Mikan, Nobu, etc) friendship events fixed and tested
  

[h2]Resources[/h2]

• Resources will no longer regrow around placed structures in any map (grass/trees no longer regrow into buildings)
  
• Iron ore now available scattered in Grassy Plains outside of mines to make early game ore farming less frustrating
  

[h2]Speed Grow[/h2]

• Now functioning as intended - using it on a tile's crop will double the growth rate until it has been harvested.
  
• New effects on use
  
• Properly renders the state of use on the farm tile
  

[h2]Fertilizer[/h2]

• New effects on use
  
• Properly renders the state of use on the farm tile
  

[h2]Farm[/h2]

• Newly accessible farm areas (cliffs) should now properly regenerate resources on saves from before the areas were accessible
  

[h2]Mines[/h2]

• Fixed a crash issue where some mine layouts would cause the game crash when exploring, breaking objects, or using the pet
  
• Player should no longer be visible for a brief moment when transitioning mine floors
  

[h2]Storage Containers[/h2]

• Increased storage slots from 50 -> 56
  
• Adjusted UI so that scrolling is no longer necessary to see all items within a container
  
• Fixed gamepad navigation bug
  

[h2]Shipping Containers[/h2]

• Fixed gamepad navigation bug
  

[h2]🎨 World Themes[/h2]
Regular game too bright? Too colourful??? It's okay, I understand.
Now available: pick your world theme AND the intensity to help make your playtime comfier.
Note: This can be changed on the title screen and carries across all saves.



[h2]💌 NPC Friendship & Heart Events[/h2]
A bug has been made aware to us over Christmas where friendship events and such were not triggering properly. We will be slowly fixing them over the course of the next week, so you may notice some cutscenes playing now as you walk around the world. We'll call it out when all friendship and heart events are fixed, but they will be slowly added into the game until then. Thank you for your patience!

[h2]✨ Obelisk Item Labels[/h2]
Uhh....what is that? Spinach? Grass? Shame? Obelisk offering conditions now will show you the item name on hover!

[h2]📑 Wiki Coming Soon![/h2]
We're working on a wiki! Hopefully, we can have it go live soon! We understand the game is a little bulky with some things that are hard to find.

[h3]Meowllo! As the year starts to wind down, we'd like to share our plans for the near future.[/h3]

As you have all probably noticed, we update the game quite frequently! As the major bugs and crashes start to calm down a bit, we're now able to start working on feature reworks or polish that we had planned. As with all parts of development, our plans may shift if we notice issues that need to be addressed ASAP, or if we feel like the community would benefit more from one feature earlier over the other. Treat this as some kind of...plan! But it's not written in stone, I wrote it in Photoshop.

Small updates, like how we are doing currently, will continue as "whenever we feel like a change or fix needs to be pushed". The features listed in the chart below will generally come in a bigger patch every month or so.

Along side what we have listed, we may also throw in the occasional QoL change, and obviously, bug fixes.

[h3]Now that's out of the way, here's our roadmap:[/h3]


One of the first things we'd like to do is work on the experience of playing on gamepad and Steam Deck. We were able to finally get our hands on one recently, and it helped us make things like Cloud Saves and the controls feel much better. If you haven't yet, you should try it! We've also set up the default control scheme to play more as you'd expect.

Part of better gamepad support is reworking some of the old UI. Things like the Journal are part of our newer SnackoUI™ system that has better gamepad handling and is generally just more stable. The two major systems that are still not on this new system are the Mailbox and Shops. Since those two are quite important and central to Snacko's gameplay, we'd like to focus on that first.

After that, since by then players would've had time to play through the MSQ, we'd like to do an additional pass on balance, just to make sure the economy isn't in shambles. It's already hard enough to have a bad economy in real life, we don't need that to bleed into our cozy farming game.

Alongside that, we'll be working on house upgrades, which includes wallpaper, flooring, and room expansions. We'd also like to reimplement tool upgrades in a NEW and IMPROVED way to help compliment the MSQ.

As of now, these two chunks are the ones we have planned out in explicit order. The rest, well, we may shift around as the game evolves and we hear more player feedback.

[h3]As always, thank you for playing! We'll be seeing you soon in our (now very late) monthly devlog (my bad) 👋[/h3]