The Last Plague: Blight News

Playtest build updated!

A few more balance and bug fixes to tighten up the gameplay experience!

Balance:

• Jerky hunger replenishment lowered and given slight negative thirst replenishment
  
• Increased effectiveness of small stone and flint as a hammer
  
• Increased generation of long sticks in forests
  
• Reduced evaporation rates of jug and pot
  
• Reduced starting blight infection amounts of all creatures
  
• Various building build times changed to provide a more consistent experience based on how big they are physically
  

Fixes:

• Meat strips now properly require the smoke rack to be smoked, no longer gets smoked in the ingredients section of the fire pit (or other heated inventories)
  
• Fix contamination not being preserved when grinding meat or cutting it into slices, as well as when slices of meat are fully smoked into jerky
  
• Fix weird issue where crafting list buttons disappear in certain UI scale modes and 4K+ resolutions
  
• Fix up the cut-off main menu in ultra-widescreen setups by changing the UI resolution based scaling to be height based instead of width based
  
• Fix right-click -> "drink all" not working with the equipped bowl/container at the bottom of the screen beside the stat bars
  
• Fix issue where fire pit and fuel wouldn't be affected by the rain if close enough to a lean-to
  

Features:

• Backpacks can be placed on the ground now to act as a storage area like the crate and chests
  
• Held containers like the jug can now be poured directly into the soaking basin using the alternate interaction (default: left alt) without having to go through the UI
  

Other changes:

• Flip yes/no buttons on all dialogs to be more consistent with common UX patterns. Buttons made more clear at a glance by changing yes/no to "action" and cancel.
  

Playtest updated!

Fixing a few issues introduced in the previous update, and some much needed balance changes. Thanks for all your reports!

Balance:

• Slightly increased the generation chance of ginseng and all the various mushrooms
  
• Reduced the amount of poison from spotted red mushroom soup
  
• Slightly reduced the amount of Blight from contaminated coyote and wolf meat
  
• Slightly increased the amount of hunger replenishment from fresh coyote meat
  
• Fixed cooked sausages having almost no Blight
  

Fixes:

• Fix issue where certain saves would suddenly not be loadable with a "Could not load game" message
  
• Fix so that the "[LMB] Place down" when holding logs will actually work now under click-to-move control mode, if the cursor is close to your character
  
• Fix various font outlines when using the Russian language setting so that things are much easier to read against the the terrain
  
• Tweak first task description in the "More realistic" mode to make it more clear that the home village is inaccessible
  
• Fix the home village and region names not showing up in the task descriptions after loading a save
  
• Fix chamomile flowers not properly switching to dry version when reaching 100% dryness while on the ground, and not in your inventory
  
• Fix collision issue with lean-to when lying down on the bedroll, now the character properly animates onto the bedroll under the lean-to
  
• Fix crafting list so that the selected required tool is properly preserved if you move it around in your inventory
  
• Fix creature harvesting to be the proper times, they were made a lot slower by accident in the last update
  
• Fix game breakage when crafting an equippable item (like a jug) while both hands are taken up by two separate items
  
• Fix a few Russian translation mistakes
  

Other changes:

• Allow bear meat to be cut up into a bunch of meat strips
  

After many months of work, the time has finally come for the release of the next huge content update for Blight. Currently only live on the Playtest build of the game. Hit "Request Access" on the Steam page or join the Discord server to get more priority access!


The main goal for the update was to start expanding on the limited story of the game and give the game some directionality. Making it so that there is more of a purpose and a path that should be clear and interesting enough to take. While a bit of this has been added in the update, it's becoming clear how much more the game still needs in order to become truly special.

A ton of other cool and interesting features have also been added to the game to make the journey along the new path exciting. A lot of existing mechanics have changed, and a lot of new ones have been added, making the experience a bit different than it was before. I hope people are excited with all the new features and the way the game is evolving.

[h2]Main Features[/h2]

• Completely reworked world generation - incorporating new road and village generation for a more varied and interesting world
  
• New locations to discover - resource rich areas and swampland
  
• Completely reworked map to show the above new features and locations, along with a much better look & feel
  
• New dialog system for interacting with NPCs
  
• Ability to put your own labels on the map
  
• Initial ranged weapons - throwable stones and spears
  
• Shields for use in combat
  
• A whole bunch of new resources to find in various places in the world
  
• Repairing items
  
• New buildable hand cart for hauling many heavy items longer distances
  
• Localization system and an initial translation of the game to Russian
  
• New water reflection graphics setting
  
• Bunch of new items, recipes, and buildings to create
  
• New clay items and pottery kiln for hardening them
  
• Compass for navigation in the "more realistic" mode - requires a lot of patience and attention but very rewarding
  
• Grass slowly turning to dirt as you run around in camp
  
• And a ton of other small features and improvements
  

There have been a lot of various performance improvements to the game since the last update, but also things are are a bit resource intensive in other places. The new water reflections being one of the main features in that regard.

[h2]Known Issues[/h2]

• Saving and loading in Windows 7 is still not fully supported yet sadly, but this will be fixed soon enough
  
• The Mac version still seems to have higher instances of complete crashes of the game. Appears to be more of a core Unity issue unfortunately, will hopefully resolve this at some point
  
• The Russian translations are a first draft and will have a bunch of mistakes, this will be an ongoing process to tighten them up. The village, region and sea names on the map aren't localized yet but this will be fixed soon
  

Happy New Year! Been a while since the last update but I wanted to push out a small update to address some issues raised in the feedback recently and finally add a commonly requested feature: click to move mode!



The existing "control style" setting has been renamed to "character orientation", and now there is a new movement setting that is set to the old keyboard-based by default, with an option to select "click to move towards cursor". Please check out this new mode and let me know how it feels to use and if you notice any issues with it!

All Changes:

• New movement mode in controls settings: click to move
  
• Attempt to fix very rare freeze just as autosave begins. Let me know if you still see this happening
  
• Make sure mouse cursor is visible after dying
  
• Add some text in the running and show nearby items starter hints about the toggle-ability of these actions
  
• Boost rabbit meat and sausage hunger replenishment after feedback
  

Squashing a few issues that resulted from the big Unity upgrade a few days ago.

Unfortunately it seems like the game won't work properly anymore on Windows 7 thanks to the recent Unity update. The game can no longer list files in a directory on the file system, so getting a list of saved games to be able to load isn't possible anymore. An alert popup mentioning this fact was added at the start of the game if you run the game in Windows 7. While the game never officially supported Windows 7, it's unfortunate that it's broken now after working fine for so long, will look into fixing this at some point. Apologies for the inconvenience.

All Changes:

• Fix missing specular highlights (shiny reflection of the sun) on the surface of the water
  
• Fix so that SSAO works again after being broken in the previous update
  
• Fix a few uncaught exceptions
  
• Added alert popup when the game is launched in Windows 7, as being able to load games won't be possible anymore for the time being