Research Story News

- Fixed: Some crops could not be harvested after loading a game.
- Fixed: Duplicated fishing rod.

[h2]Greetings Researchers![/h2]

[h3]✨ Research Story is out now in Early Access! ✨[/h3]
Start your journey in the town of Shimmerbrook! Do research by observing and recording plants, creatures and fish. Grow crops, tame creatures, and build your dream farm! Meet various townsfolk and bring them out on dates. Explore deep into the mines. Uncover mysteries and learn the story behind the development of Shimmerbrook!
https://youtu.be/bgjVbf1ZYDc
[h3]🌳 Building Research Story with the community[/h3]
As mentioned before, we're looking forward to building Research Story with the community during Early Access. Since we started sharing our game, community feedback has been instrumental in making the game what it is today - and we plan to continue engaging our players! We'll be reading the feedback wherever we can - such as on Steam forums and in our Discord server. If you'd like to be even closer to our development journey, we'd be happy to see you in our Discord server! 👋



[h3]📜 Early Access Roadmap[/h3]

While most of the core features of RS are in place, we have major upcoming features and content you can look forward to as outlined in our Roadmap below! On top of the larger updates, the game will continue to receive regular patches and smaller updates.

The Roadmap may be adjusted based on community feedback, and the order of the updates may shift, but the key features listed will be included in the game before its full release.

And as always, thank you so much for supporting us on this journey and we’re excited to start this next chapter with you!

The Roadmap outlines the major updates planned for Research Story during the Early Access period.

- Miki

Hi Researchers! While I've been quite busy this past month, I just wanted to share a few words with you as we get closer to launch.

[h2]About Early Access[/h2]
Now that Research Story is less than a week away from launch, I just wanted to take some time to say a big thank you to the community. Whether you've been following the game since we started posting on Twitter, or just found out about us, I'm just very thankful knowing that people look forward to this little game.

With the release date being so close, we are announcing our exact time of launch! Research Story will be released on ✨ Feb 20, 2023, at 5:00PM (PST) ✨ on Steam. It'll be released at the same time for all countries, so some of you might only see it in stores on the 21st Feb of your timezone. You can wishlist the game to get notified on launch. Wishlisting would also help us a lot by making the game get more visible on Steam :)

Being Early Access, there's certainly a lot of room for Research Story to grow and develop! One of the main reasons for putting our game in EA is so that we can develop alongside community feedback and suggestions. The feedback from our demo has certainly made the game a much smoother experience: there were things I thought were fun but turned out to be troublesome for players; and there were ideas that I'd never have thought of myself! Without your feedback, Research Story would not be where it is today. And I want to keep building the game alongside you during Early Access. If you're interested in being a part of this journey, you can check our our Discord server - I'll be there!



At launch, I'll also be sharing an Early Access Roadmap, with features and content that we want to add to the game before 1.0. The roadmap may shift depending on the feedback we get, but our key ideas would be there - so stay tuned for that! ^_^

I also want to take this chance to thank everyone who has worked on and contributed to this game. We wouldn't be here without them! You'll also see them in the credits:
🎵 Composers & Sound Designers: Tomás, Mickey, Tyd, Shevone, Bobby, Heedo
🎨 Additional artists: @joojabirra, @kookab_, @empathique
💻 Additional programmer: cyberfirex
🎮 QA: Close friends & family of mine
[h2]About our free Demo[/h2]

We also have a few updates about our demo:
1) The demo will stay available even after launch, however, you won't be able to use the saves from the demo for the Early Access version.

2) Chinese Localisation for the Demo: I've also been working with Electronic Sheep Games to include Chinese localisation in our demo. We hope that this lets more players try our game


[h2]See you soon~[/h2]
Once again, thank you so much to everyone for your kind support, I'm forever grateful
An expanding farm & creature army.

- Miki

[h2]Greetings Researchers![/h2]

[h3]✨ We'll be releasing Research Story in Early Access next month! Woahh ✨[/h3]
After working on this game for over 2 years, I'm more than excited to share the game with everyone, and build on it even more alongside players' feedback and suggestions once we hit release.

This month, we've been doing lots of playtests, bug fixes, and polishing, so that the EA experience for players will be as smooth as possible. Here's a screenshot of my own farm in Spring while playtesting!

My farm, with 4 chickens. Yes.

I've also been improving and adding more clarity in the tutorials. This page in particular makes me happy:
Tutorial on Tamed Creatures

I haven't shared much about this in our previous devlogs, but as in most farming sims, there will be a Mines area where researchers can delve deep to collect ores and find unique plants, creatures, and fish!
Floor 2 of the Mines. There will be different Mine biomes for players to explore.

[h3]Some folks have been asking about the game's content for EA and what to expect at launch! So here's a summary.[/h3]
There's at least 20 hours of content, which includes the following:
1) Researchables: 60+ researchables (includes crops, creatures, and fish)
2) NPCs: Over 15 townsfolk, including 6 romanceables!
- You'll be able to increase friendship levels with romanceables - unlock 4 key cutscenes and 3 Hangout Events for each of them.
3) Main Story + Content: You can complete the main story arc for the game. The content is spread out across the 4 seasons, so you'll find new things to do every season! There is no rush to complete the story and you can take as long as you like. After completing the main story, you can continue playing for as long as you wish to!

These are not implemented yet, but in the plans (to be added during the EA period):
1) More romanceables! To have at least 6 cutscenes for each romanceable. For non-romanceable townsfolk, I plan to add some cutscenes/side stories too.
2) Marriage
3) Festivals
4) And more~
I'll share the full EA roadmap on launch day! 💖

We're so, so close! Thank you all so much for your support and see you at launch!
- Miki

[h2]Hello Researchers![/h2]

We recently announced our Early Access release date to be ✨February 20, 2023✨! Thank you everyone so much for your support, kind words, and excitement - I truly can’t be more grateful, and am even a little overwhelmed! https://youtu.be/bgjVbf1ZYDc
In December, I’ve been wrapping up the first cut of Research Story, and have been busy playtesting, bugfixing, and adding little things to improve the game. Here are some highlights for the content added:

[h2]NPC Researchers’ Books & Job Board 📖[/h2]
You’re not the only researcher at the Violet Archive! Your colleagues would also be adding books in their fields to the Archive, and you can get a glimpse of the content - and maybe learn a thing or two!

Shelf with Geology books

You’ll also unlock the Job Board as you progress, and can submit items that NPCs have requested to gain their favour and additional coin.

Job Board

[h2]Seasonal tiles 🌸🌻🍁❄️[/h2]
There’ll be 4 seasons in Research Story, and each season gets their unique colour palette and designs. Here’s a snippet:

Seasons in Shimmerbrook

[h2]Mason’s Shop, Well, House Upgrade 🏡[/h2]
One of the new shops in town is the Mason’s workshop! Purchase Wells, stone furniture, and even get a house upgrade! (Only the first house upgrade will be available in Early Access)

At the Mason's Workshop

Aaaand that’s a wrap for this year! See you next year Miki