Critter Cove News

The first of our content updates is now ready to enjoy! We originally planned in our roadmap to have just a few really big updates, but instead we’ve split that into smaller, more frequent updates so we can release exciting content faster and there’s more opportunity for feedback as we go:

As such, you can call this the “Update 0.5” of our original plan, but that doesn’t mean it’s half as good!

Here's a quick peak of what's included:



While you're downloading, here's some more info about what's included...

[h2]Robo Helpers and Barges[/h2]



Ever wish you could just tell Copperbottom to go down to the beach and collect all the salvage? Well he’s not going to do that for you, he’s way too busy inspecting your new forge. But we do have the next best thing. Explore new areas and gather recipes to create helper bots that will take over your day-to-day salvaging. Added bonus, finding the parts involves torpedoes and runaway barges. Bonus: this is just the first of our plans for bots and barges!

[h2]Barnacle’s Fishing Quests and Rewards[/h2]



Barnacle is back with some new fishing quests and unique rewards. Word has it that the otters of Boomerang Bay have a bead on our elusive fisherman and will report from time to time on his whereabouts, so keep checking your weather reports!

[h2]Gardening Job and New Plants[/h2]



Gardening is now an official job on Critter Cove! Assign a critter to tend the plants and they will make the rounds each morning to water, all you have to do is harvest. (In case you’re counting, yes, this means you can leave your watering can in your trunk, freeing up a space in your hotbar!) Just be careful, as with any job on The Cove, some critters are better suited to gardening than others.

[h3]Boat Upgrades[/h3]



Did we already mention torpedoes? Yes? Ok, it’s just that we’re so excited about them! Catching those pesky barges will also involve upgrading your boat’s speed. So… go faster plus torpedoes? You’re welcome. As with the bots and barges, the even better news is that this is only the first of our planned boat upgrades!

[h3]Change who Lives in Critter Cove[/h3]



Perhaps the most anticipated change is the ability to modify who lives on Critter Cove. In this update, you can select which critters should move along to make room for new castaways, no hard feelings (although, truth be told, it seems that some of you kind of want to have a showdown with a character or two… but that’s ok).

[h3]And more![/h3]

We’ve also added in much-requested control remapping and have added two new languages: Spanish and German.

Plus there's loads of new clothing items, new house items:





But wait, there's more! We have new quests and critters to meet, more body customization (you can use a mirror to adjust this any time) and, very importantly, a crab feeding station to keep your crustaceans satisfied.

We nearly named this update the “Boats, Bots, Barnacles and Breakfast (For Crabs) Update” but it didn’t fit in the title box.

As always your feedback is why we’re here in Early Access so we’d love to hear how you and Barnacle get on! You can join us and share your prize catches over on Discord, too.

We’ll have more details to share in December about our next major content patch, which will expand the world with multiple new islands and put those boat upgrades through their paces.

Fix a bug with the last update that introduced a bug where you could not select items while cooking from your inventory with the PRIMARY A button on your controller. This will now work as before.

Thank you to everyone who helped us track down these issues that have been plaguing us since release, would have been very hard to track down without the dedication and help of our great community (so many save files thank you). These were especially annoying so again thank you for your patience. Wanted to get these out while working on the larger roadmap update coming soon. Progress on that update is going well.

#1. Fix for double storms. So storms should only happen once now and should work fine if you go to sleep on the same day skipping the storm etc (will get a notice when you wake up that the storm occurred)

#2. While cooking you now can get access to all your storage the same as if you where turning in a quest for furniture/clothing etc.

#3. Fix issue with the 5 little crabs, crab village quest circle not going away both for new and old saves

#4. Fix issue with Professor Woolington not going to work if an EA save was loaded in the demo application and saved.

#5. Show popup one time only about EA/Demo save issue to help avoid people NOT updating or deleting the demo and still going into it.

#6 Fix placement duplication bug. Placing down items into the world sometimes did not remove the item from your inventory.

#7. Fix for multiple critter found scenario characters where showing up for the same scenario. You would usually not be able to interact with one of them.

#8. Fix for critters not going away after scenarios, especially if you helped them out but did not want to bring them back to the island.

#9. Tourists not leaving with the rest of the tourists and then not being able to interact with them.

We recommend Early access players uninstall the demo and demo players update to latest to avoid any issues with accidently loading Early Access saves in demo.

Hey Critters!

It’s been just over a month since we launched the game into Early Access, and we’ve been really blown away by the response.

You’ve all been just super fantastic in your support, and we look forward to your continued support as we move forward in making Critter Cove an even better game. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

[h2]What We’ve Been Up To[/h2]

Since launch day, we’ve been prioritizing and sorting issues and suggestions based on your feedback. We’ve been focused on fixing up bugs with over 100 bug fixes across more than ten updates. We’ve also added some quality of life improvements, and a few new bits of content here and there.

Of course there’s always more to do… Even though we want to really get back to working on the main game more, we will continue to release regular bugs and QoL improvement patches until we get the game into its best possible state.

The biggest change that we are going to make moving forward is we are going to split the Roadmap into smaller chunks instead of trying to do them in just two large pushes. By splitting them into smaller sections, we can get content updates out quicker.

This first content patch will include automated resource gathering Robots, new boat upgrades, farming improvements, including an NPC Gardener job, the ability to move townies out, a whole lot of new quests, and a bunch, bunch more.

German and Spanish language support is also continuing rapidly, and we’ll keep you updated.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on what we’ve been working on.



[h2]An Upgraded Demo[/h2]

We’ve also found a little bit of time to add many of our recent improvements and fixes to the demo.

Alongside hundreds of fixes and improvements, there’s some major performance upgrades that we had made between releasing the demo and the Early Access build that are now included, and much more complete language translations.

If you have friends that you think might enjoy the game, now is a great time to point them towards that!

We look forward to continuing to make Critter Cove an even better game, and thank you again for being such awesome fans.