Heard of the Story? News

Hey everyone, it’s been a while since our last poll, but we’d love to get your thoughts on this one! This week we are working on the last small sporadic quality of life patch before finally kicking off work on breathing more life into the hearts of our show - the villagers! Here are a few medium-sized features we’re interested in adding, which of these would you most prefer we work on next? To cast your votes, please head to the Discord where you can react to this poll with emojis of the relevant features.

• 🤝 Trusty Companions: Your cooperation with villagers will forge a bond stronger than ever before. With it, you’ll gain the option to have them loyally follow you, ready to lend a helping hand in any task you undertake.
  
• 👁️ Keen Observers: Watch as your villagers come to life, their eyes darting around, absorbing every detail of the world you've created. They'll voice their thoughts, praising your impeccable town planning or playfully teasing you about that misplaced table.
  
• ❓ Unravelling Tales: Dive deeper into the lives of your villagers with the power to ask follow-up questions. Uncover the secrets of that elusive Moorwick town (or why they’re so obsessed with crafting mallets) as you engage in captivating conversations that reveal the rich tapestry of their lives.
  
• 📜 Villager Chronicles: Keep a detailed record of your villagers' lives within the pages of your trusty book. Jot down their origins, aspirations, and the favours they've asked of you. Never forget a face or a story as you create a living chronicle of your town's inhabitants.
  
• 😈 Gifts of Gratitude and Mischievous Misdeeds: Win the hearts of your villagers through thoughtful gifts and find their trust in you grow. But beware, for some mischievous souls may stir up trouble by pilfering from their neighbours. Catch them… if you can.
  
• 🎩 Quirky Traits: From charming lisps to peculiar gaits, each villager is a memorable individual with their own quirks and characteristics. Spot the eyepatch-wearing adventurer or the eccentric soul who dons their hat backwards.
  
• 🧠 Inquisitive Minds: Experience the joy of reciprocal curiosity as your villagers eagerly seek to know you better. They'll ask about your life, your dreams, and your role in shaping the town. Engage in heartfelt exchanges and forge deeper connections with those who call your town home.
  
• 🤫 Newsplace: Stay in the loop with a new Town Board (or as some might call, the Gossip Board), your one-stop source for all the juicy tidbits and happenings around town. Discover who needs a helping hand, celebrate the latest triumphs, and unravel the tantalizing rumours that keep your town abuzz.
  
• 🏆 Echoes of Renown: Forge your legacy and watch as your actions reward you with greater control and additional capabilities. Both you and your villagers can earn fame and reputation based on your deeds and accomplishments. Will you be known as a benevolent teacher, a master craftsman, or a legendary introvert?
  

There are of course, much grander and more exciting AI features we have planned, but those are for another time 😉

The next weekly update is here! After a few much needed patches centered on polishing the game, we finally had some fun introducing new features! 😄

[h2]🧰 Chests[/h2]



One of the most requested features is finally here: additional storage. This comes in the form of 4 new craftable items: wooden chest, iron chest, large iron chest, and a special chest which I’ll leave for you to discover! Different chests offer different amounts of storage, so you’ll have to work or trade your way up to the biggest ones.

[h2]🪨 Cobble path[/h2]



Something that was really missing from the game is the ability to create stone paths! With this, you can finally pave your towns in cobble, giving different spaces a fresh look and your town more visual variation in general. However, unlike the previous dirt path, this new option requires stone to build - varying based on the length of the path.

[h2]⚖️ Upgraded trading[/h2]



Trading is a really important mechanic that has not lived up to its full potential yet, so this update also aims to significantly improve it. Since villagers have limitless inventories compared to the player, the previous trading menu would only show a small subsection of their goods which would not be that helpful and was also confusing. Now, all of their items are shown, separated into pages, giving you insight and access into their entire inventory and actually making trading way more powerful. Furthermore, a small hint is now shown at the bottom to indicate it is just unique items that are shown.

[h2]🪳 Bug fixes and small improvements[/h2]

• Decorations now start placement by pointing towards you to make them easier to position. This is useful for some items that have a particular rotation of use, for example chests and wooden logs
  
• Fixed adventure names consisting of trailing spaces or only spaces from crashing the game
  
• Fixed iron shield not giving many ideas
  
• Fixed house context menu to the left of your mouse
  
• Fixed villagers being able to give you gifts of items they are currently wearing
  
• Fixed being able to fulfil quests with items in storage
  
• Fixed being able to be pick up decorations even if your inventory was full
  
• Changed “inventory is full” hint to be more immersive
  
• Fixed vegetation respawning on top of fields
  
• Fixed villagers placing decorations on top of fields
  

Since it was Easter holidays this week, this is just a small patch focused on quality of life features, improvements, and bug fixes. Next week will be back to full-time production and we hope to finally issue a more interesting patch with storage chests and some other cool things - stay tuned!

• Changed the path tool to continue after you choose the end point to allow much easier continuous and large placements
  
• Your enemies will no longer want to trade with you
  
• Windmill blades now no longer all rotate exactly at the same time
  
• Added helpful hint at the bottom of the tutorial section of the book
  
• Improved loading screen hints so they’re more immersive
  
• Fixed clothes sometimes clipping through each other when you are moving
  
• Fixed unmineable mountain rock colliders being way too big and confusingly inaccurate (finally)
  
• Fixed camera clipping through those rocks
  
• Fixed being able to place buildings and decorations on those rocks
  
• Fixed a bunch of dialogue related to the construction of buildings (no more “I’m helping build the the Lion’s Tavern”)
  
• Fixed torch lights and the night speech bubble colours showing too late
  
• Fixed quit button not working in the start-up crash screen
  
• Reduced blur effect in conversations so it doesn’t overlap with villagers when they are standing a bit further from you
  
• Slightly updated the customisation screen
  
• Changed the player expression to be happy :)
  

This is just a quick patch to fix some buildings being cursed and therefore being uncompletable, even if you restarted the game. This issue was also effecting some motivated villagers stopping short of their goal to complete a building.