Heard of the Story? News

Hey everyone 👋 I have an important poll for you all! I'd like to hear your thoughts on what should be the next major update for Heard of the Story? I've laid out a few of the key features which I think would be the most fun and make the most sense given the game's current state. But I want to leave it up to you all to decide! 😄 To cast your votes, please head to the Discord where you can react to this poll with emojis of the relevant features.

• ⚒️ Guilds & Fame: as you specialise into your favourite craft, find others with like-minded interests and establish your own guild. Likewise watch your villagers forge their own across different disciplines. Construct a guildhall and develop your collective experience to improve the items you produce. Rise to fame by developing your town's unique hallmark trade craft.
  
• 🌹 Romance & Marriage: connect on a much deeper level with more dialogue, gifts, and new shared activities. Unlock new mechanics and events such as having villagers follow you around, kissing, sharing houses, and more. Marry your favourite villager, and watch others find their own partners, or get into drama over toxic break-ups.
  
• 👑 Autonomy & Governance: raise a manor house to establish building and gardening zones for your villagers. Watch them start their own construction projects or beautify the town with well thought-out decorations. Establish more general rules and policies dictating villagers' overall conduct and witness just how exactly society will evolve.
  
• 🌾 Fields & Farming: purchase or gather seeds for various fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Plant any crop in any field, water it, and care for it. Finally, harvest the fruits of your labour and sell them for profit. Set up organic plantations by drawing the exact area in which you'd like the vegetation to grow, be it a big circle, small square, or a star-shaped farm.
  
• 🗺️ Towns & Conspiracies: open up a new world map showing a drawing demarcated by district lines, denoting towns, forests, mountains, and ancient ruins. Hear about events happening across the world - whether royal marriages or tough droughts. Uncover conspiracies, mysteries, relics, or ancient legends through stories from visitors.
  

• Added resolution options to the settings
  
• Added borderless and windowed mode (finally right?!)
  
• Improved UI adaptability for different resolutions such as the SteamDeck
  
• Trades will now show all written books and unwritten books
  
• Books now have colours and will be bound in a colour corresponding to the category of the book's content
  
• Fixed crafting panel partly blocking clicks on the prosperity bookmark
  
• Saved and loaded some additional state to prevent villagers from talking and remarking as soon as you launch the game
  
• Fixed merchants disappearing when re-loading the game after the market is over
  
• Fixed markets starting on wrong days
  
• A merchant will no longer arrive on your first day
  
• Fixed being able to walk through tailor beams
  
• Fixed and adjusted animations of the craft and sleep buttons
  
• Fixed getting stuck in the mine if opening inventory and using an action button
  
• Fixed banner being shiny
  

When using the controller:

• The last conversation option will now be re-selected after speaking
  
• Going up and down the dialogue options will now loop around
  
• Fixed no SFX for dialogue options
  
• Fixed tooltip being stuck visible when exiting a trade
  

A very tiny patch to fix a couple of rare crashes when:

• Certain villagers said something very specific
  
• Certain villagers tried to plan out their goals in a particular way
  

Just a small patch to address some player feedback :)

• Added a confirmation pop-up for destroying constructions
  
• Fixed confirmation pop-up not appearing for buildings when using the controller
  
• Fixed controller not working after going back to the main menu from an adventure
  
• Fixed building celebrations and destructions awakening sleeping villagers and causing... issues
  
• Improved coin slot interactions with the controller
  
• Added controller support for the main menu easter egg :)
  

[h3]🎮 Improved controller support[/h3]
This was primarily tested with the Xbox 360 controller, so let me know if you have any further issues and what controller you are using! Specifically:

• You should now be able to use the mouse while having a controller plugged in
  
• You should no longer sometimes lose focus (get locked out) when using the controller
  
• Added helpful hints to the customisation screen
  

[h3]🦗 Other improvements and bug fixes[/h3]

• Added specific journal icons for the latest actions
  
• Added small talk surrounding the masonry
  
• Made merchants sometimes feature an already written book
  
• Made the jewellery staircase wider to improve its walkability
  
• Made deleting saves much clearer to avoid mistakes
  
• Fixed villagers finding it difficult to perform activities (such as writing) on tables
  
• Fixed floating gloves in the tailor dummy
  
• Fixed being able to variate non-clothing objects in the tailor
  
• Fixed prosperity section not showing a problem when founding villager houses aren't complete
  
• Fixed personal_building_sign appearing in quests
  
• Fixed being able to open the contribution UI on during hammering a building
  
• Fixed some dialogue
  
• Added an easter egg to the title screen - can you find it? :)