Heard of the Story? News

Hey everyone! As always, we've been busy at work with a new major update for Heard of the Story. The plan is to release it on the 24th of March, here's the most important things you can expect!

In this update, we wanted to legitimise crafting by focusing on disciplines which do not yet have their own buildings. Therefore, we will be introducing two new workshops: the masonry and the jewellery. Respectively, you and your villagers will be able to perform stone-carving activities and whitesmithing here using new tools and equipment. Likewise, with these will come new dialogue and helpful information from villagers.



As part of strengthening the content in the game in general, we're bringing 30+ new items in this update. New tools, new decorations, new monuments, new musical instruments, new ingredients and food, new recipes, and more!

Behind the scenes, we've been working on overhauling villager actions so that we can introduce many more activities and use them to bring your to life. We've already made tremendous progress and will be releasing a set of new actions built upon this new code with this update. Villagers will be able to use objects placed around the town, tending to their plants, sitting on benches, playing card games on tables, and more!



Right now, one of the main challenges in the game is to scale up your town to many villagers. Yet, it is tough to know when and how new villagers will arrive. In the next update, we'll be introducing a brand new section to your book which will hold key information about the prosperity and attractiveness of your town to prospective inhabitants. Here, you'll be able to find what exactly you need to work on to finally materialise those new faces.

These are the biggest changes that our coming in the next major update, of course there are many more such as a visual overhaul to flowers, better understanding of needs by villagers, and so on - so stay tuned for the 24th of March to find out exactly what this new update brings! :)

[h2]❄️ Seasonal food items[/h2]

We wanted to iterate on seasons and their effects, so in this update, we focused a little on the food side of things. Overall, we've made merchants bring season-specific items as well as introducing new cooking recipes and purchasable items to vary the seasonal range. Now, you may find merchants serving vegetables during spring and summer, meanwhile nuts, fish, and their related recipes during autumn and winter. Finally, we also updated merchants to always bring at least one type of food with them to help encourage this culinary art!
[h2]🐇 Rabbits[/h2]

After almost a couple of years of teasing these little rascals, they've finally made it into the game. Note that they are a little bit shy! :)
[h2]🪓 Durability indicator[/h2]

Also much requested was a durability indicator for tools, so this update finally brings it to those items! Additionally:

• Also shows for other villagers when you're trading
  
• Used items are now discounted in trades
  
• During trading, we've also added the price of an item into the tooltip underneath the name
  

[h2]🐞 Other bug fixes and improvements[/h2]

• Added some new sound effects to market stalls and trades
  
• Fixed new villagers migrating into your town even if their house is not finished
  
• Fixed merchants not bringing tools for completed buildings
  
• Fixed merchants being able to bring monuments
  
• Fixed wheat not inspiring the idea of flour milling
  
• Picking up redcurrants will now also give cooking ideas
  
• Fixed cows so they only eat food from your hand, not also your pockets
  

This is mainly an important bug-fix update to address villagers not being able to talk or trade. This did indeed turn out to be a real issue so we thank everyone that brought it to our attention! In fact, it was quite a tricky issue to solve and make work well since conversations involve two villagers and a lot of edge cases between all possible actions - but happy with the results! This is one of the charms of this game, so we also apologise for not noticing this earlier; we've significantly upgraded our testing and debugging processes to implant more resilience into future updates and features! :)

Details:

• Fixed villagers not being able to start conversations
  
• Fixed villagers not being able to start trades
  
• Fixed villagers getting stuck in conversation due to overlapping actions
  
• Villagers can now talk to others whilst they are doing some actions (eg drinking at the tavern), and will walk up to them to do so
  
• Fixed villagers getting stuck if you go to sleep and they happened to be talking
  
• Fixed villagers remarking during conversation
  

Important note: we've recently confirmed that the latest Steam client update causes slower loading, saving, occasional in-game lag and sometimes glitches. Please see this post for details and how to avoid this issue for the best experience. Edit: This has now been resolved, thanks Steam! :)

[h3]Changes[/h3]

• Changed all flowers to slowly re-grow
  
• Fixed windows in house roofs not lighting up when villagers are inside to sleep
  
• Fixed camera being wrongly positioned when not talking to a villager head-on
  
• Fixed out-of-season vegetation from previous saves not also being destroyed
  
• Fixed villagers stopping one step too early to finish building goals
  
• Fixed villagers giving up on goals if their tools break and due to being oblivious to their crafting skills. Now they'll try to obtain the tool they need and continue
  
• Fixed game crash when destroying an uninhabited house
  
• Fixed time progressing during the loading screen, sometimes causing premature saves
  
• Fixed not being able to click on the same recipe when re-opening crafting
  
• Fixed changing crafting page not correctly updating the requirements and craft button if using the mouse
  
• Fixed out-dated settings hint
  
• Added an option to re-bind screenshot mode
  
• Fixed some interactions with screenshot mode
  
• Cleaned up the 'save and ...' flow by fixing buttons, adding a text hint, and waiting on save completion before progression
  

Happy New Year everyone! To kick off 2025, we have just a small patch to fix a few things :)

• Made villagers feel better after crying to prevent them from continually doing so
  
• Fixed merchants sticking to browsing only one market stall
  
• Fixed vegetation on and around buildings not being destroyed when it’s not in season
  
• Fixed out-of-bounds inventory items causing the game to soft-lock during loading
  
• Fixed being able to navigate the main menu banner options while in the settings