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Horticular News

July Round-Up 💚

Howdy Keepers!

How is it the end of July already?! We're over half way through the year...where did the time go?
Well, maybe it's not so surprising that July passed us by, with how huge a month it was for us. Shall we take a look at some of the things we got up to this month?



Release 🎉

Horticular has now officially fully launched! 3.5 years of love went into this game, and to see it out in the world, where it's being enjoyed by so many of you, has been a wonderful experience. Whether you played the demo when it first came out, or didn't discover us until launch day, we're so appreciative of each and every person who has taken time to play, provide feedback, or support us on our social media channels - as a solo dev and a small publishing team, every single piece of support means the world 💚
You can find out more about the full launch version of Horticular, including some of the new features, over in our launch post.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Launch Livestream

Of course, we had to celebrate the run-up to launch with a livestream! Fran, Mike, and John from Slug Disco were joined by Robert, the incredible solo developer of Horticular, for a pre-launch chat and some slightly chaotic gameplay. You can catch up above, or click here to watch the VOD on YouTube if you missed out!

Free Demo Update

With our demo having been out for a while, it only felt natural to give it a bumper update ahead of launch, so that those of you just discovering Horticular could still try it out before committing to buying the game. We added a new creature tool to help you build your habitats, made adjustments to the quests, animals, and decorations, and even gave our beloved Keepers some fancy upgrades.
You can read more about the changes here - the demo is still available, so if you haven't had a chance to try Horticular yet, you've got plenty of time to fall in love with it!

Community Creations

Since Horticular is now out in the world, we thought we'd share some of our favourite community gardens and habitats that you've been making with the full game!


This incredible garden comes from Aly on Steam - we're absolutely in love with the use of lighting and the amazing pathways!


Atweeds on our Discord channel shared this phenomenal garden - between the incredible vegetable patches and the stunning randomised flowers, we're sure they have plenty of happy creatures lurking!


Our final garden to share comes from ThePillowFortG on Twitter - we're in awe of how many creature habitats they've managed to create in one space!

We'll be sharing some of our favourite gardens every month in our round-up posts, so be sure to send us your screenshots on Twitter, Facebook, or Discord if you'd like the chance to be included!

That's everything we've got for July, but be sure to check back next month for more monthly round-up goodness!

Horticular is a beautifully relaxing garden-restoring game inspired by Viva Pinata

Inspired in parts by both Viva Pinata and Rollercoaster Tycoon, inDirection Games and Slug Disco just released Horticular and it's as sweet as they come.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/07/horticular-is-a-beautifully-relaxing-garden-restoring-game-inspired-by-viva-pinata

Patch Notes for 1.0.8

This patch's main purpose is to roll out more robust error reporting, as there is still at least one unsolved crash in the wild. That said, there are some small goodies included:

Changed
  • Overhaul to crash reporting and internal logging, especially around start-up. Errors will now be caught for reporting even earlier, and a bespoke live launch log was added for fatal crashes that normally prevent error information from being written.
  • Launcher optimized to not read crash data unless a crash was detected, thus exiting faster on normal usage.
  • Crash reports now include the program exit code.
  • UI spinners now have a bespoke and larger icon.
  • Mod category pages now show a spinner when loading.
  • Mod actions can now be exited by right-clicking the mouse.
  • Snail wander distance decreased.
  • Poison no longer deals 1 damage upon immediate ingestion to not overly punish the player. This is especially important for any future animals (or mods) that only have 1 heart.
Fixed
  • Keeper's Paradise now advances when corruption is disabled via the inhibitor item.
  • Keeper's Paradise would not reset the streak properly when having decay after starting the quest during an existing streak. This meant that you'd have to work your way back to the previous streak + 5 to beat the quest.
  • Product year was outdated and hardcoded in the credits.
  • Minor issues with the Beetle textures.
  • Creatures no longer get sick in creative mode when ingesting poisonous items.

Patch Notes for 1.0.7

At last! This minor update should fix rare crashes related to audio interfaces.

Fixed
  • Fatal crash without logging during the initial loading screen.
  • Crash during the initial loading screen, mentioning being unable to initialize OpenAL.

Patch Notes for 1.0.6

Heading into the weekend, it seems like a good idea to get the latest fixes and small improvements out!

We're still investigating a rare crash when the game launches. It seems to be fully related to Audio setups, and we're currently testing an experimental fix. Reach out if you experience the issue and would like to help try out the fix!

Added
  • Tiny rare easter egg to the Hortic Day.
Changed
  • Creature health is now visible when using the magic tool. This includes when you're charging a spell that will affect creatures but not spells that won't.
  • Unfriendly corrupted now show a different heart to make it easier to distinguish friend from foe.
  • Item see-through effect is now slightly larger.
  • Achievement description has been made clearer for Party Vexer.
Fixes
  • Sound settings did not persist when playing in German.
  • Singing stones no longer stack things on top, but they can now be stacked on things.
  • Removed chance of getting double Rory entries in the Hortic Day.
  • Fixed rare crash during the ranking part of the Hortic Day.
  • Fixed crash that sometimes happens when interacting with a lightning rod on the world border.
Modding
  • Fixed ModMaster slow page opening when running through Steam on Linux.