Wild Woods News

[p]Hello adventurers,[/p][p][/p][p]After wrapping up the last big update earlier this month, our focus is now on tackling the third biome again![/p][p][/p][h2]Roadmap Update 🛣️🗺️[/h2][p]We’ve adjusted the release window for the third biome to Winter 2025/26 (originally Q4 2025). While we’re still aiming for Q4, we can’t promise it at this point. We want to be transparent with you, so we’d rather communicate the change now than at the last minute 🤗​🙏

[/p][h2]Gamescom Asia 🎮[/h2][p]Our publisher Daedalic will be in Bangkok from October 16–19. At their booth, you’ll be able to play Wild Woods! If you have feedback, our colleagues are happy to bring it back to us after the con 🥰[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Enemies Expansion 🐰​🦡​[/h2][p]We’ve been looking for ways to bring more variety to the gameplay. With our resources we’re kind of limited, but with the enemies, we’re not. We’re working on adding new enemy abilities to create interesting mechanics and more variety in fights 🔥​⚔️​[/p][p][/p][h2]Biome 3: Environment, Mechanics, Boss Fight ❄️​☃️​[/h2][p]Building a new biome comes with a lot of tasks, for example, matching the environment to the snowy theme, or adding a new boss. We hope to give you more insights soon![/p][p][/p][h2]Wieldable Weapons 🗡️🔥[/h2][p]We’ve implemented a new system that allows your cat to pick up different items or weapons regardless of their role. This can happen at any point during a run and will temporarily replace your weapon. In addition, it allows us to create temporary weapons with unique attacks or abilities, or more items you can interact with. Think of a bandage to treat your teammates 🩹🤕, or changing colours of resources to unlock a new shrine mechanic (just ideas for now ☺️).[/p][p]In the video, you can see how we use the system for a torch. Any guesses on how that might come in handy in the snowy third biome?[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We wish you all a catastic day! 🥰​🌞​🌈​😺​👑​[/p]

[p]Hello adventurers,[/p][p] We’re excited to share the next major update with you: Hotjoin and Save Games! 🥳🔥💯[/p][p][/p][h2]Hotjoin ✨[/h2][p]With Hotjoin, you can now join an ongoing party via room code, quick join, or a Steam friend invite (the latter only works if you haven’t started the Wild Woods yet or are still in the main menu). After choosing one of those options, you pick your skin and a role. Afterwards, you'll see the others, and with one more click, jump straight into the adventure 🐯🌲🦁[/p][p]We know connecting may still be tricky for some, but this feature should already add value to your gaming experience 🤗 We’re also planning to add Hotjoin to local games in the future, which will require a different system.[/p][p][/p][h2]Save Games ⏹️😴▶️[/h2][p]From now on, every time you leave camp, your run will be saved automatically. When you load the game, you’ll start right after camp. The save file will be deleted once you finish the run (win or lose).[/p][p]If you play as a group, everyone gets their own save file. You can continue your run with the same team, with others, or even solo. In the future, we’d like saves to happen when entering camp, but that will require changes to world generation.[/p][p][/p][h2]Group Management 👥[/h2][p]The host can now kick players and block them from the current run, preventing anyone from repeatedly trying to rejoin.[/p][p]
[/p][h2]Official Patchnotes 0.2.0[/h2][p][/p][h3]New[/h3]

• [p]Hot Join Feature: It is now possible to join games that are already in progress.[/p]
• [p]Steam Friend Invite: It is now possible to join a game played by friends or be invited to one via Steam.[/p]
• [p]Save Feature: Every time you leave a camp, your game progress will now be saved. You can continue playing these saved games both online and offline. The saved game will be automatically deleted once a round has been completed. [/p]
• [p]Group Management: The host can now remove players from your current session and change the visibility of the session while playing.[/p]
• [p]New network option entry for setting the default room visibility in network lobbies.[/p]
• [p]New network option entry to hide the room code in an online lobby. Useful if you want to stream your game.[/p]
• [p]New jumping into the water and cutting gras effects.[/p]
• [p]New menu for selecting the player skins in the lobby.[/p][p][/p]

[h3]Quality of Life Improvements[/h3]

• [p]Unified some ui elements, like popups and buttons.[/p]
• [p]In Safe Camp, everyone no longer has to sit around the campfire for the game to continue. Instead, a timer starts as soon as at least half of the players have gone to sleep.[/p]
• [p]The in-game pause menu now shows the region, room code and privacy state of the current game.[/p]
• [p]You can now always see the currently selected region in the online menus.[/p]
• [p]Obstacles along the way like treetrunks are now highlighted more clearly.[/p]
• [p]The boxes in the elite event now throw away resources that are lying beneath them when they land.[/p]
• [p]Boss upgrade rewards will now be replenished using regular upgrades when there are no special boss upgrades available.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Balancing[/h3]

• [p]Attention! Due to a bug in the last game version, players only took half damage on all difficulty levels.[/p]
• [p]Totems are now thrown out of their station when the wagon takes damage, instead of simply falling directly to the ground.[/p]
• [p]Some Wagon & Rosie upgrades no longer perform their actions if the corresponding station is damaged. For example, the Turret or the Wave Defense upgrade.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]

• [p]Sometimes it wasn't possible for everyone to participate in the battle against the second boss.[/p]
• [p]Pressing Alt F4 during gameplay caused the game to crash.[/p]
• [p]Sometimes enemies lost their target and simple stood still.[/p]
• [p]An invisible mouse cursor could still select elements on the user interface.[/p]
• [p]If no wagon skin was ever selected and the language was changed, an error could occur.[/p]
• [p]Brook, the badger boss, played his defeat sound a little too early.[/p]
• [p]Sid played her appearance sound a little too early.[/p]
• [p]Players could no longer be knockedback in the air by enemies.[/p]
• [p]Players only took half damage on all difficulty levels.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]Known Issues[/h3]

• [p]It sometimes looks like enemies are healed when hit on clients with a bad connection.[/p]
• [p]If you quickly navigate back in some menus when opening them, you may get stuck in the navigation. In most cases, the only solution is to restart the device. [/p]

[p][/p][p]We can't wait to see your ✨ new high scores! ✨ Now that you can save your game, nothing should stop you from playing endless mode for hours on end! 🔥 😄[/p][p]Wish you all a catastic week! 🐈‍⬛🤗💚[/p]

[p]Hello adventurers,[/p][p][/p][p]we hope you’re all having a great summer! 🌞
Since HotJoin remains our top priority and keeps us busy most of the time, we’re dedicating this DevLog to the feature itself and want to share some deeper insights with you:[/p][p]
[/p][h2]Why do things sometimes take longer than they seem?[/h2][p]The It's easy, you just have to add XYZ phenomenon.[/p][p]For HotJoin, we first had to find an approach that reliably works with our existing multiplayer architecture. We tried three different approaches—and only the third one turned out to be viable.

[/p][h2]Starting point (Version 0.1.4)[/h2][p][/p][p]Our game is split into multiple scenes. Before the refactor, there were essentially two: a Menu scene and a Game scene. For HotJoin to make sense, we wanted players to choose their skin and role before joining.[/p][p]In 0.1.4, the lobby lived in the Menu scene. When everyone was ready, all players switched at the same time to the Game scene. The game waited for everyone because loading game-relevant data happens locally on each system. In the Game scene, we then loaded the network objects—everything the cats interact with.[/p][p][/p][h2]First approach[/h2][p]Keep the scenes as in 0.1.4. The host sends the necessary information on request to late joining clients who want to join from the menu.[/p][p]Result: Acceptable for one client. Multiple simultaneous joins led to synchronization errors between clients. On top of that, the amount of data we needed to send with this approach was too large 😥[/p][p][/p][h2]Second approach[/h2][p]We added an additional Data scene containing all important network objects that clients need for HotJoin.[/p][p]Result: Unfortunately, our multiplayer plugin synchronized all objects with the clients by default, which made a data scene pointless 🥲 While people were still in the lobby, you could already hear the rest of the group fighting evil badgers. The integration of Steam Friend Invites also showed that a Data scene alone would not be enough. We needed a different approach 🤔[/p][p][/p][h2]Third approach (0.2.0)[/h2][p][/p][p]We decoupled the Menu scene completely from the networking layer and moved skin and role selection into a separate Room scene. The required network objects can be preloaded there, and late joiners can fetch all the information they need for a consistent entry.[/p][p]From approach two, we learned that while all objects are synchronized by default, you can disable synchronization for specific objects. In the room scene, we therefore only load the essential objects. Only when the countdown has expired do we synchronize the rest of the world, and the group or individual hot-joining clients switch to the game scene in a controlled manner.[/p][p][/p][h2]Conclusion[/h2][p]With the new structure — Menu → Room scene (selection & warm-up) → Game scene — we were able to reduce waiting time by loading important objects before entering the room. We also now have a standardized entry path that we can target both via Steam Friend Invites and save games (everyone always loads into the room first) 🥳 As they say, hindsight is 20/20. If we had known right away what wouldn't work, we would have started with the third approach 😅[/p][p]
Okay, enough talk — time to put the final touches on HotJoin. You’ve been patient, and we can’t wait to get it into your hands very very soon 😲🥰🐯[/p]

[p]Hello everyone,[/p][p] Summer is vacation time — and yes, we took that to heart! 🌞​🏝️​😴​ Over the past month, we’ve been taking things a little slower and recharging our batteries. But don’t worry, the team will soon be complete again, and we’ll be back in full swing! 🤗[/p][p] [/p][p][/p][h2]HotJoin 🎮[/h2][p]One of our most requested features is finally taking shape: HotJoin. We’ve made great progress, and while it’s not quite ready yet, we’re definitely getting closer day by day 🥳 Since HotJoin lays the groundwork for SaveGame, that feature is coming along nicely as well. We hope to share more concrete updates with you very soon! 🤞[/p][p] [/p][h2]Third Biome ☃️[/h2][p]We’ve also continued work on the third biome. And while the temperatures outside might keep climbing, we’ve got some cold views for you ❄️🥶[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p]

• [p]Continue working on HotJoin and SaveGame[/p]
• [p]Continue development of the third biome[/p]

[p][/p][p]We wish you a relaxing summer time (hopefully with a little less rain than here in Hamburg 😅)! 🌞​🍨​🏝️​[/p]

[p]Hello everyone,

Over the last few weeks, our main focus has been on finishing the ✨ newest update ✨ perfectly in time for the Steam Summer Sale. What better way to start your summer than having an adventure in the Wild Woods? 🌞​🎮​🍨​[/p][p]
[/p][p][/p][h2]Update Preparation ✨[/h2][p]Our latest update went live a couple of days ago. It included six new languages, numerous bug fixes, and new visual effects 🔥 Like, did you catch how smooth it looks when you're cutting through the reeds?

This cute little splash wasn't ready in time, but it's soooo adorable that we couldn't wait to show it to you! 🥰
[/p][p][/p][p]
[/p][h2]Third Biome ☃️[/h2][p]Last month, we started a Discord thread to collect your ideas for the third biome. You all came up with some great suggestions! Thank you so much! 🙏[/p][p]The best part is that some of your ideas match ours perfectly (sometimes they're almost the same) 🙌 Seeing this is super helpful for making further decisions. Therefore, we took some of those ideas, combined them, and developed them further. We've even tested some of them in a simplified version 🎮 This allows us to experiment with ideas and figure out which ones could actually end up the game and which are great but can't be implemented.[/p][p]One suggestion that we explored further is how the cold could also affect daytime and freeze resources. But how would you survive the cold when it's always there, and how would you gather the resources you need? 🥶❄️ So, the next step was - and still is - developing new game mechanics to help us survive this scenario.[/p][p]Furthermore, we like the idea of using snow as a new interaction point: snowball fights with enemies, snowstorms as a new challenge, Rosie stuck up in the deep snow, and so on 🌨️[/p][p]We’re super excited about everything that could happen in the new biome. And, of course, as soon as anything other than "it's getting cold" is set in stone, you'll be the first to know! 🤗🥰[/p][p]
[/p][h2]Updating to Unity 6 🖥️[/h2][p]It's great to have new features and optimizations that help our workflow. On the other hand, such a transfer is very time-consuming and causes new bugs 😅[/p][p]
[/p]

• [p]Keep working on HotJoin[/p]
• [p]Rework the lobby UI (mainly to improve the skin selection)[/p]
• [p]Continue working on the third biome[/p]

[p]
[/p][p]Have a pawsome day! 🤗🥰🌞​🎮​🍨​[/p]