Wild Woods News

Hello to all of you,

aside from the boring business tasks 😴, we have been having fun working on the following things:



[h2]Shrines[/h2]

The effects you get as a reward for completing shrines are now a permanent buff. If you're lucky enough to solve one shrine type (e.g. bear, bird or squirrel) more than once, the buffs will add up new effects until the end of your run! 😲

[h2]Totems[/h2]

We've added new visual effects to the totems to better communicate their mechanics and - more importantly - make them prettier! ✨✨
As a refresher, the duck totem heals all players in its area of effect, the thunderbird totem deals damage to enemies, and the hamster totem transports resources your storage 🦆⚡🐹

[h2]Difficulty System[/h2]

This was one of the most upvoted requests during the playtest. In addition to that, we have also heard the desire for a difficulty system at PAX East (alot). After some brainstorming and reading all your feedback, we decided to implement three different difficulty levels: The one you know from the demo will serve as the "normal" mode. The easy mode will be for beginners or our younger audience. Last but not least: the hard mode for those who want to fight for their lives ⚔️🛡️

[h2]Second Biome🌊[/h2]

There is still some work to do in the second biome to make it even nicer. This includes polishing the boss as well as the game environment.

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]

The tutorial has been updated to include the new mechanics. It now needs some translation work from our external language geniuses 💬

• as we added the difficulty system, the next step is setting up a first set of values to balance in the next tests
  
• Add a notification UI that appears when you buy updates, get a buff or choose a direction at the crossroads
  
• Continue polishing the second biome
  
• Implement the first set of Steam Achievements (if you have more pawsome ideas, join our Discord to share them with us)
  

We wish you a relaxing weekend! 🐈💚

Miau, 🐈👋

We hope you enjoyed the last few days of the demo. As we explained, the last demo didn’t match the current game mechanics, so it was time to take it offline. Many of you were wondering what changed, so here’s our Monthly Dev Log, which explains the new challenge system and more:



[h2]✨New Challenge System✨[/h2]

As we mentioned in our last post, we have changed the challenge system. Our primary aim was to respond to feedback that crossroads could be overwhelming with information, and the frustration when you needed to choose a path due to the lack of resources. It’s a bit abstract if you haven’t played the new system, but we’ve tried to break it down:

When you enter a crossroads, you can still choose between two events (e.g. ambush, safe camp). Every path may include a challenge (e.g. stronger rabbit) which adds some difficulty. So why should you choose a path with a challenge? For every challenge you take, you will earn points, which can be exchanged for rewards in the safe camp. Once you have traded them in at the safe camp, the challenges will end. For example, no more annoying rain disturbing your fire! 🙅‍♀️🌧️

As a result, we don't have to pay as much attention to how challenges influence each other and therefore are freer in the design of new ones. Therefore, more challenges for you to overcome! In addition, as challenges may end in the next safe camp, we can really go wild with this: double the strength of enemies, invisible health bar, torrential rain, and so on.

With a wide variety of challenges, every run you take becomes more different from the last one. In the long term, this influences the replay value of Wild Woods.



[h2]Performance improvements🎮[/h2]

We have improved the games performance. As a result, Wild Woods now runs at 60fps almost all the time, even on the Steam Deck 🥳

[h2]Second biome🌊[/h2]

Back in March, we gave you a sneak peek at the second biome. Even though it looks really nice, there are still some things missing. So we expanded the level and added a boss. Can you guess which animal the second boss might be?

[h2]More support for the team🤗[/h2]

Valeria from Osmotic Studio has joined our visual effects department. Among other things, she has been working on the visual effects of the totems. The additional visual effects should make the totem’s buff more obvious at first glance.

[h2]Emotes System😃👍🔥[/h2]

This was one of the most popular requests from the Playtest: a communication system. We already implemented the basic structure of an emote system, and now we need to polish the aesthetic. Do you have important emotes for communication in mind? 🤔

• Steam Achievements
  
• Challenge system iterations
  
• Update the tutorial with the new challenge system
  
• Preparation of the next translations
  
• Improve readability and comprehension of game mechanics
  

Last but not least, we'd love to hear your ideas for challenges. As mentioned before, you can go wild with these. They can also be fun challenges (e.g. Rosie changing color every time you throw something in the wagon). Head over to Discord to share your thoughts.

We look forward to your feedback on the new challenge system. It changes some of the gameplay, but we think it will make Wild Woods even better! 🔥💯🥳

We wish you a great start to the week 🥰😺

Hello everyone, 👋

as the current Wild Woods Demo does not fit of the future mechanics anymore, it is time to take it offline until there is a more suitable one 🐈

But, we want to give you one more weekend, so on Monday 15:00 MEZ it will be deactivated.

Despite the unfortunate circumstances, there are important reasons for this:

Meanwhile, it would be time for a Demo Update. We would love to do that and share new content with you. But, as we’re still missing one of our main devs (which will not change in the near future), and have other big tasks to finish, an update is simply not possible for us right now.

After discussions with the team and our publisher, we’ve now made the decision that it is better to take the current Demo offline.
We had hoped to bring you better news. We are still working hard to bring you a great game as soon as possible, but we just need more time.

Last but not least, make sure you won’t miss the next monthly dev update. There might be a hint on why the current demo doesn’t fit anymore and what changes will be made 😮

We appreciate your patience! 🙏❤️

Enjoy the last days with the Demo. Have fun playing! 🎮😺

Hello everyone,

We had a blast at PAX East in Boston last weekend! Thanks to everyone who stopped by to play Wild Woods! 🎮

If you're new here, head over to our Discord to join our pawsome community! 🐈




Before we start our Easter break, here is the latest Monthly Dev Log for you:




[h2]Controller Disconnection Bugfixing🎮🐞[/h2]

We are almost finished implementing input device reconnection during play. This will allow you to continue your run without interruption if your gamepad runs out of battery, for example. In online lobbies, a message will be displayed above the character's head while the device is disconnected.

[h2]🐇Enemy AI Bugfixing🦡[/h2]

Among other things, we've reworked our enemy pathfinding system which already results in much smoother enemy movement. It might also be a solution to the ominous floating resource bug.

[h2]Programming Support🫂🙌[/h2]

Since we unfortunately still have a temporary absence in the team, we're very glad to have our colleagues from Osmotic Studios lending us a hand in the programming department 💚🔥

They’re also working on their own title right now: Closer the Distance is a story-driven game about the connections between family and friends after facing a tragedy. Head over to Steam and give them some love by clicking on the ✨ wishlist ✨

• We're preparing an update for the Steam demo, mainly to squash bugs and add in more content from the Playtest.
  
• We started working on a simple emote feature that is intended to help facilitate better communication, especially in online lobbies.
  
• As mentioned in the last Dev Log, we're still working on revamping the Crossroads and Challenge Systems. Stay tuned, we'll dive into more detail on this in one of our upcoming updates!
  

We wish you all a happy and relaxing Easter! 🐰

Hello everyone, 🐈

As mentioned before, a Monthly Dev Log has been in the works, and here it is.

After one of our team members was absent for a longer period, we wanted to start with the good news: We're back at full strength! 🥳




[h2]More languages🗣️[/h2]

You can now choose from 12 languages in the new Wild Woods Demo 🔥
Since the Playtest was only available in English, some of you asked for more translations. It was a lot of work, but we're glad we were able to add more languages so that more people can enjoy the Demo. Even more translations are planned (not finalised) for the final release.

[h2]Blackscreen bug🐞[/h2]

Unfortunately, we couldn't get to the bottom of the black screen bug before releasing the new Demo. That's why we added the disclaimer ⚠️
Meanwhile, Photon (our online multiplayer technology) has responded that the black screen is a problem due to a bad internet connection, which unfortunately either they or we can fix 😿 We're now trying to make sure that those who are experiencing the bug can see what's going on directly, while the rest of you can continue playing.

[h2]Second Biome🌊[/h2]

After you have overcome the dangerous forest, new challenges await you in the water: The reeds are sharp as knives, and the water is so deep in places that you can easily fall into the holes. We figured if we were going to create a biome with water, it shouldn't be easy for our cats! 🙀
We also polished the Revive UI and made it rewarding to revive others ✨

• We are still trying to fix the controller disconnection issue (some of you may remember this as one of the most common bugs during the Playtest) 🎮🐞
  
• Expanding the options in Crossroads based on your feedback
  
• Since we're going to PAX East, we need to make some special expo preparations (install QR codes, expand Quit, and more).
  

We wish you a wonderful rest of the week! 🐈‍⬛♥️