Southfield News

[h3]Hey, Buds![/h3]

We've got an important update from the Southfield team...

Our game has grown so much since the Next Fest demo back in February. We’re excited to show you all the hard work our devs have put into Southfield, with a fresh new Island, more crops, quests, construction options, and customisations.

You’ll soon be able to jump in and start building your own farmstead, meet the locals, and explore the unpredictable Island of Southfield. You’ll discover and grow your own chaotic crops, and invent new ways to automate your harvest.

[h3]What's happening with Multiplayer?[/h3]

Growing this game has been a labour of love. And while we’re proud of our journey so far, we know there’s further to go - and we’re grateful to our community for coming along with us.

Southfield was originally conceived as a single-player experience, but as soon as we started playtesting the game, people told us that they would love to share this island with friends. We agree, and that’s why multiplayer has been a part of our roadmap for a while!

However, multiplayer engineering is one of the most complex things to pull off for a relatively small development team, meaning we’ve had to make some pretty tough decisions and one of those is to not include multiplayer at Early Access launch.

Southfield is a game with many moving parts, which are made more complicated by our physics systems. This means that, right now, it’s a real challenge to make multiplayer work and be a fun experience to share with your friends.

We’re committed to keeping you informed on our progress towards bringing multiplayer to Southfield, and when we have an update, we’ll let you all know via Discord, social media or our Steam community hub.

[h3]What's going to be changing right now?[/h3]

Our original Steam store page mentioned multiplayer, and our art for the game also featured multiple Buds. We realise this could be misleading, so we will be removing the additional Buds and mentions of Multiplayer for now.

[h3]Southfield Early Access Plans[/h3]

Our Early Access schedule has changed, with Southfield now aiming to leave Early Access sometime in 2025. Making games is difficult and stressful, but with this extended release plan, the team has more space and time to make Southfield an even richer and evolving single-player experience, and a genuinely fun-filled multiplayer game too!

We have brought some features forward to our Early Access launch to make sure that your first adventure into Southfield is even more jam-packed with ways to play and create, a few of these being:

🌱 The Shovel A brand new tool used to gather new resources around the island… oh and you can surf on it, too!

🌱 Multi-resource Construction Use the editing mode to take your constructive creations to the next level, with loads more building materials (e.g. glass, brick, etc.)!

🌱 Bombs, Bombs, Bombs We have added many more bomb variations so you can discover all manner of explosive gameplay.

We're focused on making Southfield the best single-player experience we can for launch. We want to make this a place you will want to spend hours in, curating, cultivating and making your home! We want you to be free to explore and create, to meet the Islanders and discover their secrets and quirks.

And we want to know what you think, how you play, and what you love. We want you to come on this journey with us, through Early Access and full release. During that time, we hope to learn a lot, which will help us make sure that when we do launch multiplayer, it will be about sharing all the things you already love, and delivering new ways to play together!

More news to follow soon! And as always, thank you so much for your support.

Stay wibbly,
Flop and the Southfield team! 💙

[h2]Hey Buds, look... an art! 👇[/h2]

We’re celebrating World Art Day by taking a tumble through some cracking concepts, models, and animations from the Southfield art team.

We’ve asked each of them to share a little insight, a peek inside their creative process, to better understand how they brought our Island into being, and gave life to its quirky inhabitants.

[h2]🌄 The Island[/h2]
Rolling hills, winding rivers, and vivid rainbows crown our colourful Island. Southfield instantly feels like a playground paradise to any Bud looking for a fresh beginning! We wanted our world to inspire joy, and so we created a green, happy place where those good feelings could blossom.

Pleasant Plains offers countless perfect locations to build your farmstead. Whether you’re looking to thrive in the Mushroom Valley, escape to the Hilltop Woodlands, or find your peace on The Fens - there’s a dream spot for every Bud! But how did our Island paradise take shape?

Going right back to our roots and the foundations we built on, that cartoonish aesthetic was always there.



“The goal of these concepts was to show how different terrain materials combined together in a visually pleasing way,” says Dale, our Senior Concept Artist here at Radical Forge. “Here’s an early concept from when we were trying to figure out the look of Pleasant Plains.”



Anyone who caught our last dev update video will know we’ve recently added arches to the landscape, breaking up the horizon line and drawing the player in, making you want to look up and keep rolling on towards exciting new places to explore.

“The Grasslands is an early exploration of the Pleasant Plains area,” says Andreea, our 2D Artist. “It was inspired by animated movies with strongly stylised shape language and whimsical, nature-focused scenes.”



If you played our demo during Next Fest, you’ll have already experienced a little of what Southfield has to offer - and the Island has grown since! Our team has been hard at work perfecting every inch, from large landscape changes to the smallest detail in the Flower Garden.

"The quest board was one of the first assets we made about two years ago” says Jordan, one of our 3D Artists. “I know it seems like a random thing to make first, but it helped us define the art style and pipelines so seeing it in the game with all that came after is a really cool and humbling reflection on where we started and where we’ve ended up.”



To really take in the Island, you can climb the Watchtowers. “They offer great viewpoints across the Pleasant Plains," Andreea continues. “The Eastern Watchtower has been claimed back by nature.”



Southfield is as magical as it is mysterious (we’ve even got our own wishing well) but you’ll have to discover that for yourself!



[h2]👤 The Islanders[/h2]

The Island is home to some rather unusual inhabitants, each with their own unique style and meticulously designed features. As you meet your new neighbours, you’ll notice they look all too perfect for the job they do.

“It’s definitely handy to be a blacksmith with a portable forge” says Emily, our 3D Character Artist. “A lot of the NPC designs came from a Chimera of their vocations.”

The Islanders all have their own unique personalities. Experts think that over 70% of communication is through body language, and our Junior 3D Animator, Zoe, has paid a great deal of attention to the way each of our NPCs walks, talks and wobbles about.



Materielle loves to build, and their handy measuring tape belt is a dead giveaway! Gizmo is basically a robot, which checks out since they are all about those gadgets. Still, we’re left wondering why Big Sleeves has such… big sleeves?

"Big Sleeves is the best and it felt great to get to add to their character through a mixture of effects and shader work,” says Piotr, our Junior Technical Artist. “Their scarf is easily one of my favourite vertex animations on the entire project!"



[h2]🏠 Your Farmstead[/h2]

Speaking of building, when you’ve constructed your house, you’re going to want it to feel like a home too - so we’ve been creating decor to help you bring that cozy vibe to your farmstead!

"The Decor system was super fun to figure out,” Emily explains. “It all works with a gradient atlas system so we can tweak the colours in-engine, quick! We use a second & third UV channel to dictate where those colours and sometimes patterns go!"



We’re eager to hear what decor items you’d like to see added to Southfield. Join our Discord to share all your ideas and suggestions!

[h2]✨ Island Highlights[/h2]

From cheesy moon rocks to mysterious frog shrines, Southfield has plenty of strange and unusual sights to see.



"Set dressing the moon pools, graveyard and mushroom forest were so fun,” says Mara, our Environmental Artist. “They're just such calm and relaxing areas during the day, but have such interesting colour changes at night to create a more magical area to explore.”

“I hope players have as much fun running around and exploring these zones as I did dressing them!"



[h2]🌱 Thanks for your support![/h2]

And we all hope you have as much fun playing as we’ve had making Southfield. The work continues as we head towards Early Access. We’re excited to see how our Island grows with our community, and we invite you to join us!

Please consider adding Southfield to your wishlist, and joining our Discord to hear all the latest news, share your ideas, and see more from our team.

Stay wibbly! 💙

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2076210/Southfield/

[h2]🎬 New dev update video![/h2]

In this quick community update, we take a sneak peek at the new Island, from concept art to in-game landscaping and detailing, and we discuss how your feedback from our Next Fest demo has been implemented.

The Island of Southfield has changed a lot since our demo. A quick glance at the horizon and you’ll see new things… just everywhere! From mushrooms that glow in the dark, to waterfalls and winding rivers dividing the Island, Southfield feels entirely new (because it is).

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]Video Highlights[/h2]
🌱 Upgraded Island (featuring ARCHES)
🌱 Windmills, waterfalls and rivers
🌱 The mushrooms GLOW IN THE DARK
🌱 Reveal: Crop Combiner (new machine)
🌱 Bud can eat crops now (but should they?)



[h2]📝 Player Feedback[/h2]

Thanks to everyone who left us feedback when playing during our Next Fest demo period. All your comments were reviewed by our team, and we've been able to make changes and improvements based on your shared experiences.

👉 Camera movement sensitivity and motion sickness
The FPS drops and erratic camera movement definitely did not help things when it comes to motion sickness, but we’ve made improvements to the camera movement, and our options menu so you’ll have much more control over your experience. We’ve also improved our vehicles, with a directionally tied camera to reduce that floaty feeling when driving, and hopefully reducing triggers for motion sickness.



👉 Respawning vehicles on the go
It kinda sucks when you get your ride stuck on some particularly pointy rocks, or you happen to drive into a lake. We’ve now made the vehicle spawn platform portable, so you can respawn your ride wherever you are. All you have to do is hit it with an axe, and put it in your pocket.

👉 UI improvements to machines
We’re continuously working to improve our UI, and this has recently looked like improved communication for how to use machines (which proved an issue for some demo players). We’ve also made ALL machines interactable by either approaching and pressing a button, or the tried and trusted “lob it in” method.

👉 UI prompt to find Almanac
Players were also struggling to find the Almanac in our demo. We’ve now added a UI prompt so that every time you find a new crop, you’ll be able to jump straight to the Almanac and track your discovery.

👉 Control NPC volume
Players wanted to control NPC dialogue volume. We’ve added this so you can tweak it to your liking, and we’re continuing to look at ways to improve chatting with NPCs based on your feedback.

👉 Better balance to soundtrack
Players commented on the odd silences where there was just no music playing in the demo. We go deeper into our goals for the Southfield soundtrack in our dev update video. While the game will have more tracks and ambient sounds than the demo did, we still appreciate silent moments can be a problem for streamers who are relying on our music (and while this won't necessarily be added in Early Access, we're happy to add a setting so you can control the frequency in which music is played)!

[h2]✨ Axolotl Outfit Reveal ✨[/h2]
We reveal our little pink Axolotl onesie in the dev update, but we've also been working to ensure a lot of our skins have plenty of colour variants to choose from.



[h2]📢 Community Shoutouts[/h2]

Our very own Rhaps (a VIB and valued Discord moderator) kindly created this adorable emoji and sticker for our community, in celebration of the axolotl outfit reveal. Why not pop by our server and do a little flap?



That's all for now!

Stay wibbly,
Flop 💙

[h2]Oh hey, look - freebies![/h2]

Our Southfield demo is up for an additional week - so while Next Fest has come to an end, there's still time to enjoy the Island, find and plant crops, play with machines and automation, meet wholesome Islanders, and more...

That's not all! Every single bud who has played our demo in the last week, and every bud that plays before the demo period ends at 4pm GMT, Monday 19th February, will get our exclusive Crash Test Dummy skin.



[h3]We've accidentally started a frog cult support group...[/h3]

For those of you who want to join us in Discord (and those who are already there), you'll be able to enjoy leaping and bouncing on lily pads in you cozy frog onesie!

Could Bud look any cuter? (If your answer is yes, all the more reason to get into Discord and suggest skins for future content drops!)



These exclusive gifts will be delivered soon after we enter Early Access. In the meantime, we just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's played our demo, everyone who has taken the time to leave feedback, and all those who have shown support for our flip-floppy farming game.

You are the bestest buds.

Stay wibbly,
Flop 💙

[h2]Big news, buds![/h2]

Flop here, I come bearing some good news! We've pushed a hotfix, in the hopes we can reduce some of the performance issues players of our demo have been reporting... and just in time for the weekend!

I wanted to give you a quick run down of what we've been working on. We are limited to what we can do right now, and optimisation takes time. Still, we're confident this will help people experiencing crashes on launch, and generally make the demo experience a bit smoother.



[h3]⭐ Lag at launch/crash[/h3]
Players have reported a lot of lag when launching the demo. Provided you are playing above the minimum spec, this should be fixed! If you're closer to minimum spec. than recommended, we'd still suggest giving the demo a minute to warm up.

[h3]⭐ Day/Night transition lag[/h3]
The lag reported when transitioning from day to night should be minimised, while the lag transitioning from night to day should be fixed. The lag players have been experiencing between 9pm and 6am in-game has been improved but is still apparent.

[h3]⭐ Additional changes[/h3]
We've made some adjustments to the tutorial as some players were getting confused about the quest to fix up the house for Grumps. It should be a bit more obvious now what to do! We've also added a stone cutter outside the farm for flips and giggles.

We just want to thank everyone who's taken the time to leave feedback. You've been patient with us, and that's not gone unnoticed. We all really appreciate your support, the constructive criticism, the bug reports - and the recognition that this is a demo. It's a work in progress, and just a flavour of what Southfield is going to become.

Thank you for that.

Stay wibbly,
Flop 💙

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2076210/Southfield/