House Party Update (0.22.0) Female Player First Look & Full Controller Support!

[h2]The female player's first look is here, doods! [/h2]

Although we haven't prepared new Original Story content for her quite yet, you can now play as a female character (on the Steam testing branch, more below)! We've done a thorough first pass through the existing content and made a bunch of tone, pronoun, and wording tweaks to make you feel at home in the party as the female player! Unfortunately, we have not had the time to get voiced lines for much of this alternate content or fully convert all intimacy sequences, but bear with us! We’re working on it!

Since adding her is a huge task, this update will be a little different than what you're used to. We'll be splitting this update into two pieces: A live update for all users with fully functional controller support and quality of life fixes and a testing update containing controller support, quality of life fixes, and the female character first look.

This will give Steam players the opportunity to experiment with the female player and give us feedback as we work through adding more of her content! This also means that your game will automatically update to the version with controller support, but you will need to opt in to the Steam Testing Update if you would like to try the version with the female player first look.

We decided to do the update this way because we didn't want the female character to be unplayable the entire time we worked on her (since we'll probably be working on her until around the time we exit Early Access). Releasing the female player first look as a Steam Testing Update and gradually updating it from there will allow a big chunk of players to try her early and give us feedback as we work on bringing her full content into the game!

Controller support is also fully functional, and we added some general House Party polish and UI improvements to this update. You can play the game without any major hang-ups on all supported controllers and the Steam Deck. We still plan on adding some quality of life features and fixes in the future to fine-tune how everything feels, but, as it is now, it's completely playable.

If you're curious about the polish we added, some notable changes are that we adjusted the colors for most of the interactable UI elements so they're easier to see and fixed some cutscene issues that could cause them to get stuck. We also added a garage cutscene and a Frank mini oral scene in the yard.

Leading up to our release from Early Access later this year, we'll be adding some quality of life features to controller support, polishing and bug fixing the hell out of the base game, and adding a lot more Original Story content, voice acting, and intimacy-specific tweaks and fixes for the female player.

Thanks for being the coolest partiers ever and staying patient as we worked through the hurdle of uncensoring Lety's content in our last update. We're sorry for the delay, and we hope you have fun playing as a female! We're excited to add more of her story as we get closer to House Party's exit from Early Access!

Ready to try out the new update? Right-click House Party in your Steam Library, navigate to the “Betas” tab, use the drop-down menu to select the "Testing" option, and hit "Close!" You're all set! Be sure to report any bugs you find in the female player first look, and let us know if there are more quality of life fixes you'd like to see added to controller support. Enjoy the update, doods!

- Eek! Team

Patch Notes: https://housepartygame.com/release-notes

Note: Updates labelled as “Testing”, “Beta”, and/or “First Look” contain unfinished and untested content. Placeholders may be present for dialogue and various assets. Older save files may no longer be compatible. Custom stories may no longer function as intended. Translations may also be incomplete. Controller support is nearly finished, but if you do run into issues, you may need to temporarily use your keyboard/mouse to restore normal functionality.