dotAGE News

Hello Elders!

I wanted to thank you all we just reached the Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, which is *unreal*!

Thank you so much for your trust and enthusiasm, when I made this game I did not expect it to sell, and never in my wildest dreams I would have thought it could reach such heights!

Nine years of work, iterating, polishing, scrapping, redoing, obsessing on the design and art, and doing a lot of detective work to catch bugs...

I wanted to make a good game, and I am laterally overwhelmed at the reception. You made this great achievement possible and I want to thank you all from the bottom of my heart!

Let's go!

Hello Elders!

While we discuss suggestions in the forum and the Discord, I am prioritizing and working on the bugs that appear. Keep them coming! The experimental branch is turning out to be pretty useful for this, so I'll keep working on it and, when I deem it stable enough, the build is moved to the main branch. Which is happening now, by the way.

This should avoid big bugs introduced with updates (as a solo dev, it's pretty hard to keep everything in check), as long as some people remain on the experimental branch. Be a brave player and stay there to have faster iterations and help me avoid issues!

This update has several nice fixes for some edge cases that could soft lock the game. Let me know if you still experience one.

I also made some small changes that were fast for me to do and slightly improve the game.

I am now working on a mechanic that can shorten too long runs if you snowball, and also working on the slowdowns at high population counts. Also, I did not expect people to make upwards to 1200 Pips in a single game (yes, somebody did that, no, I don't suggest to do that), so you can expect that I'll change something about that.

Also, the Golden Prophecy has appeared, which lists what will happen in the real world around us as dotAGE becomes more and more successful. Do help in making that a reality, if you will! I challenge you to win with *no food*, i.e. you cannot have *any Pip or animail* eat any food. Can you do that? :)




V 1.0.0.0020

UX

• Buildings that take animals as input will now prioritize the closest animal they find to avoid some slow downs
  

Balance

• Removed Strong Cold from the pool of Mini-Risk events as it was too strong
  
• Randolph: Mini-events won't have a random level anymore
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug with loading buildings with actions assigned even if no Pip is assigned
  
• Fixed triggering multiple Graveyard actions at the same time softlocking the game in specific circumstances
  
• Fixed Shaman's building sometimes not being selected on load as the correct building
  
• Fixed some late-game techs being wrong and spawning wrong UI elements
  
• Fixed confirm button not being clickable on some setups in the exchanges UI
  
• Fixed 'Kiss out of Nowhere' event still being able to use a children as the kiss-giver
  
• Fixed a rare bug with some buildings changing slot inside the tree if you researched them at that time
  
• Fixed Randolph sprite being that of Matus on end score
  
• Fixed bug with some transform event teasing they would give you some resources even if you had not unlocked them yet, and actually giving zero of said resources. Consider this a fraud.
  
• Fixed a few localization errors
  

Hello Elders!

While you enjoy the game, I am hard at work with the bugfixing, but I am also reading all the suggestions you are bringing forth in the Discussion forum, and in the Discord server!

By the way, while working today, I had a weird vision... let me show you what I saw:



The dates are unclear, and who knows if this is what will actually happen? I do know that I got a Steam Deck in my hands however, so hopefully the prophecy continues as foretold!

In the meantime, if you get stuck remember to enter the Experimental branch where you will find some bugfixes and small changes, and we will also use that branch to test new mechanics and/or changes.

Have fun!
- Michele

Hello Elders!

I know, it is Saturday, I should not be doing this. I need to get into the habit to regain my weekends. Just one more Saturday, then I'll stop. ;P

I wanted to let you know that we have an experimental branch now, where I will push the fixes before moving them to the main branch. This means that updates will be slower, but more stable, avoiding issues such as the one of yesterday with changing difficulty levels.

I will need a few brave players to stay on experimental for this to work, however. You will get faster updates and fixes, and in exchange you can tell me if something goes horribly wrong.

You can access the branch from the properties of the game, it has no password and it is called 'experimental'. I am also conducting a test for Mac users that have the checkerboard pattern issue, so please let me know if the 'mac-test' branch can solve your issue.

And with this I wish you a great weekend, to next week!

Have fun
- Michele

I apologize about the last patch moving every Harder game to the Hard difficulty, that was an error on my part and I should have been more careful. Hope that did not ruin your plans!

I am making sure that the Hard difficulty too can unlock Challenge mode, as that seems fair to me.

I also fixed a couple bugs with scoring.

As you learn the game, I too am learning a lot of stuff these days. It has been a very, very exciting and emotional week for me, and I tend to be a bit... quick and careless sometimes. I am amazed by your reception and I want to make the game better, and this makes me think fast eheh.

I think I will need to setup an experimental branch to avoid such errors in the future, or if you have other ideas I am all ears!

Cat needs to sleep!
- Michele

Balance

• Challenge mode can now be unlocked also by beating Hard mode
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed score multipliers appearing wrongly at end score screen
  
• Fixed challenge mode not being available anymore