Kynseed News

1.1.0.11901





+ Customisation
+ Customise the look of your farm interior and exterior.
+ Spend money to unlock more plots on the farm.
+ Unlock more customisations by playing the game. These can be bought or gained from challenges and other sources around the world.
+ A certain Fairweather item might also give you a further area to customise…

+ Friends & Family Builds
+ Build additional structures for your farm that provide benefits or give shelter to your animals.
+ Repair structures like bridges to gain access to new areas or statues/stalls to make travel and commerce easier.
+ Repair houses that can be destroyed by the encroaching evil creatures of the land.
+ New Axe and choppable trees for wood collection
+ New Stone resource.

+ Totems
+ Many areas can now be infiltrated by monsters that place a totem which blocks resources and any F&F building in the area.
+ Through a mini combat room clear the rifts and totem to restore the area and gain rewards.
+ Eligible family can clear totems through gathering in that location.

+ Progress Screen
+ Track all your progress through this screen with a picture that fills in as you go.
+ Challenges gives over 400 challenges to complete throughout all aspects of the game with rewards of money/items and customisation unlocks.
+ Items screen gives a breakdown of how many you have found, total collected and the highest rating acquired.
+ Relationship screen tracks all current npcs and your relationship with them.
+ Story/Event keeps a history of parts of the game you have already discovered.
+ Shops gives a brief overview of how your shops are doing.
+ Customisation catalogue shows you all items you can unlock and what activities will unlock them.

+ Story Pacing
+ Some new tasks added with new characters and a new area and combat wood to unlock.
+ Additional cutscenes during childhood.
+ The flow of the game has been improved from start to finish to have a gentler pace unlocking as you learn the ways of the land.

+ New Noticeboard Tasks
+ Races
+ Treasure Hunts
+ Paranormal Activity

+ NPC improvements
+ A new talent system means each NPC, including your children, has their own skill which can be used to your benefit.
+ New dialogue has been added for reactions to you and relative to their level of friendship
+ Some NPCs now have cutscenes as your relationship grows with them.
+ The type of an NPC’s like/dislike can now be seen on their info to make for more targeted gifting.
+ NPCs now travel between levels and have had other AI tweaks.
+ Your previous family can visit from time to time at your farm.

+ Batch Crafting
+ After crafting 3 of a given item type you unlock the ability to craft in batches making up to 10 at once if you have the ingredients for them.

+ Proverb acquiring
+ These can be automatically given based on collecting the items at 5/10/15 of the item.
+ Proverbs found in the world are now context based to what skills/recipes and items in the level you might not have found yet.
+ For some items collecting 20 will also unlock the ability to place them through customisation.

+ Discovering Star Ratings
+ Picking up an item will now reveal one of the rating conditions in effect.
+ Review the info on the proverb tab or in the items page of the progress screen and you may be able to deduce the other ratings!

+ Instant Message System
+ Alerts the player to various events/tasks in the game.
+ Also provides shop alerts if you are running low on stock.

+ Misc
+ Kynseed Tree keeps growing.
+ Rumble added for controllers.
+ The apothecary can now craft combat items in a similar way to cures.
+ Good store ledger clearer on how transactions are making money/rep.
+ On the Character screen can select stats/traits/talents and press a key for more info on them.
+ Can choose the initial depth (difficulty level) on combat runs, the higher depths unlock as you complete a run reaching that depth.
+ Task to earn a new fae pet.
~ Friendship points has a new popup that shows where you are getting bonus points from.
~ Update pass on all the text.

~ Balance Adjustments
~ Skill requirements adjusted.
~ More renown given for completing story and extra is given for all sources in the later game.
~ Tools lower xp to level.
~ Prices on items are up to make rating modifiers more effective.
~ Brounie offerings removed as it clashed with totems and customisation.
~ Goddess offerings randomly paired each week.
~ Fish are weighted to appear more when their exact conditions occur.
~ Combat runs are slightly shorter and puzzle rooms are not guaranteed.
~ Noticeboard task rewards are a bit more generous.
~ Extra perk points at the higher levels of shops after all the shopper types are unlocked.

Fixes
! Various level collision/layering issues.
! Fixed issues where certain events would not trigger.
! Fixed Issues with lost items not spawning.
! Removed holes from giant vegetables.
! Aurore Boon correctly grants double herb in all cases.
! Animal likes adjusted.
! Rating conditions adjusted for Moxy/Offals Tench.
! Pig/Sheep riding anims redone.
! Fixed issues with dates to do with date spots and items gifted.
! Fixed Good store shops not making sales if you use a campfire in the same level.
! Fixed Good store shoppers not buying items at higher star rating prices.
! Fixed Good store staff pricing new items at 1 brass (now uses a number around the base price which could be a bit lower or higher).
! Collect honey order applies rating conditions.
! Cooking orders results apply ratings based on ingredients.
! Missing chickens not moving to the next step in some cases on returning the chickens.
! Chickens around the levels given names.
! Good store perk for outdoor item appears in the right place and gives star rated items.
! 4 missing recipes located.
! “In the morning” rating condition now includes dawn.
! Turning on and off lights could leave them lit with no light.
! Bees in jars weren’t selectable in combat.
! Wearing harvest task issues where it wouldn’t complete.
! Intelligence affecting speed of children learning xp.
! Fae shoppers could get stuck in the Good store doorway.

Hi Seedlings!

Welcome to the Big Build Update!

Your game should now have updated, if not check your library and you can do it manually from there.

We've spent the last year since release reviewing player comments and have developed a host of new features and improvements that we think make the game even better.

There is now farm customisation, building projects with friends and family, new combat totems that Hobs put up around Quill, story cut-scenes, loads of new NPC chat and conversation, a beautiful new progress screen, hundreds of new challenges, improvements to the flow and gating of the game and loads of other quality of life additions.



With the new improvements, we suggest you start a brand new character to experience the many additions to their fullest.

Your previous game(s) will load, though, so you can jump back in and explore the changes that way if you prefer. However, you'd miss out on some gating and story additions.

However you decide to play, we hope you enjoy this new update. It has been a true labour of love for our little team to create it, but we always felt it was worth the effort to respect the engagement and goodwill we've had from all of you since we launched.

Head to our Discord for help with questions and advice, or pop comments below and we will endeavour to answer them.



All the best,



PixelCount

Hi Seedlings!

We've just pressed the button to make our latest update available as an Experimental Build.



We’ve spent the last year since release reviewing player comments and have come up with a host of new features and improvements which we think make the game even better.

What to try:

• Start a new game. We’ve changed the content a lot, so that will be the only way to fully experience all that is new.
  
• Try Customising your farm. This is gated at the very start, but not long into the Prologue, you can play about with this much-requested feature. Turn the music up when doing so to hear a new track!
  
• Check out the new Friends & Family gameplay, which will have you organising friendly villagers to repair ruined buildings and bridges.
  
• When you hit Renown Level 3, you will see Hobs putting up evil Totems around the land. These are new combat challenges with great loot rewards.
  
• Spend some time playing with the beautiful new Progress Screen. This, we believe, really helps tie together the whole game experience.
  
• Try the revised Skill Tree system - we’ve tried to make it easier to unlock some skills so that your progression is faster.
  

What to expect:

• There is a lot more variety when chatting with NPCs.
  
• Clearer clues to what NPCs need in their lives.
  
• New task types.
  
• New cut-scenes, both for the player’s story and NPC stories.
  

Things to note:

• Installing this build will overwrite your current version of Kynseed. Existing saves stay in the Saves folder, whilst Experimental saves go into a new folder.
  
• If you want to return to the previous build, switch back to the default branch on Steam, where your previous saves will be intact. You won’t be able to load your Experimental saves into the default branch.
  
• We have bugs. We are working through them right now. If you spot any big ones, let us know - specifically crashes. We don’t see many crashes these days, but if you see one:
  

1. Take a screenshot of the red crash screen using the Snipping tool in Windows and send it to us via the channel on Discord, or by email at [email protected].
   
2. Also, send us your latest save, found in Kynseed/ExperimentalSaves.
   
3. And finally, send us the latest file in Kynseed/Logs.
   

There is more balance work to be done, for instance, on item prices, Friendship Points and Renown levels, and a few other relationship and story tweaks we are a bit behind on.


This player needs plenty of friends to complete her farm vision...

[hr][/hr]
How to get the Experimental Build installed:

In your steam library right click and access properties for Kynseed.



Under the Betas tab, select Experimental from the dropdown.



This should now update and replace the build with this version. You can return to the normal build by choosing None for the Beta Participation options.

How to get in touch:

Our Community Manager has set up a dedicated channel on PixelCount’s Discord called Experimental Build. If Discord is not your thing, you can email us at [email protected].



That is it. Once again, thank you for being one of our much-loved community members in the first place, but even bigger thanks if you decide to take a quick look at this build preview. We hope you like it.



All the best,



PixelCount

Hello Seedlings!

A dev update to close out the year.

The Big Build Update is now in the hands of a select group of our Discord Community members to do a pre-experimental wander around Quill. They are generally customising their farms, repairing houses and checking out the new features.

So far, we've had some great feedback, with a mix of the odd crash, some bugs, some fantastic ideas and general heartwarming positivity.

The Holiday season has come at just the wrong time for getting the Experimental out for everyone as we need to take a little break to spend some time with our families. A couple of us will continue testing and coding between Christmas and the New Year, and we will all be back beavering away on Jan 2nd.

We occasionally get bugs that send us down rabbit holes, wondering, 'What if that was a game feature?'. These tend to be an easy-to-take distraction from getting our to-do lists done! Here are two recent bugs that made us laugh and wonder equally!

First up, whilst tweaking the new Customisation Catalogue, the bug spirits, if there are such a thing, seem to suggest new plantable types - Bottle Bushes, anyone?



Then, and this is something we admit is interestingly compelling, having Butterscotch follow you around! Let me say now: this ain't happening anytime soon, but it would be handy for any immediate Milk Delivery requests you might get!



We've also spotted what looks like Santa's present store outside Willowdown Farm - courtesy of our soon to be released Customisation mode, of course.



That's it for now. All that is left to say is we hope you all have lovely Christmas and New Year celebrations and that you get some time to do some gaming, perhaps a bit of Kynseed, along with all the other great games that have come out recently.



All the best,



PixelCount

Hello Seedlings!

A dev update for you.

Development on The Big Build has continued at full steam, and as we mentioned previously, we plan to release an Experimental build for you all to play.

However, as with bug-fixing logic, sometimes when you fix one, you add two more... so we still have issues that we’d prefer to iron out, before we share it with you, but we promise it’ll be worth the wait. As for exact timeline we don't feel confident enough to share an exact date right now but it's looking like being within the next month if things continue going well.

As well as all the new features we've added, like the customisation of your farm and fixing up of derelict properties, we have also improved areas such as gameplay gating, AI navigation and NPC text. Due to how these all work together in a game as big as ours, we need to do a bit more poking, testing and finessing to make sure it all behaves as expected.

We hope to soon start sharing some behind-the-scenes happenings in the form of a development diary. Some bugs are just too good not to share... oh, the joys of computer game development!





We love it, really, and we love our 'little' game, which is why we are taking time to get this additional content as good as possible.


All the best,



PixelCount