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Ahoy!
It's time to grab your scissors and prepare to create some brand new friends in our Glow Up Update, available now.
The final building in the game is ready: The Salon. Once built, you can dive into the brand new Create-A-Critter system and design your very own islanders from scratch. Your custom Critters will arrive via the next tour boat, ready to settle in and become part of your community.
You can edit your creations later, but choose their personality carefully, because that's locked in for life! The Salon also brings some quests, and of course a new job and tourist hotspot.
You can have a max of ten custom critters, so that the game doesn't explode :)
It's not just the town that's getting a glow up, but the game itself! We've put serious work into performance for this update.
Overall this should improve FPS by about 15-20% on lower-end systems and the Steam Deck, a boost which can make a big difference later in the game when your town gets busier! This should also create faster loading times, and players on more powerful machines should notice less stuttering and drops in general.
We've also added new particles for fire, water, and various SFX, and we've added new higher-end anti-aliasing options for higher-end systems.
Woolington needs your help to search for a mysterious relic! The museum is at the heart of an all-new questline that you can start by checking in with Professor Woolington. (If she’s not ready yet, keep an eye on the bulletin board, she’ll let you know when she has your first task!)
Seven new critters will be joining the roster, these are the winners from our latest Critter Creation Contest on Discord! Please welcome Arco the boar, Katnip the plant cat, Quanta the lizard, Cobran the green heron, Ollie the opossum, Shae the ball python & Opalite the unideer.
We've also added monkey and pony heads, and tails for monkeys, opossums and gators, as well as a bunch of new nose options.
A bunch of small quality of life improvements landed too:
Sickness rebalances: If you give it to a Critter directly, medicine will always heal them the next day. Sick Critters will now visit the Clinic for a chance to get better. These two changes combined make sickness a little easier to manage overall.
Customizable autosaves: Choose when the game saves, which can be helpful to reduce stuttering on some machines.
Smarter crafting: No more "inventory full" messages if/when the crafting action frees up a slot, plus you can finally make slop in bulk.
We've also squashed dozens of smaller bugs in this patch, from bread pretending to not be an ingredient to fish escaping aquariums. You can now rename save files, sell the starter hat (you monster!), and will find that Renard stays visible on the map at all times.
Happy glowing up!
New Features
Create-A-Critter & The Salon: You can now complete the final building in the game, the Salon, and create your own custom critters!
Once created, they will arrive with the next tour boat. You can continue to edit your critters, but you cannot change their personalities! You can have up to 10 custom critters, but will NOT get an additional slot if you ask them to leave
Woolington Questline: Help Woolington and the museum with some problems relating to a mysterious lost Ark
Performance Improvements: This is especially noticeable on the Steam Deck, which now gets a 15% performance increase and faster loading times. We've also added brand new visual effects for things like sparkling items, fire, water etc. Salon Quest: Repeatable shop quest to earn doubloons and build your relationship with the salon shopkeeper. Competition Critters: 7 new critters will be joining the roster, these are the winners from our latest Critter Creation Contest on Discord. Please welcome Arco the boar, Katnip the plant cat, Quanta the lizard, Cobran the green heron, Ollie the opossum, Shae the ball python & Opalite the unideer. New Character Creation Options: Two new heads: monkey & pony. Three new tails: monkey, opossum & gator. New nose options (located under the facial hair slot) for humans, cat, pony, monkey, seamonster, dinosaur & robot heads. New clothing options: Dress of Embers, a black and red variation of the Dress of Darkness & a new headwrap hat, the snake headwrap. Quality of Life & Other Updates
Sickness Balancing Updates: Critters will now always heal when given medicine instead of having a chance to heal, and will have a chance to visit the clinic when ill. Also added a medicine vending cabinet to the clinic where sick critters can pick up their own prescriptions if you keep it stocked. New Anti-Aliasing Options: In addition to the existing FXAA, we've implemented stronger - and more system intensive - options including MSAA and TAA. Auto Save Options: Crafting Tweaks: If making an item would use up an inventory slot, you can now craft that item without "inventory full" messages, and you can now create multiples of slop.
Other Updates
Fixed an issue where crafted items such as bread would show as a red item in the cooking menus
You now must build the cafe before getting other blueprints, fixing a number of issues
Renard is now always visible on the map
You can sell the starting hat now, if you hate cool hats
Certain fish no longer swim out of aquariums
Tourists cooking at the grill now have the proper dialogue
Fixed Woolington incorrectly appearing outside the museum
The Donation box now properly shows up during Museum expansion
Opening treasure maps should no longer show a duplicate you
Fixed an issue with bakery quests where crates would not clear up
Changing texture quality no longer changes the quality of loading screens
Added type icons to the clothing and furniture store items
Did some work on bird spawning so they don't explode in front of the player so much
Drowning sounds no longer persist after you start drowning but put on Scuba
Player can now gain reputation with Woolington by doing quests and turning in treasures
The game will now properly save fullscreen/windowed settings
The "2 Fast 2 Tubious" achievement now only gets granted when you have all upgrades
New icon for game settings that makes more sense
Pressing LB at the end of a menu now wraps around to the start of that menu
You should no longer be locked out of sick critters homes during the day
Fixed some confusing text in the character creator.
Removed duplicate Tool Crates that some players have in their inventory
Shop payout balance pass – increased prices on several of the shops to make them more valuable
Ahoy Critters! Our “Brains, Bones and Badges” update is out now, our second update of the year and it’s a big one, with two more buildings added to the town, Steam achievements, a SEA SCOOTER and much more.
Hiring a medically-minded Critter to run the Clinic will allow you to treat sickly residents and tourists alike, giving your tourism scores a healthy boost. While Critter Cove offers free healthcare for all, you’ll first need to rebuild the facility and tackle some new repeatable quests to keep the medicine cabinet stocked.
If the thought of having Pokee as your doctor makes you feel even more unwell, but nobody else seems like a good fit, you can now also rebuild the school house. This lets you retrain critters in different jobs, allowing you even more control over your town.
Whether you’re a master of exploration, a crafting genius, or a social butterfly, there’s an achievement (AKA badge, we needed that third “B”) with your name on it. As of now, these shouldn't require a fresh save to trigger, but if anything feels "fishy," let us know in the dedicated Steam forum thread.
We’ve added a bunch of new customization options including pig and boar noses, new ear options, and a ton of new back options – these also will now live in their own tab in the character creator since our options are overflowing! Plus there’s some new music and animations to enjoy, and this cool new goth dress (the music isn’t goth but don’t let that stop you).
New Critters Hanzel, Bogo, Nova, Julie, Xolotl and Emberneigh can all be found in the world, plus we’ve made another two houses available in the town, bringing the current resident limit to a grand total of 21.
The new sea scooter can be acquired via a quest line from Anchor and works as an equip able item to allow for MUCH faster underwater exploration. If you’re not quite ready to go that fast, we’ve also added some awesome new fins that increase your underwater speed without a vehicle.
We’ve added new visual and audio cues for when things are cold or you’re running out of air, we’ve made all the ladders in the game actually climbable, and we’ve continued to make improvements to the controller, adding some new remaps and tweaks to the UI and added mirrors to most of the businesses around town. Check the path notes for the full list!
We’ve been busy behind the scenes finalizing our path to 1.0, and also our console plans. We’re very close to working out a roadmap to 1.0 and a final release date, but we’re not quite there yet.
Our next update should launch around the end of April. We hope that will cover the final new features we’ll be adding during Early Access. After that, we’ll want some time to really polish and improve the game we have. That will include a lot of bug fixing, but we will also be adding in new dialogue, and some QoL features.
We don’t want to rush out for the sake of it, and we’re super grateful to everyone providing feedback as we go.
Fixes bug where sometimes the donation box after a save for upgrading your houses new room(s) would break and show empty or another donations boxes information.
Things feeling cramped? Got too much furniture, and not enough places to put it?
You can now extend your house by adding brand new rooms, allowing you to set up different themes and styles, all in a single home. There are five room upgrades to grab, and you’ll get the first for free from Renard (provided that you’ve completed certain pirate-y tasks for him that is).
Barnacle’s questline is now complete! You can pick up the new quests from Port Bella just 3 days after completing his quest in Boomerang Bay. Expect some deep sea fishing and some brand new – if somewhat fishy – rewards.
The bakery and gym now offer repeatable quests once you’ve repaired them.
We’ve also fixed a bug that was causing issues with the tavern repeatable quest, so you should expect to see a lot more activity if you’ve completed those buildings.
The new technological marvel that is the head lantern lets you keep things illuminated while you use your tools. No more pulling your shovel out to find yourself in complete darkness. You can pick up the quest for the headlantern recipe from Copperbottom as long as you have the recipe for the normal lantern and have finished the Recycler quest.
We’ve continued to add new music into the game! We'll let you find it as you explore, but head to museum if you want to hear a new track straight away!
We’ve also added a new candy themed furniture set, just in time for the house expansion, and six new NPCs, including the OCs of our level designer Joony (Cookie) and programmer Nuno (Aurelia).
We’ve extended the time you can pre-order our wonderful Pokee plush for two more weeks!
We only need a few more in order to get everything sent off to production, and we know that hitting that number would move even Pokee to tears. Well, maybe not tears, but she’d be quietly proud of you.
We’ve also packed in more bug fixes, including:
Adding the ability use stamina to swim faster
Removing the pesky bug causing food and other items to stick to critters’ hands
Removing the camera lock when using the boat with a controller
Making feeding the crabs easier
Removing the automatic chest resort on reload
Giving Anchor a hi-res mouth, along with other character improvements
✨ New Features
Housing Updates: You can now add individual rooms to your house - Talk to Renard for details
Headtorch: Players can now obtain a headtorch to make it easier to use tools in the dark - Talk to Copperbottom for details
New Repeatable Quests: For the gym, bakery and tavern
New Barnacle Quest: Barnacle’s questline is now finished
New Museum Descriptions: Many museum items now have their own unique descriptions
More Music: New music in the museum, tavern, furniture shop, sailing, critter cove and on the enchanted islands. Tons of new music.
New Sweets Furniture Set
6 New Critters: Timmy, Aurelia, Ycaroo, Cookie, Mali, Ozzy & Capri
🛠 Quality of Life You can now ‘swim faster’ by using the sprint button in the water – this uses up your stamina like normal sprinting!
The radio will now inform you of where new critters have washed up, providing greater detail on where to find them
🖥 UI & Controls
You can now bind left CTRL, Shift and ALT as keys in controller options
Fixed a problem where players could set the same controller mapping to different tasks
🐛 Other Fixes & Adjustments
It’s now much easier to feed the crabs their crab snacks
Furniture shop items no longer appear in miniature
Fixed a common issue where the boat camera would lock using a controller
Storage chest no longer resort themselves when reloading the game
Cooking now always allows you to pull from storage containers
Fixes to collisions that were causing players and critters to get stuck in trees etc.
Critters no longer do weird rotations when seated
Fixed an issue on the main menu using the controller that would cause the d-pad to stop working
The Tour boat is now appearing and leaving at correct times
Spring horse movement no longer syncs with the camera causing potential motion sickness
Zooming into the map no longer makes the image disappear
Fixed a visual glitch when changing clothes
Fixed some character details, like Anchors mouth, showing as very lo-res
Fixed visual bug when changing clothes showed a hard cut in the UI.
Arlo was not allowing player to decorate their house.
Fix for tour boat arriving at the wrong times showing up in the middle of the night etc.
Sunglass stand allows sunglasses to be added.
Boat camera could get stuck while running and jumping onto the boat.
Many more...
Today, we’ve added a character that’s a little different to our normal crew – a fox called Pearly. Pearly is the OC of Ginny, a close friend of one of our community members, Rach. Ginny's original art (left) and our finished NPC Rach started playing Critter Cove shortly after we launched last year, and had been constantly sharing the experience through pictures and chats to Ginny, who had been too unwell to play the game herself.
As Rach was preparing to buy the game for her last year, Ginny passed away suddenly. After a long time, Rach was able to start playing the game again, and reached out to us about potentially adding a tribute to Ginny. We felt that adding her OC, Pearly, was the best way to do that. Pearly can’t wait to chat with you about worms, and she’ll be happiest if you bring her decorations from her favorite animals, the crabs!♥️
I know many of you have stories like Rach.
They are reminders that games can move us in such unexpected, beautiful ways. This is our small tribute to Ginny, to those we play with, and to those we wish we still could.
We feel very privileged that for some, Critter Cove has meant something greater than the sum of its parts and we want to say thank you to all of our fans for allowing us to continue growing and sharing the experience with you.
Rob & The Critter Cove Dev Team
Critter Cove is on sale at a 30% discount this week, starting RIGHT NOW!
We’ve recently added new outfits, decorative items and more music to the game in our most recent update, and we’re working on some major quest updates to the game for December, so now is a great time to get started.
Have you ever had the strong desire to pick up Pokee and squish her really hard? You can now place preorders for a 22cm tall Pokee Plushie on the Ownaj Store!
The plush is available for pre-order from now until Sunday 16th November. Once we get enough pre-orders, they will be sent to their new homes this coming March. Additionally, you will find a free plushie in your inventory if you play Critter Cove in this timeframe.
This project has been in the works for a long time to make sure this real-life rendition of Pokee is high quality and accurate to our original concept:
We'll see you on the island! - Critter Cove Dev Team
New music has the default volume increased. It was to low.
Fixed new building 21. Should let you get this building now was not correctly wired up.
Ahoy!
It’s been a busy month for the team as we’ve updated the demo with a year of patches, gotten the game verified on the Steamdeck AND done a big behind the scenes pass on performance and stability...
…but we’ve still got some cool new additions for you!
We’ve added nearly twenty minutes of new music to the game, mostly in areas where players spend a lot of time (underwater, and in the tropical biome, both night and day). We’d love to hear what you think on Discord or the forums, and we’re already working on more tracks.
Our twentieth house has been added, bringing the total critter population up to 20. We’ve also added spooky critters Hexis, Owlswald and Hopsferatu.
We’ve added more than 20 brand new rugs and some new outfits
And finally, in the spirit of the spooky season (as if Hopsferatu wasn’t enough!), scarecrows are now craftable by the player–the recipe will be automatically added when you log in.
We’ve also spent some time prioritizing our next big bug-squashing session. You’ll find a new thread pinned in the forum where we’d love to hear about longer-term things that have been grinding your gears for a while.
Next month we’ll be adding in new quests, and a big upgrade to player housing. See you on the island!
This update adds significant stability and performance upgrades for both PC and Steam Deck, alongside new music, outfits and items.
Blog post with details to come soon.
We've updated the Critter Cove Demo today with a YEAR of updates from the main game.
That's a year of controller updates, quality of life improvements, and hundreds of bug fixes. We're also using the demo to trial some performance improvements that'll be added to the main game very soon. If you already own the game though, now is a great time to bug your friends into checking out the demo as it represents a much more polished experience than it did at launch!
Critter Cove is now officially Steamdeck verified instead of just “playable,” which means Steam has approved us as a game that is a great experience on the Deck.
Nearly 10% of all players play Critter Cove on the Steamdeck, including some of the team, so we’ve always had the Steamdeck during production. Now we officially have the Steam seal of approval!
Of course we're not done improving the experience yet – we have many more updates planned that focus on the Deck and the overall controller experience.
We're getting back into a more social mood! We have an X and Facebook account, but most of all we'd love to grow our Bsky community, so if you're not already following us we'd love to see you on there.
Check out the competition running on Bluesky right now to win a copy of the game! As always --- see you on the island!
Our September update has just landed, bringing new quests, fresh decorative items, a shiny Codex menu, controller improvements, and of course plenty of bug fixes.
Even better: it arrives just in time for the Steam Autumn Sale! We'll be joining th sale a little early in fact, with a 30% discount starting this evening (Friday 26th September).
The farms in the enchanted biome need your help, so sail over to Port Bella and chat with Haystack to get started. And if you’ve completed the other farming quests, check in with Pitchfork or Applecore for some new requests.
Alongside the one-off adventures, there’s also a new, repeatable quest from Haystack that you can do to earn more tickets whenever you’re running low.
Feeling a little claustrophobic? Is the lack of door color options making you a little unhinged?
Fear not, for you can now add a variety of different door and window designs to your homes with this charming range of peculiar portals.
We’ve been transforming our crafting menu into a codex, which means you’re now able to see items easier, filter different categories, and see exactly how close you are to unlocking everything:
And this is just the beginning — in upcoming updates, the Codex will grow into a full collection catalogue, packed with item info and long-term progress tracking.
We’ve polished the controller experience (especially on Steam Deck) and added new options for customizing control sensitivity.
For the full list of these improvements, you can check our patch notes.
We’re always looking for more ways to improve the moment-to-moment experience in Critter Cove, so if you have any suggestions, please drop them over to us in Discord or in the forum, as we’ll be working on adding some in every single update.
We’ve added a brand new house for residents or the player to pick from, increasing the maximum resident population from 17 to 18 critters. Which is good news, since we’ve also added three new NPCs to the game as well: Melody, Zalika and Bolt to rescue at your pleasure.
We’re already hard at work on another update for October with more quests, more quality of life upgrades… and even new music!
See you on the island!
Critter Cove Team
Last month we launched our biggest update yet - the Enchanted Islands Update! We’ve followed that up this month with a big bug fix update this month that squashes over fifty bugs and general annoyances reported by players.
We also sneaked a few improvements in as well: There’s a new house available for Critters to move into, and the light on the tub boat actually illuminates things now!
Check out the full patch notes for more info, and please continue to report any problems on either Discord or the Steam forums, we read and organise every single report even if we can’t solve everything straight away.
We don’t have an exact release date yet, but we plan to launch into 1.0 in Summer 2026.
That’s a little longer in Early Access than we originally had planned – we had originally been thinking of launching towards the end of this year.
We’ve had a fantastic reception at Critter Cove so far, and we want to make sure when we do finally launch we’re all absolutely satisfied with the finished game.
Instead of having longer waits and throwing a lot out all at once, we’ll be working on bringing out smaller updates on a more regular basis. Not quite every month -- but close to it!
Our plan is that each update should have a mix of brand new content like new items and quests, alongside bug fixes and quality of life updates. Of course we also have several major new features planned, but more on those as we get them confirmed….
We've been quietly growing the team here at the studio -- which we've been able to do thanks to your support both in buying and talking about the game, so thanks so much for helping our Early Access be a success! We're happy to announce our new developer Nuno (Aurelius) and QA Manager Cariolan (Cariobs) both of whom have been for a while and have played a big part in our recent updates! And most recently of all, your very blog writer himself, Rob (DrWayward), has joined the team full time after working with us in the background for many years - pictured above at Gamescom several years ago and this very morning, wearing his Critter Cove x Gay Pride shirt. With a new programmer, QA and hopefully - if Rob can work out all the buttons - designer on board, we've got an great team to bring the game through to launch!
The other great thing about Early Access is that we can act on your feedback… So once again we’re asking for your thoughts on the game in a quick survey! If you get a chance to tell us what you think about Critter Cove so far, then filling it out before August 24th will enter you into a draw to win $60 of Steam games.
We plan to bring Critter Cove to consoles at around the same time as our 1.0 launch on PC. That includes Xbox, PlayStation and Switch 2.
We’re still looking into the feasibility of a version on the original Switch. We’d love to do a version for the original Switch still, but Critter Cove is a fairly graphically intense game and we’ll only do so if we can guarantee performance will be good.
Ahoy! We’ve launched the Enchanted Islands Update, our biggest single update of Critter Cove since we entered into Early Access last year and an expansion of the playable area of the game by nearly a third!
The update features multiple new islands, new quests, the next town rank, and a new museum upgrade. Of course, there are also loads of new customization items, decorations to craft and critters to recruit.
Accessing the New Islands
If you’ve been with us from the very start and you’re anxious for new stuff to do, some content is available right away; but to really open up what the new islands have to offer, you’ll need to visit your tavern keeper to get the “Rum Running For Ruckus Juice” quest which will get you out and exploring the new biome and characters.
If you’re just starting out on The Cove, don’t worry, this new content will blend right in!
And if you’re still debating whether or not to take the plunge and join us on the island, there’s more great news: we’re 30% off in the Summer Sale starting today!
More information below... but before you read on, a quick reminder if you haven't already to join us on Discord and Bluesky!
Sail north from town and you’ll find yourself in a mysterious island chain that looks very different from the places you’ve explored so far.
These islands are both larger and more mysterious than the islands closer to Critter Cove, places where relics from the time before are much more visible from between the leaves of exotic flora.
And new islands also mean more ocean to sail through, so we’ve also added new caves and a bunch of underwater areas awaiting exploration.
Keeping your tourist upgrades maxed out will allow you to bring a bakery and a gym to Critter Cove, offering both new food to enjoy… and new ways to work it off!
You’ll need to find townies to take up the roles of Bakery Owner and Gym Manager, and both buildings can help increase your tourist satisfaction too.
A new market stand you’ll find in the world will sell you brand new furniture items and new seeds for crops. There’s just one small problem – they might not be too eager to accept your doubloons! Perhaps there’s something else you’ll be able to offer in trade?
Spend some time hunting for resources for the museum and you’ll be able to build a brand new wing, just in time to fill it with all the treasures you’ll find that are scattered not only in the new areas but all around the existing world.
Those treasures can take the forms of items, fossils, gold plates, and even … ducks, so don’t forget your shovel, and your new wetsuit!
Dive into some of Copperbottom’s backstory, meet new characters who have made the enchanted biome their home, and learn from long-abandoned ruins how to craft working carnival rides! We’ve added tons of quests, big and small to enjoy as you explore the new biome.
We’ve also added plenty of brand new Critters to join your town and some new scenarios to make recruiting them for your adventures more varied.
Many crafting machines can now be upgraded to level 3, and with those upgrades, there are also new decoration items, tools and crops to discover.
We’ve also been expanding the interior options since our housing update last month, so you’ll be able to create a Country and Bath set to add some class to your surroundings.
But what’s the point in exploring if you can’t do it in style? We’ve also added a bunch of new style variants, hairstyles, tails and some new clothing items. And for those of you who’ve been waiting for “Chompy” the robotic dinosaur… he’s there waiting for you to learn how to craft him…
Lastly, if you’ve been wondering what to do with all those plungers you’ve found during your explorations, this release has the answer. The one… the only… plunger gun! No spoilers, you’ll have to find the recipe on your own, but this little baby will allow you to collect treasures that are out of reach without it.
Haven’t played since launch? Firstly, welcome back! Here’s a few more updates we’ve released since Critter Cove launched into Early Access, big and small:
Robotic Helpers and Barges
Upgraded decoration UI, control over who lives in your town, and other highly requested Quality of Life improvements
Tons of new clothing, customisation and decorative items
Decorating the homes of your Critter friends
Animation and technical performance upgrades
Gardening Job & New Plants
Barnacle’s Fishing Quests and Rewards
Controller Remapping
Hundreds of bug fixes and tweaks
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Critter Cove, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Critter Cove statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.