Hermit and Pig news & patch notes

We’ve teamed up with Bonnie Bear Saves Frogtime to put together a special bundle:

Bonnie & Pig

If you already own one of the games, you can complete the set and get an extra 10% off the other.

Two strange worlds of adventure, in one super affordable bundle. If either game has been on your list, this is a good time to pick up both!

Happy Wednesday! Just uploaded a significant update!

• By popular demand, Hermit’s walking speed is now 30% faster! If you prefer a slower pace, you can change the speed in the settings menu.

• The two trinkets that were previously only available during Pig’s solo mission (and therefore missable) have been updated so that they are available to the player after Pig’s solo mission.

• The input/controller system has been given a major upgrade. For those that were having trouble with third-party controllers on Mac, it should (hopefully) be improved. We obviously can’t test every third party controller, but the root cause of the previous issues has been addressed. 

• Wren no longer appears in her house after the battle with Skid Feebis. So you no longer have to sneak and aren’t restricted in her house when backtracking. 

• The Morale special exploit has been closed (sorry!). Previously, you could just let the song play, wait to see the next correct arrow, and then press it when you were ready. This allowed for massive stat increases. Now, if you don’t attempt an arrow on the right beat, it counts as a miss, and the arrow gets updated.

• Several sticky points that were reported should now be improved.

• Several edge case crash report errors should now be fixed.

Enjoy! And as always, if you run into any issues, please report them in the Bug Report link in the game menu.

Howdy folks! Another update for you. This time, we’ve added a few features requested by players:

• Steam screenshots should work now.

• Steam Cloud saving should work now, so you should be able to open your save file across devices. IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of how Steam handles transfers, whichever device you open first will overwrite the save files on any device you open afterward. So if your main file is on your Steam Deck and a second, less important file is on your PC, you should open the game on your Steam Deck first, then open it on your PC.

• On non-standard aspect ratios, you will now see a patterned border around battles and conversations. It was a design choice on our end to limit the battle/conversation aspect ratio to ensure animations and layouts are consistent. The old black border wasn’t a bug! With the patterned border, it should now be clearer that the size of battles and conversations is intentional.

For those that got this error following the last update, it should be fixed now! Make sure to restart Steam to ensure you get the latest version. Apologies for the inconvenience!

Howdy folks!

Just published a new version with a bunch of fixes for errors and sticky spots that have been reported over the days since we released. If you run into any new issues, please report them in this form: https://forms.gle/hh2c66F7TPsAF8KU9

Errors: most of these are edge cases that only happened to 1-2 of the hundreds of people that have been playing, but wanted to note them here in case any of you are reading through them!

• Step Event0 for object ob_player: Unable to find any instance for object index '-4' name ''

• Step Event1 for object TimerManager: argument is not a method, unable to call

• Step Event0 for object ob_player: Variable Index \ out of range \ - -1.109377(109377,1)

• Create Event for object ob_menu_helper: sprite_get_name argument 1 incorrect type (string) expecting a Number (YYGI32)

• Create Event for object ob_menu_save_load: sprite_get_name argument 1 incorrect type (string) expecting a Number (YYGI32)

• Create Event for object ob_game: JSON parse error : unexpected end of data

• Step Event0 for object ob_menu_start: struct_exists argument 1 incorrect type (undefined) expecting a Number (YYGI32)

• Step Event1 for object TimerManager: Unable to get variable position from object 0000026311EE9D00

• Draw Event for object ob_pig: bool argument is unset

• Step Event0 for object ob_timer: Attempting to set Instance id 715865 with Object Index 280 (ob_animation) with invalid bound top nan bottom nan left nan right nan

Sticky spots: I went through and cleaned up some of the painted collision to try and prevent getting stuck in the following areas:

• Green guy house above lamp.

• After Wren’s house, heading toward the well, between spike and river bank.

• Before Wren’s house, in the bottom left corner of the truck that pig jumps into.

• Bottom left corner of witch’s house between wall and table (couldn’t recreate but made a change that should hopefully help).

• In town, in the restaurant, between wall and the guy talking to the business man.

• In town, in the sewer, top of pipes near stairs in second sewer area.

• In town, in the first open area, the spot north of a bench and fence.

• In town, got rid of the hidden walls in the park after Hermit’s speech.

• In town, a spot near the line of bottom buildings directly below the park.

Hermit and Pig launched on Steam last week, and we're really grateful for the thoughtful response from press so far.

• RPGFan: 95/100

• The A.V. Club: A- (91/100)

• Loot Level Chill: 9/10

• STWGames (Italy): 9/10

• So Many Games: 4.5/5

• Destructoid: 8/10

• Quest Daily: 8/10

• The Indie Game Café: 4/5

“A heartfelt RPG that isn’t afraid to sit with discomfort.” — The A.V. Club

“One of the most emotionally grounded indie RPGs in recent memory.” — RPGFan

Hermit and Pig has also been featured by Polygon, GameRant, and Good Game Lobby, with coverage exploring its themes of social anxiety, corporate forces, and stepping into discomfort.

Steam player reviews make a huge difference for small indie games, so if you’ve been enjoying your time with Hermit and Pig, leaving a review really helps - especially this early on.

Thank you to everyone who’s played, shared, or supported the game so far!

Mason & Nathan

For anyone experiencing the following error when you get to the end of the prologue and talk to pig, this has been fixed! Just restart Steam and you should get the update. Apologies for the inconvenience! ERROR in action number 1 of Create Event for object ob_convo_manager: Chatterbox: "pig.yarn" could not be parsed.

If you’re looking for a story-rich, turn-based RPG with key-combo combat, dialogue-driven encounters, and a lot of mushrooms, you can pick up Hermit and Pig today with a 10% launch discount.

We also have a couple of launch bundles available on the store page, including one with the original soundtrack.

Thanks so much for the support — we hope you enjoy exploring the world.

With four days until launch, we wanted to share a dev update on what we've worked on to let you play Hermit and Pig your way. From the start we knew we wanted Hermit and Pig to focus more on player skill growth than grinding over experience points. As development went on the idea expanded to give players more ways to tailor the game to how they like to play.

• Choose Easy, Normal, or Hard to change strength of attacks, base HP, and timer speeds, depending on if you want a more casual or challenging experience.

• Battle styles: Use key-combos that flex your memory and finger speed, switch to Simple mode that removes the combos, or choose Story mode where the best attacks are selected automatically and you focus on story progression.

• Timers: Disable timers entirely, or only in conversations, battles, or menus.

• Custom controls: Fully remap controls for both keyboard and controller setups.

There are about 40 trinkets throughout the game that you can collect and equip in battle. These boost Hermit and Pig’s stats and abilities. You can only equip a few at a time though, so it’s up to you to decide what will benefit their play style the most.

TTYL,

Mason and Nathan

We finally get to say it - Hermit and Pig launches one week from today!

We’re putting the final touches on the game and getting ready for launch. Thanks so much for all the support along the way. We're almost there.

More soon,

Mason and Nathan

We're officially three weeks out from launch! Our alpha testers are wrapping up their last play throughs and we've been shrinking down the to do list every day. We're opening a final round of shorter Steam playtesting to a larger group for a broad sweep of any remaining bugs. If you enjoy bug hunting on indie RPGs and want to help us polish the experience, we’d really appreciate it, but if you’re primarily excited about experiencing the story fresh, we recommend waiting for the full release. This playtesting would take you through about the first third of the game. Depending on sign-up numbers we may not be able to include everyone who expresses interest - but we'll try our best. If you’re interested, just let us know with this form and we’ll send keys around Monday, January 19. ALSO - this is the last chance to get an end-game credit in Hermit and Pig!

Happy New Year!

Welcome to our first Hermit and Pig devlog of 2026, and one of our last before launch. It has been a minute since you've heard from us, but we're finally emerging from the deep dark development journey known as the final stretch, and things are looking very good if we do say so ourselves.

Over the last month we've had an elite group of volunteers from our community doing alpha testing, and they're real crackerjack testers who have helped us a ton! While they're testing we've focused on fixing bugs, finalizing sound and music, and adding in a bunch of small details to really make Hermit and Pig feel complete. For a while we were feeling stuck on how exactly we wanted to bring the Hermit and Pig story to a close, but after many edits and iterations we sorted out the final ending and we are excited for you to see how the whole story goes. Over the next few weeks it's all about continued testing, polishing, and putting the final touches on this dang game. It has taken years plural, but we can finally say the finish line is in sight! 

And speaking of finish lines, we're making a slight edit and moving ours to February 5th. We hope you don't shed too many tears over this one, but the extra two weeks is all we need to make sure we can release this mushroom-covered beast exactly how we want to (and really figure out how to launch a game, that's a whole workload in itself).Okie dokie, well thanks for reading, and thanks for sticking with us through this gamedev journey. We hope you're as excited as we are about Hermit and Pig!

May your new year be strong on animal friendships and tough on fascism.

Mason and Nathan

It's a Next Fest surprise! We just dropped an extended version of the Hermit and Pig demo on Steam for a limited time! Players will go beyond the prologue into the first full world of the game, venturing deeper into the plot of Hermit and Pig and experiencing Pig as a battle companion. We gave press and streamers early access to this secret edition last week, and now it's your turn! We're only sharing this demo version through the end of Next Fest (Oct 20) - so make sure to try it out while you can!

Howdy and happy October!

Wow - we probably thought the gamedev journey couldn't get any busier, and then we entered this season. 

On the top of the list is Steam Next Fest - save the date! We've been prepping behind the scenes for a while now - polishing up the demo, reaching out to streamers, and planning a pretty cool surprise. Steam Next Fest runs October 13-20, and it's one of the best opportunities unreleased games have to get eyes on their game and get the Steam algorithm churning. The BIGGEST thing you can do to help us is wishlist Hermit and Pig from now through October 13 and ask your friends to do the same - it reallyyyy makes a difference!

On the dev side of things - it's kind of hard to believe how quickly everything is coming together for Hermit and Pig now! We are on track to have this puppy (or piglet) feature complete by the end of the month. Then we'll begin an intensive playtesting period for the rest of the year. Since our last big update we sent out, we've pretty much finished cutscenes. This is a huge milestone for us - there are 125+ of these throughout the game! We've also got ALL of the game's rooms set up, and now we're working on getting them dressed up with scenery objects - all the trees, grass, urban items, etc. that make a game feel like a home.

And finally, we will end the month at Dreamhack Atlanta - please let us know if you'll be there, we'd love to see you and we'll plan to have some cool giveaways and Halloween candy at our booth.

Thanks as always for reading and being here!

Nathan and Mason

Hello Steam friends!

Wanted to give you a heads up that Hermit and Pig will be in the Six One Indie Showcase this Thursday, September 18. We’re revealing a Hermit and Pig trailer with all new, exclusive content - and a PRETTY BIG announcement - no spoilers!

Pre-show starts 11:50am EDT, showcase is 12pm EDT - The main event page is here and you can watch via the Six One Indie YouTube and Twitch channels, IGN, or GameSpot. After the showcase the Steam event goes live and runs thru Sep 22. Make sure you check out the indie games on sale there.

Alsooo - we are excited to return to Dreamhack Atlanta this year Oct 31 - Nov 2. If you or anyone you know wants to go, you can use the code HERMIT for 15% off ticket badges (we don’t get anything for this, we’re just spreading the news). We’d love to see anyone there. They've got some extra fun things happening with the Halloween overlap this year.

On the dev side of things - we wrapped up THE GAUNTLET battle testing arena last week - we had great feedback and expert bugtesters. We really appreciate everyone's engagement, it helps us so much. While that was going on we were busy cranking out ALL of the remaining cutscenes for the game. Yep! Huge progress being made over here.

We hope you can tune into the Six One indie Showcase this week for our big announcement!



Thanks as always for your support of our scrappy indie game.

ciao,

Nathan and Mason

Hiya!

We've been focusing intensely on battles. So much so that we're ready for you to playtest (if you want!) what we're calling THE GUANTLET. This is primarily a testing environment for us, but for you it’s a roguelike-ish, arcade-y, self-contained “game” that focuses on battles. THE GAUNTLET will run August 22-September 5. To participate you'll just need to use this form to sign up, and then we'll email you a game link on the 22nd. You can play through THE GAUNTLET as many times as you’d like between August 22 - September 5. All participants will receive a credit in the game, a digital playtester badge (THE GAUNTLET edition), and have the chance to win PRIZES! Prizes include:

• $50 Steam gift card to the overall highest score*

• $25 Steam gift card to 2nd and 3rd overall highest scores*

• Hermit and Pig-style sprite of your choosing for achieving other in-game challenges we’ll reveal on Friday

(*Steam gift cards will be purchased in USD and automatically convert to your local currency upon redemption if you live in another country). So what will actually happen in THE GAUNTLET? You’ll progress through randomized rooms, fighting three battles in each one, and then visit a hub where you can get an upgrade and some other goodies. You'll progress like this through different rooms until you reach the very end (and hopefully want to run it again and again). Here's a quick look at one of these hubs (which also gives you a sneak peak at how we're using truffles as currency in the game!): 

You’ll get to experience about 90-95% of everything that Hermit and Pig has to offer battle-wise, including a wide range of enemies, items and trinkets, upgrades, and our brand new special mini-games.

Hope to see you in THE GAUNTLET!

Nathan and Mason

• When is it? The beta will open Friday, Nov. 17 at noon EST and you’ll have access until Monday, Nov. 20 at 10pm EST. We’re estimating you’ll need about an hour to do the full play through. If you can’t make it this time, we’ll have other opportunities in the future.

• How do I access it? This is a closed beta, so you have to be signed up to our studio listserv to participate. If you sign up, then we'll email you a temporary Steam key November 17. We’ll also share a link to a feedback and bug reporting form, and access to a Discord if you’re on the more social side of life. There may even be prizes involved.