Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife News & Patch Notes

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Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife News & Patch Notes | SteamScope

inDirection Gamessteam_community_announcementspatchnotes

228d ago

Hello again, fellow keepers! Before ending the year, we're doing a larger improvements-and-fixes patch. It wouldn't warrant its own major release number, as additions are few, but the sheer amount of little things fixed in the game and its backend makes it a rather big update. So here is 1.6.0! In addition to improvements, the update also contains some neat modding functionality, required for an upcoming mod that we're keeping our eyes on. Additions

Browse album files button in the album menu.
Added UI tutorial for skipping the first night.
Added UI tutorial for making a habitat.
Added spellcaster cheat.
Added upgraded cheat.

Improvements

Major performance improvements all over the board. This includes some speed-ups for some more expensive UI components.
Item catalogue groups are now sorted the same in the preview as in the group.
Animated items are now animated in the item selector.
UI guide is now disabled if tutorials are disabled in the settings.
The blur effect has been overhauled for performance and quality.
Improved gamepad interactions with the UI.
Improved gamepad dead zones.
Delivering goodies changed to non-story task.
Nectar stock now fills a bit faster.
Freeze spell is cheaper.
Damage now temporarily slows creatures.
Corruption alert cycling now prioritizes creatures over upcoming spawn points.
Gamepad translation speed lowered slightly.
Music is now streamed directly from data files, improving load times and solving a rare crash.

Fixes

Creative mode says "Unlocked by finishing story".
Crash when deleting corrupt saves.
Load game header wiggles if only one save exists.
Missing DLC check defaulted to "Missing Data".
Fixed weather not being disableable. This also fixes rain being possible before settling the first bumblebee.
Fixed some missing texture accesses in gamepad mode.
Fixed glitch that would allow for copying adaptation.
Creative mode has the negative income alert enabled.
Fixed minor memory leaks.
Emissive not working on particles.
Item shadows override particle rendering.
Grass flickers when zooming in the top of the world.
Fixed that closing nectar trading using a gamepad would close the whole nectar trader menu.
Shadow issue with the stone step asset.
First tutorial is not auto-focused when using a gamepad.
Fade in doeesn't work on particles.
Alert cycling would target creature heads and not their base.
Enabling corruption in creative mode would soft-lock the game.
Deleting a save would break its focus when using a gamepad.

Modding

Temperature updates is now configrable.
Added more arithmetic commands.
Added kill entity by ID command.
Added restorer behavior range.
Added the option to deactivate nectar trading with a cvar.

September Round-Up ✈️

Tactical_Lichsteam_community_announcements

297d ago

Hey Keepers!

Welcome back to our community update! September has been hectic for Horticular – a packed schedule with Steam events and Tokyo Game Show right after! Let’s quickly go through what we’ve been up to last month!

Tokyo Game Show 2025

Yep, we are back in Japan once again, this time at one of the largest gaming events in Asia – Tokyo Game Show 2025! At our publisher Slug Disco’s booth, the Keepers were showing off the whimsical magic of Horticular far away from home with a demo specially prepared for this wonderful gaming event. It is something that has been in the works for a long time, and we can’t wait to reveal it to you in the near future. Before then, please keep an eye on our socials, and check out some photos of our Keepers in Tokyo:

Steam Events

Our Keepers were extra active online as well. Not only were they part of the TGS 2025 Steam event, they also joined several other Steam celebrations, including a charity sale.

Games against living miserably

A Steam sale organized by Curve Games and Campaign Against Living Miserably, a suicide prevention charity. This event celebrated how games can help us unwind, connect and escape. On top of that, games on sale (including Horticular) will send a portion of our revenue to a charitable cause.

Wonders of wizardry

The Keepers joined this magical event to study everything arcane. After all, magic is a mysterious art with boundless possibilities, and there’s still much to learn even if our gnomes are already magical beings. This event showcased a wide variety of games focused on magic and its wielders, from fantastic whimsies to eldritch terrors.

Summer postcard

At the tail end of summer, we took part in the Summer Postcard event to catch that one last ray of summer sun. Hosted by Ancient Forge Studios, it showcases a large collection of upcoming and released titles that let us visit breathtaking sceneries and relax in exotic landscapes.

What a month! And that's not over just yet – we have more plans this year! Keep an eye on Horticular's socials for the latest updates!

Discord X/Twitter YouTube TikTok

July Round-Up ☀️

Tactical_Lichsteam_community_announcements

358d ago

Greetings Keepers!

How’s everyone doing? Are your plants prospering in the summer heat, or have you decided to escape to the freezing Glacialis instead? The Keepers were also away for a short while to visit Japan, and they can’t wait to share this news with you in our July round-up!

Return to BitSummit!

Horticular was back at BitSummit, the largest indie game festival in Japan! With the event highlighting Yokais/folklore creatures, our Keepers were pumped to be back in Kyoto to meet some fellow magical beings and gamers intrigued by their mysterious presence. Of course, seeing so many players enjoying Horticular certainly put the Keepers and our critters in an excellent mood. A big shoutout to our helpers and BitSummit’s organiser for making this amazing event happen!

New Patches!

A couple new patches just hit Horticular in July with QoL improvements, fixes and even a new plant variant! The game might have seemed a bit quiet for a while, but keep your eyes peeled – more news coming soon!

Community Gardens

It’s been some time since our last community garden showcase, and we’ve gotten quite a few submissions over the past couple months. So let’s see what our community has conjured with their wildest imagination!

Let’s start with this submission from Zarah. A peaceful atmosphere in the story campaign. A few of our birds are roaming in the scene. Can you spot them?

From freezing glaciers to scorching lava, SapphireDragon made full use of Anubscorpiak’s Tiny Magic mod. The variety of thematic biomes and items is absolutely incredible in this community creation, and really goes to show the boundless creativity of both our modders and players!

Next Up, we have Arugiro’s impressive winter garden from the Frozen Frontier DLC with a few close-ups: An open-air space (with nice lighting too) for the Keepers; cabins hidden deep in the forest; a garden blurred by snowfall. This sprawling landscape really captures the various vibes of Frozen Frontier, don’t you think?

That’s all we have for July – the Keepers are back from Japan and are busy unpacking their bags in their tiny cottages. As mentioned earlier, there will be more news coming to Horticular in the future, so stay tuned and follow us on our socials!

Discord X/Twitter YouTube TikTok

April Round-Up 🌼

Tactical_Lichsteam_community_announcements

454d ago

Hi Keepers!

Welcome to our April Community Update! It’s been a month of events, and our Keepers were taking part in Steam events one after the other. Here’s a quick summary of everything they’ve shown up this month!

Earth Appreciation Festival

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/3529bf71a988be54b1e4e151077c9114595ff547.png To celebrate Earth Day, the Keepers once again joined the Earth Appreciation Festival to display our work alongside many incredible titles. Just like Horticular, every game in the event shares the same passion and love for nature. ICYMI, here’s the showcase video where Robert shows off Frozen Frontier and a few mod recommendations: https://youtu.be/z1pSMFm_FQY

London Games Festival

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/72db49a9439b7d8a898654c0e36ff3e0d706c2f2.png The Keepers went to London (digitally) and took part in the London Games Festival 2025. There were many amazing titles, both released and upcoming. And our Keepers felt very honoured to be part of this amazing event!

Lovecraftian Days

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/085d4b2d57aac77f89cf98895664d677939db6f2.jpg This definitely came as a surprise for many (including ourselves): the Keepers snuck into the Lovecraftian Days Steam Sale! For a cozy garden builder, Horticular actually has some pretty on-point Lovecraftian elements, with an eldritch being spreading corruption and decay across the world with its minions. To make this event even better, for the first time ever, Horticular went on a 50% discount!

Community Garden Showcase

It’s been a couple months since Frozen Frontier is out. Let’s have a look at what our community managed to come up with the winter items and plants! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/d113e444738a8c92469dd16fd885aaf67f5c8ebb.jpg Here’s one of the many submissions from mothic, who also streamed Horticular on his Twitch channel. Seems like he has taken quite a liking to boggier environments, with mud tiles scattered across his garden. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/84378d4c125fd58af746912fae1940d1afb1dc14.jpg An amazing piece by ckjr – a completely filled out garden in Frozen Frontier. The extensive forests provide excellent habitats for a wide range of critters, while the stone and wooden bridges connecting different sections of the map act as highways for Keepers to quickly traverse. And that sums up April for our Keepers! Join our Discord if you want to share your own designs with our gardening community, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube for all things Horticular!

❄️Frozen Frontier❄️DLC NOW AVAILABLE!

Tactical_Lichsteam_community_announcements

515d ago

Attention Keepers! The Frozen Frontier is upon us! This first DLC of Horticular takes us to the long-lost research world Glacialis. Rescue the frozen Keepers of the Cold Council, and uncover what happened to these poor gnomes. Introducing the overworld, where you can travel between gardens and bring items and critters from your adventures back to the main world! Find out what's coming in this brand new expansion, alongside our 1.4.0 update: Brand new mechanics unique to this adventure – thaw and bring life to this frozen world! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/5bf22d213da60b056520c1634d3b2d5b06f3291e.jpg Over 100 new items and 15 new animals adapted to the chilly climate {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/21d3f53b433cdfd4ea2fdca84897792beea7e377.jpg New Upgrades and spells to help you fight off the cold {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/0e8bd274688e701be8716a173a8508d89b525b18.jpg New friends and enemies – meet the unique Keepers of Glacialis! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/8479784b4afcfd2d3591836fb4f024ae296352ff.png And of course, new achievements for you to collect! Before we go into the patch notes, we'd like to give a massive shout-out to everyone supporting us along the way. Thanks to you we are able to bring this glorious winter season to Horticular with all the new content! We hope you all enjoy exploring the frozen frontiers of Glaicialis and designing the winter gardens for our new Keepers and critters! 1.4.0 Patch Notes
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/606059aff29e6d0ddedb646a8d17974deb006a78.png While this update prepares the game for the DLC Frozen Frontier, it is also packed with improvements for the base game. Notably, we have the new particle system that breathes new life into your gardens, as well as the much-welcomed snow! At one point in the storyline, Mercury will give you a small quest, unlocking our new cooling items. Use them to chill your garden and turn rainfall into fluffy white snow! Improvements

Snow accumulates in sufficiently cool (hehe) garden areas.
New particle system with some existing items getting some polish.
The UI now shows offending tags and missing ones when placing items.
Hovering objects, such as nectar or cones, now shows their names.
Water reflections have been polished.
Rainy weather fog polished for ambience.
Moving an item now shows the adaptation loss next to the cursor, not in the item information area.
Main menu saves will now be sorted by last played.
Magic UI improved to be more clear when the spell has charged fully.
Day change UI polished.

Content

Add 1 introduction quest for temperatures.
Add 1 new animal.
Add 3 new plants.
Add 2 cooling items to alter temperatures.
Pine tree unlock point changed and it now drops cones.
Mud visuals changed to look different than flower soil.
Larger plants have two new sound effects.
Log now looks better. And it’s walkable for your creatures. A twofer!

Design

Difficulty level now affects upkeep. Relaxed becomes less punishing in what you choose, and intense requires more optimizations.
Objects now try to drop primarily in the foreground, not behind objects, to make them easier to find.
Creatures aren’t evicted anymore if a habitat capacity decreases. However, all inhabitants will turn sad.

Fixes

UI system polished to fix some issues with elements showing a frame after it was expected.
Flying creatures would sometimes always be hidden behind some objects they land on.
Objects didn’t fully respect world time and would break when not expected, such as when the game is paused.
Some letters were never receivable but still counted as completion for contacts.
UI now better follows animal heights.
Locked creative mode was cut off on larger UI sizes.
Surface layouting improved for less odd edge cases where your surfaces look strange.
Shiny hunty quest triggered close to a new day, not “the evening” as the letter stated.
Borders (e.g. habitat tool) rendered during cutscenes.
Garden details could not be seen with gamepad in the overview mode.
Opening a tool on gamepad would not start with the last used one.
Stats page doesn’t update while playing.
Habitat marker could have a lingering error message.
Quality is shown for non-learned species when their habitat forms by chance.
Hopefully, an issue hiding the cursor when using OBS has been fixed.

Modding

NOTE: Corrupted don’t automatically spawn red nectar anymore. It’s controlled with a new OnDeath property. Make sure to update existing mods if they add new corrupted!
World Objects can now be marked as collected (by keepers).
Items can now have special effects.
Campaign worlds (like the DLC is).
Heat mechanic for items.
Power mechanic for items.
More control over UI features in the game mode (e.g. disabling overlays).
Quest deactivation conditions.
Rewards can now bypass pooling and vice versa. Recommended flow now is to set the correct store for an item and then use ForceDirect if a quest specifically wants to directly award an item.
Items can now require other items underneath as an override. Same goes for ground.
Contacts can now reveal information a bit at a time (per level).
Enabled spells are now configurable per game mode.
Animal height property that helps the UI where to place markers.
Adaptation rate can be changed by a constant.
Items and surfaces can now be usable but not count as collected for completion.
Fixed issue where multiple mod development folders at the same time didn’t work.
Custom quest categories.
Custom game mode textures.
Better inclusion/exclusion control for game modes.

Announcing Horticular: Frozen Frontier ❄️

DanPossteam_community_announcements

543d ago

As spring arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, we're not quite done with the cold weather (we got you Southern Hemisphere folks!)! We're very excited to announce that the first paid DLC for Horticular, Frozen Frontier, will launch on February 28th alongside the free 1.4.0 update to the base game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/35ad7ed191849720af4be179712ed8466ccc7927.png So what can we expect to see on update day?

Frozen Frontier

Frozen Frontier will introduce a completely new story on a frozen world that was thought forever lost. Your task is to help the Cold Council, led by the adorable Frostix, and in exchange you will hopefully learn new things about the Corruption. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/5078f4bd3997e94ccce1eefa577d38a00c60994c.png

DLC Highlights:

Brand new story featuring frozen gnomes in hours of content.
Arctic world, posing unique cold-based challenges.
Completely new quests to progress through.
New items and creatures befitting colder climates. How about a snowshoe hare?
Snowfall covering your garden. Mostly as a cozy treat!
Unique temperature-based expansion mechanic.
Rely more on keepers who have distinct jobs.
New upgrades specific to the world.
Can be accessed from your existing save file.
Achievements, of course.
Most items and creatures will find their way back to your main world.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/ef45b82821df22b9f04dd53e96606eb755edb8f1.png What could these orbs possibly be?

Update 1.4.0

The 1.4.0 update will be free and comes with some new goodies for new and returning players:

Temperature has found its way to your garden, with new items to create chilly areas.
Where there's cold, there's snow!
A new creature and a couple of new items.
Keeper chimneys finally show cookies are baking inside with the new particle system.
Other minor QoL improvements and bug fixes.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/07414b7e5d53bae2c92da3946686552de55078fd.png Introduce a little cold to your original Horticular garden with the free 1.4.0 update. To wrap up this post I wanted to share the new key art we've had created for the DLC - nothing like a bit of snow fun! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/44d24a8ae8ef1eb327005b08e5d869ed288f4351.png

December Round-Up ❄️

Tactical_Lichsteam_community_announcements

574d ago

Welcome back Keepers!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas. As the year is approaching its end, let’s do a final monthly round-up for Horticular in 2024, and see what the Keepers are up to during the festive season!

Festive update

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/b1d35a64a9b9cf685edbf69115b9b4f70308ceb3.png ICYMI, Horticular just had another festive update to celebrate Christmas in your garden. Check out the new lore book and find gifts left by a mysterious visitor. Remember, even if you missed out on the holiday event, you can still manually activate any time you want using the Festivity Spark item.

Steam Winter Sale

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/d3f1fb076eafaeeaa5388da1f6e30062b3f882a1.png The Winter Sale is still ongoing until January 2 2025 so be sure to grab Horticular for your friends and family (and if you haven’t already, for yourself) on 30% discount! No better way to start your new year than being surrounded by our adorable gnomes and critters!

Something’s coming…

Horticular’s release this year is only the beginning, and we have more plans to expand your gardens with new plants, items and critters. We can’t go into the details just yet, but here’s a little teaser for what’s to come: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/338823413783040457b0426205a17bd4f269de9c.gif If you wish to dig deeper, you can check out our Discord server. Robert, Horticular's solo dev, regularly shares work-in-progress content here and you can find out more about the future updates. You can also share your garden with fellow keepers and learn cool tips and tricks! Before we end this post, we would like to take this chance to thank you, our amazing community, for supporting Horticular throughout 2024. Whether you are a veteran gardener since the early days of demo release, or a fresh Keeper recruit who joined us recently, we equally appreciate each and every one of you for your tremendous support and passion for our game. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/42957702/800fec60a54277bbe30e19b108bc32e7837d1bfd.pngKeeper says thank you! Horticular’s release this year would not have been the same without your positive response and thoughtful feedback, which really helped us nurture Horticular into the wonderful garden builder it is today. Thank you for accompanying us along our game dev journey and here’s to more cheerful pixelated gardening in 2025. That's all we have for this month (and this year). Besides Discord, you can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube for the latest Horticular news! We wish you an awesome start in 2025 and we shall meet again next year!

Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife news & patch notes

Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife news & patch notes

YOU CAN NOW GARDEN ON THE GO

Horticular is coming to the Nintendo Switch eShop on April 30th 2026!

Featured Mod Release: Sea Adventures

More ways to play Horticular

Greetings again Keepers!

DreamHack

Community Gardens

Hi Keepers!

Mod Stream

Hey Keepers!

Tokyo Game Show 2025

Steam Events

Games against living miserably

Wonders of wizardry

Summer postcard

Greetings Keepers!

Debut Festival

Development Streams

Tokyo Game Show

Greetings Keepers!

Return to BitSummit!

New Patches!

Community Gardens

Hi Keepers!

New Key Art

Saturation Settings

Developer Mod Streams

Greetings Keepers!

1.5 Update – Creative Mode Unlocked!

Indie Assemble

Little Critters Festival

Hi Keepers!

Earth Appreciation Festival

London Games Festival

Lovecraftian Days

Community Garden Showcase

Hi Keepers!

DLC Release

Earth Appreciation Festival 2025

1.4.0 Patch Notes

Frozen Frontier

DLC Highlights:

Update 1.4.0

The 1.4.0 update will be free and comes with some new goodies for new and returning players:

Welcome back Keepers!

Festive update

Steam Winter Sale

Something’s coming…

Steam news for Horticular: Build a Garden, Attract Wildlife