Planticulture news & patch notes

Hello everyone! First of all, I want to give my greatest thanks to all the people that have wishlisted and followed Planticulture, as well as given the demo a shot. Knowing that there are people interested in this game, even if it's just cursory, really means a lot to me! Second of all, it's only as of tonight that I've stumbled across the posts in the community hub for this game- it turns out Steam doesn't send out notifications about that, so I didn't realise they were there! I haven't had a chance to do more than a quick glance over them yet, but I can see that some feedback has been left on the demo, and I want to thank those people for taking the time to write it! I'll be properly reading and responding as soon as I can. Hopefully I've addressed some of the issues, and I'll take careful note of ones I still need to work on.

Now, onto the main part of this; there has been plenty of feedback that I have seen, and it's been really valuable in working on the game! The balance with the rain and dryness has been a big point I'm aware of as an issue, and that's been the primary focus of this update. The other thing is an ongoing issue I'm always working towards fixing, and that's the communication and clarity for how to play the game. I've made some small tweaks on that front, but making a lot of updates and fixes for that will be the priority of the next update.

Change Log

Gameplay and Balancing

• Rebalanced rain amount and duration; it should now rain much less often and for less time. Additionally, there's some more work behind the scenes to balance how much dry grass there is at any point; and rain won't be able to get rid of all the dry grass available.

• The introductory part of the game has been streamlined a little; there's now guaranteed dry grass when a new garden is created, and the compost starts off with most of what you need to get it going.

• Compost goes twice as far as it used to- so while you'll still need to use it for new plots, and sometimes for fertility, it won't be as pressing all the time. Soil is now also considered rich at 50% fertility.

• Fast-forwarding has been fine-tuned a bit, with some behind the scenes issues being fixed making it now affect systems like the critter spawning correctly.

• A freeze/pause control has been added, allowing you to stop time while still being able to take actions in the garden; now you can either just stop it all and enjoy the view, or take a breather when you need to catch up on some stuff.

• Likewise, a 'play' button has been added to cancel out changes to time.

• Compost is now affected by fast-forwarding (and freezing); this wasn't the case before due to the type of timers being used, but it's been caught up with the other systems.

• The plants section for the journal no longer has a short-hand version of the plant information; instead, stats are now kept for when a plant was collected, how many have been planted, and how many have been grown. This won't be able to count plants grown before the update.

Visual Communication

• Newly mature plants get a slight outline to make them easier to spot

• The pop-ups above plants to indicate they need something are now not affected by lighting, so they're clearer at night. They also have a slight glow!

• Moved the "needs water" and "needs turning" icons for the compost outside the shed to be above the compost icon

• Updated the fertility bar in the tile overlay to reflect the changes in the threshold of rich soil

• Decorations that attract critters now have an icon on their listing in the menu, which changes appearance depending on if the critter has been added to the journal or not

Issues & Bug fixes

• Hovering the mouse over the unlock/sell button on a seed packet will no longer cause the seed information to appear

• The hitbox for the "close menu" button has been adjusted to more closely match the visual appearance of the button.

• The middle-mouse button panning feature has been tweaked to more accurately detect if the action was to move the camera or open the tile overlay

• Certain ui buttons now automatically release focus after being clicked and won't be affected by enter or space inputs afterwards

• Bees' light occluders now flip with the sprites to match them visually

• The particle hitbox for the watering can no longer interacts with lights, and has been adjusted so water appears to hit the affected tile.

• Fixed a bug where you would automatically be sent a replacement seed when you were out of them in the seeds menu, despite still having plants that could give you seeds

• Fixed a potential softlock where you could sell a seed and not automatically be sent a new one if it was the only one.

Misc

• ACT Government has been added to credits as a supporter

• Links to the Hats in the Night Studio Discord server, and forms for bug reports and feedback, have been added to the main menu.

I hope you have a wonderful day!

- Mikhael