Virtual Cottage news & patch notes

- Removed Winter Decoration - Cat purr is now a bit louder :3

Hello everyone, With this small seasonal update, we wanted to celebrate the festive season and decorate the cottage accordingly ❄️ We want to thank you all for your support this year as well—we feel fortunate to have such a wonderful community ❤️ We continue working diligently on ✨ Virtual Cottage 2 ✨ and look forward to the moment when we can finally share more of it with you. It would be amazing if you could add the game to your wishlist! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943180/Virtual_Cottage_2/ Wishing you a peaceful and joyful holiday season. Yours, Simone & Josef P.S. If you're up for some wholesome Puzzle fun or looking for a way to support us, we're releasing Birds Organized Neatly next week! :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2707110/Birds_Organized_Neatly/

Hello 😄, Are you a Lo-Fi music producer and want to have your songs in Virtual Cottage 2? Link to your music in the comments or send it to [email protected] and we'll take a listen. 🎶 While everyone will be able to add their own songs in Virtual Cottage 2, we also want to support other artists again and give them the spotlight they deserve. To answer the question everyone wants to know: when will Virtual Cottage 2 be released? Next year. We ourselves don't know when yet precisely. There is no time pressure from our side, so we want to be 200% satisfied with what we made before we show it to the world. Oh and before we forget: please wishlist if you haven't already :) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943180/Virtual_Cottage_2

This small update addresses the following:

• Cicada, Birds, and Thunderstorm sound slider settings are now saved properly.
• All sounds can now be combined, with the exception of different weather types.
• Fixed a bug where the cottage graphic would get stuck around midnight, preventing it from updating with the clock.

Dear friends, We have big news to share with you today: Virtual Cottage 2!!! But before that, here's also an update for Virtual Cottage. This update includes character customization, new ambient sounds, and the ability to create tasks using Simplified Chinese glyphs.

Update features

👤 Character Customization:

• Change your skin tone
• Change your hair color

🎶 New Ambient Sounds:

• Cicadas 🦗
• Chirping birds 🐦
• Rain with distant thunder ⛈️

Simplified Chinese: Tasks can now be created in Simplified Chinese

Virtual Cottage 2

Since the release of Virtual Cottage all these years ago, you, our precious community, have provided us with a ton of feedback. Some of it was implemented, but a lot was left out. This is because of two reasons:

Virtual Cottage was never intended to be a big game but rather an interactive blocker for your screen to help you focus on your work.

The code is extremely simple and not very modular. (keep in mind, the game started as a learning project for us! 😅) By sharing your thoughts, ideas, and ways you interact with Virtual Cottage, you made it very clear what you want and expect. So, we are happy to announce Virtual Cottage 2! It will include the majority of the requested features, an improved user interface, other quality-of-life changes, and the most requested feature of all: Cottage Customization. Please hop over to the Virtual Cottage 2 page and see for yourself! (Also, don't forget to wishlist ❤️) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943180/Virtual_Cottage_2 Also: If you supported us by buying the Dreeme and LØNÆR Music DLCs for Virtual Cottage 1 (THANK YOU SO MUCH!) don’t worry. They will automatically carry over to Virtual Cottage 2! If you want to keep in touch, feel free to join our Discord Server! All the best, DU&I

Good day everyone! After a long period of silence, it's good to be able to present an update again! We are pleased to announce that we have worked with DREEME (of which you may already know some tracks 😉 ) to produce an exclusive album for Virtual Cottage! The DLC includes 10 brand-new tracks that should make every study session easier. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2661170/Virtual_Cottage__Dreeme_Collaboration_Music

But besides the DLC, there's more!

We have also included these features / quality-of-life improvements:

• Revised To-Do List: This version of the To-Do List is a bit easier to use and now also saves the tasks after Virtual Cottage has been closed. It was about time! 🙂
• The last task entered in the To-Do Pop-Up is also saved for the next session.
• New Options Menu: Time and pet are now in a drop-down options menu.
• Minor UI changes
• The Halloween decor is back!

Oh, one more thing:

We now have a Discord Community Server! If you feel like it, feel free to stop by. Chat, share food or animal pictures, tell others what you accomplished today, and so on. We look forward to seeing you! Invite Link: https://discord.gg/E2tR2mQ2KX We want to thank you for your loyalty and feedback. You are the best! Simone & Josef

FEED ALL MONSTERS IS OUT!!! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597720/Feed_All_Monsters/ We are so happy to share our latest game with you! We hope you’ll like it as much as we do and we can’t wait to see people playing it. If you are curious about how this game came to be and why some features are the way they are, our dev Simone made an extensive series about Feed All Monsters on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWM9iUc0QfE&list=PLbz7bMKeJC576fEEzUy6UQIb1-cpCckqb

Hi! Yes, it is that time of the year when we bring out the warm blankets and enjoy biscuits of all sorts and a hot beverage. We've decorated the cottage accordingly and wish you all the best for the holiday season. On another note: the Steam Awards are happening again this year, and we kindly ask you to consider nominating Virtual Cottage for the "Labor of Love" category. It would mean a lot to us! :) Take care of yourselves and stay safe! <3

Hey everyone, with this update, we decorated the Cottage just in time for the spoooooookkky season! Also, some bugs were fixed: - Songs should not loop anymore - Audio volume should now be saved - Arrow keys no longer toggle the sound sliders when pressed during the start pop-up or pause screen - When all songs are turned off and back on again, the shuffle button triggers a song from the playlist. Before un-toggling all music resulted in total silence We know the music is still audible when the volume marker is moved to the left. We'll tackle this next. Also a huge THANK YOU to everyone who purchased the Music DLC! We hope you like it! Cheers, DU&!

Hi! Over the past two years (oh my, time is flying!) we have received hundreds of messages, about why Virtual Cottage can not be showcased in the profiles, or why it would not count in the global achievement and game collector count. For that to happen, games need to generate an undisclosed amount in sales (which is hard if your game is free 😉 ) We stand by our statement that Virtual Cottage will always remain free so we decided to make a paid DLC instead. But not just any DLC. A lot of you wish for more music. So we're giving you 24 new, never-heard-before tracks that were exclusively produced for Virtual Cottage by LØNÆR! This doubles the number of songs that are currently in the game! The majority of the proceeds from this DLC will go to LØNÆR and with enough sales, not only will you support a great artist, but you will also finally be able to showcase Virtual Cottage in your profiles! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2106700/Virtual_Cottage__LNR_Collaboration_Music_DLC/

THERE IS MORE!

These new features are now available for everyone who owns Virtual Cottage:

• We added a playlist - allowing you to turn off unwanted songs.
• A ceiling lamp has been installed in the cottage to switch between different contrasts
• The laptop brightness has been reduced
• Plus various tiny background things have been improved

Thanks for being on this journey with us ♥ Simone & Josef {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38796982/3e8f1f13d1e976bde5a1d9c85c20dbd09b6c2617.png

Visuals: removed the Christmas decoration Game: we implemented a fix, limiting the framerate. If your Framerate is still above 30, please let us know!

Hey Cottage Dwellers, We'd like to inform you that we've launched the Steam Page for our third commercial title: Feed All Monsters! A lot of you send us messages asking how you can support us. This would be the best chance to lend us a hand. ːconhappyː Please wishlist Feed All Monsters! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597720/Feed_All_Monsters Cheers and thanks for your continued support!

Hello everybody, we want to squeeze in a tiny update with some quality of live changes before the holiday season kicks in. - Support for Japanese and Korean glyphs The font now supports input in these two languages. If you know about a font that contains even more glyphs, please let us know ;) - Sound sliders Changing the volume of a deactivated sound will now automatically activate the sound. This should help solve some confusion about the states of the "white noise" for newer users - A new music track Rizzugoi - i'm in love with a ghost - Holiday decoration We fetched that one box from the basement with the holiday decoration. This will probably be around until mid January. There's also a small hidden message for you. We all wish you a great holiday season and hope that you will get the best out of it, given the difficult circumstances. Stay safe! :) Cheers, DU&I

Greetings everyone! Yes, it has been a while, but finally here we are with a new update. CHANGES & ADDITIONS

• Toggle between cat and dog
• To-Do List
• Dynamic light
• Interface adjustments
• Graphic updates
• New music added

Toggle between cat and dog: To celebrate the launch of our game Dogs Organized Neatly , you can now invite Sally into the cottage. There's a button on the top right of the screen where you can now toggle between the cat and the doggo. To-Do List: A lot of you were asking for that feature, and finally here it is. In the top right of the screen is a button to show the To-Do List. You can create multiple tasks, edit them, cross them of the list or delete them. In case you "hide" the To-Do List, don't worry - your tasks will not be lost. Please be aware, that currently all tasks get lost once you close the app. We'll try to improve on that in a later update. Dynamic light: Before this update, the cottage changed basically once an hour. But now with the dynamic solution, the light in the cottage will change in real time. So for example 5pm will look different than 5.15pm. Interface adjustments: The app now adjusts to your screen size. This should be helpful for those of you who have Virtual Cottage open as a tiny window on their monitor. Graphics update: The interior of the cottage, pets, character and effects have all been updated to a bigger resolution. This should make Virtual Cottage look better on bigger monitors as well. New Music: The track "I'm so tired" by Rizzugoi was added. KNOWN ISSUES: Due to the graphics rework, some of the interface elements might be pixelated at higher resolutions. WHAT COMES NEXT: We've reworked a lot of smaller things on the project and have set it up for the following things:

• Customizing the characters hair, skin and sweater color.
• Allowing players to set the fairy lights to a custom color.
• Adding a light switch so the PC isn't the only light source at night.
• Saving the last activity you entered for the next session.
• Continue working on the interface to make it less pixelated. Also resizing buttons etc.
• Giving players the ability to turn off animations.
• Toggle summer / winter automatically by setting the hemisphere
• More music

ON A SIDE NOTE: Virtual Cottage is and always will be free! In case you want to support us, please check out our commercial games Cats Organized Neatly and Dogs Organized Neatly ! Thank you! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597730/Dogs_Organized_Neatly https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369340/Cats_Organized_Neatly/

Hey Cottage Dwellers, With this little post we'd like to inform you that we've launched the Steam Page for our second commercial title: Dogs Organized Neatly! A lot of you guys sent us messages how they can support or where they can donate money. This would be the best chance to lend us a hand. Please wishlist Dogs Organized Neatly! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1597730 Once the game goes live, there's also a pretty good chance a dog might suddenly appear in the Cottage... who knows. ;) Cheers and thanks for the support!

- Playtime will now be tracked in real time, to avoid lag - Fullscreen bug is now fixed

Hey Cottage Dwellers! We were really busy with our other projects and there was no real time to work on the cottage. But finally it's time to bring a new update which introduces new features, quality of life improvements and some fixes. As you can see, the little construction area in the Cottage is now gone. Instead there is a small fire place now. And that brings us to the features :)

Features:

- Fireplace: Can be toggled to hear the fireplace We know winter is over for the northern hemisphere, but maybe you'll enjoy it on some cold mornings or nights. As for the southern hemisphere, you'll now be able to toggle snow and the fireplace, when it get's cold over there :) - More weather types: Snow and wind were added so now you can toggle between 3 different weather sounds. Also the tec for adding more weather is now in place. (sound effects were provided by the wonderful Damien Combe from Nox Sound) - To-do list: A lot of you were requesting a to-do list. Here it is! (Well, version 1 that is) You can now note down three sub tasks in the game itself: * Clicking the "to do" button brings up the list * Tab is used to navigate the three rows * Clicking the button again clears your list This is just the first iteration of the list and we'll improve it in future updates. Please let us know if you use it and how you use it so we can make changes in future updates. - Savegame: Your audio volume preferences and your time setting (am/pm vs 24h) will now be saved and loaded.

Quality of life improvements:

- Two new music tracks were added: Joe Bizzaro - r a i n y d a y Dreeme Ft GBY - Losing It - Removed track Signals by Omaure until we can get a filter for songs containing vocals. Thanks again for the feedback on this one :)

Bugfixes:

- Paused music should not be playing after unpausing the game - To hunt down the achievement trigger bug / "time played" discrepancy, you can now hold "P", to see how many minutes / hours you've spent in the game.

The Mac version of Virtual Cottage has been down for the past two days. We finally managed to fix the issue and hope that it works for everyone now! Happy holidays!

Hello fellow roomies, we want to introduce the latest version of Virtual Cottage to you! Changes: - New music added: Some people from the community approached us and asked if we'd be interested to add their music. We've listened to the samples and think they are amazing! Thanks for contributing, bka iz, Dreeme, Himitsu, Joe Bizzaro & Omaure :) - The cat: Since so many of you seem to love the cat, we let her stay for now. It changes the spot inside the cottage, depending on the current time. - Winter season: The default weather outside the cottage is now snow. Rain can still be turned on though! - Reconstruction time: As you might have noted, some of the potted plants were moved. Apparently something gets built there? Time will tell. - Swapped out the splash screen - Moved the music player down (general rework of UI placement) - Changed standard screen resolution from 800x600 to 1200x800 - Bug with the achievements: Some users have reported issues with achievements not getting triggered properly. We've now implement better logs that will hopefully help us to track what's not working. Please be patient with us, we're working on it to get this resolved. - Optimization Thanks to the help of Gramps the code was refactored. This motivated us to clean up the project in general ;). A lot of you know that this is our first coding adventure using Godot, so Virtual Cottage was not built for all these updates. And every time we add something, other things stop working. With this update we have cleaned up a lot of the rough patches that were preventing future features. So you might not see it... but if you're reading this, now you know! We also want to AGAIN shout out Gramps (from CoaguCo Industries), who built the Steam integration for Godot and who helped us clean up the project <3

Hello hello everyone! With this announcement we bring you an other game update with some smaller changes and we also want to make a request to you all! Changes to the game: - The neighbor's cat is back again! (by popular demand ːsteamhappyː ) - Play and Pause buttons for music were switched - Once paused, there now is an overlay for better visual feedback - Wintertime! The light should now closer reflect the daylight in the northern hemisphere. There will be a winter update, adjusting this even more, but this is what we could do in the couple of evening hours. Regarding the request: Steam Awards! Some of you let us know that they have nominated Virtual Cottage for the Steam Awards. First we were shocked but then super happy about these lovely messages. If you haven't done so already and want to support us, you can do so at the top of this announcement or follow the instructions below: Visit the Virtual Cottage Store Page and click the "NOMINATE THIS GAME FOR AN AWARD" Button. https://i.imgur.com/IgjHWdh.png Following this, you will now be able to select a category for the nomination. The "Sit Back and Relax" Award is at the bottom of the list. Just click on it (for some reason you have to click on the right side of the button) and the selected category will turn yellow. https://i.imgur.com/TPFdfrY.png Save your selection and DONE, hooray! Thanks to everyone for the support!

Hello everyone, we hope all of you made it well through the spoooooookkky season! We certainly did! Now we are back and have an other update for you. What has changed: Music Player: - The "long" playlist was cut into separate tracks, which are now randomized. - A "randomize" button was added, which let's you skip a song, in case you don't like the current one (and yes, it could happen that you get the song again :P) General: - Achievements, wohoow! Yes, it took us quite some time to get them implemented, but there are finally some available. Here we want to apologize to everyone who already has spent quite a lot of time in the Cottage, but we are not able to retroactively activate those achievements for you. We know it sucks, but we are sure that those of you who use it on a regular basis, will have the achievements in no time :) - The Halloween deco was taken down, but since a lot of you liked the fairy lights, they'll stay for now. Thanks for sticking with us and continue to provide feedback. We appreciate each all of you! <3

Thanks to our friend Boris, we managed to upload a Mac build and a Linux version of Virtual Cottage. We hope you enjoy it! The Mac version currently doesn't have an app icon. We don't know why and it hopefully will be fixed soon :D (we got our Mac 2 weeks ago and we still have to learn a lot)

Hey cottage dwellers! Here is our small Halloween update to accompany you through the spooky season :) As you can see we put up some themed deco in the cottage. We also implemented a new music mix with a few autumn/spooky songs (tracklist has been updates as well). Behind the scenes we are working on a music player that will let you skip and shuffle songs very soon! We hope you enjoy this little update!

Hey y'all! It's been a super busy week with the launch of our other game Cats Organized Neatly. We still read all your feedback and there will (hopefully) be some major adjustments to the cottage over time. These are the small fixes we implemented this weekend, based on your feedback: - added a pause button which pauses the whole app (clicking it again unpauses it) - added a reset timer button, which resets the timer to 0 so you can enter a new task - added an AM/PM button to adjust the clock (12 PM is still displayed as 0) - slightly adjusted the background colors and cottage colors to be more autumn themed - added a small border so the game doesn't look as lost in fullscreen mode - moved a few buttons around - the little cat went back to their neighbours but something else appeared in the cottage. We hear you loud and clear, the biggest issue at the moment is music. We have already reached out to a bunch of artists and asked them if we can include their music. So expect the next update to include a way to play single tracks in a random order and maybe some more music in general. We have also gotten some really good pointers on how it might be possible for users to import their own music over time. We also plan on publishing a comprehensive list of suggestions for the game on the steam forums. We are just a little overwhelmed with all the cool ideas and support at the moment :D

Hello! To celebrate the launch of our first commercial game Cats Organized Neatly we sent one of the cats over to the Virtual Cottage to keep you company for a while. We hope you like her presence. You guys have suggested a lot of cool things for Virtual Cottage, however at the moment we only had time for this graphical update :). But we did not forget about your feedback :D

We have been overwhelmed by the positivity and support of the community. Originally we wanted to release Cats Organized Neatly on Wednesday. But we just got finished with all the features this morning, testet them and then said "why wait?". Cats Organized Neatly on Steam Releasing Virtual Cottage has been crazy and we hope that those of you who asked how to support us financially, will be happy with this solution. Virtual Cottage will always be free (even with updates) but if you wanna support us, please consider purchasing Cats Organized Neatly. Yes, you are allowed to create a task for that in Virtual Cottage. ;D

Hey fellow Cottage dwellers! https://media.giphy.com/media/yHSQ6DyMazplJjn3Bl/giphy.gif thank you all so much for your awesome feedback, reviews and discussions. The two of us (Josef & Simone) have been collecting your feedback and worked on a small update to adress the most important issues: - Added an icon that toggles fullscreen (bottom left corner) - Increased timer from 100 Minutes to 9999 Minutes - Music now active when app starts (music button is also highlighted) - Music and rain are now louder If you find the app useful, we would be super happy if you could leave us a positive review :D Thanks so much! DU&I

To celebrate the release of Virtual Cottage we wanted to share a look behind the scenes and show you how the game was made!