What could my voice possibly add to a consensus classic like Dracula? “It generally holds up and is worth your time” is probably the best I can do, but I’ll try to add more.

(more…)

Dan Abnett is good at writing war stories, and 40K is a franchise with a whole bunch of war. He gets into the fraternity of soldiers, the moments of dramatic irony, unexpected heroics, uneasy alliances, and epic charges into battle. Simple warriors polish their armor and reload their weapons and reflect on simple truths. The villains fall into two categories: the arrogant or clueless who are on our side but aren’t doing it the right way, and the enemy who exists to be shot and stabbed.

Horus Rising is one of those. It follows Primarch Horus and his particular flavor of Space Marine, the Luna Wolves, as they prosecute their Great Crusade. We primarily spend time with Captain Loken, a no-nonsense and likable straight man who finds himself entrusted with more power and responsibility during a major turning point in the war of compliance. It’s about to all go very bad for everyone everywhere, but not quite yet.

I feel almost stupid saying anything more; it’s like describing the types of meals you could find at a Mexican restaurant. It’s not much of a surprise.

(more…)

A professional liar feels morally compelled to finally tell the truth in the form of an autobiography. The result is an incredulous tale that is full of half-truths, artistic license, and (most likely) straight up lies.

What begins as a fairly mundane accounting of the practical work of battlefield salvage quickly turns into a mystery, a frame job, then quickly spirals out of control from there. And I do mean spirals; by the end you’re witnessing the early days of a world war on par with WW1. Saevus is a likable sort of jerk in a very complicated bind, and you find yourself laughing with him during his victories and laughing at him during his defeats.

To summarize Saevus Corax Deals with the Dead in an adverb and adjective, I’d call it: tremendously fun.

(more…)

Hello Villagers!

This week, I reached a very exciting milestone: there are now less than 200 items remaining on my “Required for v1.0” to-do list!

There were once over 1,200 items on this list, so being below 200 is a really big deal and signifies we’re close to the end.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m doing something I hope you’ll find pretty cool: I’m making my entire Trello board public!

This means that anyone can follow along as I grind down the remaining tasks for v1.0.

Wait, what’s Trello?

Trello is a project management tool that many developers use for tracking tasks, ideas, goals, and other things needed to make a game.

You can think of it as a big, virtual to-do list. And because it’s virtual, I can easily share it.

Whoa, there’s a lot there! Too much! What should I pay attention to?

Most people will want to stick to the cards in the first column of the board. They are labeled “Read This First!” and “Burn Chart”

The Read This First card will explain what you’re looking at and how to parse my crazy chicken scratch.

The Burn Chart is probably the most meaningful thing here. This is a graph that tracks how many items are left on the Required for v1.0 list on a day-by-day basis, as well as a forecast for future days.

This number serves as a countdown, and when it hits 0, that means Village Monsters is ready for release. For example, the above chart predicts completion by September 9th.

Of course, some items are much harder to complete than others, and cards are constantly being added, modified, or removed from the list as new things are found and priorities shift.

So don’t be too surprised if you see this prediction swing wildly around. What we really want is for it to be consistently trending downward.

Does this board contain spoilers?

Sort of. Like I said, this is the same exact tool I’m using to keep track of development, so it’s bound to contain info or hints about features and things you haven’t seen yet.

However, almost all of it is in my shorthand and wouldn’t be easily recognizable unless you know what you’re looking for. Still, if you want to go in fresh then you shouldn’t let your eyes wander too much.

—

That’s all from me for now! The march to v1.0 continues, only this time you get to watch me marching from the comfort of your own home.

Patch Notes for v0.90.1

• Fixed crash when talking with the Clam Before The Storm
• Fixed crash when attempting to change your name on Three Wall Island
• Stopped villagers from referring to you as “Josh”
• Fixed incorrect placement for the skill exp bars in some resolutions
• Fixed mail keys from not working properly
• Added the option to change both your character name and “username” at Three Wall Island

Patch Notes for v0.90.3

• Greatly improved performance on Linux and Mac
• Added several new odd jobs to the board listing
• Worked and added new story cutscenes to the start of the game (New Games only)
• Reworked how critter feeding works. In general, food storage now lasts much longer
• Changed up critter food trough to visibly show when food is running low
• Combined the Fish and Critter collection pages into one journal section
• Added new titles for each hobby skill level
• Moved the records page of your journal to the System tab and added a whole bunch of new records to track
• NOTE: Some records for loaded games will be incorrect as they weren’t being tracked until this release
• Reworked how the pass out mechanic works
• You are now given one last chance between losing all your energy and forcing yourself to stay awake. When you see the “Exhausted” effect it’s time to eat some food or get some rest immediately
• Improved the garbage dump
• Villagers now universally hate being gifted trash
• Added new winter variants for a number of buildings
• Improved look of puddles
• Improved the look of flower and grass sway
• Improved the look and behavior of several critters
• Added new nicknames to the critter name generator
• Fixed “pest” critters (Fraley Snake, Tank Treader, Queenly Ant, and Sour Worm) from displaying erroneous sprites when stabled
• Fixed a number of incorrect pronouns
• Fixed a rare crash in Bonfire Beach
• Fixed additional situations where the player’s name wasn’t used correctly
• Fixed doughies displaying their descriptions instead of their names
• Fixed graphical bug on the calendar

Patch Patch Notes for v0.90.5

• Small improvements to the new library job
• Small improvements to the dump and Garboar
• Fixed item ratings / attributes being lost when stored or retrieved from your stash
• Fixed rotation issue with the calendar page of your journal
• Fixed crash related to the Sunken Treasure perk
• Fixed issue when giving gifts to Lindwyrm
• Fixed phantom door near Edmund and Calista’s home
• Fixed a number of blank entries for regional drinks
• Fixed a further number of issues with pronouns
• Fixed a number of incorrect exhibits in the library
• Various other fixes and improvements

Hello Villagers!

A big release is always a magnet for new bugs, and yesterday’s update was no different. Today’s patch is a hotfix to address all the bugs that were reported (mostly cutscene related) in the last 24 hours.

As always, a huge thank you to all the players who reported bugs via Discord and email!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed major crash when a cutscene is triggered during a room transition. The cutscene will now wait until a room transition is completed before triggering
• Fixed a major issue where a cutscene would freeze or crash during the cleanup phase
• Fixed major issue causing some cutscenes to have enormously large pauses between actions
• Fixed major issue that was corrupting gardens and resulting in unpredictable behavior, including crashes
• Corrupted plants are lost forever, but they’ve been replaced by a mutated Uhoh Plant that you can sell for a high price as way of apology
• Fixed a potentially major issue that could result in stabled critters from also being corrupted. There were no reports of this, but this should prevent it from happening in the future
• Fixed a number of collision issues (including getting stuck) when fishing against objects
• Fixed a number of embarrassing typos. Story of my life

Hello Villagers!

Welcome to Village Monsters v0.75!

This is a major update to Village Monsters – it’s so big that I decided to call it The Foundations Update. This is because v0.75 lays the foundation (get it?!) for some of the biggest parts of the game: story cutscenes, Heart-to-Heart events, player abilities, village restoration, and more.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/VillageMonsters

Discord: https://discord.gg/NaNc7Tr

Email: josh@warpdogs.com

Story and Cutscenes

Several new story moments, dialogue, and cutscenes have been added to the game. These new story features will provide some much needed context about the world of Village Monsters and your overall goals.

While these cutscenes are primarily meant for new games, I’ve retroactively added them to existing save games so that you don’t need to start a brand new game to view them.

You may also chance upon new items called Celestial Texts that you may find buried in areas outside the village. These reveal pieces of the meta-story of Village Monsters.

Heart-to-Heart Events

There are 32 monster pals in Village Monsters that you can befriend, but there hasn’t been much of a benefit to friendship beyond watching their little heart icons fill up. Well, this update changes all that!

As you deepen your friendship with a villager you may sometimes trigger special events called Heart-to-Heart conversations. These are unique cutscenes with each villager where they open up to you about a problem they have or a goal they’re working on.

Most Heart-to-Hearts take the form of a short story arc for that character, and no two events are ever the same.

Please note that the bulk of my work for this release was laying the foundation to support Heart-to-Heart events. This means that of the nearly 100+ planned Heart-to-Hearts events, only a handful of them are included in this particular update.

However, many more Heart-to-Hearts will be added throughout Early Access.

Player Abilities

Access the new Abilities section of your journal to purchase several new abilities to make your life in the village even better.

Most abilities are tied to hobbies and can be purchased with Ability Points that are gained as you level them up. Other abilities may be granted in special situations.

The majority of time for this update was spent on laying the foundation for Abilities. As such, only a few have been implemented in the game. New abilities will be added throughout Early Access.

Full Patch Notes

Story & Cutscenes

• A large number of new story cutscenes have been added to the game
• New Cutscene: Introducing the arbiter and the fate of the villager
• New Cutscene: The introduction to the Town Restoration Project
• New Cutscene: Meeting AAAAAA and learning how to clear corruption
• Cutscenes can now trigger in a variety of situations, like entering a certain room, the clock striking a certain hour on a certain day, and so forth
• Some cutscenes may be temporarily delayed via a dialogue option if you don’t wish to view it yet
• Added a large number of new story dialogue to villagers. Consider talking with villagers after major events
• In general, a cutscene will not trigger until you are ready (eg., it will wait until you are done fishing, finished speaking with a villager, etc.)
• New abilities can now be granted after viewing specific cutscenes
• If two or more cutscenes are scheduled to fire at the same time, only one will be selected. The rest will be “punted” until later
• The time / date of new games have been adjusted for story purposes
• Added a major new story character, the Arbiter
• Missing a scheduled cutscene for any reason will simply delay it by a day
• Intro story events will trigger retroactively for ongoing save files

Heart-to-Heart Events

• Added the concept of Heart-to-Hearts, special events between you and a villager as you build bonds
• Not all villagers have Heart-to-Hearts implemented yet, and many storylines are unfinished. New Heart-to-Hearts will be added throughout Early Access
• Heart-to-Heart events should trigger retroactively for ongoing save files
• A special icon (known as a Lockheart) will be displayed on their their heart level to indicate a new heart-to-heart is ready to be viewed
• Your relationship level with a villager will not advance while a Lockheart is in place
• Your relationship does continue to grow behind the scenes, and once a Lockheart is removed it will “catch up” to your progress

Skills & Abilities

• Added Abilities to the game. Abilities unlock new features, improve existing actions, etc.
• Leveling up a hobby now grants Ability Points. Spend these to unlock new Abilities
• Changed how the hobby leveling process works. You now level faster, but the level cap is higher
• Some abilities are granted via story events
• Improved the look and functionality of the Abilities page in your journal
• Removed WIP / placeholder abilities from the Abilities page
• Additional abilities will be added throughout Early Access
• You will retroactively gain Ability Points after this update

New & Improved Features

• Added a new Stash object outside of the player’s home (when purchased)
• Use the stash to store items out of your inventory that you want to keep for later
• Added the concept of NPC side stories. These are unique daily stories that involve multiple villagers. You can explore these stories by talking with the involved villagers
• Made the day length slightly faster
• The frequency and type of visitors now depends on the village rating
• Added a new type of rare treasure called Celestial Texts
• Interact with Celestial Texts from your inventory to read them
• Added new wings to the Library, though they are still under construction
• Improved the number of existing cutscenes
• Made several improvements the forecast service on TV
• Several relationship values have been rebalanced
• Made interacting with / picking up small objects easier
• Changed interaction text on a number of objects to reflect story changes
• The jackrabbit is now available as a catchable critter
• Added support for a Price Table to rapidly re-balance the economy through Early Access
• Rebalanced the buy and sell prices for a number of objects
• Added an ETA for the next major version to the title screen

New & Improved Graphics / UI

• Added a number of new directional sprites for several villagers
• Improved the look & feel of friendship hearts
• Added a progress bar to the clock so you can see how close you are to a time change
• When available, villagers will now turn and look at you when speaking
• Improved the look and feel of thunderstorms
• Improved the look of a number of job and minigame locations
• Improved the look of the area notification element
• The Abilities page of your journal is now much more useful
• Toned down the lighting for Early Morning and all interior lighting at night
• Made it more obvious when there are multiple pages to browse in the journal + added UI icons to show you how
• Added a short description when using certain items from your inventory (like trap packs and books) to make their effects more obvious
• Improved the black space / buffer in interiors to prevent villagers / furniture from being hard to see
• Improved the layering of many loose items to prevent strange overlapping issues

Bug Fixes

• Fixed major crash (and other weirdness) related to sending letters. If you’ve noticed odd crashes or issues when trying to go to bed then this bug was likely to blame
• Fixed rare crash when going to bed early and there’s a visitor coming to town
• Fixed crash from pruning certain plants
• Fixed major issue where players could move while some menus are open
• Fixed major issue where a buried item would be impossible to dig up
• Fixed major issue in which visitors were arriving every day, often in a row
• Fixed major issue that could “corrupt” your garden and result in bizarre outcomes
• Fixed multiple issues with critters getting stuck by temporarily eliminating critter collision checks
• Fixed the camera getting stuck when fishing in some situations
• Fixed bug where all food in the critter food bucket would be emptied out regardless of how many critters you had
• Fixed music overlapping in Memorial Meadows
• Fixed bug that was causing some village buildings to “level up” into unfinished assets
• Fixed collision issue when talking to certain villagers while moving
• Fixed bug that caused you to get stuck between a rock and a hard place the the Agrarian Acres pond
• Fixed journal rotation issues
• Fixed bug that caused Mayor Ludo to repeat his intro dialogue
• Fixed a number of tile issues with the non-Spring tilesets
• Fixed the “Low Energy” effect not being removed when going to bed early (ironic)
• Further fixed collision around a number of exterior and interior objects
• Fixed collision issues in Dio’s home
• Fixed “jittery” collision when moving during dialogue
• Fixed a number of slight graphical issues with buildings in the village
• Fixed incorrect text wrapping on a number of journal pages
• Fixed placeholder abilities from being displayed (they would show up as “-1”)
• Fixed incorrectly formatted text when attempting to go to bed
• Fixed the Transparency effect being incorrectly dismissed on area transition
• Fixed dialogue text from starting before the dialog box is fully displayed
• Fixed odd collision issue with the stairs in Vara’s house
• Fixed a number of collision issues in Memorial Meadows
• Fixed hotkeys from opening menus when filling out feedback via the Send Feedback main menu option
• Fixed icons getting cut off in some lists
• Fixed the long-standing typo where “Lakeweed” was erroneously displayed as “Lake”
• Fixed rare sprite issue in the intro cutscene
• Fixed a number of typos in item names and descriptions