Hello Villagers!

Today (12/12) marks the one-month anniversary since Village Monsters was released! Thank you all so much for your support, bug reports, love, and feedback! This is still early on our journey together, but you can start to make out a distant outline of what the end looks like.

And I think it looks real dang cool. Anyway, onto the patch!

This update is mostly focused on improving the look & feel of the game. Instead of improving any one specific area I just threw a (metaphorical) dart at the board and improved whatever it (metaphorically) landed on. You'll see many improvements to furniture, vegetation, weather, and more, but there's still a lot more to do to many other areas of the game.

The game's visuals will contentiously improve throughout its time in Early Access.

Important Note 1: In order to fix some player home bugs I had to alter your saves. This means you may lose ownership to your home upon loading the game. Don't fret! There was actually one particular bug we can all take advantage of: the game never deducted any money when you bought the house the first time! (oops)

It's a complete coincidence, but this means that even if you lose your home you'll still have the funds you had before to buy it. Just buy it a second time... no harm, no foul.

Important Note 2: There is now a dedicated key for using your active tool (ironically X on both keyboards and gamepads). Don't forget!

Improved Look & Feel

• New furniture assets have been added to each home and building

• The initial homestead interior has been altered and improved

• New exterior props have been added throughout town and the surrounding areas

• While trees are still geometric ( a thematic choice), they now are spikier, more leafy, and overall more tree-like

• Added a large number of flavor critters and animals throughout the world

• The look and feel of the dialogue box has been improved

• A new option exists to switch between multiple dialogue box styles

• Improved the look of various weather effects

• The item description font is now much more readable for all resolutions

• Many furniture items have been standardized in size to give a more consistent sense of scale

• The player character now has a mild idle animation to match villagers

• Improved System menu's look and feel

Hobbies

• Using a tool is now mapped to the X key (Keyboard) / the X button (Gamepad). This will prevent issues such as accidentally swinging your net at a villager when you want to talk with them

• Fishing while low on energy is now much harder. Consider napping or eating food to restore energy

• You can now earn multiple levels in certain hobby-related goals

• New fish, critters, and treasures have been added to the game

Odd Jobs

• The Critter Catching tutorial now allows you to try and catch all 3 critters

• The Fishing tutorial now requires 2 fish to be caught

• Villagers have been added to each tutorial offering additional tips and info

Other New Stuff

• An ATM has been added to the general store which allows you to access your brand new bank account! Deposit, withdraw, and even earn interest on your hard-earned Skully!

• Interest is earned on a weekly basis and increases with town prosperity. Check your mail for statements! Wow, just like real life!

Secrets

• Secrets

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a crash related to removing an effect when you have multiple active effects

• Fixed major (and often unpredictable) issues related to purchasing a homestead

• Fixed major crash related to an audio memory leak. Should finally fix the longstanding crash in Agrarian Acres

• It is no longer possible to erroneously dismiss Odd Job dialogue in a way that traps you

• Resolved a rare situation where you could have 2+ "Low Energy" malus effects has been resolved

• Fixed issue where you couldn't purchase some items if you entered the store without the required silver, even if you later sold items to afford it

• Fixed music volume issues for seasonal tracks beyond Spring

• Fixed issue where your new home's door would stay locked even after purchase

• Purchasing the home deed now actually deducts silver from your wallet

• Fixed large number of furniture collision or layering issues

• Fixed issue with deleted spaces in trophy descriptions

• Player sprites / states now properly reset to normal at the end of the day

• Improved overall performance for extremely low end laptops

• The trophy screen was incorrectly cloning the caught fish or critter. This has been fixed

• A number of incorrect or strange tree collision issues has been fixed

• Some white assets were incorrectly colored gray in certain situations. This is now fixed.

• Fixed wall collision and layering in the player's home

• Fixed issue where toolbelt selections would occur in incorrect places + improved the code in general

• Powering up a longer rod cast no longer shakes the whole camera

• Stopped tool UI from disappearing while in relevant Odd Jobs

• Fixed the "Uh oh!" description when buying a house. It was not a proper Uh Oh Moment!

• Resolved a few performance hiccups and random misc. bugs

• Fixed various typos