Hello Villagers!

Welcome to version 0.72!

This release was originally going to focus only on home and village improvements, but I somewhat accidentally found myself hunting and destroying dozens of bugs instead.

Frankly, all this bugfixin' work was long overdue, so I decided to change gears and make it my new priority for this update. In total I fixed around 50 bugs which should go a long way to making the game feel more stable and professional. I'll continue working on home / town building in the next release.

Anyway, here are the full patch notes!

Home Improvement & Town Building

• Vastly improved the look of the player house exterior and surrounding area

• Redid the interior (tileset and furniture) of the player home

• Redesigned and moved shops on main street to prepare them for future upgrades

• New Homestead Upgrade: Clean out the polluted pond so you can use it for fishing

• New Homestead Upgrade: You can now move your garden from Agrarian Acres to just outside your house

• Added a new system that can change the look and feel of the village as it evolves over time

• The village is now evaluated and ranked each week. Speak with Jaclyn in Town Hall for more info

Graphics & UI

• Redesigned and improved many of the buildings and decor of Main Street

• Added chimney smoke effects to buildings in the village

• Added a large number of new external lanterns and street lights

• Improved interior lighting of many villager homes

• Improved the look and colorization of the interior tileset

• Improved the shadowing for trees and other vegetation

• Improved the look of "New Dialogue" notification

• Improved the look of room transitions

• Improved camera movement when used in cutscenes

• Improved dialogue box movement in cutscenes

New & Improved Features

• Modified the fishing minigame so that the hit bar doesn't shrink as much

• Drastically improved how 'flavor critters' (like butterflies, squirrels) look and behave

• It now takes substantially longer to unearth treasure if you're exhausted (eat or nap to get rid of it!)

• Added a number of new Critters and Fish to catch

• You are no longer able to move away from a conversation if there are dialogue choices coming up - this solves a few bugs

• You can now speak to an NPC during part time jobs to hear tips or quit early

• Drastically improved state management to smooth things out and prevent you from being 'stuck' in a specific state (eg., being stuck in the casting rod animation)

Game Feel

• Improved player collision. In general, collision should feel cleaner and less fragile

• Your energy is restored to full when starting a tutorial from the job board

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed crash related to UI elements dimming in cutscenes

• Fixed a crash relating to sending following critters back home

• Fixed crash related to certain cutscenes

• Fixed crash when backing out gift selection when writing a letter

• Fixed a major issue in which the camera could become "detached" from the player during some room transitions

• Fixed a major issue in which you could bypass certain areas by walking through them mid-conversation

• Fixed a major issue in which cancelling a letter would cause the gamepad keyboard to display and be unable to dismiss

• Fixed several major issues that resulted in becoming "stuck" after certain transitions (cutscenes, jobs, new areas)

• Fixed a large number of situations in which you could sequence break while performing an odd job

• Fixed jittery collision when performing a job or chore

• Fixed issue where exterior lighting would appear to change during a cutscene

• Fixed some jerkiness / stuttering during cutscene and job transitions

• Fixed issue where players could still move / act during a cutscene

• Fixed issue where players could move while during an area transition and cause it to abort

• Fixed incorrect door collision

• Fixed notes not having a dialogue portrait

• Fixed large number of state-related bugs

• Fixed large number of issues related to purchasing a new home

• Fixed a few weird issues (like orphaned pixels) in the interior tileset

• Fixed collision issues near the Balefire Beach entrance

• Fixed gaps in collision around the edges of Balefire Beach

• Fixed certain UI elements not dimming during area transitions

• Fixed a number of debug commands that were erroneously enabled

• Fixed player house from erroneously changing sprites at night

• Fixed issue where homestead upgrades could appear missing upon entering the area

• Fixed a number of issues with the interior of the player home

• Fixed an issue where the player house would not update to a "fixed up" sprite after purchasing

• Fixed issue where buying a house put you severely in debt

• Fixed layering of the Donkey Fly critter

• Fixed an issue where UI elements would appear partly transparent

• Fixed collision bug in Carefree Crossroads that would cause you to get stuck between a tree and a hard place

• Fixed issue where a temporary 'ghost' item could appear after making a purchase

• Fixed issue where players could release critters that are currently following them

• Fixed a number of discrepancies between gamepad controls across PS4 / Switch / Xbox controllers

• Fixed a large number of lingering issues with flavor creatures (like butterflies, squirrels, and other critters you can't catch)

• Fixed a lack of title on the Villager page of your journal

• Fixed an issue where placeholder items from the bakery, Pots n' Pies

• Fixed issue that was causing weeds to be surprisingly tricky to pick

• Fixed incorrect control labels

• Fixed issue where mail was still being delivered to the mailbox outside of Overflow even after moving into a new house

• Fixed a number of instances of text overextending beyond the dialogue box

• Fixed a number of typos

• Various other misc. technical and stability improvements