Hello, neighbours!

After a long time, I will finally be speaking about some Diversified news!

However, today will be different! I will separate the whole announcement in three different topics!

They are all very important, including the last one! Hope you can all enjoy it!

Topic One: Diversifying the World of Plants Vs. Zombies

First of all, I wanted to say that the entire team has been working non-stop on the fangame's visuals and mechanics.

But before showing anything, I'd like to advice that most visuals from the fangame has been revised multiple times.

When we first revealed the visuals of the plants and zombies, they weren't completely set in stone.

Because of that, we decided to make some major visual overhaul on some plants and zombies designs and colors.

With that clarified, it is time to introduce some new content for the fangame!

As many of you saw already, Bloomerang has been teased a long time ago in some of our old posts.

However, this is the only new plant we drew so far. Why, you may ask?

First of all, all plants from Suburbia were already revealed a long time ago. Also, you unlock Bloomerang way later in the game, so don't expect him to be included early in the game's development.

Also, we wanted to focus more on unique features for the fangame, such as new zombies, visual reworks and gameplay mechanics.

About the new zombies, we would like to advice that we internally decided that Gargantuars will not be part of Diversified. We personally think that Gargantuars would smash the game's balance.

However, to compensate that, we decided to include some extra features in the game!

Imps will be included in the game, alongside Female Zombies! Wait... Female Zombies?

That's right! Similar to Plants Vs. Zombies 3, we are including female variants for the male zombies (Also, yes. These female variants will be included in all of the worlds!).

But not only that! We decided to add some extra charm for the female zombies. They will have unique headgears, working similarly to the well known Cones and Buckets!

As for the visual reworks, we remade the whole Suburbia backgrounds, to feel more like an actual neighbourhood!

We are super proud about this re-design, and we hope you can all enjoy the new visuals!

Also, we re-worked some plant designs and UIs, to feel more like the final version!

Costumes were also being re-worked, but they will possibly be postponed into a later update!

Finally, one of the most important aspects of Diversified: The Gameplay Mechanics!

First of all, the Fertilized Seeds were completed renamed to Power Soil. We made this change, because it fits more with the whole Plants Vs. Zombies universe.

Also, don't worry! The Power Soil is not the same as Plant Food and it works the same as the Fertilized Seeds!

However, the Watering Can has some extra details to feel more unique from the rest!

Instead of buying Water Supply from stores to re-fill the Watering Can, we decided to simply give a long cooldown for the Watering Can.

However, we also added an extra mechanic for the Watering Can and consequentially, for most plants of the game!

The Watering Can now waters most of the plants, reviving them from their "Damaged State". Similarly from Plants Vs. Zombies Adventures, the plants can be watered to be revived!

However, use it wisely, since you can't use the Watering Can all the time.

That's all we have to share for now about the Diversified new content! Now let's move to the second topic!

Topic Two: Expanding the Heartful Members and Aesthetic Projects

Second of all, we would like to say that Aesthete's Heart Studio hasn't expanded a lot over the past few months.

However, we have a newcomer which recently joined the team. You may recognize him by one of his projects...

That's right! Geremilho will be helping with Diversified's concept arts!

Since we lost our old concept artist, we decided to call a new concept artist for our team!

He is a newcomer, which made the game "A Bit More than Plants Vs. Zombies" on Itch.io!

You can all check his game on Itch.io after reading everything!

Also, we will be sharing some of his concept artists later down the line!

We have teased some screenshots about a possible website being developed for the team in 2023.

Unfortunately, we decided to cancel the development of this website, due to the privacy and technical issues.

However, we may consider other alternatives in the future!

Also, yes. Clover, the Artistic Cat still exists, but it may need some extra time to be revealed later.

Finally, let's talk about Warped Horizons.

Some people may have noticed already, but Warped Horizons is being slowly teased on other websites.

That's because me (Julius) has been developing a new and original universe named Warped Horizons!

Unfortunately, this is everything we can reveal it for now, since most ideas are just concepts for now.

However, expect to hear more about this project in the coming months.

That's everything we can talk about the team in general. However, the most important topic comes right now.

Topic Three: Diversified Hiatus & Burnout/Psychological Issues

Since this is a very big announcement, I feel like I should clarify what is going on behind the scenes.

Ever since I started developing Diversified, back in June/July 2022, me and my team have been working non-stop on this project.

For the past few months, I have been working non-stop on Diversified, doing my absolute best to not give up on this project.

For those who don't know, I have been dealing with several burnouts and psychological issues in my personal life recently.

Don't get me wrong, I love working on Diversified a lot. In fact, Diversified was my last attempt of creating a personal team.

So, after many months of consideration from my part, I decided to give an hiatus on Diversified for a few months until I feel better again.

Most of the main reasons for this decision to be made were related to people not giving enough support to my project (which it is understandable, since it is a free project) and my constant burnouts.

In fact, nothing about the fangame has been coded ever since we started the project, since I'm new at programming and most coding will have to be made by myself alone.

We even asked for extra help on other social medias, but nobody decided to help us so far on the coding part of the fangame.

Also, we are currently shifting from Godot to Unity, so we can see if the game will be "easier" to be developed with this new engine.

However, don't worry. In the meantime, I will be working on smaller projects, such as Warped Horizons!

There will be some small updates being showcased in my social medias, but nothing else.

You all can still talk with us throughout Discord or other social medias, but don't expect any news from Diversified in the next few months.

I hope you can all understand our decision, since in the end, we are all human beings, not robots/machines.

Working on a game is way harder than most people imagine, and I can tell that from personal experience.

Anyway...

I hope you all enjoyed this big announcement!

Hopefully, you can all understand that developing Diversified is being an amazing experience, but also a very long journey to us!

See you all later in the next few months!