Hello Villagers!

Happy Day-After-Valentine's-Day, villagers! This is one of the best days around if you like discounted chocolate and red-and-pink colored tchotchkes.

This is yet another big update addressing basically every facet of the game. However, the main focus was on villager relationships (to go along with Valentine's Day!) so you'll see a common thread throughout the update notes below.

Have fun!

Pen Pals

One of the larger updates this time around is to the village post office - in the sense that the village post office actually has a function!

• You can now send mail to villagers from the Post Office located in Town Hall

• Sending nice letters will improve your relationship with the villager you sent it to

• You can also attach gifts to your letters to increase your relationship

• The General Store now stocks a variety of gifts to send to villagers

• Villagers now have simple letter parsing and gift preferences, so try to be nice!

• A new UI was made for picking villagers (eg., sending them mail)

• A max of 5 letters a day can be sent

• Fixed an issue where social networks would cause you to "meet" a villager before you actually met them

• Stopped relationships from going into the negatives

Critter Catching

The Critter Catching hobby was in need of some love and improvement, so I dedicated a bit of time this update to making it more fun to catch & tame creatures. I also was able to fix a large number of bugs.

• You can now pet critters that you've tamed

• The happiness level of a critter is now displayed in the interaction dialogue

• You must now add one food item per tamed critter per day

• Failure to keep tamed critters fed will result in them running away

• Critters must now reach a certain happiness level before they'll follow you

• Changed critter fleeing to be percentage-based depending on how "aggressive" (speed) the player is moving

• Critters may now flee even when you're stalking them, so act fast

• Critters will now permanently flee (disappear) a bit more quickly than before

• Added helpful text to the critter trough to help you manage your critters' food needs

• Added a new indicator above the critter trough when it needs to be filled with food

• You can now permanently dismiss critters via an interaction option

• Fixed: Resolved crash related to the Boo Bee critter

• Fixed: Critter poop will no longer spawn so dang frequently

• Fixed: Redid critter food code to resolve a large number of logic bugs

• Fixed: Food added to the critter trough will now be used

• Fixed: The critter trough now has a name

• Fixed the critter collection display in your journal

Flavor & Worldbuilding

• A new system of daily bonuses called World Modifiers has been added to the game

• World Modifiers add bonuses to one or more areas of the game - for example, "Jumping Fish" makes fishing easier, while "Good Vibes" allows you to build friendships faster

• Several item and creature descriptions have been updated with new lore

• A number of new flavor critters - like squirrels and jackalopes - have been added to the game

User Interface

• (Request) Your available silver is now listed while in a merchant's shop

• The Villager section of your journal has been overhauled. In general, most info starts off hidden and becomes revealed over time

• You'll gain more knowledge and gradually fill in your journal as you get to know each villager

• Each villager page now lists their likes, dislikes, and where they're generally located

• Icons have been added to the villager list

• Fixed: Solved a problem where villager text and icons appeared over non-villagers

Improved Graphics

The journey to improve the look and feel of Village Monsters is never-ending. Here are a few things I worked on this time.

• A number of Valentine Day's items and furniture have been added to the game

• As usual, a large amount of new furniture and decor have been added and sprinkled throughout town

• A number of villager sprites have been improved

• A number of villager homes and other buildings have been improved

• More color changes and improvements. I'll get there one day

Other Changes & Fixes

• Made fishing a bit easier by slowing down fishing marker and altering its initial spot

• Slightly lowered the default fish spawn rates, but increased fish spawn rates during the morning, evening, and while its raining

• Resolved a crash related to selling all your items down to zero and pressing up / down

• Cleaned up a number of data structure issues that could potentially cause crashes or mismatched data

• Improved memory footprint in Linux and Mac versions

• Corrected a number of typos and awkward text

• (Request) You can now cancel and leave in-progress Odd Jobs by pressing Escape or Start

• Stopped bad artifacts from appearing in the identification process

• Fixed a rare issue where you could go out of bounds when exiting the residential section of the village

• Fixed an issue where the shrine outside of town expected 100 bits in some situation