In the last Experimental Update, we attempted to give houses more meaning by changing the way villagers fulfill their needs. The feature turned quite controversial but we believed that after some tweaks it would result in fun and interesting gameplay. However, additional brainstorms and your feedback showed that villagers fulfilling their needs in houses goes against one of the fundamental principles of Against the Storm - being concerned with the settlement as a whole and not with individual villagers. This resulted in a higher than usual amount of micromanagement which you promptly noticed (for which we are thankful!). 

In this Experimental Update (Early Access v0.28.1E), we want to approach the same problem, but in a bit different manner. Instead of focusing on individual villagers, we decided to direct your attention toward HUBs.

From now on, villagers no longer fulfill their needs at home. Instead, during each break, they go back to the Hearth to rest, eat, get clothing, etc. At the same time, Hearths now become important town centers around which you build your infrastructure and get special rewards for meeting certain milestones. 

Each Hearth has a radius that basically indicates the area of its hub. Within this area, you need to build houses, decorations, and service buildings to progress the hub level of a given Hearth. Each hub level gives special global bonuses (resolve, production speed, etc.). 

At the same time, villagers will not move into houses that are outside of a Hearth’s reach, and other Hearths’ radiuses can not intersect. Each Heart essentially creates its own hub that needs to be progressed, and the bonuses of these hubs stack.

Additionally, decorations now play a much bigger part in a settlement’s development (as they help progress a hub to higher levels). We decided to go even one step further and divided them into three categories: Comfort, Aesthetics, and Harmony. Each category has a different resource cost and each hub level requires a growing amount of decorations from different categories to be placed within a Hearth’s radius. 

Have fun playing and let us know what you think!