Creature Bonding is here! This new system lets you easily manage, store, and even revive your bonded creatures. Plus we’ve got some big improvements to structure and creature building (see our note below about old structure overlap in saved games!), resource and hunger balancing, bug fixes, and more. Thanks again to all our Pre-Release testers for your help! Please share your feedback with us on the forums! We’d love to know what you think.

Patch Notes

New Features

• Added Creature Bonding: Easily manage your closest companions by bonding with them to unlock new features!

  • Once a creature is Tamed and 100% happy, hearts will appear over its head and the option to Bond will unlock in the interaction menu.

    

  • Press (B) to manage your Bonded creatures.

  • Store and summon your creatures from this menu whenever you want (like on a looong journey across the desert where food is scarce).
    Newly created creatures are automatically Bonded if there is an available slot. Otherwise, they default to Tamed.

  • In Adventure Mode, obtaining more life shaper relics unlocks additional Bonded creature slots, from 2 active up to 4 active and from 2 stored up to 8 stored

    

  • Never adventure alone again! Bonded creatures will always follow their owner, won’t go wild if hungry or unhappy, and will be automatically stored when incapacitated.

  • Revive an incapacitated creature by feeding it Life Blocks through the Bonding screen, or head to a temple beam to revive for free with no resource cost (once you’ve obtained that temple’s artifact).

  • Quickly see the status of all Bonded creatures at a glance in the main HUD.

  • Bonded creatures will only obey orders from their owner’s whistle when in multiplayer.

  • In multiplayer Adventure Mode, only the owner can edit a Bonded creature. Once a creature is in edit mode, party members can join in to add/remove blocks.

  • Tamed creatures are now your workforce!

  • They can be assigned tasks and won’t abandon those tasks to follow you when you leave the area (like a Bonded creature would)

  • You can have as many tamed creatures as you can handle! Just remember, they’ll go wild if not properly taken care of.

  • Since you aren’t best buds with Tamed creatures, they won’t follow your whistle commands, but they can still be tethered with leashes

  • TIP: Bonded creatures will always be with you and can be revived so they make great adventuring companions! Tamed creatures are great at working around your homestead, like powering Treadmills.

    

Improvements

• Structures:

  • Updated casting system for easier placement of blocks and faster building (no longer requires fracturing of blocks)

  • Optimized structure blocks for improved performance

  • Added building sounds and particle effects

  • Added door opening/closing sounds

  • Doors and gates now always open away from the player

  • Connected gates now open together

    

    Big Chicken from Steam Workshop by goonthler

  • SAVED STRUCTURES NOTE: Structures in saved games and Workshop Worlds prior to this patch will be shifted and de-fractured after updating to the new system. This may (almost definitely) cause overlapping, floating blocks, and other impossible or odd behavior. Converted structures may also not fall apart correctly when dismantled. It’s updated in this way to ensure you don’t lose any blocks! They can be removed and replaced in the new system properly. If you have a game saved to Workshop Worlds, you can save it again after you’ve updated.

• Creature building:

  • Updated highlight system: Bad placements are now displayed with red highlighting, just like with structure blocks

  • Added smart grid system to automatically align similar sized blocks
    Exposed grid toggle (Z) to allow switching between grids

  • Smart grid: Snaps blocks at their centers for easy alignment and quick placement

  • Small grid: Snaps blocks on a smaller grid for a bit more refinement

  • No grid: The grid is turned off (no snapping); completely free placement for fine tuning!

• Rebuilt wild creatures affected by recent Life Block improvements

• Updated tree drop rates: All blocks now drop when a tree is broken; rebalanced log yield and burning times to reflect change

• Updated Life Block drops: Reduced creature Life Block drops on death; added a new smoke particle when remaining, un-dropped Life Blocks turn to dust

• Reduced tamed creature memory decay by half

• Reduced tamed creature hunger rate

• Increased crab leg size 3x

• Added new sounds for material based hits

• Temple beam boss creatures will now defend the magical eggs

• Magical eggs now drop the boss creature’s Life Blocks

• Beta branches now use their own save directory (more info in the Pre-Release FAQ!)

• The stat bar shown when hovering over a creature now stays on screen when looking at larger creatures

• Added a confirm dialog when deleting saved games

• Tweaked day/night cycle so night is shorter

  

  Greg built this huge mansion in 30 minutes. He’s very proud. Get it in the Workshop!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that made it difficult to get milk from udders

• Fix to destroying pooled objects which caused unpredictable errors

• Tamed creatures will no longer attack hatchery eggs automatically

• Items creatures are holding are now saved when saving and exiting a game

• Fixed rare issue when reloading a game right after exiting which could cause saved game to corrupt

• Minor tweaks on all lifeblock visuals (offsets, materials, animation speeds, missing mouth animations, bounding boxes)

• Minor visual tweaks to various items

• Fixed issue where fire would deal damage but not display

• Fixed missing colliders on tree tops

• Fixed issue where clients did not get correct tree information synced

What do you think of Bonding?

Your feedback on new systems like this helps us determine what changes and improvements we make. Please let us know your comments and suggestions. Post your thoughts once you’ve given Bonding (and everything else) a try!

Vote for Creature Abilities!

What’s next for creatures? Stealthy camouflage? Spider web traps? Healing auras? Laser beam eyes!? DANCE PARTY!? Help us design creature abilities for a future release. VOTE FOR NEW ABILITIES!

Screenshot by Screaming—Penguin

CHKN at E3

We were selected for the IndieCade Showcase @ E3! How cool is that? We got to show off CHKN to tons of gamers from all over the world.

Here’s John showing off CHKN and wishing he, too, had a Mario Odyssey visor.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi and give us feedback, and to IndieCade for having us. They are the coolest group of folks and we really appreciate all the time and effort they put into the show and helping indie games like us.

If you want to know where you can find us in the future, make sure to follow us on Twitter and sign up for our newsletter!

See you next time.

- Team CHKN

Get CHKN in Early Access!