This is a small Spring-Sale update that mostly rebalances and improves some existing content, including our DLC Guns & Cakes. We’re currently super busy working on our next game, an action roguelite called Monster Run (where you’re a giant monster cat fighting against armies of humans), but we aren’t done with Artist Life Simulator yet. Have a merry spring and a happy new approaching summer!
Increased painting value of ideas and some memories
Increased painting time penalty of some crimson conditions (like frustration)
Updated painting value of some generic memories
Changed Temptations to have more interesting effects
Opportunities to buy guns in Cakes & Guns DLC last longer before vanishing
Smaller fixes
Happy spring sale!
Balance update with new content
We are currently doing our first -50% off sale, so the best time to recommend Artist Life Simulator to a good friend is today. Thank you!
This update rebalances (and fixes) numerous chances and stats across the game. There is no greater pattern of increased/reduced difficulty. The most noticeable change is a minor reduction of the chance to get willpower from the Ocean, but this is counterbalanced by other changes. We also added a number of new results to various events accrosse the game.
Fixed: Charles not having "Sculpting of Physicue" upgrade. Fixed: Some gun buying opportunities of the Guns & Cakes DLC never vanishing after their timer runs out.
Added new injury type: The Allergy (cannot visit Park or Mountains).
Quality of life changes
New DLC available, steam link also in the game main menu (fully save-compatible)
Ultrawide monitors can now use fullscreen mode
Windowed mode is now resizable
Added “hover text keepout” hint
Upgrades panel can now be panned to the top regardless of zoom level
Escape keys now only opens/closes the main menu
Added more (start action) functions to Enter key
Fixed highlighted cards sometimes showing relation when there was none
New content, visuals & improvements
New visuals & improvements
We’ve completed a round of optimizations including balance changes, adding also some new content. The Mystery Artist verbs have a fresh new look, and working on any odd-job now shows a new unique work-specific image in the background.
Our full version launch has so far been humble, while earning one fine 8/10 review from Softpedia. If you have enjoyed Artist Life Sim and want to support our work, please consider leaving us a positive Steam review.
New Content
Added 15 unique new background images for various Job Opportunities
Added some new events across various locations & activities
New visuals for mystery artist actions
New visuals for The Good Listener skill
Added “final number of paintings” to certain endings
Misc & Fixes
The game is now more clear about why some actions can't be done (in card hover info and in before action panel)
Changed unwanted condition hovertext instructions for removing them
A lot of refactoring behind the scenes to make the game more stable and easier to support in the long run. It has already fixed some rare and infrequent bugs
Fixed texts that said the painting is incomplete when it was complete
Fixed effects that give multiple cards of the same type (eg "get 3 feelings" used to give one feeling that was leveled up 2 times)
Fixed some paintings getting finished as white blanks
Fixed paintings getting the same illustration as the player already has
Non-painted paintings now usually won't be portraits
Fixed some ending texts
Demo updated, Love-related saving issues fixed
We did a silent update earlier today, fixing some typos and a saving blocker that happened if your artist painted Love (one of the rarest feelings in the game) or memory of love. We also updated the free demo to full version, so not a bad time to recommend your friends to try it if you think they might enjoy the experience.
The corner doctor used to be a veterinary and butcher so he must be qualified for the job.
There are risks to owning more than you can handle.
I spent a lot of money to prove that I'm worthy of existing.
Somebody wrote in their review that they now understand better the hardships of being an artist. Thank you, that's one of the reasons we made this game for! ^_^
Full release!
We have released Artist Life Simulator full version today, together with 2275 AI-generated illustrations of 19th century oil paintings! Every painting, portrait and piece of art you create will have a unique oil painting visuals (in addition to the card image), reflecting the key inspiration that you used. Majority of results (the thousands of little stories in the game) are illustrated with such works (some shorter messages do not need an illustration). The intros contain now also truly fine voice acting. We didn't have time to update the demo due to developer illness, and it will be updated at first opportunity. Thank you for supporting us during Early Access if you had the chance. Please spread the word about Artist Life Sim to any real life artstist who happen to be gamers, we've heard artists like it, because of the brutal realism the game treats you with ^_^
New Content
There are now 2275 illustrations for various results, including painting (added 1000+)
The game now has large painting illustrations, accessible by hovering
Some new small features (Erotic paintings and any alcohol can be sold in Dark Alleys)
Added hundreds of new events
Added new effects to some feelings
Added intro voiceovers
Changes
Made only 4 narrative cards paintable
The game now asks intro to be only played once, not for all playable characters
Increased font size in action panel and popups, thus making panels slightly larger
Removed abstract paintings from the game, replaced them with genre paintings
The game now uses separate set of action card images for playable characters
Changed music playlist logic to play more longer tracks
Changed "box of soap" and "mechanical silver watch" card sprites
Tuned cards “relation particles” to be more visible
Changed card effects when cards can be solved, to be more visible
Optimized art file format and game statup speed
Improvements & Fixes
Fixed the game overwriting savegames if Steam library was shared, or when demo and full game were both installed
Fixed Alchemical Experiments card not working properly
Fixed a handful of issues causing stuck cards after action completion
Fixed some issues with upgrades not unlocking or not being available
Fixed Cravings card effects not working as intended
Fixed some soundfiles that were playing on game start
Fixed #first tag issues if there we multiple of these per action result deck
P.S. no promises, but feel free to leave your number one feature/content request as the comment for this post.
Added 1219 new illustrations, tons of new features & content
We are overjoyed to announce that we’ve added an unprecendented 1219 new illustrations (!!) into the game and more will be added soon (*_*). They mostly look like beautiful 19th century oil paintings, illustrating your visiting results (including visiting jobs and very good friends). In the future, every painting you create will also have an authentic full-format oil painting visuals (in addition to the card image). As if this wasn’t enough, we’ve added a new playable artist plus tons of new content and features. Hooray!
New Content
Added over 1219 new illustrations for visiting results
Added a new playable artist: The Mystery Artist (starts with random cards)
Added new locations: Mountains, The Corner Doctor
Added two new “opportunity” type cards
New side-job: drawing tutor
Expanded the event base for most locations
Expanded the selection of flowers & fruits symbolizing friendship
Expanded the friendship interaction content (it gets more attention soon)
Expanded the successful painter victory progression
New features
All visiting results are now illustrated with oil paintings. Soon, other results will be similarly illustrated.
Added ironman mode
Dark alley can be now visited with erotic paintings
Playable character name can now be changed on game start
Solver/solvable card pairs are now highlighted when hovered
Clicking on filled card slot removes the card
New full screen effects (for example, when losing health)
Mentionworthy Balance changes
Some unwanted conditions were made a little more challenging
Some cards, such as “Mortally Wounded” now instantly autocomplete all other ongoing actions.
Some conditions may now consume feelings and memories (e.g. Apathy and Bitterness).
Improvements & Fixes
Overwrite-savegame popup now show what it will overwrite
Many UI and UX improvements, including card effects/animations
Made new game buttons more user friendly
Card hover text coloring an wording improvements
Fixed wrong card stack number being shown on a card sometimes
Fixed Emotinarium texts for feelings (those that went missing in v0.16)
Fixed how the upgrade panel looks in the demo (Salvadari character)
Fixed "Load game" sometimes erraneously not being clickable (if there were cards in the popup panel while saving)
Fixed card highlights going wrong when a card was dragged over another
Fixed some card-giving effects never happening
Fixed before-action-panel sometimes breaking alltogether
Fixed apparent game hanging while starting up
If you find all this enjoyable, please tell your friends (and favorite streamers/youtubers) about Artist Life Simulator! Artists in our studio are starving (only occasionally, and we have infinite supply of apples because we're in Estonia).
New expanded victory progression for the Color That Should Not Exist path
Expanding the victory progression of the 8th color victory path with interesting steps was the focus of this update, together with various important quality of life improvements. Other victory progressions will be also expanded in the near future. By the way, if you haven’t noticed already, action slots can be now filled simply by clicking on the suitable cards while the action is clicked open. Basically clicking on a suitable card now has the same effect as dragging them into a slot would. New content/features
New, expanded victory progression for the Color That Should Not Exist
Updated game intro and victory texts
New card graphics to replace some victory-related temporary visuals.
New game may now have additional starting cards/effects from the previous game
Demons of the Psyche can now lead to two different endings.
Balance/misc
Solver card now has 50% chance to become memory and 50% chance to remain.
Goal/Narrative cards can be now used as inspiration for paintings
Requirements/cost for starting an action is now shown earlier
UI and animation tweaks, including card highlight
Fixes
Fixed saving the game whenever there were disabled cards on the board
Now whenever save&exit fails, the game won't quit automatically
Fixed "souvenir painting" cards not working at all
Fixed unlocking seconds and third tier upgrades for Andre and Charles
New upgrade tree, new music and other improvements
The new, redesigned upgrade tree introduces unique upgrades for each playable artist, diversifying them a little further. Completing any upgrade unlocks all upgrades of the next tier. Another feature we’ve wanted to add for a long time (and now did) is the ability to “resurrect” forgotten feelings from memories, by thinking about them with passion. You can now also send cards to action slots simply by cliking on a suitable card while the action window is open - it's very handy, thank you to everybody who asked for it.
The game now has evertyhing that it needs, so we can put more focus on cool things which are not strictly necessary (such as extended steps for main quest/victory progression), and there’s still a fair bit of other polishing, balancing and testing we want to do. If you haven't tried surviving Artist Life Simulator for a while, then it's a good time to try again and experience what the game has become :)
Features/content
New upgrade tree (unlockable by tiers), with unique upgrades for playable characters.
New feature: clicking on card will put it to the leftmost highlighted action panel slot.
New music: added 5+ feeling-related background music tracks.
Balance/Other
Some character descriptions now have better hints about what cards they want to interact with, in order to level up the friendship.
Some skills that were single-use now instead have very long cooldown times.
Slots for starting an action now explicitly lists counter cards if any are available.
Characters now always become memories with painting value 2 or more.
Solving a condition won't destroy solver card any more.
Counters now add 15% chance vs conditions again (was 10% for a short while).
Conditions are now also countered when painting an unfinished painting.
The game now behaves better when the aspect ratio is anywhere between 4:3 and 21:9.
Disabled card hovertext now shows what/why disabled it. Some reasons may be kept hidden.
The game now runs faster and uses less VRAM when run on lower than FullHD resolution.
Known issues
A couple of new cards have currently temporary graphics, the real ones will be added in the next update.
