Team's Thoughts

This week we put a little break on our Ascention implementation to look into some visual aspects of the game, let us know your opinion on those.

Additions

New Mutation Card Visuals



• Changes depending on how you obtained such mutation
  
• 5 Different backgrounds: Regular, Random, Free, Sigil and Creative
  




New Crisis Dial



• The Crisis drawer now uses a dial instead of a number to show the current crisis duration
  
• If Cernunnos' Omen mutation is active, the drawer is always open
  



New Steam Achievements



• There is now an achievement for every ascention level beaten
  
• If you already did them in the past, completing an Ascention V run should give you all of them
  

Optimizations

• Made some changes to save files, new save files should be up to 90% smaller and up to 1000% faster to load
  

Fixes

• Fixed flowers behaving weirdly on the first day of a transition before any change was made to leaves
  
• Fixed some mutation tooltips not displaying the mutation card properly
  

Additions

Ascention V: Woeful Clouds


Ascention IV Mutations




Slow Metabolism



• Shaded Leaves use less water
  
• Only available in Ascention IV+
  




Begonia's Lesson



• Leaf tiles bloom when shaded during the summer
  
• Only available in Ascention IV+
  



Structuring



• When a leaf tile is placed with enough shading, it also creates a stem tile in its position
  
• Only available in Ascention IV+
  



Recluse Paradise



• Shading radius is increased by 1
  
• This mutation stores every energy that is not generated due to shading and reduces leaf energy costs based on how much energy it has stored.
  
• Only available in Ascention IV+
  



Local Climate



• Shaded leaves have a chance of not decaying
  
• Only available in Ascention IV+
  

Optimizations

• Graphic Engine entirelly rewritten
  
• Removed the option to turn off dynamic tiles
  
• Framerate is no longer dependant on camera position
  
• Entering a page with too many icons no longer freezes the screen until they are loaded
  

Changes

Gameplay



• Human greed now affects neighbor trees in Ascention II+
  




Visual



• Mist is now animated again
  
• Enemy tiles are now animated
  
• Ascention I+ unknown tiles are know animated
  

Fixes

• All the stuff that Verde broke during the Graphic Engine rework
  

Additions

Ascention IV: Dense Foliage


Ascention III mutations




• Circle of Life

  
  When a stem tile is destroyed, a leaf tile is placed in its place
  
  
  

• Recycling

  
  When a stem tile is destroyed, you gain its capacity in energy.
  Stem tiles placed within the last 10 turns generate less energy.
  
  
  

• Offering

  
  If 50 stem tiles are destroyed, 3 sigils are placed on the map and this mutation is removed
  
  
  

• Ironwood

  
  Stem tiles have increased health and regenerate faster
  
  
  

• Pyre

  
  For every 100 stem tiles destroyed, all your tiles gain 1 cold resistance
  
  
  



New Voice Lines


6 new voice lines are now in the game

Changes

• Mutation Drawing Rework

  
  Mutations now use an entirely different shader and drawing methods.
  Mutation icons are now dynamically loaded, this should reduce load times and allow people to turn "noicons" off
  
  
  

• Flowers now use dynamic textures

  
  Neighbors now use different colors and textures
  
  
  

• Tooltip Rework

  
  Tooltip visuals changed to reflect the change in mutation drawing
  Tooltips can no longer conflict with subtitles or other UI elements such as drawers
  Mutation tooltips show their mutation on the background
  
  
  
  

Fixes

• Neighbor trees are now properly flammable
  

Additions

Ascention III: Fragile Bark


As per usual, to avoid spoilers I'll not post more info about the new Ascention level here.
Let me know what you think about this in the comments!





New Mutations




• Entangled Roots

  
  Allows you to place roots on other tree's root tiles
  Only Available in Ascention II: Selfish Neighbors
  
  
  

• Cross Pollination

  
  Increases flower generation based on the number of leaf tiles from other trees
  Only Available in Ascention II: Selfish Neighbors
  
  
  

• Respectful Twigs

  
  Other trees relocate when nearby your stems
  Only Available in Ascention II: Selfish Neighbors
  
  
  

• Comforting Canopy

  
  Comforting Canopy
  Only Available in Ascention II: Selfish Neighbors
  
  
  

• Eyes in the Forest

  
  Other tree's roots also reveal tiles
  Only Available in Ascention II: Selfish Neighbors
  
  
  



New Launch Options



• "version": displays a line of text with the current version in the bottom left of the menu
  
• "noicons": loads the game without loading mutation icons
  



Quality of Life additions



• Added a tooltip opacity slider in configs
  
  Suggestion from a user in our discord channel
  
  
  
• Added a tooltip size slider in configs
  

Balance Changes

• Most crises now have a 1 year cooldown

  
  
  • With the exceptions being "Flood" and "Drought"
    
  
  
• "Sensory Roots" mutation is now retroactive
  
• "Water Sense" mutation is now retroactive
  
• "Nutrient Zones" mutation strength reduced by 10%
  
  This should still be way stronger than before because now every nutrient patch is always within bounds
  
  
  
• "Regretful Growth" mutation no longer triggers "Intervention" mutation
  
  Thanks to our community for helping us find this exploit
  
  
  

Optimizations

• Tiles can no longer be placed outside of bounds by any means
  
  This should result in smaller file sizes since there will be no aquifers/rocks/nutrients outside of bounds
  
  
  
• Fire tiles should no longer lag the game in large quantities
  
  Steam Community strikes again, helping Verde find this one out with their save files
  
  
  

Fixes

• Fixed bounties and collection tooltips not showing up on some screens
  
• Fixed "Underwater Reserves" not working properly
  
• Initial root on Ascention 1+ will now reveal the area around itself
  
• Fixed weird graphics when restarting the game with Ascention 1 active
  

Additions

New Ascention level


Called Selfish Neighbors





Ascention Mutations


Now in the new ascention mode, you can find some exclusive mutations that can only show up with specific ascention modifiers enabled.




New Mutations




• Knowledge is Power

  
  For every 25 tiles revealed, increases energy generation by 1%
  Only Available in Ascention I: Mysterious Soil
  
  
  

• Divination

  
  Reveals the position of every sigil on the map
  Only Available in Ascention I: Mysterious Soil
  
  
  

• Unseen Treasures

  
  Every time you reveal a tile, there is a small chance of gaining resources
  Only Available in Ascention I: Mysterious Soil
  
  
  

• Water Sense

  
  When an aquifer tile is revealed, reveal all tiles in a 2-tile radius
  Only Available in Ascention I: Mysterious Soil
  
  
  

• Sensory Roots

  
  Doubles root tile reveal ange
  Only Available in Ascention I: Mysterious Soil
  
  
  

Changes

Creative mode



• Creative "Add Mutation" menu no longer shows restricted mutations
  
• Creative "Remove Mutation" menu now only shows mutations that you currently have
  
• Winter no longer drains energy when "Toggle Energy Costs" is on
  
• Steam achievements should no longer be achievable in creative mode
  

Fixes

• Restart button on death screen should now keep Ascention
  
• Mutation icons no longer act weird on lower resolutions
  
• Mist tiles should no longer lag the game
  
• Fixed stem tiles being placeable below water tiles
  

Additions

Ascention


Added a new game mode: Ascention.
You can unlock this game mode by beating the game once in the Speed Sprout difficulty.
The game mode includes cumulative modifiers that each make your game a little harder.
There is only one modifier within the game, but more should come out in the following weeks.

Balance Changes

• Sigils identification range increased from 2 to 3 tiles
  

Quality of Life

• Magic 8 Ball widget now interrupts the narrator and ignores the narrator's cooldown
  
• Magic 8 Ball widget internal cooldown reduced from 120 frames to 0.5 seconds
  
• Sigils now emit a glowing sphere when revealed and when a root is first placed in a radius of 10 tiles
  
• UI no longers plays the game start the animation on restarting
  
• Limited zoom on touch devices
  
• Camera no longer drags while dragging widgets
  

Fixes

• Crisis drawer animation is no longer frame dependant
  
• Second bloom chances are now correctly saved
  
• Turn log window size now scales with screen size
  
• Mutation menu window size now scales with screen size
  
• Fixed a bug that would make the camera teleport after selecting a tile on touch screen devices
  
• Multiple end turns can no longer be queued
  
• Turn log windows can no longer be queued
  
• Flying resource particles should no longer have strange paths when fps is low
  

Team's Thoughts

More and more development on the mobile port: Some optional optimisations and touch screen interactions are the core of today's update.

Update 1.17

Additions

General Loading Procedure



• The loading screen now shows precisely what it doing instead of what general file was last loaded
  
• Now the game also frees resources that are no longer needed during the load process itself, lowering overall memory usage.
  




Low Memory and Low Shaders accessibility modes



• Can be entered by adding "lowmem" and "lowsha" to the launch options on steam properties
  
• Low Memory mode can reduce the total amount of graphic memory the game uses by 90%, but has significant impacts on game visuals
  
• Low Shaders mode disables the heaviest shaders in the game, like clouds and blur
  
• When opening the game on an Android device, both Low Memory and Low Shaders are enabled by default
  



New Ways of moving the camera



• When not selecting any tile to place, the left mouse button can also be used to drag the camera around
  
• If your device supports touch, you can now zoom in and out by pinching
  

Changes

Bounties



• You now have to click them to gather their reward in fruit.
  
• The main menu button now shows if a bounty can be claimed.
  
• Now there is a fruit count in the bounties screen
  

Fixes

• Fixed some graphic elements not properly scaling with UI scale
  
  This includes tooltips, default game communication and subtitles
  
  
  

Small Fixes

• Fixed Bazaar Shortcut on the death screen
  
• Fruit gathering animation no longer is accelerated by animation speed
  
• UI Sliding animation speed no longer is dependant on FPS
  
• Fixed Bazaar and Bounties screens not showing properly in some devices
  
• Fixed game launching in the wrong language in some conditions
  

Team Thoughts

This update features tons of small changes and fixes as Verde decided to take every small task on the list instead of doing the big ones first.

We also ran some tests for a possible mobile port, while we were able to make the game run smoothly on a simulated android, there are some changes that have to be made before it is possible to play the game normally on a touch-screen device.

We also noticed that we didn't release the patch notes on steam last week, so this post will contain both of them

Update 1.16

Changes

Second Bloom Rework


Second Bloom now uses probability instead of being only dependent on your actions
When winter ends, the chance is at 100%, and halves for every determined mutation purchased using flowers
"Everbloom" mutation reworked to make the game roll for this twice instead of once
Now there's a widget that explains the mechanic and shows the current probability





Reworked Cold Mists


Now uses a different algorithm in order to place the mists, this new algorithm should place and remove mist tiles linearly over the duration of the crisis
That means that 2 days of cold mists now have very close to double the number of mist tiles of a single day
Mist tiles now dissipate during the spring and summer instead of only summer, but it still dissipates faster during the summer
The new algorithm recycles mist tiles between turns so that it doesn't flood the turn log

Small Changes

• The two initial tiles are now completely indestructible
  
• The Bazaar now glows purple if you have enough fruit to purchase anything
  
• Changed outdated tips on the death screen
  
• Changed default narrator cooldown from 120 to 15 seconds
  
• Added a shortcut to the Bazaar on the death screen
  

Fixes

• Fixed bounties tooltips being wrongly positioned on big screens
  
• Fixed collection tooltips being wrongly positioned on big screens
  
• Fixed the "Main Menu" button on the death screen restarting the game instead of going back to the main menu
  
• Fixed winter costs not showing on turn log
  
• Fixed achievements and fruit only being given to the player after the Freeplay prompt
  
• Fixed narrator spamming only idle lines if narrator cooldown is higher than the idle timer
  

Update 1.15

Additions

• Added a new Widget, turn log, that can be clicked to reveal everything that happened during the last turn
  
• Added a narrator cooldown slider to the audio configs
  
• Added a sign that informs the player about the widget system, it only appears when the right section of the widget bar is empty.
  

Changes

• Sliders on the config menu now contain their current value below them
  
• Moved speedometer and winter widgets back to their original position so that the new sign is visible to new players
  

Fixes

• Fixed configs not saving when exiting the config menu
  
• Fixed human greed accounting mist tiles as target tiles
  
• Fixed human greed not updating properly when the turn started
  
• Fixed human greed leaving parts of your tree red if it is interrupted
  

Team's Thoughts

Recently we noticed that some features of the game were frequently going unnoticed by new players, so we plan on fixing these issues before adding more content to the game.
Sadly these changes usually take time to plan and implement, so it is taking time, but we hope that what you can do within the game is more straightforward for our saplings.

Additions

• Added an animation when fruit is obtained
  
• Added a toggle in the performance tab for turning off dynamic grass
  

Changes

• When choosing the game mode, a third scroll will now appear with the game mode's description
  

Fixes

• Fixed text in Freeplay prompt being behind buttons
  
• Bear fruit button on Freeplay prompt now takes you to the main menu
  
• Fixed a strange interaction between "Nature's Attendants" mutation and the "Cold Mist" crisis that caused the Attendants to be placed anywhere on the map
  
• Events that should trigger when winter ends no longer happen at the start of the last day of winter
  

Team's Thoughts

While this update doesn't introduce any new features, it brings some well-needed fixes and balance changes to the table.

Balance Changes