As per usual, Verde is posting the detailed patch notes at the community hub.
Additions
10 New Mutations
Detailed information about them in the in-depth post in the community hub
New Widgets
The Build Icons Bar, also called Action Bar, is now a widget, resizing itself when moved.
Balance changes
Winter Scaling Reduced
On Delayed Development difficulty, winter energy cost no longer scales with your current amount of stems
On Regular Rise, this same scaling was reduced by 50%
Speed Sprout remained unchanged
Mutation Stacking Changed
Energy and flower generation increases are now additive instead of multiplicative
This also affects rain and spring multipliers, so they can be more easily countered by mutations
Mutations Reworked
Aerodynamic Design
Now sets the current Crisis to Strong Winds, as well as reversing the wind direction
Overwrites current crisis
Porous Soil
Reworked to trigger at the end of your turns, reducing the water level it if is above the default value
Flying Rivers
Reworked to trigger at the end of your turns, increasing the water level it if is below the default value
Small changes
Nature's attendants buff that increases following buffs now affects itself.
Nature's attendants no longer generate attendants during the winter.
Regretful growth no longer generates parasite tiles when used during a parasites crisis
Burls now increase capacity by a percentage instead of a fixed value
Capacity interests gain is now removed if the mutation is removed by Harmful Pesticides
Lucky Seed can no longer call for a turn of Human Greed
Other Changes
Input Changes
Now once you place a tile, your current tile no longer deselects
Now you can select another tile without cancelling your tile placement first
Shift is now no longer used since its behaviour is now always active
Tooltip Changes
He Speaks for the Trees mutation now explicit that it fills your capacity at 50% when you die
Capacity Interests now tells you how much capacity it gave to you
Stem tiles now tell you how much cold resistance they have, as well as how much cold damage that resistance reduces
Visual Changes
Particles now come out of leaves and fire tiles
Mutations now glow when they are activated
Mutations are now tinted grey when they are inactive or on cooldown
Stems should no longer have a twig pointing upwards when a leaf tile is in the same cell as it
Implemented some changes to the mutation shader so that details are now possible
Human greed targets should now be more easily seen when a leaf tile is in front of the targeted tile
Info Display Text now has a black gradient behind it so it is visible in any weather
Lucky Seed now uses display text instead of the narrator to announce its result
When placing a tile, the cursor now shows the current tile being placed
Widget Changes
You can now click on the resource display spheres to toggle their size between 2x2 and 1x1
Fixes
Fixed the game stopped responding bug(we hope)
Fixed a bug that would cause the Winter Widget to stop working if you died under certain conditions
Fixed a bug that would cause the Resource Spheres not to update their current value properly if you died under certain conditions
Fixed widget drawer opening with clicks above the handle
Fixed a bug that would make a sigil reveal itself if Regretful Growth was used near it
Update 1.1 is here.
Teams Thoughts
To avoid making a way too big announcement here and to be able to answer everyone's questions adequately, Verde will be posting detailed information about the mechanic changes soon in the Community Hub, you can find it here.
Additions
10 New Mutations
Two of them are locked behind new unlocks. Detailed information about them in the in-depth post in the community hub
Late game crises
We've noticed from your feedback that the game was pending towards the easier side as the years go by, so we figured out we could give it a little twist with some strong crises that only happen from the third year onwards.
With the two new crises: Thunderstorm and Harmful Pesticides, winning should not be taken for granted after the second year. More about them in the community hub.
New Widgets
With both of them being player suggestions from the community hub, we introduced a capacity meter to show how many resources your tree can hold and a Winter Intensity predictor that tells you exactly how cruel the next winter is going to be.
Cold Resistance mechanic
Several mutations used to reduce how much winter drained energy on specific stem tiles, however, this was severely inconsistent.
We introduced a mechanic to unify all of these, more details will be included in the in-depth post.
Balance changes
Changed shop and Winter scalings
While the first year remained untouched, from the third year and onwards the shop should have higher prices and winter starts getting harder in the second year.
These changes should affect all game modes but are way easier to notice on the Speed Sprout(aka hard)
New Loss Condition
Having no stem tiles now means you are dead
Old loss conditions still apply.
Small changes
Resilience can no longer make a crisis shorter than one day Beacon of Eden effect: 2 -> 1 Pollution cost increase: +1 -> x2 Removed a bug that made Junipery apply 9 times
Other Changes
Visual changes
Several visual changes were made in an attempt to make the game visual less noisy overall.
What do you think about these changes? Do you like them? Do you hate them? Let us know.
Auto leaf replacement
Now it is way faster and should work properly with the Amazonian Canopy mutation.
Flying resources
Now have a less predictable path towards their objective, they should orbit their objective a bit before going in.
Fixes
Fixed unlocks menu not being able to display a big number of unlocks Reduced the amount of floating leaf tiles
Update 1.1 release date and other info
Hello everyone, the 1.1 Update was mentioned several times recently within the community hub and we now have a date for it.
The official release date is on this Friday, 01/04/2022 (d/m/y).
We are still collecting feedback and new suggestions both for this update and for the next one, both in the Steam community hub and in our our Discord server.
Currently, we are also doing a Poll on our discord server regarding the 10th mutation that will be included in the update, which is still undecided until the release date.
Update 1.0.2
Team's Thoughts
The uber-late game is a strange place to visit since most balance decisions were taken before Freeplay was considered a possibility. However, Verde is still fighting his way towards making it at least playable, so here are some fixes related to it, as well as the feature we mentioned in the last hotfix
New Features
Added a button in the Hall of Fame that enables you to resume your run with the shown Tree
Fixes
Fixed a bug that made it so that leaves placed in the autumn of any year after the 8th become red and never decay
Fixed an error that happened every time the game reached the first day of the 11th year.
Known Issues
Crises do not appear naturally after the 6th year.
After the 10th year, the wind always points towards the same direction
Update 1.0.1
Team's Thoughts
Due to the nature of some errors found recently, several patches were included in the last 24 hours to quickly address those issues. This patch is also to fix some bugs, but the ones listed here are less severe and thus require less urgency in its fix.
As many of you noticed and mentioned, we are focusing on reaction speed when it comes to errors that affect your ability to properly play the game. Please continue to tell us about whatever error or bug you can find by telling us in the Discussions tab on the community hub or in our Discord server.
The fixes included here are actually needed in order to introduce a new feature: a button to load a run from the Hall Of Fame menu. If everything goes as smoothly as we expect, this feature should be added either to the game or to a beta version later today.
Now for the actual fixes:
Fixes
Fixed a bug that caused the "Keep Growing" button to do nothing.
Fixed several inconsistencies that generated duplicate trees in the hall of fame.
Fixed an inconsistency that made streak counts inaccurate.
Heliotropism 1.0 is here!
Verde's Thoughts
It's been a long journey. About one year ago, Heliotropism was being conceptualised by two friends in a game jam. After all this time working hard on what we've got, building a small team and aspiring towards a great day. Today is that great day. Several things have been improved and now we are finally able to move out of early access and present you with Heliotropism!
The game will continue moving forwards and being updated further as we still plan on adding more and more content to it, but we believe we've got our foundation well-rooted and it is time to start moving towards the sun.
Now, without further redo, time for the patch notes:
What's new
Terrain
Earth is no longer flat!
Lakes and mountains now fill the landscape with challenges and opportunities
You can place roots on lakes to get some water from them
New UI is here
With a new rustic style, you can now adjust the position of several UI elements called widgets
These new widgets are capable of changing the way you play quite dramatically, so take your time to try them out
Weather
Now the clouds mean something instead of being static on the sky.
It can now rain, rain makes your leaves consume less water, but also generate less energy.
Weather is influenced by season and future crises, so if your summer is unexpectedly dry, you can bet there is a drought coming
Balance changes
Several balance changes were made so that the game actually gets harder as the years go
Now seasonal drawbacks scale with the current year, and be ready for some really harsh winters later on.
Quality of life improvements
Added some widgets to improve quality of life, like automatic leaf replacement, animation speed regulator, weather indicator and more
A game end screen was added, it includes some statistics about your run and some tips about how to improve your tree-building abilities
New music for every season but winter, just to keep things fresh
Sigils
Several glowing objects are scattered across the underground
Once approached, they reveal a mutation
Once touched, they give you that mutation
New Shop
The shop can now be accessed at any time, allowing you to purchase things at any moment you so desire
Its contents refresh during the winter so that you can buy new things by the spring
New mutations
We introduced a grand total of 23 new mutations to the game
8 of them have to be unlocked to be used
Unlocks
A new system in place that brings to the table some out-of-game progression
As you do the determined tasks, you unlock new mutations to help you further improve your tree-growing endeavours
Up until now, every single one of them can be obtained in every game mode
Game modes
There are now 3 game modes, which modify various aspects of the game
They influence how many days you got in each season and also how hard can the game be
Release 1.0 Demo is out!
What's in the demo
Terrain
Earth is no longer flat!
Lakes and mountains now fill the landscape with challenges and opportunities
You can place roots on lakes to get some water from them
New UI is here
With a new rustic style, you can now adjust the position of several UI elements called widgets
These new widgets are capable of changing the way you play quite dramatically, so take your time to try them out
Weather
Now the clouds mean something instead of being static on the sky.
It can now rain, rain makes your leaves consume less water, but also generate less energy.
Weather is influenced by season and future crises, so if your summer is unexpectedly dry, you can bet there is a drought coming
Balance changes
Several balance changes were made so that the game actually gets harder as the years go
Now seasonal drawbacks scale with the current year, and be ready for some really harsh winters later on.
Quality of life improvements
Added some widgets to improve quality of life, like automatic leaf replacement, animation speed regulator, weather indicator and more
A game end screen was added, it includes some statistics about your run and some tips about how to improve your tree-building abilities
New music for every season but winter, just to keep things fresh
What is not in the demo
Sigils
Several glowing objects are scattered across the underground
Once approached, they reveal a mutation
Once touched, they give you that mutation
New Shop
The shop can now be accessed at any time, allowing you to purchase things at any moment you so desire
Its contents refresh during the winter so that you can buy new things by the spring
New mutations
We introduced a grand total of 23 new mutations to the game
8 of them have to be unlocked to be used
Unlocks
A new system in place that brings to the table some out-of-game progression
As you do the determined tasks, you unlock new mutations to help you further improve your tree-growing endeavours
Up until now, every single one of them can be obtained in every game mode
Game modes
There are now 3 game modes, which modify various aspects of the game
They influence how many days you got in each season and also how hard can the game be
Important Answers
When will those things be included?
While we do have most of the 1.0 Release content ready, we want to release it as fleshed out as we can. Our plans are to release the actual update on the 24th of March, just a few days from now
1.0 Release? Are we leaving Early Access?
Yes! After some lengthy considerations, we came to the conclusion that this update would be the best moment to leave the Early Access stage.
What about future updates?
Currently, we have most of the game on the stage that we want it to be. This way, most of the next updates will be focused on content. We plan on eventually having over two hundred mutations within the game but we couldn't work on that many as this update was focused on the game structure itself.
I already have the game, how do I play the demo?
We know that it might be complicated to play a demo for a game you already have, because of that, we also enabled this demo as a public beta, to play, you only have to go through this simple procedure:
First, you right-click the game on your Steam library and select properties
Then, you navigate to the "Betas" tab, where you select to opt into the public beta branch
Your game will then be updated to the beta version, to play it, just click play as usual
Heliotropism: the world is beautiful update beta
What's New
Unlocks
The unlock submenu is now unlocked!
There, you can find some objectives to steer your gameplay towards, with each and every one of them unlocking a mutation after completion.
Weather
Now the clouds mean something instead of being static on the sky.
It can now rain, rain makes your leaves consume less water, but also generate less energy.
Weather is influenced by season and future crises, so if your summer is unexpectedly dry, you can bet there is a drought coming
7 New Mutations
Osmosis: Your leaves generate water during rainfall
Rainy day: Once per year, you can activate it to make the day as wet as possible
Sunny day: Once per year, you can activate it to make the day as dry as possible
Summer Solstice: On the first day of summer, you gain considerable amounts of energy
Winter Solstice: Same, but on the first day of winter
Autumn Equinox: On the first day of autumn, you gain considerable amounts of water
Spring Equinox: On the first day of spring, you gain considerable amounts of flowers
Known issues
game crashes when you obtain all mutations and try to roll for a new one
game crashes sometimes when starting a new run
Sometimes the flowers in the main menu can suddenly change colours
Hall of fame crashes sometimes
How do I join the beta?
The beta is open to anyone who owns the game on Steam, and can be accessed by going through a very simple procedure:
First, you right-click the game on your Steam library and select properties
Then, you navigate to the "Betas" tab, where you select to opt into the public beta branch
Your game will then be updated to the beta version, to play it, just click play as usual
Heliotropism: The World is Beautiful update beta
What's New
New UI
We tried to integrate some aspects of the game in a little more seamless way on the new UI, while still trying to match that wooden board visual.
New Shop and mutations
The shop can now be opened at any time, its contents change during the winter.
Mutations are now cards instead of tokens
Some mutations can be interacted with, those are placed on the left side of the board and are tinted blue
Some mutations that had a one-time effect when obtained now have that effect when interacted with, those being: Abundance of Energy, Abundance of Water and Uprooted Thoughts
Every spring, a random mutation from the crisis mitigation pool is obtained
New terrain
The terrain is no longer a straight line, instead, it is procedurally generated and contains some new features
Sigils
Found among rocks in the underground
These sigils turn into mutations once approached
Can be obtained by growing a root over them
Water
Found near the surface where the terrain is below certain heights.
Roots can grow on it and generate extra water when on them
We have some plans to lower/heighten the map's water level via crises and/or mutations, but currently it is static during the whole playthrough
Game Modes
There are now 3 game modes to fit more diverse playstyles
Game modes affect season duration and sigil frequency
New graphics
Clouds
Replaced the old static sky with something a little more dynamic
Cloud intensity and movement change over time and are affected by the current season
In the future, cloud intensity and movement will also be affected by current and future crises
Roots and Stems
Roots and Stems will now change their widths based on their placement on the tree
Stems have now a slightly different texture
What's Planned
Creative mode
A mode where you take control over the game.
The player will have infinite resources, be able to change seasons at will and obtain any mutations they desire.
Best environment for gardening.
Achievements and Unlocks
A complete overhaul of the achievements system, with some new mutations locked behind some.
Transformations
Optional transformations will be available to the tree once it obtains certain mutation combinations
Once transformed, your growth starts anew, with all of the mutations of the previous tree
These will not only change the entire visual of the tree, as well as change core rules of the game
~20 new mutations
With all of the features added in this update, more ways of obtaining mutations were added and the current mutation pool became insufficient
We plan on adding around 20 mutations to the game, with the first one already included in this beta
UI changes
Empty space
Currently, there is some empty space in the UI and we plan on having it filled with the following:
A game log button, which opens a screen describing exactly what happened on that last turn
A game speed toggle, to change the speed of the animations of most of the game
We are also open to suggestions, what information do you think is critical to your playstyle?
Tooltips
There are still some tooltips missing or misplaced, those being:
Crisis tooltip is currently misplaced
Season's tooltips are getting an overhaul to include more info on each season
Flowers tooltip is going through a similar process, as is the whole flower amount indicator
Known issues
game crashes when you obtain all mutations and try to roll for a new one
game crashes sometimes when starting a new run
If you obtain a sigil before it turns into a mutation, you get no mutation
Sometimes the flowers in the main menu can suddenly change colours
Some animation times are affected by frame rate
How do I join the beta?
The beta is open to anyone who owns the game on Steam, and can be accessed by going through a very simple procedure:
First, you right-click the game on your Steam library and select properties
Then, you navigate to the "Betas" tab, where you select to opt into the public beta branch
Your game will then be updated to the beta version, to play it, just click play as usual
Jerry plays Heliotropism
An example of Jerry, a wild animal found in nature, playing with a tree.
Jokes aside, we plan on talking about our immediate plans about the game and things we want done before 27/07.
