Kind Words
The report button is for reports, not replies ;) 您不能使用“REPORT”按钮回复他人。
You're doing a great job being kind to each other, but a number of players have gotten one thing confused: The report button sends messages to ME and LUIGI, the moderators. It does NOT send a message to the person you are reporting. You can't use the report button to talk back to people. Sorry!
This update adds one-time-only message from Ella the Mail deer when you make a report to remind you that you're sending a report to the moderators and not to another player.
I hope this is a proper translation :
You can not reply to people using the "REPORT" button.
您不能使用“REPORT”按钮回复他人。
This update also changes the description on the Abe Lincoln sticker to use the word "enslaved" instead of "slaves", because in this context we are talking about a burden put upon people and not an all encompassing definition of who they were. Thank you to the player who made that suggestion!
There's also a tiny increment in the version of Unity used for this release. Shouldn't change anything. Probably.
That's all for this update. I know it's been a while since we've had a meatier update. It may surprise absolutely no one who follows me to learn that I've been rewriting parts of the backend AGAIN. Lots of invisible work going on behind the scenes to make sure Kind Words has a long life and a stable foundation on which to grow.
Cheers!
Ziba
New writing game from the makers of Kind Words: Cyrano!
Wishlist Cyrano now!
Are you enjoying writing nice letters in Kind Words? But maybe you wish you could wander outside of reality for a few minutes and write about a burning, passionate, ill-fated love? Also maybe poke a few dudes with swords? Insult some fools? And collect cards?!
What we've done is make a one hour adaptation of the classic tragicomedy, Cyrano de Bergerac. It's a funny, heartbreaking story about a writer with more wits than beauty who fights the whole world with swords and words.
It's my personal favorite play and my primary motivation for making this game was to spread access to what I know is good in this world.
It's a play about writing, and I thought: I know some people who like writing!
More than just a straight up copy of the play, we've made room for you to be the heart of the production. You will use your words to express your love.
You may have caught a glimpse of this game this spring. Our friends at Fellow Traveller commissioned Cyrano and featured it in their Ludonarracon festival. Well, this winter we're self publishing it for everyone to play. Translated in to 7 languages, no less!
Just like Kind Words, it's Luigi making art, Clark making music and me (Ziba) on the rest. It's short, it'll be cheap, and it's one of the greatest stories ever told. Please wishlist Cyrano now!
Small fixes: Duck Kami sticker, deleting responses and changing signature.
- Stopped the Duck Kami sticker from looking like a Bleeper when you put it on a letter.
- Fixed not being able to delete responses if your inbox was sorted by request.
- Changing your signature initial used to have a delay before being reflected locally.
- Clicking on the version on the title screen now takes you to the steam news page instead of the static game website.
That's all. If you're like me, you might have noticed an update for a game you care about and then clicked on the news only to be slightly disappointed that it's just bugfixes for bugs you didn't even notice.
Sorry. That's all that needed changing right now. But I CAN give you a little update on some behind the scenes dev stuff if you're just hungry for some Kind Words goings on.
Moderation is a big job for us and we take it seriously. We're always looking for ways to do it better and more efficiently.
You ever read those jokes where it's like: "We fed 10,000 movie scripts in to an AI and asked it to write Robocop 5!"
Well... we've actually got the sort of dataset with Kind Words that just might be right for that kind of AI. We've got around 4 million organized text entries and 200,000 moderation actions. Now, "feeding it to an AI and asking it to moderate" isn't entirely straight forward. There's a bit of data science and statistics to do. And the biggest catch is: I need to do it myself. We take our privacy policy very seriously. I'm never going to hand off our database to a third party, no matter how good they are at feeding it to machines.
So that's what I've been up to. Dusting off my python. Reading up on support-vector machines. Connecting PHP and Python in ways God never intended. I've got a LONG way to go, but I'm excited to say I did a first test in the production environment today and it has already flagged several questionable messages for review. I don't know if it'll ever get to the point where I trust it to make final decisions, but damn is it cool to be trying.
Cheers,
Ziba
Pink Lemonade
Two years in and over 4 million messages sent!
If you're not gonna stop then we're not gonna either!
New stickers for everybody! You get a three-eyed duck thing! And a sleepy octopus! And .... a jelly...cube...with... bones? Maybe those are french fries.
Because Kind Words is a chill place and strives to be a bit of the opposite of traditional social media, we don't flash a lot of numbers in the game. No online player count. No ticker with announcements or tournaments. (note to self: what would a Kind Words tournament be?) So every now and then we get two questions:
- Is anyone playing Kind Words?
- Is anyone moderating Kind Words?
The answer to both is: heck yes, all the time.
Usage goes up and down, but on a slow day, we're still transmitting a couple thousand letters between players.
And we are moderating constantly and always improving our moderation tools. For every update to the game, I make 10 updates to the backend. Faster, smarter, stronger, purpler. Also, we. Hold on. Duck...
Where was I? Anyways, speaking of moderation, with this update we're doing two things to help keep things kind and on-topic.
First, we're letting people directly delete responses they no longer want to have in their inboxes.
Second, we're going to ask you to confirm some things before you try to do them like... are you trying to send a stranger your discord handle? Or your email? And we'll gently remind you that we gotta keep it anonymous to keep it safe.
Full change notes:
- New room!
- New stickers!
- Added the ability to delete responses you've received.
- Sorted unopened letters to show up on top of your pile.
- Will ask you to confirm before sending if it looks like you're breaking rules.
- Prevented the escape key from erasing what you just typed.
- Updated to Unity 2020.3.16
Thanks once more for living this wild experiment in caring with us.
Yours,
Ziba & Luigi
Little fixes: Screen Savers and Non-Gregorian Calendars
More clearly restated: It's not 2021 everywhere, in fact it's 1442 some places and those places could not play Kind Words after the last update. My apologies!
Also the screensavers weren't showing more than one airplane in a row. Booo.
So I fixed those things and to sweeten the deal I put a little more spit shine on the Room Screen Saver. Now the camera doesn't just float there, you get a tour of all your decorations while it's running.
Yours,
Ziba
Midwinter Update! New Room! New Stickers! Steam Trading Cards!
We are humbled to have Kind Words become a regular part of so many people's lives and, in keeping with long-standing international custom for developer-player relations, we offer you this traditional gift: a giant, looming beast and some mittens.
In fact, since you've exchanged well over 3 million messages, we are soaring past the the beast-mitten requirement to bring you:
- A new room in a warm wooden cabin with a string of twinkling lights!
- Steam trading cards!
- 10 new stickers! Each with matching room objects. Including this guy...
What the lil' green penguin is saying is that we've also made a host of less sexy, but desirable little changes too.
- More efficient and error tolerant network code.
- Autofocusing on text input fields whenever they appear.
- The request list is refreshed every time you view it.
- Fixed a bug which could cause new stickers not to get the big fanfare they deserve when first seen.
- The options menu can now be accessed from the title screen.
- Lowered the volume. Why was it so loud?
- Updated the underlying engine to Unity 2019.4.18.
- Showing a "connecting..." message on the title screen if it's taking too long to connect. So that you know what it's up to. It's trying to connect.
It's a joy to watch you help each other and a privilege to shepherd your voices.
Take care out there. We're in this together.
Yours,
Ziba and Luigi
Evergreen Anniversary: New Room! New Stickers! Screen Savers!?!
Happy Steamiversary!
It's been a year since Kind Words launched on Steam! And what an incredible birth of a community is has been!
You've exchanged over TWO MILLION messages. More importantly, we keep hearing from people how much those messages mean to them. We'd love to take credit, but you all put your hearts on your sleeves and you all responded. So please take a moment to recognize the gifts you've given each other.
The best thanks that we can think of is to keep it fresh with new content.
Musical Interlude
If you really want to set the mood as you read on about the AMAZING NEW STUFF, here's a treat:
Kind Words' composer Clark Aboud has rearranged one of his favorite tracks, Lavender, for a trio of electric guitars!
A New Room!
The new Evergreen room is like bright sunlight filtering through leaves above.
More stickers for everybody!
I don't want to spoil all the surprises, but there's an Axolotl and a ghost. And they're cute as fu...n times ahead for everyone!
Screen Savers!
We know a lot of you are leaving Kind Words on in the background to listen to the music or wait for replies. So now you can do that with style. We've included three screen saver modes which fade out the UI and intensify the chill. (One can intensify chill, right?).
Even better, the screen savers have an option to automatically display airplane messages from other players. You've written about 400,000 airplanes. And now you can just relax and let them float directly in to your heart.
Hmm. This is getting a little saccharine.
Good thing I saved the least emotional bits for last!
Bug Fixes and Improvements!
That is, unless you get weepy about ultra-wide monitors. Cause baby: we now have much better support for ultra-wide monitors.
Or maybe your heart has been yearning for this little checkbox:
Also:
- Fixed a couple problems preventing Ella from alerting you about new letters.
- You can cancel out of reporting a message without selecting a reason first.
- No more sending empty airplanes! People weren't really abusing it. But it was silly.
- The scarecrow sticker is no longer sideways in a bunch of places. That wacky guy.
- Upgraded the game engine (Unity) to 2019.4.10
- Somehow the whole thing is a couple megabytes smaller. Not really sure how that happened. Bit gremlins probably.
With sincere appreciation for all your kindness,
Ziba and Luigi
Million Letter Update: New room! New stickers!
A Million Letters!
Kind Words' big hearted players have written each other a million letters.
That's not counting the 300,000 paper airplanes with words of encouragement you've thrown.
No, that's specifically letters written in response to strangers' requests for comfort or advice. Almost every word and every minute of that time was focused on lifting up another person. You players have done something amazing!
New Room and Stickers!
The least we could do in response was to stick a cute frog in the game.
Also, we like you so much that we decided to do more than the least. Today we've added
- 10 new stickers
- each with a new decoration
- and a new blue room in which to enjoy them!
But wait! There's more!
New Inbox
You're writing so much more than we ever imagined that our interfaces weren't keeping up. We've reorganized the inbox. Now you can view your messages sorted either by newest responses or grouped together by request.
Both modes will stream in your letters from the server as you browse, allowing you to keep a library of hundreds of letters without your computer breaking a sweat. There are more improvements needed for our most prolific writers, but this should help!
Options Galore!
There's a new options button!
Which goes to the new options menu!
It has toggles for toggling toggle-able options!
- A buffet of graphical options!
- You can change the signature that is automatically appended to letters!
- A wildly dangerous button for erasing your save game! (It does ask you to confirm)
Various Things That I've Lumped Under One Heading
- Big performance improvements for older machines
- A warning if you start the game on a computer that's probably too old to play it
- Link to the FAQ in help
- Minor visual contrast improvements on the help screen
- 27.8MB smaller, even with the new room!
- Updated to Unity 2019.3
Dramatic Conclusion
Thank you all so much for playing!
Ziba & Luigi
Update Reveal in the Wholesome Games Direct
Wholesome Games is having a showcase and we thought we'd chip in a fistful of wholesome by premiering a little trailer for our next update!
Tune in Tuesday, May 26th, 1pm ET to https://www.wholesomegames.com/ and learn the answers to all your burning questions:
- Is it stickers? It's stickers, right?
- WHAT STICKERS ARE THEY?
- Is there anything more than stickers? That would be neat.
- How long are you going to keep me away from my new stickers?
Kind Words Live on Steam in LudoNaraCon Festival
Happens live at the very start of the festival and then gets re-run till Tuesday. But all the cool audience members (like you) will be tuning in live.
Official blurb!
Panelists: Ata Sergey Nowak, Matthew Seiji Burns, Paula Rogers, Jörg Friedrich Alex Paterson, Ziba Scott
In this exciting panel we explore games and developers that utilize the uniquely powerful medium to create meaningful experiences about real world problems; provoking thoughts, increasing awareness and making an emotional impact to change the world for the better.
LudoNaraCon 2020
