Research Story

4 New Romanceables Added!

Get to know more about Eira, Luke, Ming, and Yan Yan!

• You can unlock the following content for each new romanceable:
  
  
  
  • 4 Heart Events (Purple 💜, Blue 💙, Green 💚, and Yellow 💛)
    
  • 3 Hangout Events (2 Friendly Hangouts and 1 Romantic Date)
    
  • Changes in daily dialogues based on relationship status.
    
  • Letters in your Mailbox.
    
  
  
• 800+ dialogue lines added.
  
• New character portraits (various emotions) added.
  
• 13 new letters players can receive.
  

New Features

• You can now track NPC relationship progress in the Friendship Tab.
  
• You can now sell your items at the General Store while it's open! Get that bit of extra gold you need for your purchases without having to wait for the next day.
  
  
• Both an item's Sell Price and Energy can now be seen across the Inventory, Shipping Bin, and Chests.
  
  
• Improved Map! 📍
  
  
  
  • Hangout Events are now marked on the Map.
    
  • Added Legend for Hangout Events and Unexplored Locations.
    
  • Map tracking improved to record a more accurate player position when outdoors.
    
  • You can now track NPCs who have Green Hearts (or above) on the map!
    
    
    
  
  
• Table Decor 🌷: Some small decor items (e.g. flower arrangements and frog plushes) can now be placed on some furniture. These furniture can hold 1 small decor item:
  
  
  
  
  • Table
    
  • Bedside Table
    
  • Round Table
    
  • Dining Table
    
  • Comfortable Sofa
    
    
    

New Items

• Mushroom Planter (Penny Bun)
  
• Decor - Unique Flower Arrangement
  
• Decor - Flower Arrangement (Pink, Orange, and Blue)
  
• Keepsake
  
  
  
  • Knitted Bookmark
    

Other Changes

• NPC relationships have been balanced.
  
• Polished Dialogue Options UI.
  
• Polished NPC Shop Icons.
  
• Changed the term 'Date' to 'Hangout' for Hangout Events with NPCs who are just friends.
  
• Added a tracker for unlocked/total tutorials under the Knowledge Tab.
  
• Loading screen for loading save files have been updated.
  
• [Controller] Improved controller navigation for Friendship Menu.
  

Fixes

• NPC following the wrong routes/walking into walls after the player doesn't show up for a Hangout Event.
  
• Fixed a bug causing players to get stuck in an animation after fainting from exhaustion while catching a new fish.
  
• Energy Value of an edible item no longer shows decimal points when hovering over it from the hotbar.
  
• Fixed the game camera zoom and camera placement for some cutscenes when playing in 1440x900 resolutions.
  
• Other small fixes.

Optimisation

• Harvesting from laaaarge farms with lots of crops causes lag. This has been improved greatly! (Happy to see the large farms, thanks for the reports!)
  
• Reworked parts of dialogue logic.
  

Public beta branch

• Public beta branch with Chinese (Simplified) Localisation for v0.6 will be available at a later date.
  

📝 What's next

• Winter Festival ❄️⛄️ - the last festival, such that there's 1 festival per season! One of the ideas I have and hope to implement is a snowball fight mini-game :D If you have other ideas, we're always happy to hear them!
  
• Creature Variants 🐾✨ - many players have suggested this, and it's also something I've been wanting to add for a long time! What's a creature collector without some ✨variants✨? Tell us what you wish to see!!! (excited)
  
• New creatures, crops, and fish! 🌿🐟 There's more research to be done!
  
• More content for the Mines 💎🔨 I want add more variety when exploring the Mines, with things like hidden rooms and special levels.

• Steam Achievements, finally! Since it's something I've never implemented before, I'm not sure how long it'll take but I hope to fit this in before the end of the year. I'll update you guys about whether it's possible when the time comes!
  

[✨Update v0.6 is in development. It'll be released in early November!]

Greetings Researchers!

Selling to the General Store! 🛒

Tracking Close Friends on the map! 📌

Eira's friendship and romance content 💛

✨... As well as *drumroll* ... 2 additional romanceables! 💗✨

[✨Update v0.6 is in development. I'll give a release estimate when ready!]

Greetings, Researchers!

• 4 Heart Event Cutscenes (💜💙💚💛).
  
• 3 Hangout Events (2 Hangouts and 1 Date) with interactable activities.
  
• Special dialogue, mail, and character portraits.
  

• Polishing visuals for dialogue options
  
• Overall optimisation
  
• A progress tracker for relationships
  
• Balancing for NPC relationships
  
• Minor fixes
  

What's next 📝

Some words and thanks

✨Updated Roadmap✨

Final words

🏮 Mid-Autumn Festival

• Added Mid-Autumn Festival (16 Autumn).
  
• Added new original soundtrack: Midautumn.
  
• Festival Minigames:
  
  
  
  • Mid-Autumn Riddles: Solve some riddles to earn Lantern Tokens!
    
    
  • Lantern-making: Customise your own lanterns!
    
    
  • Sky Lanterns: Make a wish upon the Moons with Sky Lanterns!
    
  
  
• Added festival-related dialogue.
  
• Added Food Item: 5 types of Mooncakes as part of the event. Players may receive Mooncakes as a gift from certain NPCs.
  
• New Decor:
  
  
  
  • Night Sky Rug
    
  • Moon Chair
    
  • Pumpkin Frog Plush
    
  • Lanterns: 32 different combinations of lanterns, including 2 shapes (round/rectangular), 4 colours (red, yellow, blue and orange), and 4 prints (Sproutkitten, Grassbun, Fox, Wotter).
    
  • Water Lanterns: Regular and Orange.

Other fixes

• Fixed crash when players press Shift+LMB while using a Crafting Bench (Feed Crafter/Bait Press).
  
• Fixed getting stuck if players skipped the Cherry Blossom Festival Cutscene while a dialogue is showing.
  
• Fixed unable to enter Garden on a festival day from 12AM-3AM.
  
• Fixed Start Menu Logo animation when returning to Start Menu from a game save.
  
• Optimisation (loading fonts, returning to main menu).
  
• Fixed other minor visual bugs.
  

Sharing our Beta build with Simplified Chinese Added!

📝 What's next

🎉The first two Seasonal Festivals are here! 🎉

• Added Cherry Blossom Festival (11 Spring).
  
• Added Ice Cream Fair (19 Spring).
  
• Added new original soundtrack: A Welcomed Surprise.
  
• Festival Minigames:
  
  
  
  • Spring Poems: Write a poem related to Spring, and vote for your favourite poem written by townsfolk!
    Spring Poems Board
    
    
  • Summer Dessert-Making: Go through the steps of creating a cold dessert! Make Ice Cream, Sorbet, and Popsicles in 10 different flavours. Gift them to townsfolk - will they enjoy what you made?
    If you give them Suspicious desserts, they'll have a unique reaction.
    
  
  
• Added other Activities and Dialogue (~190+ new lines) as part of the Festivals.
  
• Added Festival Shop.
  
• New Items:
  
  
  
  • Ice Cream, Sorbet, and Popsicles in 10 different flavours, including Milk, Mint, Floral, Corn, Cactus, Maple, Watermelon, Blueberry, Berry, and Suspicious.
    
• New Decor:
  
  
  
  • Spring Poems Memento (Pink, Light Pink, and Dark Pink)
    
  • Spring Poems Trophy
    
  • Cherry Blossom Rug
    
  • Cherry Blossom Chair
    
  • Cherry Blossom Frog Plush
    
  • Sunflower Rug
    
  • Sunflower Chair
    
  • Sunflower Frog Plush

For older save files (before v0.4)
💛 Newly-added festivals will only be triggered if the player had slept the day before the festival, and not if the player had saved/loaded on the festival day itself.
💛 Previously scheduled Hangout Events are automatically cancelled (with no penalty) if it falls on the date of a newly-added Festival. Players may initiate the same Hangout Event with the townsfolk.

Other changes and fixes

• The name of key locations shows up when entering the area for the first time each day (e.g. Shimmerbrook, Garden, Woods). The names also show after starting a new play session.
  
• Certain UI, such as the Research Shelves, Origin Tracker, and Auto-Feeders now show if an item can be used.
  
• Rewrote code for getting the Fishing Rod from Sesame with slight adjustments.
  
• Added a Rainy (Work) Day Routine for Sesame.
  
• Updated Caravan Shop design.
  
• Fixed a conflicting dialogue bug for Suo'e if you completed the objective of the quest 'A Cave and a Relic' and have the 'A Favour for Teagan' as an active quest.
  
• Fixed Calendar showing 'no events today', unless hovering over the day cell.
  
• Other smaller fixes and changes, such as minor edits to dialogue and artwork.
  

📝 What's next

✨Research Story OST is now available for purchase!✨

• There are currently 31 tracks in this album (.mp3).
  
• Various artists - bosu, Shevone Seow, Tyd, Tomás Palazzi, Mickey Hernández and I have all contributed to the lovely soundtrack. You'll be able to see the credits for each track in the .mp3 file (under 'Contributing Artists')!
  
• As the game develops and we add new OSTs, we'll update this soundtrack as well.
  

🎼A little bit more about the composers

• 🎵 Tomás Palazzi is the first composer for our game, composing tracks such as the Announcement Trailer OST, Into The Caves, and recently, Stream.
  
• 🎶 bosu, Shevone Seow, Tyd are part of a team who have come on board later on and made most of the beautiful tracks you hear in Research Story, including Evergreen Tale, Violet Archive Theme, and Tales of White Snow.
  
• 🥁 Mickey Hernández added percussion to the Announcement Trailer OST.
  
• 🎹 I've made a few tracks for the game, too - such as A Day in Shimmerbrook and Frozen Depths.