Stamina values used by tools now consistent between all systems
Stamina usage when hitting world resources now factors charging into the stamina cost
Obelisks now have an effect to denote if it has been activated
Hotbar - fixed issue where hotbar would go out of sync when loading a save
Journal
Added Cultural Center donation status to the Nekopedia
Farming
Stamina usage no longer deducts on the farm when your action didn't do anything that gained XP (ex: watering an already watered tile, trying to use the axe on a rock)
Farm debris items now drop like the resource drops (no more flying rocks (aww...))
Builder Kit
Dye menu now pulls from all inventories, not just what you're holding - so you can safely store dyes in a storage container and use them anywhere
Now shows control prompt to toggle snap to grid/free place
Shrines
Conduit - Added additional sign in starting area to explain how to hit the power switches
Iceway - no longer crashes on completion
Hotfix 0.9.0_4976
Hotfix 0.9.0_4976 is live with the following fixes:
Rain will now properly water crops! š§ļø
Mesecina's Wrath has ended in the Grassy Plains (going into the Grassy Plains while its raining will no longer cause explosions)
Multiple Journal UI & general stability fixes (thanks for using the Crash Reporter!)
Storage Containers now keep their inventories when moving them
Furnaces now keep their inventories when moving them
Seed Makers now keep their inventories when moving them
Alembics now keep their inventories when moving them
Cutting Boards can now be put away
Shop item descriptions now properly scale to fit the UI element
Betta fish are no longer stackable
Hardwood Lamp is no longer uncraftable
Fixed Shrine Goal collision
Please enjoy!
Hotfix 0.9.0_4956
Camera if zoomed out/on ultrawide no longer clips through skybox in Cultural Center rooms
Shortcut to grassy plains in your farm no longer blocked off
We're aware of saplings being nuked from the game once you reload/go to next day. Hold onto your saplings for now until we patch in a fix! We're currently focused on resolving crashes and memory leaks, thank you for your patience!
Quick hotfix... 0.9.0_4945
I may or may not have forgotten to hide Nobu's ceiling š sorry my bad
š¢ 0.9.0_4942 patch is live!
Game
Can use both WASD and arrow keys by default
Can now place Mushroom Table
Can now place more than one barn
Fixed issue where Nobu Jr. may not show up if you had items too close to your house entrance
Fixed issue where you could still place your house on inclines that would cause trees to block the entryway, causing cutscene-related softlocks later
Misc.
Bugsplat crash reporting now enabled. Please send these when you crash! We will be reading them!
Changing dialogue and adding Shrine tutorial to clarify they're not required for story completion
Added popup when interacting with other Shrines for the first time if you're sure you'd like to try them
Made it easier to get the crafting books inside Quicksand
Can no longer jump out of Nobu's house or fall into water in the farm and get ported back home
New things we're working on still:
Hotbar doesn't visually refresh, not showing you your new items or added items to your inventory
Mines below floor 1 disabled until we fix crash
Previous fixes from NEXT
Game
New players/players who haven't seen the end of Grassy Plain events yet: last cutscene now triggers right after Obelisk event to be more clear on progression
Myst Pollen can now be properly found in the Mushroom Forest
Gems can now be found in their respective biomes. Their drop rates are low, so good luck!
Fixed freeze when you buy a barn from Nobu Jr.
Discard extra equipment tools
ALL wood items can now be used as furnace fuel, not just Softwood and Hardwood, including furniture. Different woods have different fuel rates. Wooden furniture burns very well ;)
Misc.
The boat is now sue-able. Fixed typo of an unusable boat being unsuable
Fixed Nobu being off-screen during his first friendship event
Frame rate limit set to 60 by default to prevent your GPU or fans from dying (options in Other tab to change it)
Known things we're working on still:
Memory leaks and related crashes
Cannot put equipment into containers
Cannot affix gems on tools using the Furnace
Mesecina's wrath still appearing (flashing particles in Grassy Plains and Goddess Pond)
After spring ends, Goddess Pond trees have both the spring and summer trees, causing them to glitch between the two
The Goddess does NOT like the game
NEXT branch enabled for frequent updates + 0.9.0_4926
Meowllo! We have a new hotfix patch that's on the NEXT branch. Please read carefully, as this isn't the default branch and your game won't automatically update unless you follow these steps:
The Next branch will be patches we personally verified to work with current saves, but not yet passed through QA
To opt in to the Next branch, go to the game in your Steam library, select the cog -> Betas -> and insert the code snack0snack0
You can go back to the default game at any point by selecting "None" under beta participation's dropdown menu
And obviously, you can always go back to the NEXT build by selecting it under Beta Participation
We will be marking patch notes only live on this version as NEXT, and will notify when it's been clear to go default
There may be times where multiple NEXT builds roll up into one big default build, but don't worry, patch notes will be written for each release
Now, patch notes for the current build...
š¢ 0.9.0_4926 NEXT
Game
New players/players who haven't seen the end of Grassy Plain events yet: last cutscene now triggers right after Obelisk event to be more clear on progression
Myst Pollen can now be properly found in the Mushroom Forest
Gems can now be found in their respective biomes. Their drop rates are low, so good luck!
Fixed freeze when you buy a barn from Nobu Jr.
Discard extra equipment tools
ALL wood items can now be used as furnace fuel, not just Softwood and Hardwood, including furniture. Different woods have different fuel rates. Wooden furniture burns very well ;)
Misc.
The boat is now sue-able. Fixed typo of an unusable boat being unsuable
Fixed Nobu being off-screen during his first friendship event
Frame rate limit set to 60 by default to prevent your GPU or fans from dying, esp on Steam Deck (options in Other tab to change it)
Known things we're working on still
Memory leaks and related crashes
Cannot put equipment into containers
Cannot affix gems on tools using the Furnace
Mesecina's wrath still appearing (flashing particles in Grassy Plains and Goddess Pond)
After spring ends, Goddess Pond trees have both the spring and summer trees, causing them to glitch between the two
The Goddess does NOT like the game
Small adjustments/bug fixes: 0.9.0_4914
Settings UI
Added a "text" tab, which is available both in the title screen and in game. This page contains a picker for the game's Language. You can only pick between "English", and "Japanese (Beta)"
Adds "Gentle Visuals" to the "video" tab. This will be available in the title screen and allows players to disable the flashing in the intro cutscenes.
Fixed an issue where selecting a video mode (Fullscreen/Windowed Fullscreen/Windowed) would sometimes not update the video mode.
Game
(Temporary) Player will now be warped back to their house when they fall out of bounds - this calls the same function that the "Go Home" button in the main menu uses.
Fixed issue where Item Obtain notification popups would appear over the shop UI, making it impossible to leave.
Fixed issue where you needed to hold items to be able to craft with them (you can just leave items in storage and still use them in crafting)
Removed ability to walk off platform in the Obelisks, causing you to fall forever or get stuck
Known issues we're looking into right now
Myst Pollen currently not obtainable in the Mushroom Forest
Stumps drop way too many Hardwood to stamina use ratio
Sometimes, NPCs can get stuck in the middle of the town map underground. Leaving the town and coming back can sometimes unstuck them
Resources from other maps (Grassy Plains, Desert) can regrow and appear on your farm when switching levels
You can always join our Discord to help expedite the back-and-forth process to help get your save file unborked! Or, you can fill out our bug form to pass along any files.
Hotfix for flashing in Grassy Plains
No longer blinds you when you walk into the plains during a rainy day!
Devlog #62: Snacko is coming to Early Access
Meowllo! Spooky season is over, now itās cake season. I mean, November is almost December, right? Thatās how that works? Itās already snowing where I live, so itās December for all I know.
Anyways! We have lots of big important things to cover this month, so Iāll leave the intro short~
Snacko will launch in Early Access on PC. Snacko 1.0 will be released in full in 2024 on PC and console!
We came to this decision after a lot of thought and discussion on where Snacko is, and where we want it to be for you, the player. This gives us time to do a final polish pass, expand on some of the existing content the way we want, localization, MORE QA, and implement community feedback!
A lot of things have factored into this, so lemme run them through you. Before that, I know itās a lot of text, so the gist of it is:
The gameās story and core loop is complete and playable, but there is room for more content and polish
Localization and porting takes time to both do, and do well for a game of this genre and scope
We want to fine-tune the pacing and balance for everything: crafting progression, relationships, all that fun stuff
We will be working with our QA team to try to maintain save file integrity, but the possibility exists that changing content or fixing a major bug update may impact your save files as updates are released.
Iāll post a separate update that goes into more of the dry details of how EA will look like, our plans, and the rough update schedule during the time period, along with some other important things in the future.
Now, the long version:
#1 - The game is content complete and playable from start to finish...but thereās more!
Yes, you can play through the main story. Yes, all the dialogue is written and you can do everything else youād expect in the game, like...farm, explore, build, craft, date...cow.
But, thereās a lot of polish and balancing weād like to adjust. Weāre about a month into our Kickstarter-only beta now, and itās been very helpful to get feedback from players, so weād like to continue that vibe for a little longer through early access!
Part of that is yeah, itās mostly just the two of us working on the game full-time. (Including support from some of the talented contractors weāve worked with, of course!) The game has (unsurprisingly) ballooned into quite a hefty game over the last couple of years since we started. It sure does feel great to say āthe whole game is playable now!ā but itās been long enough that we feel like the additional time will really help Snacko go from āyayā to āWAHOOā. You know what I mean?
Thereās lots of stuff that is already playable but we want to improve:
Better mines experience, more floors with more variation
Player house expansion, wallpaper and flooring options
Little world activities and events, more festivals
Proposing and a more in-depth post-bonding life (donāt worry you can romance and date everyone eligible in early access!)
UI/UX (including controllers!) polish
Better tutorials and documentation in the game for those of us that need more help (me, thatās me. I need more help)
More accessibility options and better settings
Additional craftables
...and obviously, bug fixes
For weaker computers and consoles especially, we want to dedicate time to make sure it runs well and feels really good with a controller to play. These are things that will take us some time and a couple rounds of playtesting and fine-tuning to really get right, but we think having the game play well on both keyboard/mouse and controller with a stable framerate is very important! In fact, the month of October was heavily focused on making UI/UX improvements. Weāve been working on a new system (we call it SnackoUI, very original) that has made it easier to make functional buttons and screens that will just work with controllers. Itās very exciting.
(Keep in mind at this point when this message was sent, I havenāt seen recursive in a whole week. We live in the same house. He is my husband.)
Poor recursive did...wilt a little bit creating the system, but itāll make things go much faster (with less bugs) in the near future. In fact, weāre already reaping the rewards now! No more ā1 business day spent on a single UI screen to get it to work with a controllerā!!!
Zoro also spent time profiling where a lot of the performance bottlenecks were and remaking certain portions of features to improve it.
Now, with the worries of āoh no not another UI screenā out of the way, weāve been able to spruce up some existing screens to make them feel and play better.
(Before!)
(Now!!!)
The poor arcade machine at the grocerās just...Yeah, it was rough.
#2 - Some other things just take (more) time
PC is relatively easy to test on, make fixes for, and update. But that kind of exponentially grows as you tack on more things, like other languages and console releases.
While working on finalizing the text earlier this year, it became pretty limiting to keep the text as-is and not make any more changes or additions. It became clear that we just had to add more text, especially with small tutorials and other flavor text to help the world come together.
But unfortunately, the process of writing, making sure I didnāt spell mackerel wrong again, sending it off to get localized, reimported, QAād in the new language...
Itās just a lot of time and effort. With the two of us, it meant if we were working on localization implementation, we couldnāt work on bug fixing or polish. So, we decided to focus on making the base game better before worrying about controller support or additional language support.
#3 Game big playing hard
So like, I guess I never thought about this in depth, but one of the downsides of having a more sand-boxy type of game where you have a lot to collect and craft and a lot of characters to talk to means that itāll also take a long time to test.
Sure, weāve got debug commands and systems to help us test if something works, but people have to actually play through it to see when the pacing feels off, or when an activity or goal is just too grindy. Bubbafare, one of our long-time supporters, was a huge help as they played...a hundred hours during beta.
Not sure how, but thank you very much.
So, early access will give us more time to nudge numbers back and forth and play more of the game ourselves to see where we can improve the experience. One feature weād like to implement that was a brainchild from beta and Discord suggestions was difficulty modes. An easier difficulty setting would make days longer, actions cost less stamina, etc.
Anyways, Iām starting to ramble (I started to ramble 8 paragraphs ago my bad).
At the end of the day, Snacko is our baby. Well, a 5 year old child at this point. Broās in kindergarten already. But itās a game that weāve put a lot into, and we want to really make sure that the full release alongside the console versions live up to the effort and love weāve put into the game so far.
(Snacko in 2019! Wait, look how different the inside of the player house looks, too!)
Optimization, polish, balancing tweaks, bug fixes...Iām just very, very happy weāre finally at the point in development where we can worry about things like this, versus implementing basic things, like cutscenes.
Thank you very, veryveryvery much for reading all of this, and reading all of my updates.
Your support really means the world to both of us. Snacko has been an extremely emotional, difficult, but fulfilling journey. We want to put out something that weāre both proud of, something that will give you joy to repay you for the support youāve given us.
Thank you (again) for reading this monthās long update! Keep your eyes peeled for news coming soon!
Devlog #61 - Backer Beta Released!!! š„
HELLO EVERYONE Iām like half a month late with this, but! Thereās a good reason!
Snacko beta for Kickstarter backers has been released! Into the wild! Live!! Playable!
Actually, that was like, almost two weeks ago at this point. But because of the beta release, I have been a withered husk of a person. My Slack profile picture really encapsulates how I feel right now.
(If you havenāt, you should totally read the webtoon āThe Greatest Estate Developerā!!)
I have re-alived myself to report what weāve been up to!
š NASTY BUGS
Well, obviously, lots of bug fixes. We went through internal QA, but bugs always slip through the cracks. They are simply too small. We probably spent the first 4 days doing nonstop fixes for things like falling out of a collision hole, etc.
Luckily, there was nothing huge. So, we are alive and happy with how it went.
Right before the launch though, we had a lot of super special surprising (SSS) bugs pop out of nowhere. Like, literally, where did you guys come from?
My favourite, that dealt severe spiritual damage to my already weak psyche, was this one:
We were working in a voice call together. Motivated by the beta launch in the horizon, the three of us work quietly, excited to wrap up the build for the night for QA to test in the morning. And then suddenly, Zoro asks,
āHey, umā¦is your guysā houseā¦sideways?ā
Silence.
Recursive, worried, responds, āwhat do you meanā¦sideways?ā
Zoro pauses, unable to find the words. āI went in the house, and when I came back out, the world was upside down. And now the house is in the floor. When I jump upā¦I jumpā¦sideways?ā
Nobody makes a sound. The implications of this world-turning (literal) bug happening 24 hours before the beta is set to go live weighs heavily in the call.
After a moment of confusion, I sheepishly ask, ācan you show us? Through screen share?ā
Zoro turns on his screen share.
Mind you, at this point, I was already on the brink of tears for a whole week after the whole main scenario refused to work despite the story being tested and played through multiple times by QA at this point (it was easy bug to fixā¦happened because we added debug functionality). So, I did have a wee bit of a freak out but it ended up being an easy bug to fix.
Asides from doing hotfixes, weāve also worked on other things! So donāt worry, the rest of the devlog will have many pictures for your enjoyment.
š§¼ POLISH
āMake Mesecina statue less uglyā has always been on my to-do list, I just never had the chance to work on it on top of the more pressing bugs. But last month, I did! Left is the old one, right is the new one!
Along with the visual rework, you can now obtain a quest while interacting with it. The statue, broken as you arrive, can be fixed up. Maybe if you pay a visit to it once a day often, something good might happen!
I totally did not want to implement that into the game because I recently got back into Neopets and found myself enjoying doing the dailiesā¦
While we were working on an item duplicating bug with the seedmaker, I also realized the old seed maker was just a littleā¦old.
We also felt like the interact prompt pop-up that often comes up also blocked a lot of the screen. With these two things in mind, weāveā¦
made the seed maker asset more aligned with the other assets
made the pop-up indicator for how many seeds lessā¦stretched
instead of 3 sad seeds when the seed maker has something produced, thereās now different colored seed piles depending on which seeds itās currently making!
made the interact prompt a little smaller and reduced the opacity for the text portion so youāre not losing as much vision on your screen. The key portion is kept opaque since the readability of which button to press > what the prompt text is
The alembic also got a similar treatment, getting a cute little animation, some VFX, and an all new indicator for what elemental fragments it has distilled so far.
And lastly, for the longest time, you couldnāt place any of the crops as a buildable. It was marked as a buildable, but when you tried to actually place a turnip or something, the game would give you an error. So I fixed that! I put em in lil baskets.
All crops now can be placed as a decorative object. Nice!
Thatās all we have for thisā¦I mean, last month. Iāll see you in November š Thank you for reading until the end! Getting to Kickstarter beta was a huge milestone for us, so thank you for being patient with us as we put out fires etc etc.
