It's been a couple of weeks now since leaving early access, and it's been great. Lots of new players providing feedback and ideas, and a lot of interest in expanding to consoles and new languages. I remain focussed on quality and more content for now, but it's nice validation!
That said, I thought I'd check in with a summary of some new content that's just gone live this week, as well as provide a summary of the issues resolved in the last couple of weeks.
New animal: Raptor
Stalking the swamps you can now find the Swamp Raptor, or head to the dunes for it's more brightly coloured Dunes Raptor! These are uncommon spawns, but can turn up any season but winter.
Their stay requirements are terrain based, and there's a new sequence with Kaci on unlocking their Produce requirements (enter her house with at least the second affection level to kick off the quest).
Once you've got them producing, you'll get either Swamp pellets or Dunes pellets. They aren't too valuable on their own, but they are the core ingredients for two new fertilizers added: Growth fertilizer which ensures a full stage of crop growth overnight, and Retention fertilizer which means the crop will still be watered the next day.
Community requests
As long as you've either got 90+ karma, or you've received the Town Deeds, you'll now be invited to post your own community request on the 1st of the season. Head into town on the 1st, and Claudia should ask if you want to ask the town to fulfil an item request. You'll then get to pick from a somewhat randomly generated list of items and quantities. A nice way to get some of the rarer collectibles!
Other additions
- New biome controller controls. Same functionality, just as a small menu now rather than textboxes - Lots of new dialogue entries! - Added a signpost to Winter's Close festival to better explain the rewards - Cutscene for Ethan - Recipes for the new fertilizers - Guarantee the correct weather for the winter festival days - New library book - You can now learn the recipe for beaver dam through a library book (in addition to existing dialogues)
Issues fixed
I currently have no outstanding player-reported bugs, so please get in touch if you've seen something! - Crashes when interacting with library books that should give animal knowledge - Pumpkin contest wasn't closing if you missed the cutscene trigger - Seasonal variants weren't always changing their colourations until the 2nd of the season - Claudia showing up on the ranch when she shouldn't... - Legacy controls weren't removed for Pets day festival - Arrow keys weren't showing properly in the controls mapping menu - Wrong emoticon showing when Henry loved his gift ...and a few more, but those are the main ones!
Thanks for reading, more to come! It's gonna be a lot of work, but I have the design for a romance update ready...
Scott
Tales of Autumn Full Release
The time has come! Whilst I've still got plenty more in the tank, the time feels right to leave early access. The recent feedback has been really encouraging, and I'm extremely grateful for everyone who has played a helping hand on the journey. I'll save the long thank you for the end of this post, but first here's the release content!
Achievements
I've been asked for them a lot, and as an ex-achievement hunter myself I've been keen to add these since day one! The only reason I haven't added them before is because then I wouldn't be able to take them away. So, with the release I've added over 40 achievements. They range from obtaining specific species, through to completing various collections, and a handful of secret ones for some special interactions. For those of you who have already sunk a fair bit of time into your save, don't worry - I've added a 'Check my achievements' option to the systems tab of the menu. I'll leave it there for a couple of months, but clicking this should run through your save file and unlock achievements for you.
Fae shrine
Once you expand your ranch to the field, you'll notice an old shrine to the south. Once you gain access to this, you can make essence offerings to the fae, who in turn will cause different circumstances for the next game day. In example, you might want to ensure the next day is a rainy day, or you might want to boost your chances of mining rarer gems. Most essences have a unique effect, and Henry can help decipher them for you.
New festival: Jackoball
What greater way to spend a summer's day could there be, than to play football with jackalopes! Join the town and play for a new trophy.
New festival: Winters close
See out the year with the rest of the town atop a cliff, and make a wish for the coming year.
New festival: Aurochs crossing
As spring starts, animals migrate towards the sun. Join your fellow Autumnsfolk as they watch the Aurochs migrate past the forest.
New festival: Pets day
House pets need some recognition too! All the different pets of Autumn will head into town for a contest!
Everything else
Since the seasonal music update I've also added a whole load of smaller items, most of which have been released for a while, here's the highlights. - New key art, hope you like it! - A few more music tracks. - A new scene and way of understanding the player reviews - New weathers: Light and Heavy snow - Another Sphinx maze - Over a hundred new dialogue additions - Quality of life additions -- Different tutorial types now share the same inputs -- Barn and coop feed stores now give you 'change' when you fill them using the bulk items -- The Brynja races now gives an item prize instead of karma -- You now gain the first level of Animal knowledge when first encountering a new species
Issues fixed
And of course, I've closed off a whole host of issues over the months too. Far too many to list, but two that unfortunately affected a lot of players: - Crashes when reading certain library books for new animal knowledge - Beehives weren't working on the field, they are now!
And with that, I'll wrap this post up. For anyone who didn't catch the early posts, I'm a solo dev who works on this before and after work. It's changed a lot through development, but the core ideas of Tales of Autumn were in my head for years, and I finally got it started as a project to do with my daughter. She quickly left me to start designing her own games, but has been my primary QA since! I've been overwhelmed with positivity from players since launching - whether its your patience whilst I've been fixing bugs, or your willingness to share ideas on what is or isn't working, I'm just so grateful. Thank you.
Life's been pretty hectic this year, so I wanted to set myself some goals for putting the game to full release. This does not mark Tales of Autumn as complete. I still have a lot of content ideas, all to be added as free updates, and as long as someone's playing then I'll keep the content coming.
Scott
Seasonal music update
Hey Autumnsfolk!
Checking in with an update of what's gone live over the most recent releases!
Seasonal music
I was planning on holding this back until the full release, but I'm excited to say that there's now 12 new tracks for the regular day themes. Each season now has it's own set, including a rainy day theme.
Configurable gameplay speed
Tales of Autumn's game days are about 10 minutes long, which was completely intentional. When I'm playing games of this genre, I like to know how long a day will be, plus with ToA I wanted to have a game where you couldn't just do everything in a single day. However, enough of you asked for the option to prolong the day, so now within the menu you can change the default 10 minutes to either 20 or 30 minutes.
If changing to one of these times, I completely expect you to see some odd glitches with the NPCs. Nothing harmful, but you might see them repeat their paths a bit if you run in and out of the same area multiple times. I'll get to it!
Character customisation
I've completely changed up the way that sprites et recoloured, which means I'm happy to add more colouring options. Now when you create a new save, you can pick from many more hair colours, as well as changing eye and shirt colour. With this system now updated I'm much more comfortable adding more hairstyles, so that can come in a future update. If you've got a specific colour that you want adding to the existing options, just ask!
Winter crops
Until a few releases ago, winter crops were surviving as if it were spring. Now, they'll freeze. Animals that want you to have specific crops won't mind, but you won't be able to harvest a crop that's frozen. You can always take advantage of the seasonal fertilisers to get around this...
Issues resolved
It was possible to earn more than the maximum skill points by attending the Sphinx festival every year
Ranches with a (huge) number of foliage weren't loading at all, so these are now limited to 200
The experience bar in the menu wasn't showing partial progress
If you unlocked the nature reserve, some of Hal's schedules weren't updating
If you placed a Moon Light on your ranch, turned it on, and then removed it then the light was still showing
Changed up the Quit confirmation to be in a modal
'other' tavern cutscenes could interrupt the end of season player reviews
Life has continued to be pretty hectic, but working on Tales of Autumn early mornings is helping it all through! I'm away for a short break in September, and hope to release asap upon my return. Very aware that I may have said that last year though...
Thanks for reading, any issues or questions please let me know!
Scott
Controls update
Hey Autumnsfolk!
Hope everyone’s well, I’m checking in with a summary of the release that went live this weekend.
Control mappings
The main event of this release, you now have the ability to reconfigure the mouse, keyboard and gamepad controls.
You can access this from the main menu's Settings button, or within the System tab of your journal menu. Selecting to do so will open up a page of all configurable inputs, and then you can go ahead and change each by selecting the edit icon, then entering the new key/button.
For the mouse, there's a section on the right where you can define the action for the left and right clicks. I've added all the choices that I got from a few players, but if there's additional requests then please get in touch. I very rarely use this feature myself in games, so I looked around at how other similar games do this, but I'm sure there's something I missed!
I've been meaning to add this since entering early access, so even though it took a while and I think most of you probably won't make use of it, I'm still pleased that it's done.
Umbrellas!
When it's raining, your fellow Autumnsfolk will now be carrying their umbrellas with them. Well, all but Thimba who generally disapproves!
Additional issues fixed
Ruth wasn't always setting her quest 'The holy trinity of livestock'. If this effected your save, then the quest will be activated when you next load the game
Rose could be seen sleeping and in her pen at the same time
Lee's path to the library was blocked by picnic tables
Increased the chance for Golden Water Lilly seeds at the merchants
What's next?
A bunch of content is already at the finish line, including seasonal music, and new Steam artwork which I'll be putting live soon. My next big piece is adding achievements, and other than that it's all new gameplay content until leaving early access.
Thanks for reading, any issues or questions please let me know!
Scott
Photography update
Hey Autumnsfolk!
Hope everyone’s well, I’m checking in with a new content release ahead of the long weekend. Hopefully the weather is great and everyone gets some time outside, but in case it’s raining here’s what’s been added to the update!
New character
Meet Wendy!
Players that have progressed to unlock the nature reserve may well have met her already, but Wendy is a tourist who starts to visit Autumn every Saturday to pursue her photography career.
With this update, when you next meet Wendy on the reserve walkway (not for the first time), she’ll kickoff a quest sequence that eventually results in her moving in!
Photography
The quest mentioned above is to capture five photos of animals for Wendy on her spare polaroid camera
The Polaroid camera is then unlocked as a tool, meaning you can store it in your tool crate, or the tools section of your backpack
When you equip and use it, you’ll enter a ‘photography mode’ where you’re able to run around and aim the camera by moving the cursor.
Take aim by getting an animal under the camera icon, and snap a picture! It takes a second for the picture to take, so you need to keep the animal under the cursor for a moment. I’m thinking of adding a player skill to make this instant, let me know what you think!
After Wendy moves into Autumn, she’ll upgrade your camera to hold more photos, and invite you to use her photo storage equipment. This is essentially a computer that you interact with inside her house, and use to view your photos, transfer them from your camera to her storage.
Transferring them to storage is required for Wendy to see the photos, and for you to progress completing the two photo collections.
And as always, a handful of small random issues have also been fixed. I’ve already started work on the next content release, wherein I plan to unlock “that shrine thing in the field” and add a new festival.
I’m also getting a lot ready for the actual release - new artwork, achievements, etc. Also some new music is on the way, which will help further differentiate the seasons. For any achievement hunters out there, I'd love some feedback on my drafted list of 50, so get in touch!
Thanks for reading, any issues or questions please let me know!
Scott
Development update: New buildings!
Autumn buildings' new look has arrived!
This face-lift has been a slow burner for quite some time, as I wanted all buildings to be ready before release. Each building now has a distinct look, primarily to give them some character, but also to help you learn the map (for anyone who hasn’t played yet, prior to this all buildings looked pretty similar).
Some of the new looks:
Ranch buildings
Hal’s house and Autumn’s Library
Ruth’s Ranch animal store
You may have also noticed a few small updates over the last week or three. Over the course of these, the below list have all been added or fixed.
New special interactions ahead of secret achievements
The Pumpkin contest introduction cutscene was starting with the pumpkins half-grown!
Closed a few exploits where you could earn a crazy amount of affection points with Claudia, Ruth or any biome-barn resident that enjoys water!
Closed a softlock opportunity when first revealing the farm field
Changed Henry’s response to essence items once the apothecary has reopened
Fixed a bug that was stopping crop fertilizers from being applied
Fixed a few random typos
Fixed an issue where the fireplace wasn’t always accepting wood!
Giving positive gifts in a row will now earn you karma with the town. Currently this is set to happen every 5 gifts, and if you give a dislike gift it’ll reduce your counter by 1.
Adam, Lee and Ethan were occasionally appearing in the wrong place once the reserve has been opened
You can now partially pay Ruth’s tab using the Nature reserve’s funds
Additional dialogue
Morgan now visits Autumn on his birthday!
Changed Akra’s birthday to Spring 10
Fixed a bug where Claudia’s white mouse quest wasn’t completing
Added ‘Encourage’ as an action within the chicken drop game
Stopped owned Buzzards flying away
Additionally I’ve completed a decent chunk of the next update where a new character considers moving to Autumn, and along a new tool/game mechanic with them! I’m going to carry on with this as the main focus, and hopefully release it early April.
Thanks for reading. Get in touch in the forums, email or Discord with any questions, feedback, issues, or just to say hi :)
Scott
Nature Reserve
At long last, I’ve uploaded the Nature Reserve update, and it’s about five times bigger than I originally planned! Before I dive into the detail, I just want to say thanks for your patience everybody. Life got crazy for a bit, and I certainly haven’t been disciplined with regards to not adding extra stuff!
So, the here’s the first round of Nature Reserve details, then some extra changes that have happened too!
Nature Reserve
What is it?
Ever wondered whats behind the fences to the north of the town? Well, it’s a huge open space. Once your friendship level grows with Hal, he’ll take you there and pitch you his dream of creating a reserve for animal research.
A few scenes and a completed workshop upgrade later, you’ll find a new museum looking building, complete with a basement for managing it, and a walkway going over the terrain-editable field.
With this in place, you and Hal have a joint business interest, animals will start to arrive, and Autumn will have its first tourist attraction!
How does it work?
Animals
There are currently two ways that an animal can arrive at the reserve.
Donate them from your biome barn
Animals can also arrive overnight, based on the terrain you’ve set
Once an animal has arrived, it’ll need feeding! You can donate feed for them, or just settle the bill later. Hal takes care of the actual feeding, and he’ll give you any produce he finds whilst out there.
Just like on your own ranch, animals will move on if you change the terrain away from their preferences.
Small exhibits
This update also adds endemic life to Autumn! Mice, snakes, scorpions, and other small creatures that live just about everywhere!
During the opening scenes for the reserve, you’ll be given a ‘Capture cage’. This is a humane trap that can be placed outdoors anywhere in Autumn, and overnight it’ll have a chance to catch the local small one!
The next day you can check if you did, and either let the animal go, or send it for a very comfortable life in one of the four displays at the reserve.
There’s a whole calendar for where and when each species will arrive, and about 20 different species at the moment. I thought I’d see how people get on with it before adding too much more!
Tourists
When he sees the reserve, Morgan the trader gets inspired and shares an idea to start bringing tourists with him every Saturday.
This introduces the concept of a ‘Reserve rating’ or ‘Tourism score’, where the reserve is scored based on several factors, such as how many animals are here, how populated the small exhibits and displays are, and more.
Your rating then directly effects how many tourists show up each week to visit the reserve, and pay an entrance fee! The entrance fee is small to start with, but it can be used to offset the animal feeding costs.
There’s 15 tourists at the moment, and I’ll add a few more as time goes on. A maximum of 10 can show up on a given Saturday for high scoring reserves, and one of which may even show some interest in staying in Autumn…
Displays
Alongside the small exhibits displays in the reserve’s foyer, there’s display space for animal produce. Contributing items will increase your tourism rating, brighten up the place, and please Hal greatly!
Management
In the staff area (fancy way of saying basement!) of the reserve, you’ll find the food stores but also a computer where you can manage everything, see your current animals and ratings, and get extra information on how this all works! This can also be an effective way to boost your animal knowledge, as once an animal joins the reserve, viewing it’s details on the computer will immediately grant you species knowledge if you didn’t already have it!
Extras
There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that changes once the Reserve is open too, such as an additional upgrade, townspeople changing up their routines to visit, and more. Oh, and of course some new animals to be found!
Additional changes
Some extras that I added that have nothing to do with the reserve
- Ruth’s farm store now has an ‘Out of hours crate’, where you can buy feed over the weekend - Danica’s insect collecting story now doesn’t require you to have level 4 affection with both Henry and Danica - Henry’s portrait now changes as you progress his story
Bug fixes:
I’ve fixed a whole bunch of issues, with the below being the most notable, or already discussed directly players. Most were already released in small patches throughout January.
Danica and Henry’s cutscene sequences weren’t always triggering
Couldn’t remove terrain from the rightmost areas of the farm field
Quests weren’t always showing in the menu when first loading your save
Closed loophole where gifting loved and liked items wasn’t always rewarding NPC affection increases
Fixed a crash issue when exploring the dunes
Fixed a crash when trying to sell an animal to Ruth without selecting the animal first
Opening the tool crate was hiding the main GUI, but not always activating the smaller GUI
Stop Matty leaving the workshop whilst your browsing the upgrades
Fixed a case where ‘old’ crops were harvestable multiple times a day. Sorry!
I also spent quite a while changing the way text is drawn to hopefully appear clearer on different resolutions, which some players were struggling with. I can’t mark this as complete yet because there are a few places where it can still look stretched, but early players told me its already a huge improvement so I’ll release the progress so far!
Whats next?
I’m going to get back into smaller updates for a while! Obviously any issues that crop up from this update will jump the queue, but my next round of priorities are:
- I have a small list of extra content to add for the reserve (a few scenes showing the townsfolk interacting with tourists!) - The reserve introduces a new character, so I’m going to continue her story - Spend some time on Quality of Life features - Redesign the calendar to look like a calendar - ‘NPC tracker’ player upgrade - New building designs!
Finally, you may notice that I’ve added a splash screen with a new company name. I shouldn’t have named the company the same as it’s first project. For any fellow indie devs reading this, learn from my mistake!
As always, let me know your thoughts here, on the forums, or Discord!
Scott
Nature reserve: Progress update
Hey Autumnsfolk!
It’s been a while since the last Steam update - hope everyone is doing well! Like most people, I had a busy summer and the day-job has been pretty demanding too. However, I’ve kept up with Tales of Autumn daily progress, so even though I’m not pushing a release tonight I thought I’d drop an update anyway!
Nature reserve summary
I’ve spent nearly all my available time on the next major content update, which is the Nature reserve. You can expect a full writeup when release day arrives, but in summary:
- A new upgradeable area in the town where you can create Hal’s research dream of an open space for wildlife - You’ll be able to donate creatures, or have them arrive naturally based on terrain - Small animal displays as a new creature type to collect (and a cage & baiting system to do so!) - Animal produce displays, museum-style - A tourism score that can help with costs, and attract new characters to Autumn
It’s been quite the workload, but I’ve done everything except the Tourism mechanics, and then adding lots of character content. For example, once the nature reserve is open, many of the villagers will update their schedules to spend time there.
Of course there’s also then a long list of new dialogue, quests, bugs for Danica, cutscenes, and more. And of course, new creatures!
A roundup other changes that have gone live in the past weeks:
- Added 'Excited' and 'Annoyed' portraits for NPC dialogue, and painstakingly went through all existing dialogue to update them! - A new player skill, Groundskeeper, which you can use to help stay on top of weeds! - A bunch of code changes on the animals to benefit performance for busy ranches! - Bugfixes - Selecting a tool from your backpack wasn’t always unpausing time! - If you skipped the sphinx intro scene, you wouldn’t be able to start the sphinx challenge - Text fixes in the review scene
Finally, I picked myself up a Steam Deck. I’ve not done any special development for it, but from a quick test Tales of Autumn seemed to be behaving. If you play on one, or intend to, let me know and I’ll devote some proper time to it!
Thanks for your patience on the next update, it’s been a much bigger workload than I first anticipated! I’m always keen to share more details so get in touch if you’d like to hear more!
Scott
Ranch Field update
Hey all!
I’ve just uploaded the next main feature update, so here's a summary and a quick rundown of other changes made along the way.
Ranch field
Once unlocked, this upgrade adds a new area to your ranch for your creatures to roam. A lot of you have mentioned that your ranch was getting too crowded as soon as you owned some of the larger creatures. The field more than doubles the currently available space, so I’m hoping this alleviates that!
The field has a terrain manager, so you can customise it as you wish, and grow crops there too.
Once you’ve unlocked the field, the building control buttons will change to now give you the choice of having those animals indoors, roaming the ranch, or roaming the field.
To unlock the upgrade, you have to have at least five animals, and then you should get a visit from Hal and Adam.
Finally, there’s a new species included in this update too: Capybara.
This was quite an involved change, updating a lot of old code. I’ve been testing it along the way but please let me know if you see any issues!
Additional changes
When using mouse and keyboard, you can now click and drag the terrain cursor
You can now study animals in your biome barn to improve your animal knowledge
Your ranch (and field!) now have a chance to gain sticks, weeds and stones overnight
The Tavern and Kaci’s store now show the energy impact of items whilst shopping for them
Different wool items across all relevant animals, each in small and large
Changes to wool collecting quests inline with the new items
A new cutscene for Josh
Three new fish
Small bugfixes, most notably Matty going awol on Wednesdays
Next up I’m carrying on with the Nature Reserve update and other content (more character cutscenes, and it’s time I started a new festival!). I’m also going to spend some time experimenting with some new fonts, as it seems the current font isn’t working for everyone.
And just as a reminder, I post updates on Discord as and when they get released, so if you prefer the more granular and timely updates, I’ll see you there!
Scott
Early access: 12 weeks roundup!
Hey Autumnsfolk!
12 weeks feels like an appropriate time for another update roundup!
Since I posted the roadmap update, I’ve been lucky enough to meet a whole bunch of new players. Everybody has been really great to talk with, and I’m extremely grateful for all the feedback, and that I can openly discuss ideas with you all :)
Anyway, what’s been added since the last Steam announcement?
New content
New festival: Glowfly watching
On the 28th Spring you’ll now get a visit from Danica inviting you to an evening festival at the forest. The festival brings new music, insects and a mini-game challenge too!
Essence grinding
There’s a new upgrade available for the apothecary: Mortar & Pestle. You can use this to break down any organic item into an essence, which should make your gathering tasks much easier!
New town content: Rose
I won’t spoil who Rose is, but everyone has liked her so far! This is a longer sequence of scenes and quests that gets triggered once your karma hits 70.
There’s also been a couple of character cutscenes added to continue building out the villagers, as well as some new library books added for animal and fae lore.
Gameplay changes
- Wool and milk producing animals will now pop an emotion letting you know they’re ready for milking or shearing - Settings are now saved between game sessions (so if you play on mute, or windowed, the game should now remember it!). You can adjust this from the main menu as well as the player menu - Time now pauses when your in a chest, shipping crate, or backpack - Chests now show an item’s value if it’s known - Using an item in front of a shipping crate will now open the crate, rather than offering to use the item - In the wild animal journal, you’ll see a green tick for species you’ve ever owned (I might replace this with something more elaborate within the nature reserve update!)
Bugs
I’ve also been fixing issues as they’ve been reported too. Most notable non-spoilers: - Directional input wasn’t always working within the Quests menu tab - Fence gates now give you the fence or hedge they were placed on - Kaci’s wool quest wasn’t always completing - Claudia now gives you more than one chance to get an omelette
For those who’d prefer to get information in advance, or more granular release notes at the time I post the update, head on over to the Discord.
And with that I’m back onto the Nature reserve update …although I have started detailing the expandable farm update too, and am pretty close to being persuaded to deliver that first. Let’s see what you’d all prefer to get first!
