Chinatown Detective Agency, our 2nd game, is on Kickstarter
Chinatown Detective Agency is a cybernoir point and click adventure inspired by the classic Carmen Sandiego games, blending stunning retro design with innovative mechanics. Manage your detective agency and use real world research to solve cases as you unravel a global conspiracy.
About 3 days ago, we launched our Kickstarter campaign to amazing support from both those who have been following the game's development the past year, as well as from the game industry. Right now, we're sitting at 43% funded!
If you like the idea of the game, please do visit our Kickstarter page where you can watch our trailer, check out screenshots and learn about the world and the characters of the game!
We've also got links to our free alpha demo on itch.io and to our Discord server where you can join in the conversation.
Thank you all for the continued support!
MARK
Big Update: Terroir 2.5
Happy Holidays, winemakers!
We bring you new content and tweaks -- behold!
A quick note to our Chinese and German speaking players: we are currently localizing the new content as I'm writing this, so please stay tuned for updates.
New Grape Varieties
The game now has two new grapes - one red and one white - that you can try planting for quick and massive profits. They're grapes from beyond the traditional winemaking regions of France and neighboring countries, and will require some patience to grow.
Zinfandel is a grape that is more popularly known as one of the most important in the California wine-growing regions.
Rkatsiteli is one of the most important grapes grown in the country of Georgia, where winemaking can trace its very early roots to.
Now, here's the thing with these "Non-Native" varieties -- when you plant them, they won't produce harvestable fruit immediately. You need to give them time to develop as it adapts to the soil and the weather. Zinfandel will have to develop for 18 months on a Loam tile, while Rkatsiteli will have to develop for 22 months on a Loam tile. During this period, you'll have to tend to them just like any vine, because repeated exposure to Overexposure and Fungal Rot will kill the vine (and you'll have to start over). More information is provided in the Grape Varieties section of the tutorial.
While a non-native variety is developing on a tile, an icon will appear above it to indicate its status.
After the mentioned developmental period has passed, your vine will become a regular one, producing grapes just like the rest.
Why go through all the trouble to grow these non-natives? Well, because they're not common in your home region, they start out with maximum negative market saturation. That means that, at least for a time, they can make the most expensive wines in the game and are very cheap to buy and maintain. However, their market saturation does increase and decrease at a higher level than the other varieties, so the best course of action is to use them as ways to make quick profits -- you won't be able to rely on them sustainably in the long term.
Other Additions & Changes
We've also made other tweaks and additions:
We tweaked the Market Saturation mechanics so that they're slightly more unstable -- selling large quantities of wine will have more visible effects on the market and the price of wine.
A new award called "Best Non-Native Varietal Wine", which can be won by either a Zinfandel or a Rkatsiteli.
New achievements tied to the new grape varieties.
OST Will Be Available Soon For Free
We're also making the official soundtrack a downloadable DLC that's completely free -- we're just waiting for approval from Steam for the page to go up, which could happen any time in the next week or so. So do make sure you grab the tracks when they come out.
One Thing On Our Wishlist
As you guys know, little indie devs like us rely hugely on your support. Your positive reviews on Steam mean a lot to us, and it helps Terroir gain exposure, and makes continued work on the game on our part much easier. So please, if you can spare us a minute or two of your time, and if you enjoy the game, please don't forget to leave a positive review.
Please continue to sound off in the forums, as we're listening even when it isn't apparent. And do keep those awesome uploads, screenshots and guides coming, we love them!
Whether you're celebrating the festive season or not, we wish all of you lots of awesomeness. Cheers to another great year, and we hope to continue producing new content in the coming year!
High five,
MARK et JENNY
Oh, We're Also Releasing The Soundtrack
We've been getting a lot of positive feedback about the music, so we decided to release the soundtrack to you: absolutely free of charge.
We'll make it so that you can either download the tracks via our Steam store page, or a link to our website for a direct download.
A lot of work went into the soundtrack -- it was composed and recorded by a quintet of very talented musicians just for the game, so of course we'd be super happy to let you include the tracks in your music library!
Just another way to show how much we appreciate you guys!
MARK et JENNY
A New Update (And New Content) Coming This Week
Winemakers!
We missed you! We apologize for such a long period of silence. We were busy working on another project which took more time than we planned. But even during those months, we had the community page perpetually open on our screens. We continue to read your suggestions, and we continue to enjoy keeping track of your screenshots, guides and videos.
And what we've done is we've taken a few of those suggestions and made tweaks to some in-game mechanics -- things we felt would improve the game and make it more competitive.
And we have also created two new grape varietals which offer a new challenge -- we won't spoil it, but let's just say they'll take a little more patience and work (much like how Semillon and Grenache introduced a new way to make wine).
We'll release the update by the end of this week, so do stay tuned!
Very many thanks to all of you!
MARK et JENNY
Update: Terroir Version 2.4.2
Hello winemakers!
It's been a while since we last spoke, and as usual, it's because we've been scouring through the forums on the lookout for bugs or errors, and other areas of improvement. In this new update, we've got the following changes:
Fixed a financial report bug that displayed cash flow incorrectly.
Fixed an issue with barreling (monthly barrel change reduces to lowest possible value correctly now).
Fixed tooltip flicker that occurred with some resolutions.
Fixed a bug in German wherein the character "ß" didn't display correctly.
Fixed award mission length.
We'll continue to read through the discussion boards and continue to improve the game moving forward. Your feedback has, and always will be, extremely valuable to us.
Also, Terroir turned 1-year old in May (which was when we released in Early Access). It's so amazing to see so many players enjoy the game. It has really come far, in no small part to your amazing feedback and support.
Speak soon!
MARK et JENNY
Hotfix: Terroir Version 2.4.1
Winemakers!
It is so encouraging to see our community grow larger everyday. Please note that Jenny and I are always listening in at the discussion boards and reviewing your feedback.
We learned early today that there was a bug affecting the CIVO menu, causing it to not function properly -- it had to do with our last update to the Unity engine. We've managed to fix this issue, and thr menu should be fully functional. Should you continue to experience any problems, please let us know at the discussion boards or at dev.team@generalinteractive.co
We also added more tweaks and fixes to the German localization, which we are progressively trying to improve.
Thank you all so much for your continued support!
MARK et JENNY
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Version 2.4: Terroir is now in German!
Hello, German-speaking winemakers!
At long last, we have finally finished German localization of Terroir. You can now choose German as an option in your language settings. We are continuing to improve on the localization, with a few minor additions and possibly tweaks in the next coming weeks, but by and large, it's now playable in German.
Danke!
Mark und Jenny
Hotfix: Terroir Version 2.3.3.2 (Mac Issues)
Hello winemakers.
We've been receiving a small number of reports of a bug that affects certain players who play on Mac systems, which shows large random text all over the screen, rendering it non-interactable.
One of our players managed to send us an output log file, which points to the root of the problem: a Unity bug related to a the engine's video decoder, which is unable to play the tutorial videos. We've reached out to Unity, who have admitted that it is indeed a bug within the game engine, and have asked us for help with sorting it out.
Since we can't really do anything much about that bug, we did manage to create a workaround. When the game detects that Unity can't play the tutorial videos, they will be disabled, and only the text and voice over will appear in the tutorial pop-ups. Also, if it's taking too long for the videos to load, they will also be disabled (the threshold for this is set quite high, so it will only affect the small number of players experiencing problems with Unity).
We're hoping that once Unity sorts this out, the problem will be fixed with a simple update on our part, and the tutorial videos will play normally for the unfortunate number of Mac players experiencing this problem.
In the meantime, thank you for your patience and continued support!
Happy gaming,
MARK et JENNY
Update: Terroir Version 2.3.3.1 (A Few Fixes)
Hello Winemakers!
I'll keep this brief: some players have reported a few bugs, and we've released the fixes to smoothen those out in this new version.
They include:
Fixed a bug preventing players from scrolling back through their grape varieties in the winemaking process menus.
Fixed a bug wherein having a controller plugged in (other than your mouse or keyboard) made players unable to interact with the game.
Changed the way A.I. decides how to accept bids from Players trying to buy their tiles. An A.I. winemaker will now accept a bid if it has less than 3x the amount of money placed in the bid.
We hope these changes improve your gaming experience, and as always, keep the feedback coming in the discussion boards.
