Terroir Version 2.0: Out of Early Access and Into Exciting Territory
Hello everyone,
We are happy to announce that Terroir has left Early Access with the current version 2.0 build. This build introduces quite a lot of new features, the most important being the new in-game tutorial, with VO and video - which complements the more detailed text tutorial already introduced in an earlier version.
Another major new feature is the introduction of Automated Tile Workers, which allow you to set your vines to automatically be trimmed according to your settings by assigning a worker to a Planting tile.
There also a few other changes, some of which are tweaks that improve balance, as well as other features that help the Player progress - namely, the tip that comes with wine reviews of less than 5 stars, which will tell the Player what went wrong with their wine.
Here's a complete list of the changes in the build:
Automated Tile Workers mean that you can now set your vines to be trimmed automatically according to your preferences by assigning a worker to a Planting tile.
Fully voiced-over in-game tutorial.
Tips given in the wine review when wine receives a rating of less than 5 stars.
Players can now only accomplish each Circumstance mission once - when all missions are complete, Players simply gets a monetary and renown bonus every time they choose a Circumstance card.
Changes to how wine price is calculated, as well as tweaks to renown cost for all technologies and maintenance costs for some types of grapes and tiles. The calculation for the final score has also been updated to include missions accomplished and wine awards won.
New SFX.
We hope you enjoy this new build, and as always, please do drop by the discussion boards if you have any questions, feedback or bug reports.
Good luck and happy winemaking!
MARK
Thank You For An Amazing Early Access
Dear winemakers,
On September 20, Terroir v2.0 will be released and the game will leave Early Access. In just 4 months, what was a very basic, buggy and frustratingly unbalanced game has turned into one that has improved to the point where we feel we have met our objectives for the base game. Terroir is much tighter, less buggy and is much richer with new content. Yes, there's more that can be improved upon - there always is, no matter how far you've come in developing a game. But in whatever way Terroir can improve now will simply be us building upon a foundation. And of course, we have plans for releasing new updates even after launch (not just bug fixes, but actual new content). Terroir has always been a long-term project for us, and there's so much more ground we want to cover. All the new stuff coming your way in the coming months are all from you, our players. Your suggestions and feedback will always be an integral part of Terroir's continuing development.
So this is us saying thank you. Thank you all for supporting us and sticking by Terroir through the thick and thin. The game will release some time on the morning of the 20th of September in Europe, the Americas and Africa (afternoon in our part of the world). It will retail for $14.99. It will continue to be updated - our priorities are:
<*> Localization in more languages
<*> More content for Chance & Circumstance
<*> More Steam Achievements
<*> More game features (we're thinking of shifting our focus to wine blending)
It wouldn't be prudent of us to give hard deadlines for these updates, but as we have always done in the past, we'll release them in batches so that the improvement is gradual but steady.
So, we hope you'll enjoy v2.0 - we hope more than anything that you'll continue to lend us your support, and continue to lend a hand in the discussion boards as we anticipate a new wave of players.
We got here because of you - and we'll continue to strive to make the game better with you in mind.
See you at the vineyard,
MARK
Big Update: Terroir Version 1.10 (Wine Awards, Text Tutorial and More)
Hello winemakers!
Long time no see, and for good reason. We've been working on several new features that are sure to add some depth to the game.
Firstly, there's the Wine Awards organized by the Castelfiore Institute of Viticulture and Oenology. It happens every four years, and awards the best wines across several categories. Winning awards grants an increase in the price of your wine, as well as Renown bonuses. And also, medals!
The other major addition is, finally, a text tutorial! All you need to do is click on the Text Tutorial icon (seen below) in your icons tray at the upper edge of the screen, and you can access a full tutorial that teaches you everything you need to know about succeeding in Terroir.
Also, the full soundtrack has now been integrated into the game -- 4 pieces inspired by each of the four seasons, as well as new ambient tracks to set the mood.
Here's a full breakdown of the new additions and fixes:
Added the CIVO Wine Awards
Added the Terroir Text Tutorial
Added new music and ambient SFX
Fixed a minor issue with vineyard naming -- you can now use special characters in your vineyard name without running into issues with saving games
We hope you enjoy these new additions, and as usual, we're busy working on new ones!
Many thanks,
MARK
Join Our Competition. Oh, and Version 1.09!
Winemakers, hello again!
Okay, some cool stuff. First thing's first -- a new patch. Biggest thing about this patch is the game now has difficulty options. You are given the chance to choose your difficulty when you start a new game. You get three modes: Easy, Normal and Challenging. Each mode will give you a different starting budget, and the chances that pests, rot and overexposure occur also differ from mode to mode. The modes will, however, affect your final score. Playing on Easy will apply a penalty to your final score, while playing on Challenging gives a boost to your final score (playing on Normal means your final score will be calculated in the regular way).
Here's the patch notes:
Difficulty settings added. Accessible when starting a new game.
Trees are now synchronized with the wind turbines.
Right-clicking while a Worker Action is active (you know it's active when an icon follows your cursor) deactivates the action.
You lose 1 relationship rating with a distributor if you sell that distributor less than 30% of your available stock of one variety. Previously, you only lose 1 point if you sell a distributor less than 10% of your available stock of one variety.
When you reach a relationship rating of 5 with a distributor, you are immune to deductions in the rating unless you sell them a wine with a rating of less than 4 stars.
Okay, the other thing: we're holding a competition!
I was testing the latest build earlier today just before Jenny uploaded it to Steamworks, and I was just amazed at how far the game has come. I was testing out the new major update, Chance & Circumstance, and as I watched the wooden chest animate and the two cards jump out, I felt just a slight pinch of pride -- pride in the continuous evolution of Terroir, and thanks in no small part to you, our Players.
The Chance & Circumstance feature is the game's mission system. I guess you could compare it to Monopoly's Chance and Community Chest (and I'd be lying if I didn't say we were inspired by it), but replace the latter with missions. These missions can lead to some pretty great rewards if accomplished within the deadline, or significant penalties if you fail them. The Chance card, on the other hand, simply spawns a random instant event with either a positive or negative outcomes.
We're really excited to hear what you think. We'll be introducing more missions in the future, and we're even thinking of opening up a call for entries for missions in our discussion boards - we'd love to include maybe two or three player-made missions in the game.
Here's a full list of features and changes that come with this new update:
The Chance & Circumstance mission system with a handful of missions and a few random events.
Adjustable font sizes (finally!) -- please go to options, and you'll find it under the "Video" sub-menu. We've reorganized the contents of the settings menu into "Video", "Audio" and "General", with the last one referring to gameplay options.
We've made it so that the barrels in the cellar under the Chateau tile roughly reflect how much wine you actually have stored.
Notification icons now shake, to call your attention to them.
Disabled controllers (Unity has a weird quirk with controllers, but the gist of it is that we sorted it out for some players who were having issues with it in the past).
And that's version 1.08 for you. As usual, we hope you'll enjoy the new stuff, and let us know what you think in the discussion boards!
Talk to you in our next announcement!
MARK
Help Us Test the Chance & Circumstance Mission System
Hey winemakers,
So good to be back -- such an awesome sight to see our player base growing every day and our discussion boards humming with activity.
Well, after a week of reacquainting ourselves with the Chance & Circumstance mission system, we're glad to announce we've finished it! As Jenny and I are are pretty much the only ones actively testing the new build, we felt we need more testers to try it out across all the platforms. Usually, we'd turn to our Reddit community for testers, by we'd rather go straight to our gamers this time around.
So, if you're interested in testing the Beta build with the C&C feature, by all means, please do.
Activating it is simple: go to your Steam Library, right-click on "Terroir" in your games list, click on Properties, then proceed to the "Betas" tab. Select "openbetas" in the drop-down menu, and you're all set!
I'm starting a new sticky thread in the discussion boards for any comments on crashes, bugs and other stuff.
We hope you enjoy the new mission system - it was a lot of fun designing the missions. And do note that with the system in place, we'll be introducing more missions and random events in the future!
Many thanks and happy gaming,
MARK
Update: Version 1.07 and Linux!
Hi winemakers!
Great news: version 1.07 is here and it brings lots of small but nice new features. Least among them is Steam Achievements -- finally, some extra challenge to your virtual winemaking career. We've also done quite a few improvements for performance, and *drum roll* are now releasing the Linux build!
We've also added a new wine distributor: Kruppe Foods. This new distributor is more like a bulk buyer, and was a suggestion from our awesome community of gamers.
Made a bad batch of wine? Don't clog your other distributors with bottles that they'll struggle to sell -- just sell it to Kruppe, who will buy it at a reduced rate of 15% of your wine's Retail Price.
Here's a complete list of tweaks, changes and additions (many of which are suggestions straight out of our discussion boards):
Steam achievements added
Bulk distributor added (Kruppe Foods)
Added animated trees
Added ambient occlusion
Linux version!
Changed the way the cellar works: the game pauses first, then the animation plays so that the calendar doesn't change after they've clicked, thereby changing the characteristics of the stored wines
Added wine price to the Reviews window
Let us know what you think of all the new content in the discussion boards, and may your grapes avoid the dreaded Fungal Rot!
Many thanks and cheers!
MARK
Update: Terroir Version 1.06
Hello everyone,
In this new update, we see yet another new building.
The Caste Ruins building is the latest addition, and is meant to be a support building for your Tavern(s). Any Tavern that is adjacent to Castle Ruins has its bottle purchase limit increased to 1,000 from 600. This bonus doesn't stack, so a Tavern adjacent to two Castle Ruins will still have a bottle limit of 1,000. A player can only have 2 Castle Ruins.
This update also has a few other changes, the most important of which is the way wine price is calculated. Previously, this was how a wine's price was calculated (after it's initial retail price was determined after a wine review):
This now means that the maximum price for a wine with a distributor will be considerably reduced. With Manhattan, it will still be a considerable discount. But to truly maximize a wine's price, you'd have to take it to the Tavern.
Here's the rest of the updates:
Added a notification for when a distributor is available to sell wine to.
Fixed a bug with Fungal Rot that took away 20% of the yield per tile, rather than 20% in total.
Added new icons, including colored distributor logos.
Wine price at Tavern has been increased to 40% more than the Retail Price.
Fixed a bug with the Tavern that allowed Players to sell more than 600 bottles by closing and reopening the Tavern menu.
And that's that for this week. Hope you enjoy the new additions!
MARK
Another Major Update: Terroir Version 1.05
Hi everyone,
Every time we roll out a new update, it's always exciting to see how the players will react. We spend every day working on new features, new tweaks and new content, and we only release the ones we personally love.
In version 1.05, the Tavern building has finally arrived. It's an alternative means of earning money -- you can sell your wine directly to Tavern customers, which are priced higher than selling to the larger distributors, but the maximum quantity one can sell to a single Tavern is much lower. Well, then just build more Taverns! Oh, and they also generate Renown if you sell high quality wine - something I'm sure many of you will be happy about.
We've also introduced a start screen, which has been a long time coming. Aside from that, there are also several significant additions and changes.
Here they are:
Lowered the cooldown times for some of the Worker Actions.
Increased the monetary costs of the Workers' Office techs.
Players can now delete their save files in the Save and Load menus.
Added a Market button in the Cellar Manager menu.
Added an animation for vines that are infected with Phylloxera.
Added a new model for the Heavy Foliage vine, which is now easier to distinguish from the Optimal Foliage vine.
Discarding barrels in the Cellar Manager now allows Players to decide the quantity to be discarded.
Discarding bottles will also allow Players to decide the quantity to be discarded.
Players can now decide how many bottles to produce when bottling barreled wine.
Added option to turn off Autosave in the settings menu.
We hope you enjoy version 1.05, and as always, should you encounter any bugs or have any feedback, sound off in our discussion boards!
Many thanks and happy winemaking!
MARK
Major Update: Terroir Version 1.04
Dear Winemakers,
We are excited to share our latest and largest update so far -- one that includes new features and changes that were requested by you, our incredible gamers.
The Rural Development Bank
First thing's first -- the bank loan system. Prior to this new features, there wasn't a lot of financial flexibility for players that were just starting out and were experiencing difficult years. As players of Terroir will know, the weather is the game's X-Factor. The unpredictability of the weather is the greatest challenge, and allowing players to loan money from the Rural Development Bank will help them get through tough years.
The banking system in the game is a simplified version of real life -- you can get a loan based on your Renown and choose a repayment plan. Monthly repayments are deducted automatically from your account. But just like in the real world, if you miss your payments, it will cost you (in the most extreme cases, it may even cost you the game).
Mac Version Now Available
Good news for our followers who are Mac users: Terroir is now available on OSX. As you might expect from an Early Access title, there may be some bugs or errors, but the current version of the game has been considerably refined throughout the past few weeks.
Terroir Demo to Release by Mid Next Week
We've also made a demo available to those who'd like to try out Terroir without committing to a purchase. It will be capped to 5 in-game years, but it should be ample time for players to explore the features and mechanics of the game to determine whether joining our E.A. journey is right for them. The demo will only be available in Windows for now.
Other Additions and Fixes
Here are some other things that changed with Version 1.04:
Added Worker Action costs to icon tooltips.
Reduced the maximum quantity of wine distributors will accept to 75% of your total stock, thereby adding a real benefit to Hougang's distributor bonus (they will buy up to 100% of your stocks while relations are maxed).
Added new wine bottle packaging options -- these are aesthetic for now and have no effect on the game, but new mechanics will be introduced in the future which will give each bottle a different effect.
Fixed a bug wherein researched technologies would remain unlocked when loading old saved games -- please note that the fix will only take effect with new games, and loading old games with this error in effect will remain so.
As always, we're eager to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions in our discussion boards.
We hope this new update gives you a better and more enjoyable experience with Terroir, no matter how small. We also hope that this update -- along with the numerous others released since our E.A. launch -- is testament to our commitment to building Terroir around your feedback and experiences.
