Boy, oh boy, can't believe that it's already been a year! When we first launched The Tenants into Early Access on March 25th, 2021, we certainly couldn't have predicted the absolutely amazing response the game would get and the incredible community it would garner around. Throughout the year, we've pushed many updates and hotfix patches to stabilize the game, moving us closer to the full release slated for later this year. None of this could have been possible without your support, so let's take a trip down memory lane and see it all in action once again!
Brings back memories, doesn't it? If you're in for more juicy details from the game's development, be sure to check out our very first dev blog post on our website, written by Dushan Chaciej, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Ancient Forge Studio. We'll be posting more articles in the future there, focusing on the behind-the-scenes side of things, alongside content directed towards fellow game developers looking to learn from our experiences.
It might seem overwhelming at first, but don't worry! If you're new to the community and feel like you have missed out on some of the journey, then just know that there are still many more things to come! Seasonal events, both new and returning, major updates, the 1.0 release, the DLCs (yes) - suffice to say there's plenty of content ahead of us. In fact, if you're just joining us and you don't have a copy of the game yet, we're hosting a celebratory giveaway from March 25th to March 28th with a chance for five people to win The Tenants Steam key! Join the giveaway right here.
We cannot stress enough how much we appreciate the continued support and feedback, and hope that you continue to be a part of our community going forward!
Oh, and by the way, we're having a bit of a surprise update next month. More teasers to follow. Until then!
Thank you, The Tenants Team
The Tenants - Patch 0.8g
General
Fixed an issue with one of the jobs in the Suburbs.
Fixed a number of issues with the Earthquake event where Uncle Steve wouldn't always appear to fix the issue.
The Tenants - Patch 0.8f (Trashing disabled!)
Hey there, Landlords!
Due to popular demand we've decided to temporarily disable the tenants trashing feature until we rework the system in a way that is enjoyable for players, instead of plainly frustrating.
General
Disabled trashing altogether until the system's rework.
Fixed an issue with room detection in the Baron's Mansion two-rooms job.
The Tenants - Patch 0.8e
General
Fixed being able to sample and buy furniture even when you couldn't afford it.
Fixed an issue with the boat being available for purchase before completing the first Elite Contract.
Fixed an issue with auctions sometimes failing after being completed.
Fixed incorrect Workshop floor mapping in one of the Suburbs properties.
Fixed an issue with the two piles of garbage stacked on each other in one of the Suburbs properties.
Fixed a couple issues with the cockroach event tutorial hard locking the game.
Fixed two jobs that required non-workshop type floors in workshop type rooms.
Fixed an issue with ghost UI markers in some tenant events.
Fixed a host of issues in the new tenant events related to starting and ending them.
Fixed an issue with the proximity bonus detection range calculation sometimes being incorrect.
Tweaked one of the speakers to be placeable on various surfaces and not only on the floor.
Balance
Cleaned up tax behavior with auctions. Apartment sales will not count towards taxable income anymore to avoid double taxation. All apartment transactions after selling are now grouped together and carried over to maintain finance history integrity.
Slightly increased profit margins for sell auctions.
The Tenants - Patch 0.8d
General
Fixed a game crash that sometimes occurred when moving certain garden items.
Fixed a game crash related to the Botanic Garden job.
Fixed a pathing issue related to wall-mounted items, preventing players from renting out previously verified properties. The fix is temporary and you might observe inconsistent behavior with some shelving items; more patches are on their way.
Fixed an issue with the Alcoholic event sometimes beginning too close to the bed causing unexpected behavior.
Fixed purchase auctions starting with a $0 opening bid.
The Tenants - Patch 0.8c
General
Added visualization of the auction table for Steve to make starting bidding more intuitive.
Added the ability to attach your save file when using the in-game feedback report tool.
Added some missing translations.
Fixed an issue with players being unable to exit failed auctions.
Fixed a glitch with the proximity bonus lines in the UI.
Fixed collider issues with some of the furniture.
Jobs
Reworked First Impressions to be more consistent with the rest of the reworked categories, taking into account tags and proximity bonuses instead of prestige only.
Added more items provided by the client
Fixed an issue with missing Firewood items in the Barracks Elite Contract. Implemented a recovery fix for already affected save files.
Fixed room detection issues in the Brewery job.
Fixed Botanic Garden job clients wanting wall mounted items for their preferred items.
Fixed Garden Work tenant request to require Garden Plants instead of Big Plants.
Balance
Reduced the amount of Landlord Points rewarded for solving issues with Uncle Steve and for completing Elite Contracts.
The Tenants - Patch 0.8b
General
Tweaked photo mode's camera. Made camera bounds more forgivable in the Slums.
Fixed an issue with off balance prestige values inflating apartment ratings.
Fixed an issue with overlapping chairs slotted to different tables.
UI
Fixed roadmap popup's UI layout making it impossible to close the popup.
Fixed money not always updating in the UI.
Fixed missing phone translations.
Jobs
Significantly increased the number of items provided by job clients.
The Tenants - Landlord Update
Hello there, Landlords!
It's time for another major update! This time we're back with one that everyone's been waiting for quite some time, the Landlord Update! Introducing possibly the most requested feature by the community, apartment selling, today's update drastically enhances the gameplay as you know it, adding on new layers of interaction with the game and a plethora of new content to explore. To celebrate the occasion, The Tenants is now 25% off! Let's dive right into it!
New Apartment Selling & Buying
The biggest changes in this update are by far related to how we look at properties in the game. We've always intended for The Tenants to have a more managerial style of gameplay at the very top of our gameplay loop, with players buying multiple properties, investing into them, renting them out, and eventually flipping them for profit. This dynamic was not possible to achieve without a number of key features, including the ability to sell apartments and the revised buying system. Both utilize auctions, a new interactive way to handle all your purchases and sales, where you'll get to bid against other landlords!
To make investing and progression more meaningful, players will now have to upgrade the so-called property limit, which describes the number of properties they can own at any given time. You'll find all about it, including a list of all upcoming and ongoing auctions in the area, in the new Properties app on your phone. Be sure to check it out!
Note: For players with existing save files who own more properties than their current limit allows them to, the game will prompt you to sell a number of units of your choice to convert your save file to a landlord update compatible version.
Job Overhaul
Jobs are an essential aspect of the game. As you venture into the landlord update, you will notice that the jobs have changed. You may see that all jobs that once were are no longer there or have been revamped in one way or another. Alongside doing this to existing jobs, we have also added new jobs, so over 90 new jobs are available in the game.
With new jobs come new requirements called prestige scores. We have decided to remove “decor” from jobs as it felt disconnected from the rest of the game. Adding prestige scores instead will make the game more consistent between jobs and your places, as scoring will be the same throughout both.
Moreover, we have added a new type called puzzle job. You will be challenged to think outside the box to fit the requirement task list into a small room supplied to you in these jobs. Are you up for the task? If so, try not to hurt yourself thinking!
Job Rating Changes
We've been closely monitoring the feedback related to job ratings, and the thing that kept coming up was that the game more-or-less forced players to keep using the same items over and over again (the most expensive ones). In the previous updates, we've added the Tags that didn't work exactly as planned since they were regarded as a separate rating category, and the old issues were still present for the other categories.
However, with this update, we've made bigger changes to the whole rating system. We've removed the Decor and the Tags categories, adding the new Prestige category in their place as previously mentioned. Furthermore, we've changed how the game rates the Required Furniture, Preferred Furniture, Walls, and Floors categories. Now, these categories don't consider the given item's price; instead, they focus on using the correct tags (if available) and avoiding placement issues.
The overarching goal here was to remove the focus on expensive furniture and materials, and enable players to use a wider variety of items while doing renovation jobs. Of course, this is an intricate system, and we're eager to hear your feedback on the changes. We plan to keep tweaking and balancing it in further updates.
New Unlockable Items
Another exciting feature of the new update is the new unlocking system for Elite Contract jobs! You will be able to unlock the complete set of unique job items for each contract by completing it three times. Each successful job will yield a portion of them, making each one more than worth the hassle while giving you a reason to come back to them to get the full lineup!
Landlord Points
One thing that we wished we had introduced right from the very beginning, was a second currency. With this new currency added, instead of using money for everything, you will now be required to use Landlord Points on a number of in-game features, such as gifting, sabotaging, and services. No more spending real money to boot your most hated tenant!
In the future, we'll be looking at adding even more avenues to spend your landlord points on, so make sure to keep an eye out for that!
New Events
It's been a while since we added any tenant events to the game, and it seems like our tenants have managed to come up with a number of really interesting issues to bug you about during your gameplay. New events are all uniquely tied to specific tenant archetypes, and they all can involve Steve in one way or the other! And so, alcoholics might forget their way to the bed while artists will message you asking you to drop by to pose for their new painting. Plenty of fun ahead in Wondersville!
New Tenant Archetype - Magician
It wouldn't be a major update without a new archetype coming to town! Magicians are all about gaudy appearances and equally ostentatious magic tricks. Although, with enough gigs lined up for the month, they can be pretty good at paying rent on time! Make sure to treat them well, or who knows what can happen to a landlord they deem problematic.
No update would be complete without a batch of key quality of life changes and improvements to the existing mechanics. We've focused a lot on improving loading times and the general loading pipeline, which in the past could cause crashes for some of our players. Important balance changes have been also pushed, lowering the $12k cashflow quest to $8k, while adding two new quests in the Slums in between to make the transition to the Suburbs smoother.
We're very excited to get this update out for you to play with! Some of the features released today have been in the works for months, designed right at the beginning of the development, and it's incredibly rewarding to see them come to fruition. We hope you enjoy it, and we can't wait for your feedback!
Full Changelog
Features
Added a new Phone app: Properties.
Implemented selling apartments via auctions.
Reworked buying apartments to work similarly to selling.
Added a new currency: Landlord Points.
Implemented Elite Contract item unlocks.
Content
Added a new tenant archetype: Magician.
Added 6 new tenant events tied to specific archetypes.
Added a new renovation job type: Puzzle jobs.
Added 4 new Elite Contracts.
Added over 90 new renovation jobs.
Added 2 new missions in between the Slums' missions..
General
Optimized the game's loading speed in a major way.
Tweaked and polished the environment in the Suburbs.
Fixed Open House jobs being sometimes wrongly 1 star reviewed for being sold too cheaply.
Tenants will now leave their apartments for other reasons than only going to work.
Tenants will now try to use the freshly installed items right after a renovation request.
Tenants will now look at items of interest (for example when watching TV).
Jobs
Reworked (once again) how rooms are assigned and recognized in renovation jobs.
Removed Decor from scoring categories, added Prestige instead, and reworked the scoring in general.
UI
Polished the item unlock popup on level ups.
Re-organized item assignments to different furniture categories.
Added the ability to click and search scored item types in the room context menu panel.
Tweaked the furniture placement warning icons in renovation mode.
Added an event icon that signalizes that a tenant's lease is ending.
Added tooltips that explain how to unlock locked features in the Open House UI.
Moved the common requirements to the bottom of the renovation checklist.
Balance
Reduced the casfhlow required in the "Playing for High Stakes" mission from $12k to $8k.
Reduced the number of required Babysitting jobs to perform in the "Babysitter" mission from 3 to 2.
Thank you, The Tenants Team
Landlord Update Teaser
Hey there landlords!
We have been working hard to bring you the next big update on our roadmap these past few months. The landlord update will mark an important milestone for all of us as we pass the roadmap's halfway mark and are getting closer to the 1.0 version! This major update brings many new features, content, excitement, and a little something that happens to be a very highly requested system by the community.
Let's start with the little something, which is, well, not that little. We're introducing a new Phone App to manage your properties and look at ones available for purchase; no more scrolling endlessly through the whole map to find that green dollar symbol! What's more exciting is that along with the new app, we're changing up how properties are bought and sold (yes, sold!).
All properties will now be available to purchase via auctions. Each purchase will now involve more gameplay elements as Uncle Steve himself will now dress up for the occasion! You'll be able to walk around the property first, evaluate how much it's worth, before you take part in a bidding war against other landlords. Finally, the update will also allow you to sell your own properties through a similar system, this time featuring Steve as the auctioneer himself.
But let's move to the next item on our list. A vast assortment of new jobs, which includes new Elite jobs and a newly introduced type of jobs, will be added with this update. For example, there’s a new Elite contract job for a botanist who will want their place to be full of plants and other exciting items as if it was the Palmenhaus Schonbrunn itself! Overall, we will be adding over 90 new jobs altogether, which should alleviate some of the repetitive gameplay issues. Of course, we plan to still keep adding even more new jobs throughout the development, so don't worry about that!
With the addition of new jobs as we mentioned we would be bringing you the new type of job called Puzzle jobs. These jobs are for the more challenge-seeking players or simply those who want a break from the complete renovation jobs. With the Puzzle jobs, you will have less room to work with and yet more items to put in. Note you will not be able to edit the room layouts to make them any bigger. These jobs are where the challenge begins to see if you can fit all the listed items in the room, which may require you to think outside the box and use that reset button a few times here and there until it all just fits. Are you up for the challenge?
Since we've been putting more jobs and Elite contracts in the game with each update, we decided that Elite contracts needed a little more spice to them. So instead of just taking them for the money, you will now be able to unlock Elite job items each time you complete them. To unlock the full set of job items, you will need to complete each one three times. After unlocking these items, they are yours to use as your own furniture. You will notice these items scattered around in your renovation tab when renovating for jobs or your properties.
Another thing that's going to be touched up in the update is the main storyline. To make the early game smoother we added two new objectives and tweaked the cash flow quest to be less of a hurdle. Moreover, the update features important quality of life changes, including refreshing the prestige value in the room panel with each item purchase, double-clicking the item to move it, and, oh, improved loading times! Certain configurations should see up to a 50% improvement on the new patch.
And that's it for today's teaser! Landlord Update will go live in a few weeks' time and we can't wait to hear your thoughts about it! Until then, stay tuned!
Thank you, The Tenants Team
The Tenants - Patch 0.76
General
Disabled winter decorations and seasonal time-limited content. Santa will return to Wondersville next holiday season.
Disabled remodelling in a few jobs.
Fixed Open House job ratings being sometimes wrongly docked for tenants not having enough past tenancies.
Fixed a number of incorrect furniture icons.
Fixed a number of wall decorations wanting to be placed right up against the wall even when they were on the wall itself.
Fixed some tenants suffering from premature balding.
Balance
Toned down tenant events frequency scaling with the number of player tenants. Introduced a hard cap starting at 22 tenants.
Cashflow problem event changed to occur to everyone but Loyal / Diligent tenants.
Date night event changed to occur to everyone except Loners with Social Animals having a boosted chance of it happening.
TV / Internet subscription upgrade event changed to occur to everyone with Gamers having a boosted chance of it happening.
Adjusted how much rent agents are able to get during lease renegotiations.
Agents with over 75 Salesmanship will now never lose money on lease renegotiations unless the tenant is already maxed out.
Adjusted what lease lengths agents are able to get during lease renegotiations.
Agents might be able to get a longer lease than your current one, while agents with over 80 Salesmanship will never get a shorter lease than your current one. However, lease lengths negotiated by agents are capped at 120 days.
