Hi everyone! It's been a hot minute since the last proper devlog for an update, partly because so much stuff happened since the last one (the game's release and all that), but also because the last few updates didn't really feel devlog-worthy.
This one is, though! We hope you agree. We put quite a bit of work into this update, but we also didn't have as much time as we maybe would've liked to work on it due to a bunch of outside factors. I don't want to drone on about that though, instead, I want to show you all the exciting improvements and additions, and then also talk about some other fun stuff surrounding Tiny Life!
Bars and Brews
Remember the Mixology Kit? It's been in the game for quite some time, and we'd always been planning on making it functional. That day has finally come!
When you select the Mixology Kit, you can now make one of a large variety of drinks. There's Brew, Brew with Lemonade, and of course some cocktail staples a well!
Take care, though! Drinking too much brew at once might have some very negative effects on your Tiny's... aliveness.
Along with the ability to make various types of drinks, we also added a new lot type: the bar! The bar lot type has a bartender who will hang around the lot from 3PM to 4AM and serve up some lovely drinks for you. Just ask them!
To make it easier for yall to get started, the new version of Maple Plains City has a new lot called Dive Bar by the Lake, built by the lovely AngelofAcid, who constantly submitts some absolutely stunning lots to the workshop - definitely check out some of their other builds!
After updating, loading an existing save file from Maple Plains City will cause the new lot to be added automatically, without anything else about your world being changed.
Action Progress Bars
This has been an incredibly long-requested feature, and it's still kind of in the making and will be added onto slowly over time: progress bars for some actions!
Right now, the only actions that display a progress bar like this are ones that pertain to an object or project that is being completed, like painting, woodworking, programming a mod and writing a book.
Over time, additional progress bars will be added, though, so absolutely keep the requests coming!
Additional Additions
There were also a bunch of other additions and improvements, so here's some of them.
An adorable new wallpaper called ColorCo Cute Cacti!
Full-height versions of the Now You See Me doors and windows, called Now You See It All doors and windows!
Style in Style
We added a basic style preference system for clothes, none of which is directly exposed to the player. This system is intended to make randomly generated Tinies a bit more coherent and feeling less "wacky", while still maintaining the same amount of diversity that the game already has.
The way this style system works, in short, is that clothes now have one of three internal flags set: feminine, masculine and gender-neutral. Based on the internal preference of a randomly generated Tiny, the likelihood of them choosing a clothing item that matches their preference is 75% higher. This system is also used when randomly generating pronouns, voice styles, and pregnancy abilities.
The main change that this system introduces is that about 66% of Tinies will conform slightly more to Western gender norms. While this seems contrary to the goals of the design of the customizability of Tinies, it's important to keep in mind that this 66% of Tinies will still only have a 75% chance of choosing a clothing item that matches their preference. Additionally, a lot of clothing items have the neutral preference set, and a third of randomly generated Tinies will not have a preference at all, and thus choose from all clothing as before.
What this boils down to is this: a few more Tinies will now feel more "coherent" to a lot of players that are used to cisgender people. While we want Tiny Life to be as inclusive as it possibly can be, we also realize that it's easier to get into a topic if it feels familiar and relatable in some way. For a lot of players (me included), that means Tinies that are fun, wacky and queer, but for many players, it also means Tinies that conform more to traditional gender norms. So before diving into the wild and wacky, this feature gives the oldsters a second to adjust.
Celebrating Pride
I thought long and hard about how to include both topics in this devlog: the style preference system, which, in a way, lowers queer representation, and our Pride '23 charity special, which is meant to celebrate Pride in a genuine and supportive way.
I didn't have much time, unfortunately, to celebrate Pride with Tiny Life this year. The last two years, there were updates that specifically added Pride-themed items and features, including the flags and asexuality and aromance. With the game's release, University and two large family events, I didn't have the capacity to work on Pride-specific features and release them in a timely manner, so I decided to do something small and easy that still celebrates Pride in a meaningful way.
At the start of July, Ellpeck Games will donate 23% of all of Tiny Life's earnings throughout June to charities like The Trevor Project and Outright International. These charities support queer people all over the world, and help them overcome some of the many challenges that they still have to face.
We announced this on Twitter and on Discord at the start of June. However, Tiny Life is still a reasonably small indie project, and a lot of the game's sales revenue goes to Steam and our publisher. Because June was only our second month of selling Tiny Life, throughout it, we have realized that 23% (which we originally picked because of the year 2023) doesn't actually end up amounting to that much. That's why we've decided to double the donation amount, from 23% to 46%.
We'll be making our donations at the start of July, so keep an eye out on the Twitter thread where we'll be announcing it.
A Proper Blog, Finally
Where are you reading this post right now, by the way? Might it be on Steam? On itch? In your newsletter reading program of choice?
Maybe it's on the new Tiny Life blog, which is now finally up and running on the website! We're super excited to finally have a unified place to publish posts about the game, without having it scattered across different sites. The blog also features the ability to switch between light and dark modes, so you can feast your eyes on a much more relaxing way to read our devlog posts. Yay!
That being said, we're still going to continue publishing all of our devlogs on Steam and itch, as well as on the mailing list and the Atom feed for the blog.
The Full Changelog
Before I go, I want to thank all of you again for the amazing support you have given me and Tiny Life since its release, and I really hope wholeheartedly that you enjoy this update and the additions and improvements it brings, and that you're excited for the future of the game!
Ell ❤️
Lastly, and as always, here's the full changelog for this update, which you can also view in the bottom-right corner of the game's main menu.
Additions
Added the ability to make drinks using the Mixology Kit
Added a Bar lot type with a bartender
Added the Dive Bar by the Lake lot by AngelofAcid to Maple Plains City
Added Now You See It All window and door
Added Solid Paint with Baseboard wallpaper and ColorCo Cute Cacti wallpaper
Added progress displays to some actions
Improvements
Improved the lot staff tooltip to add more information
Made conversation partners walk back to the initiator if they walk away after being talked to
Made protein shakes also count towards the Drink Mixing skill
Allow selecting a Tiny in the active household by right-clicking them in the world
Improved lot visitation priorities for the AI
Some performance improvements for pathfinding
Allow daily goal for teachers to also be fulfilled through skill books
Display an open book texture when people are reading
Allow water tiles to connect to dirt paths as well
Pause the game while the notification history is open
Order lot employment menu by first name
Made gender options and clothes on randomly generated Tinies have a higher chance to be more consistent with Western
gender norms
Fixes
Ensure vehicles are removed when an action is canceled or fails
Fixed children being unable to take days off school
Fixed the gnocchi being too cheap
Fixed "map unavailable" tooltip not being displayed when using a gamepad in the demo
Fixed the quality of baked goods being influenced by the cooking skill
Fixed lot staff sometimes not finding their lot and getting stuck
Fixed lots momentarily being invisible when a Tiny in the household goes home
Fixed sleeping in a crib causing an exception when the crib is removed
Fixed people only going to the corners of public lots when visiting, instead of the entrance
Fixed people being called to meal if they haven't been invited in yet
Fixed Perfect Painter life goal being available for children
Fixed work and school emotions displaying the wrong source
API
Added the ability for lot types to define their own visitation hours
Added Map.OnEventsAttachable event
Added a basic style preference system for clothes
0.33.2
Fixes
Fixed a rounding error in amount-based goals
Fixed an exception when trying to pick up a person that a Tiny doesn't know
Fixed children and babies repeatedly asking for food when food is already being prepared
Fixed an exception when adding a baby as the 8th household member
Fixed visitors leaving to do other things upon being invited in
API
Added some more emote categories for better distinction
Added a warning for when the issue tracker URL for a mod isn't set
0.33.1
Fixed an occasional UI crash when exiting Play Mode
Fixed vacation days being awarded daily rather than weekly (embarrassing)
The Quality of Life Update
Read about this update in last week's post on itch or on Steam.
Additions
Added the ability to invite visiting Tinies into your house (they shouldn't enter otherwise)
Added the ability to take vacation days and family leave
Added ColorCo Modular Curtains
Added Turkish translation by Archura Localization Group
Improvements
Made adults take leftovers from the fridge rather than cooking new food when asked for food
Added some more modern and hair colors
Moved some computer actions into subcategories
Disable the AI for a little bit when a manual action is started
Handle mod initialization issues more gracefully
Made babies not lose social effectiveness when using a social multiple times in a row
Made some clothes intentions unavailable for babies
Bold some text in the in-game hints to make it easier to skim
Allow Tinies to do inappropriate things if they're close to the lot's household members
Made people more likely to put down items before doing things
Improved the City Dweller reward personality by causing it to give discounts on public lots
Allow potties to get dirty
Fixes
Fixed babies being able to have sophisticated emotions
Fixed mods being able to add objects to incorrect map sections
Fixed households not automatically getting a job if there is a primary school student
Fixed Play action displaying as "too sad" for every object if too sad
Fixed Tinies deleted from the character creator not being removed from relationship panels
Fixed still being able to order food and drinks at the café with no money
Fixed being able to fool around while holding something
Fixed a rare exception when baking food
API
Removed IPricedObject interface
Made more Register methods return the registered objects
Allow mods to specify an issue tracker URL
Added an event for when the play mode tool stats panel updates
Added support for having multiple jobs at the same time
Added SaveHandler.OnSaveLoadError event
Added OnGetPrice event for food items
Community Showcase and Future Plans (Early Access Launch Postmortem)
Hi everyone! The Tiny Life Early Access launch, which was a few weeks ago at this point, was an unprecedentedly big success. Not only did we see a huge amount of sales, we also saw rave reviews and a ton of excited people and amazing-looking custom content in the Steam workshop and the Discord server.
We'd like to take this post to thank everyone for their overwhelming support, and also show off some cool community creations that we've seen, and talk about the immediate plans for upcoming features.
Some Beautiful Community Creations
Honestly, we've been absolutely overwhelmed with the stuff that yall have created. There are already mods with clothes and furniture, custom maps with beautiful scenery, and gorgeous-looking lots and households. We'll be showing off some of the ones here that we found most impressive, but of course, you can check out the Steam workshop and the Discord server for yourself to see all of it.
This is an incredible custom map called Foolshope by user v_dcc. Just look at the detail! It's so cute.
Workshop user AngelofAcid has been publishing a ton of beautiful builds, including residential lots and public ones. Here's a gorgeous residential home called The Blue Lagoon as an example.
Our lovely community moderator Ari, whose Steam username is Superwholockwarrior, has been creating an adorable mod called Tinies in the Nineties that contains a ton of fun nineties-themed clothing items for your Tinies. Here are some of them!
The user shroomy-p has also been creating a huge amount of custom clothing for their mod A Bit Of Interest, which features a ton of incredibly wacky, but equally gorgeous, clothing items. Just look at these!!
And lastly, check out this cute furniture mod called Neb's Additional Furnitures by NebSpacefarer, which features a mix of additional furniture like chairs, TVs, and this adorable clothing rack!
Definitely keep all the custom content coming, we love seeing you share it on the Steam workshop and the Discord server. Yall are incredibly talented, and we're so excited that Tiny Life can be a way to express that creativity for you!! ❤️
Our Immediate Plans
In case you haven't found it yet, the game has an official roadmap on the website that has a lot of information about planned features. As it says at the top, that list is not exhaustive by any means, and stuff may be added and moved around here and there, but it gives a pretty good overview of our long-term plans for Tiny Life's development.
What do we have planned for updates that are coming very soon, though? Well, let me tell you.
First up, we recently implemented a feature that a lot of you - and I mean a lot - have been requesting: the ability to invite visiting Tinies in, rather than them just breaking into your home!
For features that we'd like to add very soon, the major ones of note are
the ability to take a break from work through vacation days,
the ability to take family leave when having or adopting a child,
additional baby skills, including thinking and self-care,
additional life goals, including ones for writing and reasoning or reading,
a retro-themed furniture set, with additional furniture and clothing sets already planned.
Of course, while doing all of that, we've steadily been releasing bug fix updates that also feature small improvements and features. Since the Early Access release, we've released four of them, and you can always find their full changelogs in the bottom-right corner of the main menu, or on the documentation website. So far, notable improvements that are already released include an easier way to see lots while zoomed out, the ability to highlight Tinies in the world, a better Steam workshop workflow, and more!
We hope you enjoyed this little update on Tiny Life's development, and we hope everyone is as excited as we are about the future of Tiny Life and its community. Please keep the feedback, bug reports, and amazing custom content creations coming!!
Added an accessibility setting to highlight Tinies in the world
Added woodworking recipes for some newer items like the changing table
Improvements
Made pregnancy-based energy loss a bit less high
Don't display pronouns in places where they're not really useful
Show lot outlines when zoomed all the way out in Play and Build modes
Show lot type icons in the Visit Lot action name
Show skill description tooltips in job promotion requirements
Fixes
Fixed some transitive genealogy calculations
Fixed a rare exception when pathfinding a very short car route
Fixed choice prompts not having a default selected element when using a gamepad
Fixed a rare crash when publishing items on the Steam workshop
API
Easily allow mods to change the game's default textures through TextureHandler events
Allow for mods to extend the Person class through a protected constructor and various virtual methods
Allow for clothes to have an additional description in the character creator
0.32.3
Improvements
Reduced Steam thumbnail sizes, which should mitigate upload issues for some people
Updated localizations
Fixes
Fixed Steam usernames not being saved correctly for downloaded items
Fixed the usage of reserved file names being allowed on Windows
Fixed a rare crash when opening and closing the life goals menu too quickly
Fixed the fitness level 3 goal actually requiring fitness level 5 in the Gym Rat life goal
Fixed the log file not being able to be opened by other programs, causing a crash
Fixed a crash when trying to pick up a book from a deleted bookshelf
Fixed a crash when playing with a custom map that was removed from the game
Fixed romance with only partner sometimes counting as romance with someone else if the household was exported and then imported again
Fixed an exception when reading a skill book while quitting and then loading the game
Fixed being able to watch TV from the location we're standing if no other locations are available
API
Harmony for mods is now optional to avoid issues on ARM devices. If you use Harmony, please return true on RequiresHarmony in your mod class.
0.32.2
Additions
Added a popup with additional information when uploading an item to the Steam workshop
Added an accessibility option to move the pronoun display to before a Tiny's name
Improvements
Made it much more likely for Tinies to get leftovers rather than cook something
Fixes
Fixed a missing "too angry" localization string
Fixed lot previews being offset in some camera rotations
Fixed being unable to remove lots that are intersecting
Fixed a lot of issues when trying to move a map in a negative direction
Fixed impossible actions for wall-hanging paintings being available
0.32.1
This is a small update to fix some major bugs people have reported since the Early Access release earlier today! Thanks so much for all the kind words and lovely feedback today, we're so grateful to have such a kind and loving community <3
Fixes
Fixed a rare crash when a person is out of bounds in a vehicle
Fixed a crash when a map loads very quickly
Fixed a rare crash when a food item's parent furniture is removed while eating
Addressed a crash when trying to resize the cursor on some devices
Tiny Life is OUT NOW!!
Hi everyone! I'll make this quick, so you can get right to it: Tiny Life has officially been released into Steam Early Access!!
You can buy it now for \$14.99, or whatever the price ends up being in your local currency.
If you buy the game and you enjoy playing it, please be sure to leave a Steam review for it as well! Reviews really help make the game more popular, and they obviously also help other players decide if the game is worth buying.
If you haven't watched the trailer for the Early Access release yet, you can do so right now!
What You'll Get
What will you be getting as part of this release? Well, here's a quick rundown for your perusal:
Everything that is currently in the Tiny Life Demo
Three free, always-installed Sets of content: The Familiar Attire Set, the Woodworking Set and the Fitness Set, two of which come with lots of additional stuff to do!
The large Maple Plains City map which was featured in the Tiny Life Beta
The ability for adult Tinies to get pregnant, and give birth to babies
The baby life stage, which features unique interactions, personalities, and skills
The ability to export, share and import lots, households and custom maps, both manually and on the Steam Workshop
The ability to create and share custom mods for Tiny Life using the official C# Modding API, both manually and on the Steam Workshop
All free, future content and bugfix updates, as laid out (roughly) on the roadmap
Thanks so much for everything you've given me so far, and I really, really hope you enjoy the game!
