Atmosphere, Social Life, Controller Support(WIP), + Turkish Language

Lighting and Atmosphere Upgrade

[carousel][/carousel]

[carousel autoadvance="true"][/carousel]

I did a major lighting pass. I added bloom and sunshafts, improved overall light quality, and reworked how lights are drawn in the world, making them much more vibrant.

A big technical change is that lighting can now be layered properly. In a 2D side-view game this matters a lot, because lights used to always render on top of everything, which looked wrong in many scenes. Now lighting behaves much better with depth, so foreground/background composition is cleaner and the world feels more natural.

The result is better atmosphere and better readability at the same time, especially during sunrise, sunset, and night scenes.

There are also some other improvements:

• new twinkling star field with better variation and motion

• moon/night color tuning

• improved river reflection rendering

• more variation in river life/objects (fish/lotus variety and movement feel)

These changes are small individually, but together they make the world feel more alive.

Villager social life is much deeper now

[carousel autoadvance="true"][/carousel]

Villager Thoughts

Villagers now react to daily life in context, and those reactions appear as thought bubbles above their heads in real time. A melancholic villager broods under the rain. A cheerful one hums while working. A sake brewer watches the first snowfall, knowing it'll make this batch exceptional. A woodcutter hears the forest go quiet and wonders if kodama are watching.

Each thought is driven by the villager's traits, job, mood, the current weather, season, time of day, and what's happening around them.

Social Interactions

Villagers also run dynamic social interactions based on who they are and what's going on. A night owl shares the beauty of the stars with a companion. Two farmers bond over the autumn harvest. A cheerful villager cheers up someone who's been struggling.

Two villagers who work together can slowly become close friends, and that bond lifts their spirits and deepens over time. Or they can turn into bitter rivals, dragging each other's mood down. A hot-tempered villager might escalate a small disagreement into a real fight.

Who Is This For?

Because the game supports higher population, these individual systems aren’t as deep as they might be in a smaller-scale simulation, but they still add a lot of liveliness and charm to the world. And if that’s not your style, you can tone it down or turn it off entirely in the custom settings before starting a new game.

Controller Support (Work in Progress)

[carousel autoadvance="true"][/carousel]

Controller support is coming for the game, which will be an important accessibility upgrade. A lot of players have asked for it, and many people nowadays prefer playing on Steam Deck or on TVs from the couch, so I wanted to support that properly.

This is a tough feature to implement in a colony sim because of the sheer amount of UI and interactions, but most of the heavy lifting is now done. Navigation, focus behavior, and button prompts are already working across many screens and pop-ups, with more polish still in progress.

If all goes well, I’m planning to release this update in a couple of weeks, with full support for common PC controllers. Honestly, I originally meant to do this after release (if ever)… but I was mentally exhausted from other work, so I procrastinated by building controller support instead. 🙂

Trade routes now use contract types, not one fixed request

One big change is the trade route design.

Before, trade routes felt too fixed and repetitive. Now each country has a pool of goods it can demand, and each arriving cargo