Alpha Now Available!

I wanted to provide a few updates today about the Alpha testing which is now available, the Logistics system which will be an important part of the full game, and the small Demo patch which is now live.

Alpha Builds

I'm really excited to announce that I'm starting up a series of Alpha builds to begin testing game mechanics and systems which will be coming in the full release! If you've enjoyed the demo and are looking for more to do, or would just like to help provide more feedback on the game in its final stages towards release, this is the place to do it!

These builds are now available to monthly subscribers to my Ko-Fi! (Ko-Fi is a Patreon-like platform for creators)

Current Feature Highlights

The current Alpha build contains:

• The ability to unlock more land tiles

• Access to the full Logistics technology which allows direct shipment of products, and an associated tech tree (more on this below)

• More Field + Building Ranks, up to Rank G

• A bunch of new crops, including grains, herbs, and fruit.

• A slew of new recipes for dried spices, oils, flours, vinegar, and more

• New buildings which produce the new recipes

• New "bonus"/"buff" buildings which amplify the production speeds of other fields and builds

• A few new high value / high complexity end product recipes which are significantly more complicated than the Simple Vegetable Soup of the demo

These cover most of the things that have been teased in the demo tech tree ;)

Note that these features are not everything that will be included in the full game. These builds are not test builds of the full game release, but testing builds focusing on systems I want testing and feedback on before they make it to the full game.

Balance/Polish

Alpha builds will be focusing on getting feedback and testing on full game features, and as such, they may be a bit rougher around the edges and less polished compared to the demo. They also are earlier testing, so mechanics and balance may shift and change as feedback comes in etc.

Saves

You are able to move your Demo saves over to the Alpha builds. You also will be able to move your Alpha saves to the full game when it releases. But you will not be able to move Alpha saves back to the demo.

I also recommend backing up your saves and creating new saves frequently, just in case you run into any snags in the new content.

If this sounds exciting, head over to the Ko-Fi to get started!

Logistics

In a recent post I went over how expanding your farm and the extra land tiles would work. As you unlock more land, each "tile" of land will work as independent "districts" - plots will only "connect" to other plots within their district, and they can only send their trucks to other plots within their district. But I noted there would be a way to move some items between districts.... Which is one primary purpose of the upcoming Logistics system.

Logistics is a tech that you can unlock in the General tree after unlocking more land. It is an entirely new tech tree of its own, which will have its own XP, upgrades, and technologies, but also provides a new Logistics system.

This Logistics system will allow you to create dedicated Logistics Routes which move items directly from one place to another. Routes start at any Storage building, end at a Loading Dock, and define one item to move along that route. The Loading Dock will then load the items it receives into neighboring Storage buildings. This essentially allows you to move items from one Storage building to another, regardless of what district each of those Storage buildings are in.

Each Loading Dock can only have one route/crop being shipped to it, and they must have Logistics Trucks from a Logistics Depot assigned to their Route to deliver the goods. They can have multiple Trucks assigned at once, but they must unload one Truck at a time.

Some of these limits will be reduced/improved by later Logistics Technologies, which you can unlock by gaining Logistics XP which is generated when you deliver items along the routes.

Patch Notes

A small Demo patch went live today - here are the full changes:

• Fixed a bunch of alt-clicks not working as intended

• Fixed some tech tree requirements to prevent unlocking buildings with no recipes available

• Updated some crop icons for better visual identity

• Fixed some tutorial text

• Fixed some quest reward visuals

• Fixed a couple issues with Plow Window tabs

• Fixed some building model alignments

• Small changes to names/values of future products

• Small tweaks to vehicle operation/setup

• Added some more save metadata