Build 68: sacred mandalas, new Soul Candies & a cozy Pieced Together collab

Dear friend,

For the past month or so, my focus was largely absorbed by the sacred geometry of mandalas. I have been fascinated by mandalas for as long as I can remember, but now that I finally gave myself permission to draw them to my hearts content, I understood their magic. For a very long time, mandalas have been used by various religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism as a form of meditation. The gentle exercise of composing a beautiful geometric structure, and then adding colour and details, feels a lot like a reverie, not at all unlike how it feels to take a stroll in my beloved forest. So the highlight of this content update is a spread in the Fairyland Book of Wonders dedicated to mandalas. I hope you will enjoy the decorations I prepared for you, in watercolour with a touch of lineart and pastels.

While the mandalas are my favourite highlight, they are not the only new decorations in this update. I tend to avoid counting and keeping track of what I am adding (or, frankly, I completely forget to do so), but to make this update easier to understand, I decided to at least give it a try:

New content by Fairy

• a mandala spread containing full and tileable quarter mandalas that can be combined creatively, a handful of lovingly hand painted aquarelle backgrounds, a poem written by me where every verse can be used as a quote, and my favourite quote by Ursula K LeGuin

• a dozen more Soul Candies added to the Soul Candy jar, but for you, this number will double the Soul Candy content as I realised that a lot of candies were not taken into account and never shown when interacting with the jar

• more Fairyland pictures in the Fairy camera, where I focused on capturing the joyful signs of spring that I notice ever day as Fairyland becomes warmer

Steam post image Someone's home, in the forest!

Pieced Together bundle and decorations

The popular way to market indie games on Steam these days is to bundle. This idea inspired me to reach out to magical souls who create experiences that complement your visit at The Merry Fairy. The first collaboration with The Abbess Garden allows you to take a stroll outside. Since I get a lot of feedback about adding a story to The Merry Fairy - something that I am hesitant to do, as I hope you can focus on your own story while visiting my enchanted cottage - I chose the most lovely story I could find on Steam, in the form of The Bear.

And now, the time has come for an alternative, story-driven way to scrapbook journal. In Pieced Together, you experience the heartfelt story of a friendship, told through gentle puzzles using a delightfully executed scrapbook journaling mechanic. Through the Cozy Scrapbooking bundle that launches today, you will always have a 10% discount applied on top of whatever discount is active, for the game in the bundle that you do not yet own.

I am also very, very grateful to the wonderful Glowfrog Games (thank you, Kate!) for letting me choose a handful of stickers to add in The Merry Fairy for you to use. I had an extremely hard time picking this collection for you, because I adore all the stickers in Pieced Together, but I hope you will enjoy the selection!

Bug Fixes

When it comes to bug fixes, the most important thing to say is THANK YOU! I fix bugs because you, my lovely community of magical souls, help me. Your feedback and reports are so incredibly useful! Thanks to your help, the bugs that were fixed are:

• your personal decorations should now always be saved and never disappear from your journal

• your personal decorations that you add in the drawer should now appear correctly and not darker

• the Soul Candy jar has now finally been properly refreshed and you should now have access to 90 Soul Candies (you could access about 60 before)

• an innumerable amount of typos has now been fixed; however, I do not doubt there are plenty more typos out there and I will be grateful if you can catch them!

Of sadness and joy

news and reflections from Fairyland

Alan Watts once told the story of the Chinese farmer:

Once upon a time there was a Chinese farmer whose horse ran away. That evening, all of his neighbours came around to commiserate. They said, “We are so sorry to hear your horse has run away. This is most unfortunate.” The farmer said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse came back bringing seven wild horses with it, and in the evening everybody came back and said, “Oh, isn’t that lucky. What a great turn of events. You now have eight horses!” The farmer again said, “Maybe.”

The following day his son tried to break one of the horses, and while riding it, he was thrown and broke his leg. The neighbours then said, “Oh dear, that’s too bad,” and the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day the conscription officers came around to conscript people into the army, and they rejected his son because he had a broken leg. Again all the neighbours came around and said, “Isn’t that great!” Again, he said, “Maybe.”

The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity, and it’s really impossible to tell whether anything that happens in it is good or bad — because you never know what will be the consequence of the misfortune; or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.

The spell I try to practice the most is to embrace every moment as it is, and to love it deeply for the gift that it is, without expectations. Some moments cause joy, and they are easy to embrace. But some moments cause sadness, and those are harder to love, even though, many times, they carry greater gifts.

What causes immense sadness to me these days is the fact that Skuggan has not returned home for almost two weeks now. He is a free and independent cat, clever, resourceful and very strong, and I do not doubt his extraordinary abilities to take good care of himself wherever he is. But even though he has always had his holidays and adventures in the vast forest of Fairyland and the villages nearby, he has always returned home after a few days at most. This is the first time he has been gone for so long, and I cannot help but worry that he might be trapped, hurt or dead, as Fairyland is filled with wildlife which may not always tolerate Skuggan's bravery and defiance. I miss him dearly; I cannot imagine Fairyland without him and every single day that starts without him greeting me with so much love is a day filled with sadness and tears. I try to do as he taught me and be strong and filled with hope. I try to imagine the best adventures for him (my favourite explanation for his absence is that he fell in love and is now living blissful days alongside his beloved), but I still cannot avoid the sadness of missing him. And it is this sadness that taught me something important: to never hesitate to show love, no matter what. There are simply far too many hugs and cuddles I wish I would have given to Skuggan, but I didn't, because of various, insignificant reasons. There are far too many treats I kept away and rationed, too many doors I closed to keep him out, fearing the ticks he might have gathered, too many times I became annoyed of his chatter and insistence to follow me in the forest, because I wanted to "record" and "work". I am so grateful for this lesson of unrestricted love!

What causes me frustration is that I got new negative reviews for The Merry Fairy Demo. But upon further reflection, this frustrating hides a great success. The reason I am committed to keep The Merry Fairy Demo live is because it is a great preview for a visit to my cottage, where there is truly nothing to do except to relax, reflect and create. I do, however, feel inspired to do a better job with my presentation skills. I feel that The Merry Fairy storefront pages for the demo and full experience can be much improved. Dear friend, if you are reading this and have any good ideas about improving the store page for The Merry Fairy, please do not hesitate to tell them to me!

What causes me joy and an endless flow of awe is this coming spring with all her lovely signs, and watching my little seeds grow. This year, I decided to nurture tomatoes, cucumbers, paprika, salad, corn, beans, squash and pumpkin (and a few more things such as luffa and sunchokes, aka Jerusalem artichokes, but I really try to keep my enthusiasm contained). As I mentioned before, the great experiment that I will do is called the Three Sisters, a native American way to plant corn, beans and squash together as the support each other both above and underground. My world domination plan is to move my pumpkin patch near the border of Fairyland, and to plant an impossibly large number of pumpkin seeds, which can hopefully produce enough pumpkins so that every passer-by can get some.

Thank you for reading!

PS: As per my discount spells, this content update comes with a 30% discount which will become active today, Mon, Apr 20, 10 AM PDT (7 PM GMT+2) and will be available for one week, until Mon, Apr 27, 10 AM PDT (7 PM GMT+2).