What's coming in The people of Sea, Sun & Salt 1.1?

We have a big announcement to make: The people of Sea, Sun & Salt is getting a major patch. We have received a lot of feedback from all corners of the internet and we have decided to make one big content update later this summer.

This post outlines the main changes coming in v1.1:

Procedurally generated worlds

Probably the most requested feature and arguably a feature the game should have released with: this new version will have new maps. I'm not entirely certain what format this will take but what is for certain is that you will get a chance to play through the game on different islands.

A little screengrab of a procedurally generated island: Steam post image

New mechanic: Districts

A flaw in the current game is the homogeneity of cities: The island sometimes feels like one big undifferentiated mass of buildings. So I'm introducing districts to push the player to partition their city into smaller neighbourhoods with their own needs, function and visuals.

Hopefully this and some visual changes outline later in this post will improve the game's visual quality.

Here's a little work in progress screenshot: Steam post image

Reworking progression

This is a catch-all category for a lot of small stuff that felt wrong when playtesting but I couldn't change so close to release. Things like:

• Changing boring or trivial era missions (era 11 and 12 water and food production missions are a snooze)

• Removing uninteresting choices in the era unlock sequence (all leisure buildings are now unlocked and you get to pick which one you want to use while building the city, not in the era unlock sequence)

• The forum is both a place of worship and unlocks policies for all players. I always felt like the "democracy"/"autocracy" choice was a bit embarrassing. It was a placeholder for better more meaningful political choices that never ended up appearing in the game (It is just not that kind of game). So I'd rather just remove the choice entirely.

• And much more!

Key rebinding

Not 100% on this, I feel like I addressed a large portion of the underlying complaint with camera control being annoying when you had to use the shift key. But if I have the time I will implement key rebinding. Wouldn't hurt right?

Visual improvements

Last but not least: Graphics. I still want to go for this stylized voxel look but I want to make a much better looking version of it, the key gripes being:

• Summer and winter can be a bit rough to look at

• The color white overlwhelms the game's palette and I need to find ways of differentiating floor, cliff faces, walls and roof-tops which are all a nearly identical white texture. This one has always been funny to me because the inspiration for the game is the island of Santorini which is beautiful to look at but it also "suffers" from a similar visual issue of being overwhelmingly white. In the end, the white in Santorini's architecture does not translate very well in my game.

• The little guys need a redesign. They lack visual fidelity and I can make a cleaner version of the "meeple" look I was going for. I have entertained a more "minecraft" like look but I refuse on principle so I'll find another route.

• More varied architectural components: There are not that many different possible parts to a building in the current version of The people of Sea, Sun & Salt which leads to a sense of repetitiveness. I need to look into this. Better plants, better patterns, better textures...

• Better waves maybe? I don't think the game's water is one of its shortcomings but it occupies such a large amount of the game's screenspace that it is probably worth spending a bit of time tweaking it. Maybe the land unlocking animation could be juiced a bit.

What do you think?

Let us know if there is anything you would want to see in the game!

We were really pleased with the game's reception. Without the very positive returns we would not have been able to entertain this patch so again thank you to everyone who played the game.

Stay tuned to see where The people of Sea, Sun & Salt goes from here!