July Development Update
Over the past month and a half, our public Alpha has been live! We have rolled out a number of live patches for it to address bugs and player feedback. This development update will touch on the feedback received, development progress and where next for Nestables.
Over the course of the Alpha, we greatly appreciated the feedback and interest from the community in the development of Nestables. Your feedback was invaluable in helping us roll out live patches during the Alpha to address bugs and tweak gameplay areas.
We will be rolling out one final patch for the Alpha before we go back to some closed development for a while.
A special thank you to Ricki Martiano, B K and Walrus for submitting the most feedback over the course of our Alpha.
The feedback from the community also highlighted that we are on the right track development wise, with wonderful comments like these:
“I really enjoyed it. The game was simple yet has potential to be a cool and fun world building experience that could lead to many people growing attached to their Nestables in a fun, long time way. More features like mini games or perhaps some encounters while exploring would be really awesome to have in the future. I took some pics of my lil Nestable friend.”
“Wow, the game is looking awesome, congrats!, would love to give you feedback for the UI, found some tutorial letters hard to read, I know the look and feel has to be within the game design, maybe could work to make the letters to have a bit more contrast, but nothing that stopped me from completing the tutorial!, great times ahead!! keep it up!”
The contrast for the text was something that we were able to address during the Alpha.
Development Progress
The final update includes the following:
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug that prevented a progress update when returning from the building editor
- Fixed bug that prevented the resource cost reduction from the builder research topic from being applied
- Fixed bug that prevented automatic game saving in the early game
- Fixed bug that allowed Nestables to research/explore while doing other tasks
- Fixed several tea effects and tea related bugs
- Fixed bug that caused Nestables to become unresponsive after planting/harvesting
- Fixed descriptions for tea effects
- Fixed bug that prevented wheat flour creation to be counted for quest completion
- Fixed interaction points for several toys
- Fixed bug that caused toddler Nestables to switch tasks erratically
- Fixed bug that caused juvenile Nestables to start researching a new topic without player input
- Fixed bug that prevented the trampoline form regeneration social
- Fixed bugs in the introduction tutorial
Gameplay Improvements
- Interaction points now occupy space when placing interactable object on the map, placement bounds adjusted for several objects accordingly.
- Added several new food items for high cooking levels
- Updated rating coloration: Rating colors will now correctly reflect benefit cutoffs
- Updated AI so that content Nestables prefer tasks they are good at
- Area currently being explored by a Nestable will now display on the map
- Implemented affection decay; Nestables will now lose ~3 affection per day
- Ability to deselect a Nestable
- Added a “Create All” button
- Made selling larger amounts easier
- Improved text readability
- Fixed issues with the compost bins
Balancing Changes
- Food balance updated; cost and hunger regeneration changed for several food items
- Bathing and Playing traits updated; Now contribute to resilience and regeneration for their respective stat, instead of just regeneration.
- Buffed trait effects for low levels, high level traits remain unchanged
- Tea balance update; level requirements and tea effects modified for all tea bases
- Buffed several unique teas
So where next?
Just like after our Pre-Alpha, we are preparing a “Where Next for Nestables?” Medium post which will be available early next month. You can read the post we did after our Pre-Alpha below.
