Week one in the fog
New builds went out almost every day this week. Here are the big ones.
A map you can write on
The map has its own tab now. The farm view shows everyone's pins, crops, trees and benches. The world view is a hand-drawn map of the network and the Thinning that fills in as you go: fog over the places you have not opened, a red tick for every place you came home from, and a star for every curio you found there.
You can mark places (Danger, Good fishing, Come back later and a few more), and in co-op your friends see your marks. As your story moves on, your farmer starts writing notes in the margins. Places you know but have not finished get a quiet pencilled hint.
One farm, two PCs
Turn on Share farms and every save is also copied to a shared folder, so you can pick up the same farm on the PC in the living room. If the other PC saved a newer copy, the game asks which one you want. Nothing gets overwritten without a copy kept first.
Life together
Court someone long enough and you can give them a key. A couple of mornings later they move up to the farm. They have a cup by the door at dawn, go to work in the Landing, come home in the evening, and help out with one thing on the farm every morning. On a raid night they do what they would do: one of them goes out to meet what comes over the fence.
The years
The game never ends, so the calendar keeps going. A new year brings bigger raids, new seeds and new fish, a letter from the wall, and a Landing that grows: a new cottage, more lamps, a new boat at the pier.
Also new: fish ponds that breed whatever you stock them with, blasting charges for the tunnels, and a rain chime.
Your own faction
The survivors you rescue from the Thinning are a little faction of your own now. Name it, pick a banner, and watch it grow from a household to a House of the Wall. They live in a lean-to against the cabin at first, then a bunkhouse, then a longhouse you build for them. At night the windows light up and they go in to bed.
As of this week they also work where you can see them: waterers walk the field with a can, harvesters carry a basket, foragers head out through the gate in the morning and come home with a sack, and in the afternoon everyone chops at the woodpile.
A school
In the second year a schoolteacher moves into the new cottage. The letters went wrong, so she teaches the Landing's children shapes. Sit in on a lesson and it settles your mind and teaches you a little of something. Stick with it and there is more: a recipe, a steadier hand past the wall, a stall at the Barter Fair, and chalk shapes appearing on the Landing's doors.
Art
A lot of the town and farm got redrawn this week. The cabin shows its upgrades, the barn and the pen's fences are rebuilt, the glasshouse sits on a brick plinth, and every building in the Landing has a shingled roof, framed windows, a lamp by the door and a little of its trade outside. The bandstand, the clock tower, the beacon, the harbor crane and the abbey chapel up the coast got the same treatment.
Under the hood
A big sweep for bugs: things that duplicated, things that got lost, people stepping out of a new building straight into a wall, and a lot of random-play testing on every build, alone, on the couch and online.
Next week starts with fresh playtest notes. See you in the fog.