The Thistlewolf Post #5: The Plant Retreat Arrives

Good morning, everyone! It's August now, and this week we have a rather substantial new feature in store! So let's take a look at this week's Morning Post—and this week's beta release.

Foreword

This update centers on a brand-new system, along with many new features tied to it—and quite a few changes to older content as well. Naturally, some parts are still missing due to the schedule; future betas will gradually fill them in as new content arrives!

Content Log

First, let me introduce the Plant Retreat.

It's a residence scene you unlock after reaching a certain progress—after all, a busy protagonist needs somewhere to rest their feet, right?

You don't have to enter the Plant Retreat from Snowbloom Palace: once the Retreat is unlocked, a Plant Retreat button also appears in the upper-left corner of the world map.

Of course, the Retreat has plenty of features… which will be completed in later updates. For now, its art is still beta-grade; we'll refine its appearance in the future. The current Retreat already has quite a few unique functions, and along with them come some brand-new levels…

The save system has also changed a little as a result. This experiment may not make it to the full release, though—I'm not sure yet whether it will fit everyone's habits. Depending on feedback, we may switch to a more sensible save interaction later.

Next, Snowbloom Palace's layout has been revised. The Palace will gain new interactive content down the line, and the old button-based format no longer suits its needs, so we reworked how the Palace works. Along the way, we also added a button for Sandbox mode.

One thing to note: the Sandbox screen still needs some adjustments before the full release. In the current build, Sandbox does not hide future items based on your game progress; that will be fixed before the full release.

Also, CocoBottle Shine has a livelier animation now! Made by our excellent animator 飞鹰子!

We also improved how the level "Chain Reaction" is displayed in level records, and removed its Endless mode for a few reasons.

By the way, we fixed a Wiremoss layering error in Snowbloom Palace.

Some Future Plans

The final art and music for the Sands boss are nearly complete! Once the animation is done, we'll finally get to see the real Sands boss.

As for the next chapter—new plants, a brand-new major mechanic, level design, and zombie design are all moving forward. The new mechanic is especially worth noting: part of its code is already done.

The next beta will continue polishing the Plant Retreat. If progress allows, we may also see the next chapter, along with the Sands boss in its final art, music, and animation—it all depends on how things go!

Aside

I strongly recommend backing up your save before playing this beta. Some details may be tweaked later—nothing that would corrupt your save, of course, but it saves you from unnecessary save bloat or lost resources.

My drawing tablet got water-damaged, so this beta's art is a bit more "beta" than usual (the cover of this Morning Post included)… please bear with me! I really hope my tablet gets fixed soon…

Also, for this update I built a brand-new localization-sync tool so we can sync with the localization site better before every update. As a result, this version synced a LOT of localization content! (And naturally, it also came with plenty of new content that needs localizing LOL)

That's it for this week's Morning Post — see you next week!