Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working on adding new features to the game and improving its stability. The past few nights have been filled with squashing bugs and playtesting. We’ve just pushed a new version of the Alpha to Steam. The new version should also be on the Humble Bundle page soon. If you already have the game on Steam, it will update automatically.

Farming

Now, wheat and mushrooms grow wild in the world. When harvested, they can be used to build wheat farms and mushroom farms. Wheat farms can only be grown above ground, and mushroom farms below ground. Right now, farming is done simply by clicking on an employee and then clicking on the farm’s associated “Farm” button. The employee then goes to the farm and smacks it a bit until a new plant grows. Farming will become more interesting/complex in the future, but for now that is what we have!

Dwarves eat food when they get hungry, and will die if they don’t have enough to eat.

Rest and Relaxation

Dwarves now go to common rooms, sit in chairs, and chat with each other while eating. This makes them happy!

Sleeping has also been improved, and makes a bit more sense. Dwarves’ energy levels are tied to the time of day. They prefer to sleep in beds, but may sleep on the ground. When all the dwarves are asleep, the player can skip forward to daytime.

Happiness

Dwarves now have a “Happiness” meter. Several factors influence happiness, such as getting paid, eating, talking to friends, witnessing a death, and more. Unhappy Dwarves sometimes refuse to work, and prefer to sit around loafing. The effect of happy/unhappy events decays over time.

Crafting

We have added craftsdwarves into the game, and have created a simple crafting system to make use of them. We’ve also added a “coal” resource. Craftsdwarves build items at workshops, and are now the only class that can build rooms. Crafting involves selecting an item from a menu and then deciding where to place it. Craftsdwarves build the item at the workshop, and then place it where it belongs. Right now, there are only two items: a bear trap and a lamp — but we intend to add many more!

Bear traps trigger when any enemy crosses over them. The bear trap is destroyed in the process.

Wizards

Wizards have now been added to the game, but since they don’t do anything special yet, I wouldn’t recommend hiring them! In the next update, we hope to add some wizardly stuff. Their main role in the game is to research magic spells and enhancements. It’s sort of like the tech tree of DwarfCorp.

What’s Next?

Porting

The macbook we ordered using the Kickstarter funds has finally arrived, but as we were focused on adding these new features, we haven’t gotten around to making the Mac and Linux ports of the game work properly. We will be pushing for Mac and Linux support by late November. Again, we do have running builds of the game on both platforms, but they are too slow and buggy to be playable.

Making all the Rooms Work

After build 1.1.2, the only default rooms that don’t do anything right now are the Library (magical research) and the Training room (for leveling up military Dwarves). So we’re going to add a magical tech tree and give those military Dwarves something to train with. Once we’re done with this, we will be close to having at least skeletons of the games’ core features complete.

Rewards / Goals

We haven’t yet begun adding player-created content from the Kickstarter rewards into the game (such as company names, logos, creatures, and credits). We will add at least a few of these before the next release (late November probably). There are a few more rewards (like physical copies and soundtrack) which will not be ready until the game is publicly released.