A new month, a new devlog as usual. The new demo has been playing smoothly and mostly stable. We´ve recieved a lot of love and feedback on the new demo so far and we have patched some minor and some bigger issues for a better experience.
This month we've also finalized the new store artwork and interface details!
Next Tiers
The demo contains 90% of the first 3 planned tiers, but the full version of the game has many more tiers of progression planned. Right now we are working on completing the demo tiers at the same time as we implement the next tiers - sowing it all together to make them fun, relaxing and challenging all at the same time.
If you want to see what we're working on, there is an official wiki with the progression system explained in more detail, here: Folklands.fandom.com
Two of the features that have been essential to get right are the trading system and the way your settlement population grows - how new people arrive to your settlement and advance through the tiers.
Trading
Since the demo does not unlock mining or producing your own tools, we wanted you to be able to continue playing and building your settlement in the demo if you feel like it. That's why one of the recent demo updates introduced the first preview of the trading system. This gives you a sneak peek into the surrounding Folklands kingdoms, as well as a little look at how trading and interactions will work. For now, it lets you get hold of tools to expand and grow your settlement with the features that are available in the demo. We've already seen some impressive settlements, and can't wait to see what you're all building!
Rewritten folk arrival and progression
Until very recently, our solution to settlement growth was to spawn new folks when you built a house. This is true to the mechanics of some of the games that inspired Folklands (think Settlers and Anno), but play testing and streams have shown us that for Folklands, this doesn't really work well. So, we've updated the demo with a new folk arrival system, where folks will regularly immigrate to your settlement as long as you keep your existing population happy, and have enough free housing. This also means that if people start becoming unhappy because you deny them berries and water, they will actually start to leave!
Gameplay improvements
The last thing we want to highlight are some gameplay improvements we're working on. Many of the game buildings provide service with coverage areas, so one of the improvements coming to the demo is an adjusted visualization of service coverage when building and selecting service buildings such as tax offices, builder's huts and fire stations.
In addition to this, placing roads have been improved by adding entrance markers when you build roads or buildings - so you can see where and if your buildings are connected to your road network. This also outlines the building footprints, so you can see why you can't build a road straight through the backyard of Günthers house.
The updates are coming soon to the demo, as we continue working towards the Early Access release. Let us know what you think in the comments or forums!
