Hey Critters!

It’s been just over a month since we launched the game into Early Access, and we’ve been really blown away by the response.

You’ve all been just super fantastic in your support, and we look forward to your continued support as we move forward in making Critter Cove an even better game. So thank you, thank you, thank you.


Since launch day, we’ve been prioritizing and sorting issues and suggestions based on your feedback. We’ve been focused on fixing up bugs with over 100 bug fixes across more than ten updates. We’ve also added some quality of life improvements, and a few new bits of content here and there.

Of course there’s always more to do… Even though we want to really get back to working on the main game more, we will continue to release regular bugs and QoL improvement patches until we get the game into its best possible state.

The biggest change that we are going to make moving forward is we are going to split the Roadmap into smaller chunks instead of trying to do them in just two large pushes. By splitting them into smaller sections, we can get content updates out quicker.

This first content patch will include automated resource gathering Robots, new boat upgrades, farming improvements, including an NPC Gardener job, the ability to move townies out, a whole lot of new quests, and a bunch, bunch more.

German and Spanish language support is also continuing rapidly, and we’ll keep you updated.

We can’t wait for you to get your hands on what we’ve been working on.


We’ve also found a little bit of time to add many of our recent improvements and fixes to the demo.

Alongside hundreds of fixes and improvements, there’s some major performance upgrades that we had made between releasing the demo and the Early Access build that are now included, and much more complete language translations.

If you have friends that you think might enjoy the game, now is a great time to point them towards that!

We look forward to continuing to make Critter Cove an even better game, and thank you again for being such awesome fans.

Finally tracked down the bug that many of you have run into where a storm refresh of resources, including refreshing critters to pickup out in the world, did not appear to always happen or appeared to have some very long waits between storms (weeks).

The issues was you could sleep through a storm, so sleeping right away on a storm day in the morning or anytime before the storm hit would not count as a storm day and the resource refresh would not apply. So technically you could keep sleeping over and over and never have a storm refresh.

You will now get credit for the storm refresh when you wake up on the day after the storm if you slept through the storm on the previous day. Sorry for the delay in tracking this down and thank you to everyone who reported the issue.

Game Play

Fishing from boat. Equipping your fishing road will now let you fish off of your boat. Unequip your fishing road to drive boat again.
Added new additional fiber based resin recipe

Bug Fixes

Selecting new shoes in your inventory will replace the current set of shoes instead of adding them as alternative shoes (left or right food).
Fix issue where some people had gotten the deliver lunch to Rigs quest twice and the second time was not able to be completed. Will auto complete that quest now.
Storage/Chest naming now works again with the letters C and Y fixed the conflict caused by the sort and auto transfer buttons.
Prevent furniture or clothing fetch quests from being completed with quest or no drop items.
Fixed issue where clothing, food or furniture quests could interrupt each other if you have multiple turn ins ready.

Animations

Fix a animation for Axolotl swim.

Fix for those that after the update can no longer enter the game and keep getting the pop up to exit the game and start over with continue.

Very sorry to those that this happened to, thank you for your patience.

Gameplay
Added Critter Cove Cap Early Access reward…thanks everyone!
Added SORTING and AUTO STACKING functions to storage. More to do here but its a start.
Matcha is now an athletic character.
Adjusted several clothing items to be in more suitable categories.
Eddie should now like working at the Cafe.
Added The Great Plane Robbery scenario to Boomerang Bay.
Reduced fiber cost for most recipes.
Fiber can now be used as a fuel for cooking fires.
Resin recipe now requires wood instead of fiber.
Updated Aster and Trevor food likes.

Bug Fixes
Fixed bug where quest items were disappearing from players inventory before they could turn in items to NPC.
Putting on a wetsuit or similar one piece items that take up two slots with full inventory will no longer cause you to lose a clothing item.
Carts and chests must now be emptied before players can pick them up so you do not lose the items in them. Working on a way to move these and planters without having to empty them but could not get this done in time.
Fixed the extremely loud music that would occur when the game first started.
Fixed item duplication bug that could occur sometimes while decorating.
Cleaning up extra items that might be getting stuck in peoples inventory after completing certain quests: Rigs Lunch, Luggage, Anchors Chest, etc.
Fixed many issues related to other languages not always showing dialog due to a formatting bug.
Fixed several emote issues in dialog some NPCs were having.
Fixed a few issues that could get tourists stuck on the island after they should have left.
Fixed several holes in the world that could allow players to get underneath it.
Fix for Renard sometimes locking himself in his shop and not coming out.
Fixed issue with Happy characters behaving incorrectly when in the tavern job.
You no longer lose items from the Recycler if your inventory is full.
Lots of recycler bug fixes including split inventory fix, duplication fix, random item fix so now recycler should give predictable items.
Fixed bug where it was possible to give quest or no drop items to characters asking for clothing or furniture.

UI
Added Mail Icon to the HUD when you have mail to collect.
Fixed the interaction text showing up as 2 lines instead of just 1 in certain languages.
Items on the bulletin board should be easier to read now.
Changed dark red text to be easier to read in some cases.
Added a few new eye styles.
Furniture fun style should now be using the correct icon.
Removed the blank gym icon from the town list.
Fixed the medium aqua planter icon.
Area for finding Anchor’s Leg should be marked correctly on the map now.
Anchor should now refer to himself correctly in French.
Fixed issue where sometimes when selecting dialog with the space bar and arrow keys it would not pick the correct option.

Art
Fixed issue with sunglasses 02 having incorrect color on certain heads.
Fixed issue where Bean Suit would make the NPC remove their facial hair or features.
Fixed the large food sizes of Cheese and the Ultimate Wonk.
Fix for water texture around shores looking incorrect on Critter Cove and Oh Kay

Fixed message for deleting objects that said it was for deleting the character. It was not in fact deleting the character but the object, message was just wrong. Sorry the confusion.

Gameplay
Critters will now attempt to sell players maps and salvage less often.
Slight increase to swim sprint and fin speeds.
F5 saves anyplace anytime.
Auto saves each hour, helpful if something happens during EA that you need to roll back to a previous save to fix. You can find auto saves in the Load screen in the Main Menu on the start screen.

Bug Fixes
Fixed wardrobes that were acting like mimics and eating people.
Fixed issue of extra lunch that would sometimes get stuck in players inventory.
Fixed problem that was causing players to not be able to pick up certain planters while holding E.
Moved sandcastle waypoint in an attempt to keep NPCs from moving into it.
Pathing fix on Hotter Tropic that was causing NPCs to move under the world.
Fixed NPCS sometimes not asking for a tent, getting them into a stuck state.
Fix for Recycler sometimes getting stuck in the busy state.
Fixed issue where Woolington would sometimes not give the player the key. You can now return to him and get a new key.
Fixed issue with townsfolk doing tourist convos while interacting with deco items.
If you are missing the crate from Renards shady quest line it should now be in your inventory.
Fixed issue with recycler not working, going unresponsive, not being able to be picked up after a save if it was in the middle of recycling.
Fixed issues with splitting inventory into the recycler.
Fixed issues with duplicate objects coming out of the recycler (sorry folks)
Recycler now gives the correct amount of objects when processing.

Art
Fixed issue with Fancy Mirror not being able to be removed from walls.
The Fancy mirror should also activate appearance change now.
Fixed issue with Woolington sometimes not going to Critter Cove.
Removed some rocks and trees that were blocking where some people put town decorations.
Fixed collision issue on one of the new houses.
Collision fix for cave near submerged cave.

UI
Updated Tourist and Relationship UI that was causing issues with localization.
Various UI cleanup to journal, recycler, and the load character screens.
Lots of spelling and dialog fixes.

Fix for people who had two or more villagers trying to get into the same house or already gotten into the same house causing an extra journal entry and or donation box.

Fix Cafe quest causing an issue where you cannot remove the villagers from a job and close it out in your journal (was not isolated to just Cafe Food quests but the root problem is now fixed). Closes out the quest on load and reward will go to your mail box.

Fix Planter pickup bug (both aqua and land) where you could not pickup a planter box without putting all the seeds in it first. Hold E or primary on controller will now pickup planter as it should.

Fix minor bug with the spring rolls recipe.

Improvements

Sped up underwater sprint and flippers.
Increase the number of villagers you can bring back to your island by +3.
Added two more buildings to choose from or at least let you move characters into them now.

Fixes

Professor Woolington will now always get on your boat and move back to the island regardless of how many citizens you already have.
Villagers picking a house to move to but not showing the donation box. Donation box should not be available.
Villagers will stop trying to pick more then one house.
Pathing where some character would teleport on five little crabs.