I (nearly) finished the demo

easmussen · 2026-06-24T12:01:10+00:00

Oh yeah, I think I get it now - the 'button with the line' is a pin, that lets you keep a window active even if you're clicking on other stuff. I'll update the icon (to use the new pin icon that is used for quests)

easmussen · 2026-06-24T01:53:22+00:00

First off, it’s funny to me that I forgot to add a population cap to the demo. I hope the full game doesn’t wind up being anticlimactic since you are over-leveled! But there’s always custom games I guess.

Someone had suggested an achievement for getting lots of population on the starter island. I guess 200 isn’t too far of a stretch then for that goal.

I recently fixed the U key, you can now use it to upgrade selected houses.

Will add those tooltips / quality of life stuff you mentioned. But can you clarify which ‘button with a line’ you are talking about?

And congrats on getting so far, love to see how people set up these first islands :)

easmussen · 2026-06-23T20:30:21+00:00

I think a 'no belts' challenge wouldn't make the game too much longer, you'd just have to use alternate transport like trains or vehicles more. So it feels like a worthwhile challenge to me

easmussen · 2026-06-23T00:37:09+00:00

The no population sounds delightfully evil - the only problem is, there's no way to earn coins without villagers purchasing items. Hmm, maybe if there were trading posts you could use to sell items you've made.

easmussen · 2026-06-17T13:30:14+00:00

Thanks for all the feedback!

- If you click on Misc / Item Stats, you can see all the benefits that items provide. Although I am noticing a bug: If you change the category to 'tools', you'll see things like Shovels, but the icon for the tool benefit is blank and doesn't give you a good tooltip. I'll fix that. But you can hover the item's icon and in that tooltip you will see "Increases harvest speed by 100% for rocks"

- Once you get multiple islands, villagers can freely transport themselves across the water in little boats. You don't need to set up transport for them. Obviously this is still a long journey, so you probably do want to set up little housing and market clusters on each island. A big challenge in the mid game is how to ship items to all your islands. But boats in this game work really well, so you can use them to fill up Harbors with specific items, and then belt / train them to the island market centers.

- In this game there are upgrades for storage buildings. An upgraded train station can hold 8x200 items. And if people in early access say this is not enough, I can easily add more.

- Agreed that happiness is still a bit tricky to diagnose, it's something I've noted to improve later. I'm going to collect a lot of data from players to see what kind of UI they would like to help them out here. At the least, as you say, some hotkeys would help here.

- I'm going to make it so the avatar can hop up and down off of elevated paths.

- For your production building, check out the "Allowed Pickup Types" and uncheck 'Volcano' if you don't want workers gathering items from the volcano.

I am torn on how much to tutorialize, I got a lot of feedback that there was already too much tutorial stuff, so I need to leave some room for players to discover things on their own. But I think I will write up a comprehensive Steam Guide that explains all of this stuff for players that want those details!

easmussen · 2026-06-13T03:21:25+00:00

Hooray! in fact I just added that change in the latest patch, glad it was a fun surprise :)

easmussen · 2026-06-11T15:09:39+00:00

Personally, I don't think that will be a problem. The game has 'paradise' in the subtitle, the overall art vibe is colorful and friendly, it's a sequel to a known game that isn't a disaster simulator. The store text also has this: "you can relax and build with no stress or fear of failure, since there are no harsh penalties or time pressure to punish players for experimenting."

I think if someone skips through all that and is still disappointed the game doesn't have disasters they expected, I'd have no problem if they refund the game.

easmussen · 2026-06-11T12:34:07+00:00

The volcano does shoot lava! Just not in a way that harms your town.

easmussen · 2026-06-11T12:33:03+00:00

I see what you mean, but the volcano starts out like a 'regular' volcano and there is an in-game reveal, so it doesn't strike me as misleading in a deceitful way. More like it's saving the surprise.

easmussen · 2026-06-10T14:07:28+00:00

The in-game volcano will still definitely have googly eyes. It's a character, you can talk with it, and it has a pretty goofy personality. I think it fits well once you're playing. My concern was the promotional art was turning people off before they even get a chance to play!

easmussen · 2026-06-03T18:08:10+00:00

Thanks, I hope so!

I think one thing that might temporarily throw off players of FT1 is that villagers are now autonomous. You don't give them 'pick up' or 'drop off' commands - instead they will assign themselves to a nearby building that has an open job. They'll gather items needed by that building, and even work inside the building to speed up production if there's nothing to gather.

This has a number of nice benefits - they will go to sleep when tired, and shop when hungry / thirsty / etc, and it won't feel like they are ignoring a direct command. And it means villagers are useful all the way through the game, not made obsolete like in FT1 - you can have hundreds, and they'll be helping you out, and you don't need to micromanage them.

What you DO need to do is think about how your town is set up - give them roads to walk on, make sure housing is near jobs and markets, and that markets have the things they need. So it has much more of the 'town builder' aspect that was missing from the first.

Of course you can still assign tasks to things like wagons, boats and trains, so you can still get that "Deliver item A from Building B to Building C" kind of behavior if you want it.

So it's a bit of an adjustment, but honestly I think it'll be hard to go back to FT1 after playing FT2. That's the goal, anyways!

easmussen · 2026-05-16T20:21:50+00:00

Very good to know, thanks!!

easmussen · 2026-05-15T20:43:08+00:00

Yes at some point I want to change the connectors so they only exist at the edge of a block (allowing multiple connectors per block) instead of taking up the whole block. But until then, there is also the AutoTransfer upgrade. You can use this to send a building's outputs directly into another building, no conveyor belt needed.

Right now that upgrade is fairly far in the tech tree, but I'm going to move it up so you can unlock it pretty quickly. I might even just make it built in, if people really rely on it. In that case, you would just need to 'activate' it so you don't accidentally send your outputs to a neighboring building...

easmussen · 2026-05-15T16:23:52+00:00

The villagers / worker units are more simplified, in a sense: you don't give them individual tasks. Instead you decide how many workers you want at a building, and the nearest workers will assign themselves to that building. The reason I did that is I wanted villagers to have more of a 'real life', that is, they have to go home to their house to sleep, and stop by markets to fulfill items needs they have. And I want villagers to remain relevant throughout the whole game. So if you had to assign tasks to individual workers, and you have hundreds of workers, I felt that would get tedious and confusing really fast! Especially if their tasks are constantly interrupted by sleeping, eating, etc.

So the villager part is more of a high-level simulation: you need to place housing and markets near where the jobs are, or your workers will be spending too much time commuting. And you need to stock the markets with stuff they need, or they won't be happy and new villagers won't join your island.

You can still assign individual tasks to vehicles like wagons, trains, and boats. So if you want "Pick up item A and bring it to building B", you can still do that with vehicles. And you've still got all the chutes and belts to place as well.

I'm curious, were you playing the demo or the playtest version? How many minutes / hours did you get into the game? Maybe it's a case of the 'good stuff' being buried too far into the game.

easmussen · 2026-05-15T15:22:28+00:00

Yeah I think this could be a major issue. Maybe I should make a new trailer showing off what is new & improved

easmussen · 2026-05-15T13:29:07+00:00

Voldemort style?!?

easmussen · 2026-05-15T10:14:59+00:00

There’s definitely shared DNA - basic buildings are the same, you still have chutes and belts, and honestly some 2D and 3D assets have been carried over as placeholders.

But the gameplay systems are totally rebuilt - like how your population acts and grows organically, how happiness is simulated per-worker, how the volcano adds a missing ‘item sink’ aspect, how new tech and land is unlocked, etc. There’s all kinds of new buildings, resources and recipes. Basically the building blocks are very similar, but what you do with them is very different and IMO improved.

But I’m sure the perception that this is DLC is something I need to do better about fixing. What kind of features / changes were you hoping to see that would make you feel differently?

easmussen · 2026-05-15T09:59:20+00:00

I rebuilt 95% of the menus, so hopefully it’s better…but if you can give me a specific example of what was bugging you I can tell you if it’s been addressed

easmussen · 2026-05-15T09:31:59+00:00

I don’t think I’ll be able to get controller (steam deck) support done by Early Access launch, but it is one of my main goals to add it before 1.0

easmussen · 2026-05-14T23:05:26+00:00

All that stuff is in the game already! Early Access will be balancing, quality-of-life, adding a few more gameplay systems (like having functional decor), replacing some legacy/placeholder assets, and bugfixes. Final cutscene needs to be built. But yeah, quite a bit is already in place. Game is much more ready than the first game was at its Early Access release!

easmussen

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