This version IS compatible with previous saves.

Before I proceed, I want to make few things clear. The new NPC art is intended as a placeholder and will get replaced again at a much later date. These sprites were AI generated, but I had to edit them quite a bit to remove any obvious flaws and to make the blinking and talking animations. 

New NPC sprites

One of the biggest flaws of the game right now are the graphics and especialy the characters. The first NPC in the game you see is a stickman, which doesn't give very good first impression. 

I decided spend some time on adding new character sprites for dialogue to all major NPCs. 

For example, here is Billy. Old at the top, new at the bottom.

It is safe to say the new version looks much better. As I said, all major NPCs got the same treatment. Only kobolds are an exception. Here are some more pictures.

As you can see, there are some problems that are inherently tied to AI images. Inconsistency in artstyle is a major one. As I said though, these are meant to be placeholders and nothing more and they do quite a good job at that. 

New text boxes

As you surely noticed, I added new text boxes to the game. There is not much to say about these, except that they change their look depending on the person you decided to join after finishing the story dungeon. A minor detail, but it gives the game more personality and will make more sence once I get the cutscenes explaining the ingame UI in the game.

Next update

Next update will focus more on gameplay. I decided to overhaul the way skipping weeks works.

Right now, you go to an NPC, select a job and there goes your week. Nothing really wrong with that and the game works fine like that, but I would like to give the player more freedom and options when planning the week.

New system will be slot based. Each day will have a separate slot, giving you 7 per week. You will be able to put any job / activity in one of these slots. This means that you can manage your week in greater detail. 

For example, you can spend 2 days working for Billy, one day training with Olaf, one day mining , two days exercising and one day resting. On top of that, most half day activities currently in the game right now will be added here. Mining, performing, woodcutting, exercising, fishing and so on. Activities done in this fashion will be less effective than doing them in your free day for balance reasons.

You will now be unable to fail your job, but you will be paid based on your performance instead. For example, Billy will pay you in range of 2-8 silver. If your stats are low, you will be paid the absolute minimum of 2 silver. As you get better, your payment will increase. Once you reach the top value, increase your relationship and maybe do some quests, you will get promoted and get new range of 10-20 together with increased stat requirements and higher mood penaties. This should increase the difficulty a little in later stages, where mood becomes a non issue. This way you will be getting more money and stats as you get promoted, but lose more mood points.

Mood will have a different effect on job success. It will directly corespond to your chance of "critical success / failure", which doubles / halves the amount of money you get. Ten positive mood points means 10% chance to get double the reward, while twenty negative points will mean 20% chance to get only half the money. This should return some of that "excitement" random success chances in the past had, but it will also make the failures less punishing and working for other NPCs viable even at the start of the game. In the current version, you can't even work for some NPCs unless you spend some weeks training first. In this new version, you will get atleast some money for your hard work.

All of this is just on paper and it is possible I will change some of these before release. QoL things like templates you can save and load are also planned.

Full changelog:

• New dialogue sprites for: Soldier, Generic NPC, George, Billy, Suong, Marcus, Olaf, Roman, Tadeas, Valdemar, Russian and German generals, Mr. White.
• New dialogue window background, which changes depending on the NPC you decided to join after finishing the story dungeon
• Minor fixes for the status window font colors

As always, report any bugs you find here or on the forum. I will try to fix any you find as quickly as I can. The work overhaul will take some time to finish, but I think I can finish it sometime in early december.