We have some amazing new content on the way in our next Main Street update!
For this patch, we're trying out an alternative way of alpha testing. Instead of doing biweekly tests that are only two days long, we plan on testing less frequently, but we will leave the servers up for two weeks for players to enjoy!
This should allow us to do more pre-testing to relieve major bugs before everyone plays, avoid more last-minute hangups, alleviate some pressure of rushing to put out content at that pace, eliminate the weird scheduling process we were trying to do to match alpha tester availabilities, and create bigger, more exciting tests for all of our players!
So, what's new in this alpha test?
One of the most exciting announcements is that we have a major Valentine's content update ready for everyone!
With the new update, we added several new heart-themed furniture items to decorate your stores with! Enjoy spreading Valentine's cheer with an assortment of heart doormats, heart rugs, heart wardrobes, heart paintings, and more!
You'll also see a couple of cute Valentine's decorative objects around Main Street, replacing the normal lanterns around town for the duration of the event!
Keep an eye out for our limited-time Heart Fruit Trees, too. Collecting enough of this fruit will allow you to craft the Valentine's Day decorations to use in your store!
Along with the new Valentine's Day-themed content, we have completely reworked our old building system!
Attempting to place an item will now show a preview of where that object will be placed.
The item will be green if it is placeable in that location and red if it is not. We believe this will make decorating much easier and more intuitive, especially for newer players.
You may also notice that objects will shake and make an audio cue when placed. We found this to add more immersion to our placement system!
We've also compressed our sounds and music to improve performance and loading times for all players.
Another fun recent change is the introduction of Wall Mounted Furniture! We have a variety of new decorations for players and many special decorative paintings for our Patrons waiting for you in-game!
The ability to mount decorations on store walls should add a lot of additional customization to shops, so we can't wait to see how you decide to use them to decorate!
Also mentionable is that we have fixed a few known bugs and added cleaner, more crisp-looking player nameplates!
For those of you new to the game, since we don't yet have a tutorial in-game, we have a very detailed tutorial blog post answering pretty much any question you may have about how to get started. You can check it out here!
If you're only new to the Valentine's content update, here's how to enjoy the new furniture:
Search the map to find Heart Fruit Trees (these look like regular trees but with pink or red hearts growing on them)
Gather the Heart Fruit
Once you gather enough Heart Fruit, you will unlock the ability to put a limited amount of Valentine's Day decorations in your store
Collect more Heart Fruit to place more decorations
Enjoy having a festive shop full of limited-time decorations!
(Note: All Valentine's Day decorations that you unlock during the limited-time in-game event will be available to you in the future, even when the event is no longer active!)
Have fun, everyone!
- Sonic -
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