Walk of Life News

[p]Hiya![/p][p]There have been fiery disputes in our offices over what avatars should make it into the game and casualties are in the dozens. With no end to the battle in sight, we have decided to turn to you, our beloved playerbase, to help us choose, before the developers turn on each other like ravenous wolves.[/p][p]The first poll is underway on our Discord, and these are your candidates:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]It's a pretty hard choice, right?[/p][p]Head on over to our Discord and let us know which avatars you'd like to see in coming updates! Make sure to stick around afterwards, as we plan on having more of these polls in the future! [/p][p]That's it for now, back to the office infighting![/p][p]En garde![/p]

[p]Yo! [/p][p]Just a small followup to the last update. We have finally managed to pin down the mouse issue that many of you faced during remote play sessions, and we also added some new life events that were supposed to be a part of the last update. For a full list of tweaks, here you go!
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• [p]Remote Play Mouse bug fixed![/p]
• [p]Added new life event cards![/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where Rent Reports could come while living in the Park.[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug that could cause Report card screen to skip completely at start of turn.[/p]
• [p]Fixed issue where Global events did not clean up properly.[/p]
• [p]Fixed bug that could cause the Report screen timer to stop the game prematurely.[/p]
• [p]Fixed issue where Drifter Jobs would not get registered in longer games.[/p]
• [p]Fixed issue that caused some quests to register an invisible trait with no translation in the character sheet.[/p]
• [p]Added fourth option for Life Events.[/p]
• [p]Fixed Undecided voter achievement.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue that would cause the player to be posessed by an AI demon.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue that would cause the tourists in the city never to leave.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted Cost of quest actions.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted Tarot card probabilities.[/p]
• [p]Removed the Encumbered trait from some quest items.[/p]
• [p]Adjusted Stress penalties.[/p]
• [p]Network Timeouts increased from 10s to 60s.[/p]

[p]It's been a little over four months since we released Walk of Life into Early Access and we're incredibly thankful for the reception that we've gotten. The game is sitting comfortably at a Very Positive review rating, but we're nowhere close to stop improving on it yet!

When we launched, we put out a roadmap of the features we wanted to implement for the game's full release. It's about time we ticked off some of the boxes to mark our progress for all to see. There are also several new features we decided to add to the roadmap as we feel they'd make the game even better.[/p][p][/p][p]Let's do a quick rundown of the things we've marked as done:[/p]

• [p]Job Perks: We've added perks to every workplace in the game, giving them a distinct feel and allowing players to develop certain strategies depending on where they work.[/p]
• [p]Education Redux: The education system received a bit of a facelift, and players are now given rewards in the form of diploma traits for completing a tier of education.[/p]
• [p]The Stock Market: The Stock Market finally made it in, for all you with a gambling investing mindset.[/p]
• [p]Game Modes: We've added a PVP game mode for the more competitive players as well as difficulty modes for those seeking an easier expeirence or added punishment.[/p]

[p]So, what have we added to the roadmap that we felt was missing?[/p]

• [p]Mod Support: We really want to see what alterations the community can make to our game, so we feel mod support is needed.[/p]
• [p]Fishing Update: Fishing as a game system feels very raw, so you can expect some changes to make it more viable and engaging.[/p]
• [p]Pet Update: We want to add more pets to the game and add some depth to the pet system to make it more interesting.[/p]
• [p]Secret Missions: Many players from No Time to Relax sorely miss this feature, so we're working on adding it back with a few twists.[/p]
• [p]Bots in Online: There have been loud cries for this, and we promise that we're working on it! [/p]

[p]And what's left from the original roadmap that's still in the oven?[/p]

• [p]Unique Items and Furniture: We want to introduce unique items that have an impact on the game. More on that soon![/p]
• [p]Pawn Store Overhaul: We hope to make the pawn store a more exciting place to visit, full of surprises and a rotating inventory.[/p]
• [p]Safety and Security: Staving off robbers and muggers during the crime wave and raccoon raids is fairly boring right now, and we want to add more options to protect your home as well as your wallet.[/p]
• [p]Map Layouts: Shuffling the locations on the map and rearranging the roads can lead to interesting gameplay differences.[/p]

[p]Finally, there's the promise of a New Map.

[/p][p]The team is hard at work at a new map, which will not only be visually different from Calicornia, but also introduce new gameplay features! The new map is influenced by various Asian cities, and we're currently trying to find a good name for it. That's where we need your help. [/p][p]Head on over to our Discord server and take part in the Discussion to help us come up with a name for the new map! You can also leave us a suggestion in the comments right here. [/p]

[p]Guess who's back? It's us! And we have a new content update for you lovelies! As usual, we'll have an exhaustive list of changes at the bottom, but here are some of the highlights.[/p][h2]PVP Options In the Park[/h2][p][/p][p]Direct player interaction has been sorely missing from the game until now. We've implemented several options for you to mess with your fellow players by meddling with the game state. These options will only be active if you enable competitive mode during game setup, so you peace loving ninnies don't have to worry about your friends ruining your plans.[/p][p][/p][h2]New Role: The Drifter[/h2][p]The Drifter is a mysterious stranger, disappearing as quickly as they showed up, but not before turning their workplace around! The Drifter is all about, well, drifting between jobs, working for short spurts of time before having enough and moving on to a new job. The Drifter also has the added benefit of retaining job perks for a short time after moving on to a new job. Give this new role a whirl![/p][p][/p][h2]Multiple Bots! Bot difficulties![/h2][p]You read that right! You may now enable multiple bots when playing local games and tune their difficulty to your liking. Unfortunately, the bots are still having issues during online play, so they will remain local for a while longer, but we are working to get these things onto internet games as soon as possible![/p][p][/p][h2]Game Difficulty[/h2][p][/p][p]You can now tune the overall difficulty of your game to three different settings: easy, medium, and hard! Very original names, we came up with them ourselves. The difficulty setting will affect many different factors, including rent, salary, attribute gains and losses, and more that will make the game easier or harder to play.[/p][p][/p][h2]New Global Event: Tourist Invasion[/h2][p][/p][p]A cruise ship full of annoying tourists has landed in Calicornia! During this event, the tourist horde will go sightseeing, occupying a new location every round and locking it. Why would the tourists be so interested in Moo Moo Mart? Who knows?[/p][p][/p][h2]Four New Avatars![/h2][p][/p][p]That's almost five new avatars! Wowza![/p][p][/p][p]There's a bunch of other changes that you can read about in the changelog. [/p][h2]Version 0.45.0[/h2]

• [p]Added a new role, the Drifter, check it out and let us know what you think![/p]
• [p]Added 4 new Avatars (that's a 36% increase, wow).[/p]
• [p]PVP Mode is now available for players who've tasted blood, and want more![/p]
• [p]You can now choose from 3 difficulty settings (easy, normal and hard).[/p]
• [p]Also added a Bot difficulty settings (set per bot).[/p]
• [p]You can now have more than one bot in Local Games.[/p]
• [p]Completely overhauled the Character Sheet.[/p]
• [p]Don't feel like paying your rent? Well now you get evicted and get to live in the Park. It´s the great outdoors, minus the great.[/p]
• [p]New Global Event: Tourist Invasion. All lines are full and there's no parking while tourists rule the streets.[/p]
• [p]Swapped out the NPC Landlady in the Fancy Apartment for a new one.[/p]
• [p]Timer for Reports and Role Selection added.[/p]
• [p]When receiving Quests from VexCorp you no longer get the same Quest twice (unless you finish all of them, which would be quite impressive).[/p]
• [p]Bots have been upgraded with a new Br4v3ry module and will now attempt Easy and Medium Quests in VexCorp.[/p]
• [p]Job Salaries have been tweaked.[/p]
• [p]Role related Score is now shown correctly in the score screen (it was rewarded under other categories before).[/p]
• [p]Bunch of Score screen fixes and tweaks (big and small).[/p]
• [p]A whole lot of new Quests! I would tell you how many, but nobody told me...[/p]
• [p]VexCorp jobs now reward you with access to the Teleportation Chamber over at VexCorp.[/p]
• [p]A lot of bugfixes concerning rejoining online games.[/p]
• [p]Barry would drain way too much Happiness after being voted as Mayor. This has been lessened.[/p]
• [p]Effects for the Heatwave Global Event and Blimps for the other Global Events have been added back in after being removed for some optimization.[/p]
• [p]The Adventurer's role bar has been updated for increased clarity.[/p]
• [p]Education traits tweaked.[/p]
• [p]And like always, a lot of other minor tweaks and bugfixes.[/p]

[p]All aboard! This is the last blog before the next update![/p][p]The crew is busy at work getting everything shipshape for the next update which will be dropping later this week. Clear your schedules! Here are a few tuning features you can expect to be able to fiddle with in the patch![/p][h2]Longer Games[/h2][p][/p][p]We know some of you have been (quite audibly) wishing for the option to play longer games. While marathon mode is still a whole marathon away, you will now have the option to create 40 and 50 round games. We expect these will mostly be played by people enjoying the single player experience, but to those of you that have been looking forward to 6-player 50 round games, we'll see you in 2027.[/p][p]Keep in mind that the 40 and 50 round games are not going to be balanced at all to begin with, as we are still tuning things for the standard 20 and 30 round games.[/p][h2]Bot Difficulty Settings[/h2][p]Our bots have gone through quite a ride. Starting off at a paint-eating intelligence that offended even our newest players, they rapidly developed into supercomputers programmed for one purpose only: walking life. This wasn't especially welcoming for new players as they usually got absolutely trounced by the AI.[/p][p]We have now implemented three different bot difficulties for you to choose from, depending on how big of a challenge you're looking for. Keep in mind that bots in online are still not here, but we are working hard to get them into the game in a future update![/p][h2]Game Difficulty[/h2][h2][/h2][p]Finally, we have also heard complaints from players that either find our game too easy after a couple of playthroughs and others that find it too hard, especially for newer players. To tackle this, we have added three difficulty settings for the games themselves: party mode, normal, and difficult.[/p][p]These difficulties will hit game systems such as salary, rent, stress, and attribute bonuses/loss. Expect the overall experience to be more chill or more gruelling, depending on your preference. Speaking of rent, there will be consequences more grave than having your furniture pawned, but we'll leave you to discover those yourselves when the update goes live![/p][p]Bon voyage![/p][p][/p]