Dev Update: The Path Forward

Hey friends of Animalkind!

It’s now been three months since Animalkind launched into Early Access on Steam and we’re as excited as ever to be working on this game thanks to your support. We enjoy hearing your stories, your feedback, and your wishes about the game.

In these past few months we’ve released a number of updates to fix bugs, address feedback, and add quality of life improvements. We’ve also introduced great features such as villager chatter, codex scanning, and fishing. We’re now looking ahead to what’s next and wanted to share our Early Access Roadmap. There’s a lot in there so feel free to expand it if you need to!

While more details will come in the future, let’s discuss some of the themes of the roadmap and what we have in mind.

Town Building Gameplay

We’ve always imagined Animalkind as a game about building a town with your friends and the villagers you befriend, and we want to really emphasize that aspect of the game in the future. We also want it to be easier and more rewarding to decorate, both inside homes and out. So we’re working on new ways to decorate and systems that celebrate your designs as they progress. We’re also working on making the villagers a bit more involved in the process.

Daily Fun

A lot of our players look to Animalkind as a way to relax, enjoy the cozy mood, and help out the villagers. With the Daily Fun theme, we’re going to make the daily rituals of the game more fun by changing how daily quests work. We’re also building a system that makes resource collection more worthwhile, as we know a lot of players really enjoy collecting.

Customization

While we have some truly spectacular colors for our animal protagonists and mechs, the Customization theme is about adding more expressiveness to animal characters as well as the mech. We have some really fun things in store for you in this release. This also includes more ways to modify the environment of the home island, to help you realize the town you imagine.

Full Release & Beyond

The full release for Animalkind builds on everything that came before and broadly elevates the game. This includes the various types of content such as quests, decorations, and villagers. We’ll also be revising the islands you’ve grown used to, making sure they’re fun areas to visit, explore, or establish your town.

A bit of context on all this, though: Early Access is an unpredictable and iterative period of development so no plan is ever truly set in stone. This roadmap describes our vision for Animalkind and many things we’ve already put in motion. However, plans can change unexpectedly and this roadmap may need to evolve in the coming weeks and months. As we release updates we’ll make sure to listen to feedback and ensure stability for our players, which may sometimes take our focus off these bigger features. We’ll be upfront about any changes as much as we can.

Thank you again for being supportive, for playing, and for cheering us on. Join our Discord server here if you’d like to connect with fellow players, share feedback with the team, or just chat with some fine folk!

See you in Animalkind!
The Uncommon Team 🐾