Hello again! I try to write up a summary at the end of every month of what we've accomplished and dealt with. This past month has involved a lot of... unexciting changes, like balancing, bugfixing, filling in missing animations, and UI tweaks—but that's a good thing!

If the number of systems I'm adding or drastically changing is decreasing, it means we're not sooo far from a launch (there were still a couple of new systems we added though...)

So what have we been up to in April?

• Buggies! I shoot for 10 bugs fixed each day and I'm now up to 638 squashed since we started tracking them. I was at 604 when I sent the last email 4 days ago so I'm not too far off from my goal. Still about 250 known bugs to go (although every time we do a playthrough we add about 40).
• Started work on Xbox certification stuff. We're failing in more ways than we're passing and still a ways off but we at least have a direction to head now.

• HUD tasks. Now your major quests and tasks are easily accessible in a little HUD panel you can expand or hide.
• Balancing. Now that the game is mostly playable, we've been overhauling ooblet move stats, crop grow times, prices, forageable spawn spots, and loads of other variables to make things more fun.
• Scheduled letters. Now the townsfolk can send you a bunch of mail to help welcome you to town, explain a few things, try to sell you their junk, and remind you of things you probably forgot.

• Homebaby farm grow bonus system! To help SYNERGIZE the ooblet & farming gameplay, we added in a bonus to crop grow times based on how many and what types of ooblets you've kept hanging around your farm (opposed to being in your followbabies team).

• Ooblet UI overhaul. It's now much cleaner and clearer to manage your ooblets (feed, pet, send home, see moves, etc.). I also added in an almanac so you can keep track of what types of ooblets you've grown and what types are still out there.

• Scrollbars! I finally added in visual scrollbars to UI panels with scrollable content.

• Simplified purchasing UI. Ben thought our buying stuff UI was too complicated so we streamlined it a lot.

What's next?

Our main goals moving forward are fixing all the major bugs, getting ready for cert, and just generally trying to make the game more fun and cohesive. Ooblets has so many pieces and we've only just got it all working together, so there's still a lot left to do to make sure it's all working together well.

If you wanna get more in-depth info about some of the work I'm doing emailed to you, you can become a patron for $1/m.

Thanks so much for following along with me and Ooblets!

-Rebecca