Seven fixes, before and after

On 4 November I sat down and played my own town, Ashwell, for a whole day. I did what a player would do and wrote down everything that felt wrong. Seven of those got fixed the same day, and I filmed each one twice, once broken and once fixed, so you can see the difference.

The first was the smallest. An old shaft in the hills has a card, and on it a button that boards the opening up. I clicked it and nothing happened. The card was being hidden and shown again on every tick, so the button was never there long enough to catch a click. Now one click boards it up, and the card shows the wood the haulers still have to bring.

Then Remove. Dragging it over a patch of forest only covered 10 by 10 tiles, which is nothing when you want a whole wood gone. It now covers 20 by 20.

Worse was a well. Four haulers had ended up walled in at its spot under a storage yard, and they could never leave. They just stood there. Now someone walled in walks out over the buildings first and carries on from there.

Another hauler had a pointless job. It kept lifting felled logs off a planned road and putting them down again right on the same road. Now it carries them to open ground, away from the road.

Doors and roads used to be enemies: a door could not open onto a planned road. It can now.

Outside the healer’s door a crowd had jammed in a one-tile lane, everyone waiting for everyone else. Now walkers who are held up go round, and after a few seconds the stuck ones squeeze through. The jam clears.

The last one was tired people. They walked at a tenth of their speed, a sleepy snail. Now they walk at half speed at worst, still slow, but they get where they are going.

The same day brought bigger changes too. People now have health, and Cinderkin fight hit by hit. They eat crops whole and raid homes and the market, and hunger and thirst can kill. You can see people inside their cabins, farmers belong to the farmhouse, and a haulers hut splits its places between haulers and builders. A label names what the mouse rests on, and roads are built tile by tile. The test suite also went from 2.5 minutes to about 25 seconds, which makes every later fix cheaper.