Time for our first competition, with an opportunity for you to help us heaps with testing the level progression model, while grabbing some awesome in-game bonuses unique to this testing phase.

The goal is to reach Level 20

Participants will be rewarded with a big boost to their profiles when the game restarts for the last time in a fortnight (so you’ll get to keep these forever, no more server resets!). Here’s what you’ll get for achieving the following:

IMPORTANT: To be eligible you must also have completed the survey!

• Play the game: 10,000 HD
• Reach Lv 10: 20,000 HD
• Reach Lv 20: 20,000 HD + Limited Edition Alpha Flower

And we have a special something in store for the first person to reach level 20

Good luck everybody, have fun, and remember to help each other out by visiting groves and gifting items. We’ll post an update on how everyones going in a couple of days.

PLAY HERE

It’s been a grueling couple of weeks but we have arrived and Alpha Version 3 is now LIVE for you guys to play with.

Please remember to take the survey as its incredibly import for us to gauge reaction to the game. We’ve now hooked it up so that if you click the link below the game and complete the survey, we’ll reward you with an extra 5,000 HD! (the bonus will be processed for you overnight)

This version was a big deal for me as we crossed the line where I started having honest to goodness fun with our own game. It’s always been the objective of the game to feel warm, relaxed, connected to the natural world while letting players work towards something they can craft as their own. I felt that involuntarily, without having to fill in the blanks with my imagination, it’s just there. So now the more important part comes, to see if YOU get it too. New stuff:

- Grove Expansion! You grove will get bigger at levels 3, 5, 10, and 15. These expansions also bring with them a Fruit Tree, Frog, Hummingbird, and Toucan

- The Fruit Tree starts out little and will grow to soaring heights if you come back to water it daily

- New creatures for your grove as above

- Refined XP progression, blockages are now free to clear once you get to the required level. Yellow Seeds are now a big deal and could be the key to you advancing quickly (they make a flowerbed double in XP and HD)

- Stacks of new foliage and flowers

- Caterpillars now walk along the bottom of your grove, and are fed in the same way as other animals. Make sure you feed them the right host plant!

- Visit your friend’s grove by clicking on their portrait. This will grow their Social Flower, and you’ll be able to harvest from their visitor flower

- Gifting. You can drag any item out of your inventory and into your friend’s grove to leave it for them as a gift

Stay tuned for details of a competition that could win you a serious in-game bonus when we start the game for real in a couple of weeks. We’re creating a race to level 20, so if you’re super keen to start you could begin …. oh… NOW!

Alright team the next build of the game is ready for you to take apart. Play here!

The updated survey is really important for everyone to take so that we can see whether the game is getting better. It also provides crucial feedback specific to the improvements and feature additions in the latest build. This survey resets every time we reset the build so make sure you fill it out for each revision. Remember: be honest and critical. Here’s what changed since the first release:

• Tutorial introduction to the game
• Feed the frog and beetle for XP
• New pricing structure means you can get more, and unlock more areas faster
• New pollination rules: Flowers recharge honeydew over time, really fast at first (1 HD per 5 minutes) then slower over time, stopping after 24 hours. This means you can choose how often you want to come back without having to set some crazy schedule, but you still get rewarded for returning often
• Upgrade your flower beds! See if you can find a super rare Yellow Seed in one of the treasure chests, then drag it on to a flower bed and double your Honeydew!
• Harvesting HD from friends (50 per friend per day)
• New pricing structure means you can get more, and unlock more areas faster
• Significant frame rate and smoothness improvements

Thanks again so much for all your feedback and help with testing, we’re working hard to make sure you have the best possible game to play

Awesome feedback coming through from our testers. It’s hugely appreciated and as you can see above its already being put into great use in prioritising bugs / tweaks / feature requests. We’re now focusing on:

• - Tutorial intro with dialogues to explain mechanics
• - Tweaking flying to make navigation simpler
• - Some quick framerate fixups
• - Interaction with animals

We’ll be fixing bugs through the week, with a big release and reboot happening next Tuesday. In the meantime keep firing in those ideas and see if you can get to the top of your friends leaderboard