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Have you had any issues in the latest update (0.2.9)? It should be fixed (goxen have a larger hitbox, and the axe can hit enemies at any point during the swing animation, not just one frame of it).

I'm hoping not to add too many changes to the demo area, instead adding more to the inaccessible areas around the demo so that it's not a big deal if you import an old save - but if you want everything like the Goxen Arena (it's like the cattern and afowl ones), you can restart.

Generations and having kids will not be available in the demo, as it requires meeting the goddess of fertility.

I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

Obsidian tools are weaker than bronze, but they never expire (so it's kind of a tradeoff). Obsidian is also much more common than copper (once you have a pick strong enough to mine it), so that's part of the reason it's weaker.

Greater creatures have a 5% chance to spawn in no-star biomes (which is all that exists in the demo), but there's a guaranteed one of each type in arenas.

Old saves will be compatible with future versions. Areas you've explored won't re-generate, so any changes to those areas won't transfer over to old saves (for example, the goxen arena wont spawn in saves from before I added it), but the majority of the world will spawn around the demo area, so you won't miss out on much.

Rubies have the same spawn chance as emeralds - both are rare, but it sounds like the RNG gods just weren't favoring you until now. Since you have an emerald wand too, try using it to blow on fires made with the ruby wand...

Rubies can only be found in obsidian, and will require a perfect-quality bronze pickaxe to mine (since you can't make steel in the demo). It'd probably be easier to get the sapphire in the chest guarded by the swampjaws in the southern river.

I'm glad you're enjoying the game! You cannot make cheese yet - but you will eventually be able to make it in the demo, I just need to add a cask structure you can put milk in.

The latest update was meant to address a lot of those comments - it explains the stats and suggests a build with 5-6 endurance for new players, and adds a lot of tutorial and qol stuff to make the early game less difficult. I also reduced the amount of time to research things - as I want things to move relatively quickly (this game is meant to take place over multiple generations, so years have to fly by haha).

Goxen are never immune to attacks, but I might want to Increase the hitbox - as the axe has to be pretty close right now to hit it.

I'm glad you're enjoying the game!

I'm definitely planning to add more village building - including setting up a market and a village square.

The borders of the current world are the planned borders for the demo version - but the full version will definitely add more biomes and parcels outside these bounds (once you can see parcel coordinates, you'll see these parcels have x/y coordinates in the hundreds so there's plenty of room to expand in all directions).

If you accept a build house job, Hughes wont touch that house no matter how long it takes you to build it. But, I don't want those NPCs sleeping in the open forever!

For the bugs:

1. This isn't a bug - the flora and fauna guides always exist, but they show much more information once you reach wisdom 8 and 9.
2. Yeah, Riley can plant anywhere within the bounds, and prioritizes the middle of the bounds. Usually you want to keep the region as small as possible (as you pay per tile), but I could have her prioritize planting in already dug tiles.
3. The Adrian bug was fixed this update.
4. Swampjaws are aggressive, but they do eventually give up and go back to their nest.
5. The audio bug "should" be fixed - it was caused by using too many channels, hence why reloading fixed it.
6. Doors and windows for other NPCs is planned once I finish the acquire item job logic - they have to request a door (they can't craft it themselves)
7. Afowl won't spawn inside houses or the range of scarecrows... but they can spawn in yards. I could potentially keep Afowl from spawning within enclosed fences (although that requires keeping track of what's actually enclosed)
8. NPCs can accept jobs - but they won't look at the quest board until 11am (gives you time to accept jobs before them and the npcs time to work on their own stuff). Also, for the acquire item job, they will only accept if they have the item - so asking for a reasonable amount of wheat or wood will work, but asking for sand will fail (as no one collects it yet - Vivian will eventually), and asking for 99 wheat will probably fail, as it'll take Riley a long time to get that much.
9. Shelves are going to be part of the market quest and shops are on my roadmap - but for now they are decorative.
10. Pink dyes are obtainable - harvest flowering lilypads with the hoe to get it (this usually requires building a bridge to reach them).

That's awesome! The next update should be tomorrow - it has a lot of QoL and tutorial stuff!

I haven't decided how much the full game will be yet. And yes, the chili bug is only in the downloadable version - it was not handling a null value properly, that'll be fixed in the next update.

Huh, I wonder why? Maybe she was busy with something else? If she'll accept the quest if you give it to her directly, then she'll take the quest when she checks the questboard, but it's possible she never got a chance before it got too late.

Since they are a fake item, that won't let them disappear - but it will once I post the update (so you can get rid of them).

This is a known bug caused by batch cooking with some items having higher quality than others. I have a fix ready, and it'll be live in the next update.

Ah, if you plant a crop right in front of a door, that actually counts as indoors (hence why the roof disappears when you stand there). I'm not sure how important this is tho - as why would you plant a crop right in front of your door?

You can mark multiple areas you want (the minimum cost is based on the size of the region, so it's more or less the same cost for a few small areas vs one big one if you want an irregular shape). It'd be complicated to exclude individual tiles, but I could just add a rule for no planting crops in the corners around trees/blueberry bushes.

Sure - send me the save file, and any steps needed after loading to see it happening (you can e-mail it to david.m@fancyfishgames.com)

Tamed creatures cannot attack their owner - if you attack your tamed creature enough times, the taming ribbon will break and they can finally attack back, but that doesn't sound like what's going on. Currently, there's no way to revive creatures - that's a planned change, but if sally died she'd be gone for good. The teeth are just a daily drop for swampjaws.

As for grudges, they do fade over a few days, but yes, creatures can remember you attacked them or stole their eggs.

Villagers can be killed, but not permanently (death revives them the next day). I need to make this clearer by adding a gravestone where the NPC dies and you can ask Death about it there. Iris should re-appear the next day, unless she dies again (if a lot of afowl make nests in her territory and attack her as soon as she awakens, it's possible). I'd watch her location (in the relationships tab), and if you go to her location and there's nothing there, she died that day.

The error has to do with your save file quota, not memory, so it can't have anything to do with other tabs being open. But, I did realize that the quota is set per domain - in this case itch.io. So I don't get 5-10mb for Witherspring Wilds, itch.io gets 5-10 mb for all browser games and site cookies total - if you play a lot of games on itch.io, that could easily fill up! A simple solution would be to play on a site other than itch.io (like our homepage), or to clear cookies on itch.io to reset your quota (but beware, this will delete ALL your save files across all games on itch.io, so make sure to back saves up before you clear cookies).

Yeah, the sprites would need to be redrawn (and the player would need sleeping directions to rotate beds). But I think beds, tables, and bookshelves are worth rotating - maybe a few more.

NPCs can die, and they revive the next day same way you do - I'm thinking of adding a gravestone where you can ask death about it to make it clearer.

That sounds like a pretty normal save file size, and should be well within the default quota for most browsers. Worst case, you can always try the downloadable version.

It looks like your save file (slot 2) is larger than your browser is willing to store - it varies per browser, but there's nothing I can really do on my end. You can export the save and re-import it by dragging it into the browser window, or try to increase the quota (even large saves I've seen are less than 100kb, and quotas are supposed to be 5+ mb, but maybe your browser is more restrictive?

You just need to select the research item you want to research - then it will progress every day. Unless it says no research selected, you're all set, just go to sleep haha.

I loaded your save, and as expected, she died of old age as she randomly spawned really old. I'm gonna change it so she always starts young in new saves - that should fix it!

You can import saves by dragging the .gensav file into the game window - I'll add a note about this in the next update.

I'll change it so seeds aren't movable, that does seem like a problem! I wonder what happened to sally, are you sure she's not hiding in the pond? It's possible she died - but if so, Iris should probably say something! Mind sending me your save (e-mail it to david.m@fancyfishgames.com)?

Iron/steel isn't usable in the demo really as you saw (I'm actually going to remove steelworking from the demo as you can't reach the required 3 stars). Gold can be used to make magic wands - although I'm gonna change tier 1 wands in the next update to require bronze, as I want to let players get started with magic a little earlier (but tier 2+ will need gold). The red ore is a ruby, which is only useful for magic wands, but will require a perfect-quality bronze pick.

There's no need to hate liking a game! That just means it's fun (yay)!

1. Which furniture specifically would you like to be able to rotate? It'd be a little tricky to rotate crafting stations with the crafting animation, but I could certainly see rotating bookshelves.

2. This is a planned feature, although probably not soon.

I'm still working on the NPC logic (and relationship stuff) - the reason you see Riley out and about is because the farming logic is one of the few that is done. You do have to complete quests with them to help them unlock higher levels in their skills, but they should be able to do basic tasks, and barring that, wander around instead of staying home all day!

I'm glad you're enjoying the game! Yeah, I haven't added touchscreen support, so you need a keyboard or gamepad (or on screen gamepad) to play on mobile.

Hmm, I just followed your steps:
I tamed the cattern, the chest lock disappeared. I confirmed I could open the chest, but also reloaded and tried not touching the chest at first, same result.

I went to bed, when I woke up the next morning, there was an egg, I collected it. The lock still didin't appear.

I opened the chest with no issues.

Was the lock visible on the chest? And what did it say when you tried to open it?

I do like when players discover things for themselves and too much tutorial can be annoying and feel like handholding, but I do think being clearer about some things (like the hourglass icon) is a good idea.

You can mine ore inside obsidian rocks with a higher quality bronze pickaxe (see the crafting section of the encyclopedia for tips to increase quality). When you unlock refining and smithing 2, you can attempt to upgrade the quality of your bronze pick too. This is definitely late-stage for the demo tho.

Riding a swampjaw is not going to be a thing - I thought about it, but decided you could tame them too early to be a water mount and made them too small to support the player. There will be a water mount later game tho!

Strange - as soon as you tame the cattern, the chest should unlock, but maybe there's a bug? I'll look into it.

Yes - the two hats look different and unlock for two different skills, but they are functionally the same. There's also two hard hats (with 14 skills, it's hard to come up with unique hats for each one haha).

I should probably have the sword check if there's a wall in the way - although I have to be careful as otherwise people will get frustrated if they feel like they should hit, but it fails as it clips a wall.

I'm glad you're looking forward to the game, and there will definitely be much more dangerous enemies as you get farther away from the demo area.

That was smart to use two ropes - as usually the mountain top overhangs the river (intentionally so there's a nice river cave). I'm glad you're enjoying the game, let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions as we move forward!

You can build a bridge once you have 2 construction stars and researched engineering 1, but there's an easier way: the river freezes in the winter and you can just cross the ice.

Find the cairn up there during the winter, and you'll be able to teleport back there even after the ice melts.

To change a control, select what you want to change, then hit the key you want to change it to (it sounds like you already did this as it changed the tool button). Afterwards, you MUST hit okay - if you hit cancel it will undo any changes you made while the control window was open, and if you hit reset, it will reset all controls to defaults.

I'm glad you're enjoying it! I'm definitely blind to how the game plays as a new player since I've tested it so much - it seemed fine to me, but a lot of players had issues with the controls at first, but I'm glad you figured it out. I know what my next update is going to be.

The goxen are indeed a lot of fun - especially being able to fight while riding them!

Unfortunately, no, we had to strip all the online features like Aground Cloud due to networking restrictions on the Switch.

If you cannot fly, surface structures are accessed by moving up (the W key). Equip any flight item, and it switches to action like normal. This was set as there was no reason to hit up at the surface if you can't fly, and makes Z less cluttered with npcs, objects and structures.

I did tag that the game doesn't use AI (it's now required on itch.io), but I don't see where the tag shows up on the game page...

A lot of game development is experimentation - I thought it was a good idea, I wanted to try something new, and it just didn't work out. I don't know why you feel the need to be, as you yourself said, unnecessarily hateful, but after spending years making a game that I thought was a really cool idea but was not well received, the last thing I want to read is a more hate piled on.

No. While the game features AI in the storyline, no AI was used to create the game or assets.

GOG is curated, meaning they don't let every game on their storefront. The way the original Aground got on was because of the votes it got on the GOG Dreamlist - you can see Aground Zero's dreamlist here: https://www.gog.com/dreamlist/game/aground-zero-2024 (but it only has 17 votes so far).

I will probably release Aground Zero on itch.io at the full launch - but it's easier to not have to manage many storefronts during early access (where there are frequent updates).

If you still haven't received an email, try resending it now - it should be much faster (switched the mail provider).

The emails are slow to send right now - I'm working to switch to a different service, but for now you just have to be patient (they usually arrive in a day or two).