Wow! Where has the time gone? Before we knew it, the changes and new things piled up into the biggest release of Catadel to date. And we’re excited to share them with you on this Christmas Eve!

So, what’s been happening? Well first off, we’ve got an intern! And he’s been doing amazing work. Check out the Acolyte, the church, and the new Level 3 map! All done by the new intern! We’ve also been trying to add more flavor and life to the trait and relationship system. There so much to talk about, and so little screen space … here goes:

New Level 3

Level 3’s been given a face lift. Resources should be more compact, and the level objectives have been re-balanced. Give it a try and tell us what you think!

Note: sadly, old Level 3s cannot be recovered. If you were on level 3 in a save, upgrading to the new game version will reset it so you’ll have to start level 3 over. You’ll get to keep all the cats and profession levels you had though.

New Class: Acolyte

In level 3, you’ll now get an acolyte in addition to a ranger. Acolytes are a ranged combat unit, who can learn to heal in combat in one of their talents.

Church

Also New: Fleas!

Cats can now get fleas from interacting with plants (chopping down trees, tending to farm crops, & harvesting catnip). The Architect can learn how to build a bathhouse, where flea ridden cats can take a bath to remove the fleas. Cats with fleas can transmit them when socializing with other cats, so be careful not to have an infestation!

Other Noteable Changes

Strength now affects the maximum stacks a character can carry. So a character with 5 strength can carry 5 logs at a time, while a character with 2 strength will only carry 2. If a character is forced to carry something heavier than their strength will allow, they will move significantly slower.

Cats now have to ask others to be their apprentice directly — and sometimes this will fail if you aren’t friends with the other cat. Apprentices now earn exp that can be carried over when they become a professional. Masters can now Offer Advice to apprentices (a social interaction) — this grants some experience to the apprentice. You now get a message when an apprentice can be certified to become a professional.

Cats can now copy traits from their best friends. Once best friends with another cat, a “Copy Cat: insert name of trait” social interaction will show up. You then choose to replace an existing trait with the new trait. You can only copy one trait per day.

There’s a new town rating UI actually lights up stars when you reach that threshold. It was kind of hard to tell if you were on the cusp of completing a star before. Now the stars don’t light up until you actually reach that goal.

Lots of Trait Updates

• Removed Energetic and Thick Headed traits from the starting trait selection — they were too strong as starter traits
• Scaredy cats now only get -1 mood hit from being near enemies
• Dust clouds now show up when a cat fight starts
• Pacifists reworked to dislike engaging in violence and to get a mood buff if they have been peaceful for a period of time.
• Thickheaded, Energetic can no longer be selected in initial list of traits
• Cats with the Hunter trait can now “stalk” an enemy, sneaking behind them and stunning them
• Make more activities scale with Mood. Cats now chop down trees and mine rocks slower/faster depending on their mood. You should see an actual slow down in animation speed.
• Bush cat and tree cat get a buff from sleeping at the right height
• Loners get a buff when they are all by themselves
• Playful cats get a buff when they’ve played a lot
• Charming cats that are Shallow will always succeed at bragging
• Shallow cats can brag about themselves to others and get a stacking buff per successful brag.
• Gluttons get a mood bonus if they eat till full
• Sleepy cats get a mood bonus if they sleep to max
• Changed trait distribution for predefined characters – there should be more variety in traits seen
• Angelic cats will get a bonus to their healing done (Useful for Acolytes)
• Miserly cats will randomly finding gold sometimes. Gold finding chance is based on the cats’s luck stat
• Changed Grumpy to Sourpuss and made it the opposite of playful. Sourpuss cats will almost always reject being asked to be played with
• Added Pessimistic trait, now opposite of Optimistic
• Playful cats get a buff from playing with others and will want to play more than other cats. Playful cats get bored if they don’t get to play with things

Quality of Life Changes:

• Make options menu have tabs now
• You can now save cats in library files and share them with others
• Random cat generation now works — no guarantees that their traits will be a good combo, though!
• Add option to tweak mouse click and mouse drag sensitivity
• Added a green glow effect to characters that can level up. Different notification sound now plays when a character can level up
• Architects will now consider resuming building their last building, if it is far away
• Combat units will prefer attacking the same target instead of changing targets mid fight
• There’s now an ability to view all your cat’s relationships with other cats
• Make buff list be more visible when there are more than 4 buffs on a cat
• Each point of luck now increases dodge and crit chance by 5% (still tweaking this). Luck is now shown in more character selection dialog
• Combat damage numbers now fly up in the UI based on your selected characters. You can see how much damage you’re dealing and receiving

And finally: Bug fixes

• Fix containers in Windmills not being considered for storage
• Fixed autosave file being in a bad state if quitting out of the game while in level select after selecting restart level
• Fix for characters in old saves not having any traits at all
• Fix for select rectangle broken on lower levels
• Fix for characters running away from combat getting interrupted a lot