It's been a long time since we've done a release, but not to worry: we're still working on the game and more updates are coming. With v0.40, here are a few important changes you'll find:

* Using click, hold, and drag on Unemployed People no longer works. Instead, we just have simply: click and drag. As in, yeah, click once, then the icon is attached to your cursor, and then you can just drag it onto another business, click the business, and voila! No more holding down the mouse button. This was the only place in the game that required players to click and hold the mouse button, and thus broke the universal language in the user interface that was established everywhere else. This should now be much easier to understand for new players and more intuitive for existing players.

* The market panel has been visually revised by the work of our user interface artist, with a few more small tweaks coming. Still, it now looks like this.

This is significantly different than the old market panel, which used buttons to add amounts for buying and selling the ingame currency, K (or what we're now calling "Kallings"). Instead of multiple buttons, you can just type in the numbers you want and click Invest (K) or Sell (K). We think this is much more friendly to players, especially given that this game is comfortably a PC-only title for the time being. So, hey, welcome you to use your keyboard to type some numbers.

We also began working on the next update already, which focuses on two major areas: the new player tutorial mode and savegames. The tutorial mode will teach new players how to play by explaining all of the different panels in the town view, how the different game mechanics work, what to look out for, and then: it'll get out of your way and let you play. For savegames, we've begun working on the code that allows serializing game state into save files, and then loading that state in on demand. You know, like... like a saved game. But the real importance behind the savegame system is the ability to configure new games more how you'd like to play, thereby increasing accessibility - choosing your starting cash, setting the number of turns you'd like to do, and other possible options.

These are both big undertakings with how the game is currently designed, so they'll take some time to complete.

We will probably make a few more minor releases without these features as we continue to work on these areas, so please be patient while we complete these new features. Some minor features you may see in the near future we're working on include:

-More new user interface designs which improve the experience and make the game more visually attractive, the first two of which will probably be the business management / info panel and the unemployed people screen

-An overhaul of the expenses system and visual appearance of the panel which allows for different benefits at each expense level. The game will inform you of those in the Expenses panel screen

-The grass field that your town is built on is nicknamed "the canvas" because it is just that: a blank, green slate. Instead of this, we're looking at how to improve the visual appearance of the canvas to allow more attractive scenery when you're constructing buildings, such as trees, foilage & greenery, and other small details

Oh, one more thing: the game is now available on Linux. Please let us know how it works for you on that operating system. We've tested it with Debian but it should work on Ubuntu as well when using 64 bit systems.

Thanks for reading! We'll get back to work now and let you enjoy v0.40.