Spry Fox Making Happiness

(Note: if you haven’t already read it, please first read Summer Update #1, which includes lots of important information about new features that we won’t repeat here.)

Hey Scouts! It’s time to tell you more about what you can expect from the Summer Update. Let’s kick this off with yet another entirely new feature: Stone Skipping! (WIP – audio and vfx are still being finalized)

Every day, a limited number of mysterious, open-mouthed clamshells will reveal themselves beyond the shore. Find yourself a nice, flat skipping stone, toss it across the water into the clam, and rewards await you!

Amazingly, these clams are as appreciative of a skillful, many-skip stone toss as we humans, and will more generously reward scouts who manage to sneak in a few extra skips before hitting their target. Different-colored clams give different rewards; some give quartz, some cough up driftwood, and some will reward you with both of those things simultaneously. And on very rare occasion, even better rewards may emerge for a particularly generous clam.

For those of you who’ve unlocked a certain beach-loving character, you’ll be pleased to note that her recurring quest will no longer involve finding skipping stones, and will instead involve actually skipping stones. 😀

New event NPC: Darla O’Hare

Darla, like dear old Pandam, will be gracing Cozy Grove with her presence one day every week (Saturday, in her case.) And we do mean “gracing”… she’s got a very healthy ego and she’s not afraid to show it. Fortunately, she’s also quite friendly, and the source of some pretty cool new features and content!

• Darla is willing to sell you second hand items from her rather extensive clothing collection. This includes, but is not limited to, *wigs*, which are effectively hairstyles that you can keep forever in your closet and swap into whenever you want.
• If you let her, Darla will challenge you to dress up in a specific outfit for her (this can always be accomplished with clothing you already own and/or is currently available in stores that same day.) Completing Darla’s challenge will result in her awarding you with a unique clothing item that is not available anywhere else in the game! We’ve added a whole bunch of new clothing outfits just for this purpose.

New feature: animal naming!

So many of you have told us that you adore your spirit animals… so we decided to let you name them! No longer will your dear deer “Squishy-Poo” run around nameless and forelorn.

New content: more “decoy” item sets!

We’ve had the ability to make you search for a specific item from a set of similar-looking items for a while now, but we haven’t made much use of it. In the Summer Update, we’ll be adding several new sets of decoy items to various quests. Harvesting a decoy (instead of the true item you’re supposed to find) can cause a “bag bug” to hop into your backpack. You can get rid of those pests by tossing them into the water (or Flamey, if you’re feeling harsh.)

New content: treasure maps and lost lore!

It is now possible to find rare bits of “treasure maps” and “lost lore”. Once you’ve found all the pieces, you can assemble them for an especially large rewards!

New feature: shell model collecting!

Here’s a fact: one of our Bears loves shell collecting, and many of you Scouts also love the idea of collecting and decorating your island with shells. But up until now, you haven’t been able to do that, because decorating your island with old shells causes new shells to stop spawning.

Fortunately, we’ve got a solution for you! The aforementioned shell-loving-bear will now able to take your shells and convert them into “shell models.” These models look identical to the originals – they’re just a bit larger – and you can use them to decorate the island as you see fit.

New content: more background music!

We’ll be adding two new songs to the Cozy Grove soundtrack, brought to you by the same lovely composers who created the original music! We hope you love them.

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Ok, that’s it for the Summer Update. Mostly. There are a couple small surprises that we haven’t mentioned; we’ll let you discover those on your own. And of course, Ms. Carouse is still a total mystery (and we hope to keep it that way.) You can look forward to her arrival – for a limited window of time – on the first day of the summer event.

You can expect the features and content mentioned in this blog post to arrive in Steam Beta in the days ahead.

Love,
All the Spry Foxes