Howdy folks!
I figured you might be interested in what our upcoming release schedule looks like – so here you are! Please note that it’s subject to change; we all have full-time jobs, and it’s always hard to tell what the holidays will bring. That said, we’re reasonably confident that this what our schedule will look like.
THIRD OR FOURTH WEEK IN NOVEMBER: Equippable items! This will see an expanded selection at the Wall Market. We’ll release more details in a Design Diary, but expect to see things that 1.) increase your Styles and 2.) increase your gains on grind cards. That said, most of it won’t be purchaseable until the Day 2 update… because all of it will cost more Dollars than are currently in the system.
THIRD WEEKEND IN NOVEMBER: An interstitial chapter between Day 1 and Day 2! This will answer a few of your questions about what happened to the Protagonist at the end of Day 1.
SOMETIME IN NOVEMBER OR FIRST WEEK DECEMBER: Revamped character sheets! This is hugely interesting to us (although probably not as interesting to you.) The Location Quality will be disappearing. Items will be categorized. Other things may be categorized as well. Grinds will also begin providing Reputation… although you won’t have anything to spend it on until the Day 2 release. (Another Design Diary will be arriving presently to explain Reputation to you.)
END OF DECEMBER/BEGINNING OF JANUARY: Day 2! This will be our second major release. Expect to see 50+ new storylets. Taken together, it should take 350+ actions to play through all the new content.
MID TO LATE JANUARY: New Nex-locked content! Those curious about the Gun of Santo Guerrero will be able to pursue its mysteries.
We can’t wait to share all this stuff with you folks! We’re working daily to make it happen. Please let us know if you’ve got any requests or suggestions; our ears are always open.
DAY 2 DESIGN DIARY #3 – EQUIPPABLE ITEMS, INVENTORY CHANGES
Okay, we’ll cop: this isn’t strictly a Day 2 thing. The equippable item update will be coming sooner than the Day 2 update. But we figured you might want some insight into what we’re going with equippables, and we’re already in this Day 2 Design Diary cycle, and why waste a perfectly good opportunity, &c.
Zero Summer is fundamentally a mechanics-light game. It’s not very fiddly. And much of the fiddly fun comes from juggling storylet outcomes – in other words, managing which Qualities you want to gain. You can’t always know what branches will do to your character sheet, but we try to give you a pretty good idea most of the time.
That said, we think equippables are a good mechanical way to do two things:
(a) reward players for earning Dollars, which will happen faster for players who do ‘extracurricular’ questicles (much more on those later…)
(b) encourage players to customize their character sheets (e.g. while the Sharp-Spurred Boots and Barman’s Best Friend might both give +1 to Gunslinger, the choice between which to equip is meaningful in terms of how you conceptualize your Protagonist).
Ultimately, we want to empower your sense of your Protagonist while also giving you some gentle mechanical advantages.
We’ve decided that equippables will do two things:
- Items in the Gunslinger, Cityslicker, and Doc slots will raise the relevant Style(s). Most of these items will only raise one Style. A few will raise two. Most equippable bonuses will range from +1 to +3. A very few items will grant larger bonuses. These more powerful equippables will be earned as Reputation rewards (oops! a spoiler!) and from Nex-locked branches.
- Items in the Talisman slot will accelerate your Quality gains from grind cards and similar. There will be Talismans that increase the grind gains for each Style by ~50%. There will be similar Talismans for Reputation gains. Some Talismans may also have other effects – Membership, after all, Hath Its Privileges.
Expect to see equippables implemented in mid/late November. Although you likely won’t be able to afford them until the Day 2 patch, when we’ll be implementing an increase in Dollar gains.
And if you’re interested in a preview of what our equippables will look like, why not check out our Facebook page?
I hope this is the place to ask questions about Zero Summer… I am in a situation that seems to be locked: was having the Evening under Lamplight and it ended… and now I have two opportunity cards that cannot be played, and no pinned cards and nothing to do that does anything…
Also, I can see it is kinda ironic, as I’m locked in “Sunrise House…” And I know it’s been a ruin for a many poor boy… But do I have to be one ?
@Alar: howdy! Sorry you’re having trouble. So let’s diagnose! What are your current values for your subplots and “The Dark Hungry Eyes…”?
@Gordon: Good day, sir ! Relevant qualities:
Legends of the Fall 5
The Dark Hungry Eyes of Elena Villalobos 6
Drinks with an Excitable Engineer 1
Company for the Governor’s Aide 7
An Amateur Astrologer 7
A Game of Dice 7
Ally: The Governor’s Aide Ally: The Governor’s Aide
Your Dance Card 4
The Wounded Welkin
Time of Day: Evening
Date: May 21, 2026
Character name: RdN, account: RayDNoper
Anything else ?
Yep: we need your Harvestmen/Hallowed Ground/Cutting Your Spurs. ;)
OK, here they are:
The Harvestmen 19
Hallowed Ground 21
no Cutting Your Spurs…
Aha! You’ve bumped into a bug we fixed upstream awhile ago. We knew a few characters would get snagged downstream – the fix was only for going forward. You should be good to go. Please let us know. Thanks!
Logged out and in again, and… still the same - two opportunity cards that cannot be resolved and no pinned cards / opportunity deck… Looks like this: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Spoke too soon! Different bug entirely; should be fixed now. Check and see if that Dark Hungry Eyes should be playable. That should get you back on track – but again, please speak up if it doesn’t.
Nope :) This is the tooltip: http://imgur.com/CBB8g and clicking on card still does nothing…
I think I see the problem… There should now be a card in your Opportunity deck. Draw and play!
Cool. Progress :D Thank you !
In any case, this seems to be the most interesting of the new StoryNexus games I’ve tried so far… Good work :)
Whew! Glad we got you rolling again. Thanks for your patience – and thanks for playing!
The place after the white was well written keeping with theme, however some stories even when much devotion was put into finding out more about a certain professional was unachievable. Despite flipping a singular card at a time and using up one to repeat to improve my odds of finding the card I needed the best I got on this venture was three. Which leaves me with a starving hunger.
Not a long enough experience to truly test out your new refresh rate. Does this mean other stats will face similar menace states to compensate?
@Samuel: we are FOOLS and forgot to put in discard branches. Please allow me to fix. In the meantime: be assured that you will revisit Rio Seco… often. :)
All three Styles will have Menace states as of Day 2. Grind branches will also begin giving out Menace for failures.
(The Menace for Cityslicker is The Heavy Hand of the Law. The Menace for Gunslinger is Ailments. They land you in fairly predictable places: jail, and the Free Clinic.)
I got you-know-who’s Profession up to 6, but the storylet in the Scrublands card that lets me continue the story isn’t there! I think it’s a bug…
It’s not a bug. :) The branch at 5 has text indicating the next card can be found in Amarillo’s Scrublands.