Zero Summer Discussion Thread

SPOILERS!

I’m stuck after meeting Pohoee and his special talent against the sky creatures… with only the Absolom the Tinker card as a pinned card. Did I hit a snag? Did I perish?

Qualities:

Ally: Warren Castillo
Seer of Rabbits 1
Afraid of Heights
Date: May 21, 2026
Glorious in Peace
Ally: Sermon on the Mount
Hallowed Ground 21
The Harvestmen 19
The Postmaster’s Right Hand 3
Ally: Jack Ishiguro
Mirrors and Reflections 1
Helping the Brothers Skunk 1
The Skunk Brothers Farm: An Associate
Cornskunk '26: Smoke and Guns
A Charitable Heart
The Texan Job 3
Ally: Miz Nils
Ally: Nicco Carfora
Ally: Calo 1
Ally: The Governor’s Aide
A Rain is Gonna Fall 8
Ally: The Excitable Engineer
The News Around Town 1

Char Name: Matticus

@Matticus: there SHOULD be another pinned card explaining that you’ve hit the content cap. Which clearly I futzed up last night when I opened the new content to our closed beta testers! Sorry about that. Expect to see another dribblet of content tonight that should properly transition you forward.

Oh, those Scrublands. Wasn’t quite clear on that.

I realized that inclarity and changed the wording this morning. Thanks for the catch!

[quote=VRB]I seem to be stuck. No location has a pinned card to get Time to Move On 3. I have Cityslicker 17, Doc 17, Gunslinger 18, The Ministry of Black Powder 14, Hallowed Ground 8, and The Harvestmen 8.
Any help would be appreciated.[/quote]
I seem to be having this problem as well, so it must not be fixed for all cases.

@Ian: sorry to hear you’re stuck! Let’s diagnose. What is your current Date and Time of Date?

May 21, morning. I fulfil all the criteria for advancing, except the “Time to move on 3” I am currently at 2, but I’ve gone to every available area and there is no opportunity to increase it that I can find.

Aha! We missed an inconvenient digit. The relevant HG pinned card in the Scrublands should now correctly increase your HG on success. Let me know if that resolves your issue. Thanks!

@Gordon No dice, I’m afraid. The only 2 pinned cards that I can see in the scrublands are Travel around Town, and Advance Time, which is locked due to the Time to move on quality being too low. What do you mean “HG”. Is it hallowed ground. Because if so, we may have had a miscommunication. The game isn’t telling me to increase HG.

HG is Hallowed Ground. Time to Move On is raised at the end of each subplot. Thus you’ll need to increase HG to increase TtMO. :)

I’m not really sure what to tell you here. Are you SURE your HG is 8?

A-ha! Ok, the card told me I had done everything I could on morning of Day 1. Will look for ways to increase HG. Thanks, big help. :)

Emerges from cloistering himself trying to finish The Silver Tree

Ah, linear, straightforward, non-grindy plot progression, how I have missed thee.

Anyway, hm. Is the rampant capitalization of everything intentional to cement the surreality of the place?

-“Through a Glass Darkly” branch of the “Investigating the Scrublands” card: …where cows and sheep graze overwatched over by…

-In “The Undertaker’s Trade” card, the “Perhaps Not” option has a different sub-description (what’s usually the result text: “Opportunities always come around again” or something like that) than normal (“Your plate is already full.”)

Those are all the errors I found. Looks great! I like how you’re putting effort into making menace areas dangerous enough to be a deterrent, but interesting enough to not make the player bored out of their skull. Though perhaps that’s just because it’s likely the most supernatural menace area. :-) Most curious indeed.

@Ian: let me know how it goes. There SHOULD be a card available to you at HG 8 in the Scrublands. That should be the route to Time to Move On that you’re missing. If there isn’t, please let me know and I’ll continue to diagnose.

@Little The: glad you enjoyed! Thanks for the typo catch. Certainly this is the most “unnatural” Menace area, although I think the others are just as good. They’re all designed to both “punish” you – that is, send you to a place that is Formally Bad – while in fact rewarding you with snippets of plot.

PATCH NOTES: BEHIND THE WHITE NOISE (BETWEEN DAY 1 AND DAY 2)

General

[ul][li]Various bug fixes. Expect to see more structural improvements during the EQUIPPABLE ITEMS patch coming in early December.

[/li][/ul]
Behind the White Noise

  • “Behind the White Noise,” Zero Summer’s first Menace state, is now live! “Behind the White Noise” is also the transitional space between Days 1 and 2.[/li][li]“Behind the White Noise” features ten new storylets and 30+ Actions of play per visit. Other Menace states are coming in the Day 2/Morning patch. They will feature similar gameplay, including questicles that begin in the Menace state and continue into Amarillo.

An admirable design philosophy.

I’ve played through White Noise. After raising my Undertaker quality to 5, I was told that the Undertaker’s story continues in the Scrublands, but subsequent Scrublands cards didn’t mention the Undertaker (just the choices for finding Junior). I lowered my White Noise to 0 a few actions later. All told, it took approximately 15 actions to finish. Is that as designed?

@Tea Biscuit: functioning as intended. Each trip through a Menace state will take between 15 and 25 Actions. And I updated the Undertaker card this morning to clarify: the Amarillo Scrublands. Rio Seco is somewhat afield. :)

@Little The: glad you approve! Our motto, now as ever, is “Entertain and Edify – In That Order.” We never want to punish our players for doing anything. And anything dressed up as punishment is usually intended to broaden the experience of the game, not shrink it. Thus why we don’t dock you Actions for things, or take away your stats in any significant way (the largest possible drop from a Menace state is ~20 change points, which is negligible in the scheme of things), etc.

Put another way: we want to reward people for playing Zero Summer with more Zero Summer. Doing it any other way would be counterproductive – for our players and for us.

Excellent! (I should bone up on my geography. And read more carefully.)

@Tea Biscuit - If you find Rio Seco on a map /do/ let us know. :)

*this particular Rio Seco.

We should like to have a word with Goldie. About her loose morals. Clearly someone should.