Hello, friends! Big news: new progression system! 🎉

We’ve got super exciting news to share with you! We’ve been working very hard these past few months, and we’re quite proud of the result. And what is that? Completely reworked progression! Not to brag, but “Cowboy” feels like a whole new game now…



What was progression like before?

Honestly… it wasn’t great. You could only unlock things by progressing the narrative. For example, you couldn’t build or craft anything unless you finished a specific quest.

And, more importantly from our perspective, managing the progression was incredibly hard. The simplest change, like wanting a certain craft to be available even a bit earlier would require tinkering with the quests and narrative, and those are a very delicate web, especially in a non-linear game like ours!



What’s it like now?

So, we decided to add a completely new layer: good old fashioned experience points, so you can level up! And not just one set for those, though. We added three experience pillars: Farm, Fame, and Frontier!


– Farm Points: Earned by upgrading your farm.

– Fame Points: Earned by helping and interacting with NPCs, and doing quests.

– Frontier Points: Earned by exploring and making new, more advanced things.


You can see your points and levels in the “Progression” menu. It also shows what cool stuff you’ll unlock at each level. Need points fast? Complete fun challenges under each pillar to get more!



Here’s a sneak peek into our work-in-progress of the progression screen. Do not get too attached to it just yet, we are working on overhauling the UI too!



What can you unlock?

There’s a lot of freedom when it comes to that. Depending on which progression tree you want to go with, rewards may vary. They include:

– new buildings
– item crafts
– forage possibilities
– entire game features
– special dialogue lines

... and many others!

And, these new dialogue lines aren’t just for chatting – they start quests, and even whole storylines.



How does it work?

Say you’re talking to an NPC, and you see a greyed-out dialogue line. It says you need Farm Level 3 to select it. You check your “Progression” menu – you’re at Farm Level 2 and need more points ...

... What can you do about it?

– complete a farming quest on your farm (like sowing fields)
– complete some challenges: there's lots and lots of those, so there’s always something to do!

Boom, now you’re Farm Level 3 – go back to the NPC and unlock an awesome quest!



Was that an easy rework?

Well, it wasn’t – the new system has to work with all the other systems, and itself be easy enough to manage and maintain. Also, now we can’t simply say “you can’t build that before that quest is completed”. You can gain experience through many different activities, so the math has to be perfect if we want the game to be balanced.

So far though, it’s looking good! Now, if we want to give the player some craft earlier on in the game, we just change its availability level from 10 to 7. Done!

All in all, we think that “Cowboy Life” is now way more engaging because there’s always something to do. On the other hand, if you don’t want to do quests, and meetings, but simply explore, farm, and make a mark on the land, you should also get some experience, and level up.


So what do you think? Don’t hesitate to reach out, comment, suggest, or share a laugh! Follow us and shoot us a message at our Instagram – @odd.qubit. We’d also love to have you over on our growing Discord server – here’s the [[url=https://discord.gg/C8qr3S6WwX]link[/url]].


Happy trails, friend.