Hello everyone!
I hope you are all doing well. It's been a while since the last announcement, and we wanted to give you a new update.

First, we're happy to announce that we're finally ready to share an official-ish date for our Early Access release.
If all goes according to plan, Card Survival: Fantasy Forest will technically be available by the end of November.

Once the game is out, we'll start rolling out new updates with additional content, just like we did with Tropical Island. However, unlike the mini-weekly updates of the past, we plan to launch larger, more significant updates every few months. These updates will be unlocking 3 additional forest regions, new items and structures to craft, new animals, plants, agents and more.

That said, here's a full list of all the things that you can actually expect in the first version of the Early Access:

- Lots of Survival Content:
Enough content to last you for at least 3 in-game years if not more (each year lasting 120 days).
From Wooden Cabins that can be expanded with cellars and interconnected rooms, a food flavour system that allows for creative cooking, or a complete combat overhaul with lots of moves, feints, and many other features, to fully improved systems for food preservation, herbalism, gardening, leatherworking, farming, animal rearing, weaving, hunting, general crafting and more.
The character creator will also be available, with enough perks to let you create your desired character.

- Exploration & Central Forest Region:
Exploration has been fully overhauled, featuring a less abstract system that lends itself better to foraging, tracking and the discovery of new places.
The available region features a river, a cave complex with multiple flint veins, wet forests to the south, oak groves at the center and pine groves to the north, as well as numerous clearings.
Future updates will include the regions adjacent to this central area, including a large swamp, a higher altitude pine forest and a mysterious oak expanse.

- New Weather System:
Featuring four separate seasons, humidity and cloud formation mechanics, different interacting winds and numerous weather phenomena including rainfall, snowfall, storms and blizzards.
Areas can get progressively covered in snow to the point of making travelling difficult and water bodies can freeze. Animals also adapt their behaviour based on temperature and season. For instance, stags may become more aggressive during autumn while wolves may expand their territories as they grow hungrier during winter.

- Forest Fauna, Hunting and Husbandry:
The starting region features many animals, including squirrels, mice, badgers, foxes, partridges, deers, boars and wolves.
Most of them real agents capable of moving across the forest on their own, leaving tracks for those skilful enough to see them.
They can all be hunted and trapped, and some like the Partridges and Boars can be tamed and bred with a new more robust animal husbandry system that lets them graze on their own among other things. Combat and tracking have also been made substantially more realistic and interesting.

- Forest Flora, Gardening and Farming:
A new gardening system that replaces the old crop plots and is best for growing wild plants and smaller amounts of vegetables. Different plants have different requirements in terms of nutrient levels, humidity and acidity and can lend you their medicinal and culinary properties.
Crop Fields can be built on forest clearings (be them natural occurring or artificially created) and harvested for substantial yields of food and fodder. Different crops will have different effects on the soil; like damaging or repairing its structure or depleting or restoring its nutrients. For this reason special attention needs to be paid on what to plant each year in order to avoid depleting or damaging the soil.

- Digestive System Overhaul:
The digestive system has been greatly improved and now tracks vitamins, proteins and fibers. Vitamins and proteins affect your immune system, mood, energy levels and wound recovery among other things. While fiber plays a role with a newly added and fully functional excretory system capable of passing stools and urine.
This new system should increase realism and immersion while also giving you incentives to eat varied foods. Especially during winter when less food is available!

- UI Improvements:
The UI has been improved to make it less confusing. Stats now appear with numeric percentages instead of bars and cards can now be made visually smaller on command among other things. Bookmark numbers have been increased and enhanced tutorial elements have been introduced to help users navigate the game more effectively.
Individual cards now display their stat information and present artwork in an enlarged format. Stacks can now be expanded or collapsed. This and many more UI and quality of life improvements.

- Player Progression:
For new players or those who like to have a more guided or streamlined experience the game includes a Quest Mode that gradually unlocks blueprints as you complete objectives. That way players can better learn how to survive in the forest with less trial and error.
Veteran players or those who like more of a challenge or simply to discover things on their own can go on Free Mode where all blueprints are unlocked from the start and there is thus a lot more freedom when it comes to survival strategies.

- Mystic Content:
For those of you interested in the things that lie in the metaphysical, spirits can be found when in the right state of mind and can help you with blessings, spells and rituals. There will be a minimum of 10 unique spirits available on the first release, including animal spirits that can provide you with some of their traits, earth fertility spirits that can help you with your gardens and crops as well as other spirits like fire, water and darkness ones. Numerous shrines, charms and ritual objects can also be crafted.

***

We have decided to not include the main agents (hunter and maiden) in the first early access release as we would like to have more time to get them to the right place and we don't want to compromise on other things. We will aim to release them in one of the first few updates.

In the meantime, we will be focusing on balancing, polishing, adding missing art (still a lot missing ;_; ) and implementing some additional minor content.

If any of you have any sort of things that you would like to see in the game, be it animals, spirits, mechanics, items to craft or really just anything please join our discord server for discussion. As usual we can't promise anything but we'd love to hear from you and if we see any way to implement your ideas in a cost effective way, or at least features inspired by them, we'll be more than happy to do it.

You can join our discord here:

https://discord.gg/dURZTmeEaN

See you in the next announcement! :)