This update has a very important fix (memory leak), which isn't very interesting, but it also comes with a set of 9 new events that may trigger under specific circumstances. All of them are repeatable, which means you can figure out what triggers them and use that strategically in your game.
There is a bit of rebalancing happening as well, specifically in the Angry Letters department. Until now, even if you played well, chances were you'd reach your limit for complaints and get fired before winning. To help even those odds, Angry Letter Forgiveness rewards are nearly doubled throughout the game.
Finally, this patch lays the ground work for Alpha 9 and for some of the meta game features planned for future updates. All stuff that isn't necessarily visible in the game at the moment, but lay the foundation for the next layer of the game (mini storylines based on decisions in previous events).
Changes in alpha 8.8
- Added 9 new, repeatable events, conditionally triggered with a mix of negative and positive effects
- Added a new sprite for the sample Angry Letter
- Added 5 new decision hooks, which can influence later events (mostly setup for next patch)
- Added Reporter name elements matching characters from Friends, Seinfeld, and Beverly Hills 90210 (setup for future achivements)
- Added a check for whether celebrities are alive, before being associated with a story
- Added tracking for how many times each celebrity has been featured (which can affect their opinion)
- Going beyond your max word count may now trigger happiness loss as stories are edited down
- Rebalanced Angry Letter forgiveness rewards, increasing each by 50-100%
- Tweaked the randomness of events playing out a tiny bit
- Fixed a bug that wouldn't let you toggle the music on and off freely on the map
- Fixed a memory leak on the Map affecting later chapters especially
- Fixed bugs related to Personality Trait events