Hello there, Landlords!

We're excited to bring you another update that addresses a lot of the concerns mentioned by the community. On top of the many QoL changes we're introducing, we're also adding a brand new feature in the form of Elite Contract Intros that aims to bring more depth into the jobs you'll be undertaking. Let's get right into it!

Steam Awards

As you probably already know, the voting for this year's Steam Awards has already begun and we'd like to invite all of you to vote for The Tenants in the "Sit Back And Relax" category. The interesting part is that initially we had actually aimed for more tycoon-like gameplay, but thanks to the players' feedback we ended up going in the more chill direction that focuses on unleashing your design creativity instead of comparing tax rates and graphs all day.

We're extremely happy with the community that's gathered around The Tenants and we're looking forward to developing the game further with your continuous support and feedback. Not to say that we're not looking forward to your votes :tt_wink: Oh, and make sure to join us over on Discord (click here) if you ever need help with the game or simply want to chat!

Elite Contract changes

We've always strived to make Elite Contracts truly elite and as such today's update brings changes that introduce more personality to them. As of now, each contract will start with an additional step of having you inspect the property you're about to work on and the actual job will start once you uncover the roof of the building. Do so and your client will appear to give you a bit of background and talk more details about the job at hand! In the future Elite Contracts will also feature new and exciting permanent item unlocks.

Skill Tree upgrades

It seems like almost everyone wanted Uncle Steve to move even faster and so we had him work out a bit these last few weeks! Movement speed upgrades have been buffed and additionally a few new skills have been introduced pertaining to the tenant research feature. You'll now be able to increase research speed as well as add an additional research slot to make your landlording that much more expedient.

Tutorial revisions

As the game keeps growing, new features and mechanics end up being added with pretty much every bigger update. Some of them, however, haven't been properly explained by the in-game tutorial and with today's update, we went back and made sure to cover them all! Placing and demolishing windows, item proximity bonuses, the skill tree, item tags and color variants have all gotten a much-needed in-game debriefing.

QoL tweaks

Small quality of life tweaks are sometimes equally if not more important than new features and this update brings a few very much needed ones. The item checklist in the renovation UI got spruced up and will now merge multiple instances of the same required item into one list entry by providing the required amount right next to the item name. The in-game music will now fade out when you're watching musicians jam it out, and tenant item tag preferences have finally made their way to the UI. We've also heard your feedback regarding trashing and all tenant archetypes will now be a bit less keen to mess your apartments. Not only that but a few lingering bugs have been also smashed and should be now gone for good!

Halloween Contest results

Around a month ago a mysterious man from afar called Dracoola invaded Wondersville and offered a one-of-a-kind job that attracted many aspiring landlords. Dracoola's Call was our first ever design community event and we're extremely satisfied with its reception and impressed by the quality of your submissions! It got close, but in the end in the final voting on Discord one entry prevailed and @vritto became our official winner! Congratulations to the winner and with vritto being our long-time community member we'd like to take the opportunity and thank them for their continuous support of the game.

The main prize of the contest included designing a new furniture set and below is a sneak peek after a session of brainstorming with our victor!



And that's it for today's announcement! Next up we'll be gearing up for the Winter Update which will be followed by the next major update from our roadmap. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the new version of the game and we can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Full Changelog

Features

• Implemented Elite Contract intros.

Content

• Added new skills in the Skill Tree that increase research speed.
  
• Added a new skill in the Skill Tree that unlocks a second research slot.

General

• Added a few new tutorials to explain new mechanics introduced in previous updates.
  
• Added new steps to the remodeling tutorial that cover placing and removing windows.
  
• Tenants will now send their text message responses to apartment events only after Uncle Steve leaves the property.
  
• Tweaked the way item smart snapping works.
  
• Revised proximity bonuses for a great deal of items.
  
• Fixed an issue with moving back to a district with an active tenant request for a tenant that had their contract run out.
  
• Fixed an issue with Open House guests being uninteractable.
  
• Fixed a host of issues with overlapping sound effects and music.
  
• Fixed an issue with time scaling in Creative mode.
  
• Fixed an issue with players having too many available skill points for the number of available skills in the game.

Jobs

• Added a new step to perform in the Elite Contracts where the player first has to click on the building to hide its roof and start the job.

UI

• Merged multiple instances of the same item into single entries on the renovation checklist.
  
• Fixed an issue with skills on the Skill Tree looking like they can be unlocked when they weren't.
  
• Changed the default tab in the Skill Tree to "Tenants".
  
• Tenant tag preferences are now displayed in their context menu.
  
• Added a close button to the tag filter panel.
  
• Tweaked the renovation checklist elements to be clickable (and searchable) while in the Remodelling or Finalize tab.
  
• Fixed an issue with the room context panel not always refreshing on room layout changes.
  
• Fixed the position of negotiation indicators.

Balance

• Increased the speed boosts for Uncle Steve's movement speed skills.
  
• Decreased the pace at which tenants generate garbage in their apartments.
  
• Lowered the required tag scores for the tag category ratings.

Thank you,
The Tenants Team