The Strong

NPC progress

One of our last remaining goals before Open Beta is finishing art for our existing NPCs, below is the progress for Wheatley & Crowley, Nana Nettle, and the finished Maven.

Art by Hydde and Asp.

Art by Azarel.

Art by Hydde, Remmie, Amelia and Azarel.

Farmland Icons

We have also finished icons for our farmland events, these will pop up on the screen along the event.

Art by Hydde.

Dawnstone and Duskstone

We have recently added Dawnstone and Dusktone items. Dawnstone turns any cat into a kit, permanently. Permakits can do anything that adults can other than breeding. Only a Dusktone can cancel the effects of a Dawnstone, which will age up any kit immediately. Below are the finished icons for these!

Art by Hydde.

Fyret Genes and Accessories

Before every artist got retasked on the final open beta prep tasks, they made some amazing progress on Fyrets!

Art by Asp, Tybaxel and Catafyra.

Dev Update

Our dev team has been incredibly busy! They have completed several bug and styling fixes, such as accent layering issues, cat for cat trades, ghost notifications; and new features such as composting, private guild teams, arrows to move between cats, encyclopedia, overhauled cat retirement page and implemented half-step in errands–just to name a few!

Below you can see the updated retirement page, and the first sneak-peek for an upcoming item card overhaul!

Mod Applications

As a preparation for Open Beta, we are looking to hire a few volunteer Discord Moderators. If you are interested please submit the form below to apply. You must be at least 18 years of age to apply.

Color Contest

We are hosting our official PawBorough Colorwheel expansion event, where YOU are invited to submit colors to add to the colorwheel.

By the end of the contest, we will see 50+ new colors added to the wheel by users and staff.

Please click here for more information and on how to enter!

Open Beta Update

In the past 2 weeks our dev team has completed 254 tickets. We are currently working on the last missing big feature, the tutorial, as well as crushing the last remaining bugs and doing various styling fixes and cleanups. 

Our art team is currently working on the last few remaining tasks: NPCs art, fertilizer icons, Onyx Composites backdrop, Moonstone Pool decor, Bazaar backdrop and finishing the Flea Market banner. 

Our admin team is also busy with finishing touches–finishing writings for Encyclopedia, writing the last few missing item descriptions, finishing up Faunapedia entries, some other misc writings, economy rebalancing and making the recolor files for Moontails and the final files for Farming.

Which means….

Open Beta Dates

We are thrilled to announce the official Open Beta launch date!

Open Beta will launch on Saturday, March 21st at 2 PM PST or 5 PM EST or 11 PM GMT.

But… wait, what is Open Beta?

Open Beta is the next step in PawBorough’s development.

Closed Beta was a rougher test phase focused on identifying bugs, and building new features. Access was limited to key holders so we could refine the experience behind the scenes.

We now feel the game is at a stage when it’s ready for the general public. Open Beta will offer a much smoother experience, and registration will be open to everyone. Once the given date comes, anyone will be able to create an account and travel to Kotemara with us. If you registered during Closed Beta, you will not need to register, simply login to your existing account and onboard.

During Closed Beta, we reset accounts multiple times to properly test our systems. There will be no more data wipes moving forward. This means your onboarding choices - and everything you do after - will be permanent.

Open Beta is not full launch yet, however. We have a lot more to do before we can call the game fully launched. However, the Open Beta experience will be much closer to full launch than to Alpha or Closed Beta. We will be focusing on the following goals, and once these are completed we’ll be hitting full launch:

All starter mystic breeds

The Notebook

Multi-cat scenes

General achievements, in addition to archetypes

Referral system

User shops

Cross-user breeding

Cross-borough competition (influence)

Periodic story event system

Universal tagging system and game-wide search functions

Cat profile comments

"Wandering" system for expanded den space

Daily Duty parties

"Additional ingredient" system to expand cook/craft complexity and options

Expansive relationship fostering, with more relationship consequences

Forum code for cat and item sharing

And finally, the golden goose of our application: Large guild/combat revamp with better, more dedicated dungeon crawler and multiplayer mechanics

We're going to be working on this list immediately following the stabilization of Open Beta. We'll be getting right to it! 

While we will be depending on support from users like you to continue development, and the timeline will be dependent on our resources, rest assured that every penny will go back into making this happen, and we'll be taking all your feedback along the way!

Patreon in the future

We'll be slowing down on showing WIP media that is not front facing and presentable to the public. What this means is that Patreon supporters will continue receiving regular updates of our progress, and work in progress shots, which will otherwise be totally exclusive to the page.

What will happen to the discord?

As we've mentioned, the official Discord is a temporary establishment, and not a permanent community hub. For the foreseeable future, the Discord will remain open.

However, it will shut down between now and full launch. When that is, fully depends on usability and environment of the forums. We will be monitoring user feedback on the forums, encouraging users to migrate, and doing our best as admins to facilitate community and social interaction on the forums, with the eventual goal and community understanding of a full transition. We want to hear if you like using them, how to improve them, and what we can do to make the PawBorough forums an overall enjoyable community experience!

Our future Discord mods will be nominated to be forum moderators when our Discord shuts down, should they choose to.

Offsite trades during Open Beta.

Farming

We’re wrapping up the farmland art, with only a few remaining pieces left to complete. Aside from alternative art for the small pens, husbandry is finished.

Art by Hydde, Remmie and Tybaxel.

Obsidian Sentry

Before Open Beta, we’re also remaking all of the Kickstarter decorations and backdrops. Below is the finished Obsidian Sentry decor.

Remade sentry by HellishAsp.

NPC Updates

With our other pre-beta art goals in a good place, we’re beginning to shift focus towards NPC art, including their backgrounds. Below is the finished backdrop for our guild NPCs, Peter and Marion, as well as a work-in-progress backdrop for Maven.

Backdrop by Azarel.

Backdrop by HellishAsp.

Fyret

While not a pre-beta goal, we’re also slowly working on Fyret accessories so they’ll be ready to launch not too long into Open Beta.

Accessories by RavePsin.

Den rework

We decided to rethink dens a little bit, towards a more informative interface. Below are our mockups, which come with all the icons you can think of and custom color coding to allow for clearer organization and sorting.

Mockups by Kida.

Dev update

While a few smaller tasks remain, our current main focus is hunting bugs. We’ve squashed many this month, including fixing the search for user IDs in trades, making sure multiple copies of accessories and decor can be equipped, and addressing several exploits.

We also reworked the heritage information on your cat's profile and released the heritage page along with it, which displays the family tree of your cat in detail.

Moreover, we released the account numbers, which are account-bound statistics, showing interesting information about your account, such as how many litters you had or total copper spent and earned. 

Reflecting on the year

The site has come a long way since this time last year, with several new features, more stable gameplay, and oh so much new art. Safe to say, it’s been a long and eventful year!

We finished the last of our accessories and base recolors for each breed, including all Longhairs; and Moontails are just around the corner. We've also made a huge increase in the amount of available decor, reaching 70 pieces this year, which we'll soon triple that by adding farmland art as decoration. All icon art has been completed as well! Over 500 pieces in total, including item icons, archetypes, and various miscellaneous icons like dashboard notifications. We also created several pieces for the farmland and additional misc art, such as guild backdrops, along with a massive progress on unreleased breed genes.

Our development team has kept just as busy, introducing many, many new features while squashing even more bugs. Our small team closed nearly 600 developer tickets this year alone, this covering both tasks and bug fixes! Among the additions are the item database, archetype system and collection page, faunapedia, wardrobe, night mode, dashboard, husbandry and farming, advanced white selector, integrated user reporting system, and the merging of Accent 1 and 2 items into one; just to name a few.

Additionally, we’ve reached over 7,200 resolved Zendesk tickets, all thanks to our wonderful testers!

This is a time for reflection, to look back on the past, to see the good and the bad. And to look towards the future, with hope. We’ve learned a lot this year and made significant progress. While our pace was slower than we initially hoped, we’re still incredibly proud of our small team’s dedication and hard work. We are equally grateful to everyone who has played and supported the game in any way.

With that said, it’s time to look towards the future, and we’re excited to do so with a long-awaited announcement…

Open beta

We are incredibly thrilled to announce:

We are entering the next phase of development!

We have a plan going forward, and we need our testers' help!

We will hold our final wipe during Closed Beta in the middle of January.

After the wipe, we'll ask EVERYONE who has participated in Closed Beta to register immediately and try to break the servers.

This registration will help us determine stress testing and be imperative for ensuring we have a clean Open Beta launch…

Which means... following this registration test, we will be closing the Closed Beta. While we don’t want to provide an exact date yet, we estimate Open Beta to launch at late February to early March.

Longhair accessories

Our artists are busy finishing accessories for Longhairs. We’re in the final stretch, with only a few pieces left to draw. Below are some of the finished pieces! Once everything’s wrapped up, the new accessories will be added to the game right away.

Art by Eemmie, Azarel and Asp.

Premium bundle art

Though not our primary focus, we also continued working on the silver bundle arts.

Art by Hydde and Tybaxel.

A look at the Husbandry and Farming mechanic

Husbandry

Husbandry is the process of raising animals and harvesting their products. Animals are held in pens, players start with two small pens and may purchase up to five using copper. For additional copper, pens can be expanded. Small pens hold up to three animals, while large pens can hold the maximum number of animals, which is five.

After placing the young animals into a pen, players must tend to them for several days. This phase is similar to nesting—you’ll need to provide a specific item from a set pool, determined by the number of animals in the pen. After a few days, the animals begin to produce byproducts. During this stage, players can harvest byproducts (such as honey or milk) daily, or choose to slaughter the animals for a portion of their adult meat yield. Once the animals reach adulthood, they stop producing byproducts and will only provide meat upon removal.

Animals fall into two main categories: flocks and herds. Flocks include chickens, ducks, and bees. Herds include bison, goats, and sheep. Each group has distinct preferences and growth times. Flocks are fast growers, reaching adulthood in just 7 days, while herd animals take 12 days. Animals can be removed from pens at any time. If they’ve reached the young adult stage, you’ll receive a partial reward based on their adult yield.

Harvesting animals affects the pen's grass density, which directly influences animal happiness—and thus, yield. Grass quality ranges from -10% to +110%. Herds prefer higher grass density, but also decrease the quality of the grass when harvested. Flocks, on the other hand, prefer lower grass density and increase the grass quality after harvesting.

Additionally, you have the option to modify the soil quality after each harvest by spreading ash or scraps on the grass - these items are obtainable through another mechanic, called rotting. Rotting occurs to 0 star supplies and foods in your inventory - food turns into scraps, which raises the grass density, and supplies turn into ash, which lowers it.

But wait, there's more! Each day, something might happen. We decided to make the husbandry game more colorful by including random events. When an event triggers, you’ll have the choice to act or leave it be and accept the consequences.

We’ve crafted several scenarios, for example, one of your animals might turn out to be especially stunning, and a buyer visits to offer you silver for it. If you choose to accept the offer, you’ll receive silver, but your harvest will be reduced. If you turn down the offer, no changes will apply.

Another scenario is a predator attacking your animals. If you leave it be, your harvest will be greatly reduced. If you take action, your harvest will still take a small hit, but you’ll also receive a new friend.

To summarize, husbandry lets players raise animals in pens of various sizes to harvest byproducts and meat. Animal growth and yield depend on species, amount, grass density, and random events. Grass quality can be modified by scraps or ash from rotted items.

The pen size, grass quality, animal species and numbers, and random events are all represented through art as well.

Farming

Farming functions similarly to husbandry but has some important differences. Players start with one plot and may unlock up to three more using copper. All plots are the same size and can hold up to ten seeds.

Instead of flocks and herds, farming features stalks and trees. Trees include Avocado, Apple, Bamboo Shoot, Cacao, and Shooting Starlet, while the rest of our current plants—including all incense plants—are considered stalks. Instead of grass density, farming uses soil quality, which works in the same way.

Stalks prefer low soil quality and need only 3 days to be ready for harvest, but they produce only once. Trees, on the other hand, prefer high soil quality, and take several days to reach a harvestable state, but can be harvested five times. They exhaust on day twelve, and when removed, yield rare resources: light hardwood and dark hardwood, which can only be obtained through farming. Additionally, they also provide sticks and, of course, their fruits.

Farming also features random events, such as crickets munching on your precious plants. If you choose to do nothing, your harvest will be reduced—but you’ll gain some crickets. If you repel them, your harvest remains unaffected. Not all random events are negative; for example, bees might visit your field, greatly increasing your harvest.

To summarize, farming lets players grow plants to harvest produce, and wood. Plants growth and yield depend on species, amount, soil quality, and random events. Soil quality can be modified by scraps or ash from rotted items.

The grass quality, plant species and numbers, and random events are all represented through art as well.

Below are some of our WIP and finished art assets for Farming and Husbandry!

Art by Remmie and Tybaxel.

Beta progress

This month we pushed out the finishing touches for the wardrobe, introduced the scene builder, restored archetypes and fixed several bugs. We are nearing the final stretch of Closed Beta. Below is the list of the remaining functions we need before we can go to Open Beta:

Farming & Husbandry – Currently in active development, and the biggest lift of everything in this list.

User-to-User Trade and Direct Messaging

User Report System

Archetype Collection Page

Updating comment UI

Splitting Cooking and Crafting into two

Undercoat Pattern Split

Forum announcements displayed on the main dashboard

Faunapedia Layout

Adding white patch selector to both the Cat Creator and Founder Creator

We know a lot of you are excited (so we are!), and we appreciate your support and patience. Stay tuned — we’re almost there!

To summarize: We shared longhair accessories, premium bundle arts, and farming and husbandry game mechanics.

Bundle Art

We’ve started producing bundle art for our premium one-time purchase item sets! These visuals will soon accompany the one-time purchase premium bundles we introduced recently. These bundles offer silver, copper and various items at a discounted price.

Art by Hydde.

New Fauna

The Northern Enzoi is here! This fauna will be available for all player to use on the site, and will be Hydde’s avatar!

Art by Hydde.

New Decor

We’re also continuing work on decor, with several new items currently in the works! Below are the new pieces we finished this month!

Art by Remmie, HellishAsp, Giulia and Hydde. 

Accessory Recolors

We are currently working on the Iridescent Trail and the Filigree set’s recolors, here are some previews! Please note, this is early WIP, and the colors are subject to change.

Recolors by Emma.

Sweetheart Accessory Set

While we primarily focused on icons, UI assets and decor lately, work on accessories will shortly be our artists' primary focus.Our next goal is to have all currency available pieces ready for longhairs and moontails, along with our three starter breeds. The Sweetheart set has been lined for Longhairs, see them below!

Art by Remmie and Tybaxel

Nightmode

We’ve continued on designing the Nightmode, to give your eyes a break with darker UI themes. While still a work in progress, the goal is to offer a more comfortable experience for nighttime browsing and playing. Below are previews of this feature, all across the site!

How’s Beta?

Closed Beta is still going strong—and we’ve been making steady progress towards Open Beta!

Since our check-in last month, we’ve introduced several new features: one-time premium bundles, the dye system, processing mechanics, and recipe functionality. 

Looking ahead, our near-future goals include the item database, merging the Accent 1 and Accent 2 metamorphic items into one single item, introducing Nightmode, and husbandry and farming.

We’ve also been actively tuning the economy. Prices, drop rates are being refined in real time based on live data and tester feedback. It’s a tricky balance, and we appreciate your patience as we work toward a sustainable and engaging system.Our goal is to feel the time spent on PawBorrough is enjoyable and rewarding for players of all playstyles.

We’ve also fixed a lot of bugs. From small UI issues, to larger exploits and broken features, your keen eyes and tickets have helped us move fast and tackle issues efficiently. We want to give a huge thank you to all of our testers for the help, it is truly immeasurable. 

We’re aiming to keep this momentum going, as we are chuggling towards Open Beta. While we can’t wait to let everyone in, Open Beta will not come until we truly feel the site is ready for it.

Thanks for sticking with us!

To summarize:We shared bundle art, a new fauna, Nightmode progress, decor sneak peeks, Sweetheart accessory lines, and Filigree recolors.