Welcome to another major update of Fech The Ferret!
4 months after last update, we've primarily worked around the end of the current build: a park is now located after the river zone and the brand new city Marmocle is now accessible, which will eventually serve as the main hub for the game.
During this time we've also laid the groundwork for a quest system and notifications on the UI to warn the player about any change of state, like saving and having picked up objects.
Lastly we've continued with improving existing systems under the hood as we try to streamline the development workflows, leading to reduced likelihood of mistakes on our side and making it easier to add new content: an example of that would be the improved water behaviour throughout the game.

As it is with each major update in this Early Access, resetting the save file is not required, but it may be convenient.

HIGHLIGHTS:
2023-02-02 New swimming behaviour
2023-04-09 Implemented new quest system
2023-04-20 Brand new look for the park
2023-04-30 Marmocle's main centre is accessible! (but with no activities)
2023-05-01 Added notification system for quests and saves
2023-05-02 Major UX improvements to the power plant
2023-05-21 New songs added for Marmocle and the Sewers/Park

CHANGES:
-Water is now made of box triggers instead of planar ones, making the game more flexible
-Further collectibles optimizations: they make use of spawners now. Small performance improvements expected on low spec hardware
-Technical improvements to the occlusion system. Small performance improvements expected
-Removed an arrow in excess from rhythm aras that looked off
-Small improvements to ara maps
-Ara obstacles appear a little later to better sync up with music
-Improvements to the elevator battery quest
-Snappier animation transitions
-Rolling in air no longer consumes stamina
-Improvements to the feel of the flower spring
-Increased thread priority during loading screens
-Added grass to a few empty spots of the game
-Improved Timer UI
-New character species added to Marmocle
-Adjusted out of bound trees in the quarry
-Slightly reduced river push force, added support multiple forces at once
-First zone card after opening the game stalls a little longer
-Diving works underwater too, rolling is easier
-Rolling underwater doesn't deplete the stamina anymore
-Tiny improvements to simple poles
-Removed potential unsupported resolutions in excess, added a failsafe

FIXES:
-Fixed all water detection bugs. The game now supports having dry spaces below a body of water
-Fixed a infinite water jump bug
-Fixed inventory loading bug (cone hat would disappear)
-Fixed excessive shininess in the river zone
-Calling the quarry elevator multiple times no longer resets its speed
-Fixed inconsistent behaviour on whether a player could roll or not on a rhythm ara treadmill
-Removed an old invisible wall in the ferrest
-Small fixes to how Fech's animations are triggered
-Fixed fall animation being triggered instead the jump one when jumping (most evident in rhythm aras and on springs)
-Reset button completely deletes the save file now
-Improved stability of the water push system
-Small fixes to the power plant
-Fixed a few holes in the quarry
-Fixes to how simple poles behave
-Rain is now correctly confined to the river zone only
-Fixed a water bug in the sewers
-Fixed oversight with triggering music change at the end of the river zone
-Fixed a death plane in the river zone
-Fixed weird bug where the mouse cursor would mysteriously appear every time a new scene got loaded
-Fixed bugs related to fech being wet in the wrong zones
-More fixes to the custom occlusion system

KNOWN ISSUES:
-Marmocle is incomplete
-Some longtime issues related to slopes
-Infrequent camera collision issues
-Make sure to manually save in the river zone. The river itself is a valid save point
-New challenges are missing of their own dedicated music and sfx
-Fech's notes aren't navigable with a controller
-There's unfinished "business mode" code in the build
-Post processing seems to get turned off when dealing with some online interactions
-Cloud saves don't work on Linux yet
-Fech himself oddly doesn't support shadow cascades. Set shadows settings to low
-Given the lack of activities, debug characters have been left in Marmocle

And lastly, the roadmap as of now!