Hello and welcome to V1.0.0 of Idle Sands! We've gone through so many iterations and change since our initial Jam submission, that we'd like to walk you through some of the mechanics and visuals that we've changed.

Shoins

You're probably wondering what shoins are? Well, that's our currency! We don't use dollars or rupees here, shoins are taking us to new heights. So just to remind you when you hover over your total money there'll be a little tool tip for you.

Visual changes

We felt that there were some areas that could use some touch ups and additions to better help you interact and play our game, so here's what we've done:

1. We've changed the coloring in the tooltip for purchasing bots, specifically when you're looking at the item rarities the bot can collect. Now you'll be able to better connect the background colors of items in your inventory to specific rarity levels.  We've also changed the text size of the tool tip from 10 to 13, we hope this will increase readability with all tool tips in the game.

Before	After

2. In addition to the normal tool tip text which appears when you hover any item in your bots inventory, we've also added some helpful 'calls to action' with how to deal with those items. Now if there is a item you can sell you will see "Left click to sell" and if it's a trash item you'll see "Left click to discard" at the bottom of the tool tip. We've also included the rarity of the item in the tool tip to help you better connect each item to it's rarity.

3. We've made it a bit easier to read larger numbers when you're working your way through upgrading and purchasing bots. You will now see spacing in the numbers dependent on how large they get. We hope this will increase readability and understanding of where you stand with upgrade and bot costs.

Before	After

4. While playtesting we felt that you'd want to get straight to handling a new bot when you buy one, so we made a change so that when you purchase a new bot your UI will switch to match that new bot's class. 

5. You'll probably also notice that the IPM counts are now missing in the top right, and that's because we've intentionally gotten rid of them and replaced them with a full achievements system. With some objectives to strive for we're hoping this will keep you all playing and having a good time. There's also a nifty "Achievement Complete" animation when you finish one.

6. When you start the game you'll notice that the speech bubbles are no longer there, but have no fear, as per the GIF above, when you buy a bot, purchase an upgrade, or remove a trash item from your inventory, your favourite characters will give you a little dialogue to keep you going.

7. We've removed the "Sell Trash" button from the trash crab because it was confusing people. Sorry trash crab, you'll need to figure out a new way to earn money! From feedback we found that this button was a little ambiguous with what it was doing, and when you consider the cost you were paying VS the action that was happening, it was simply not worth paying the price.

8. Smaller change, we've added a timer below your "Items per dig" counter in the middle of the screen, an easy way to keep track how much fun you're having!

Mechanical Changes

1. We've heard your feedback and we know there is a disparity between the cost of items and how they scale during the game, so we've done a major overhaul with how the upgrade and bot costs work. In addition to the cost of everything being adjusted, we've also adjusted how costs increase. When you purchase a digger, the cost of upgrades will go up by a multiplier and vice versa. 

2.  You'll now see that all slots auto-sell automatically, and you will only have to purchase upgrades to reduce the time it takes to auto-sell. 

3. To get rid of items and trash all you will need to do is left click, and we have removed the ability to drag trash items.

4. We've also added a weighting system to items and how each bot obtains them. We won't spill the beans on the values, but we'll say that it's going to be harder to obtain legendary items now.

Clicker

We've added a true clicker element! Now when you click on the beach you will start earning 1 shoin, We've also added the ability to upgrade this clicker in the Buy Diggers menu, so you can now earn shoin at your own pace.

Bug Fixes

1. Rectified issue where all bots (except for Beach Boys) you could upgrade Auto Sell from 60 seconds to -5 seconds.
2. Rectified issue where Version text in bottom right corner was stopping user from pressing the auto sell button on the last item slot in the list.
3. Rectified issue where Hover Tip UI was closing when auto-sell event fired, which would close the hover UI if the player was hovering over anything.
4. Rectified issue where selling an item that took up more than 1 slot would sell all of that item in the bot's inventory.
5. Rectified issue with bot class arrows not looping correctly.
6. Rectified issue of a double 'S' on the Sherlock Combs large image.
7. Rectified issue where a trash item that is in an inventory, when another of the same type was found, would not be added to an empty slot.

As always thank you so much for playing our little idle game, and we hope to hear back from you. If you have any feedback you'd like to share with the team please don't hesitate to post it in the comments on the main Itch page.

~ The Studio Bolland Development Team