Steam Next Fest's biggest city builder adds a new feature after "outright mad scientist-like" players kept trying to brute force it themselves

News
By published

The cozy Tiny Glade just got even cozier

Tiny Glade
(Image credit: Pounce Light)

The Tiny Glade demo could have easily gotten buried under the big and bright RPGs, shooters, and roguelikes that filled up June's Steam Next Fest, but the game won out as the most-played city builder and the fourth most-played demo overall, earning the title of "the baddest motherf***er in the room" by some other devs. There's nothing quite like the pastoral castle creator, so while Tiny Glade's exact 2024 release date remains unclear, its devoted player base was trying to make the most of its demo. 

Sometimes, they even loved the demo a bit too hard, breaking it a tad to jerry-rig new features and building options. But they won't have to struggle so much anymore – the Tiny Glade developers just added half-timbered buildings directly. 

To devoted players, these, Medieval-style homes are a big deal. Two-person developer Pounce Light noticed that "even in our early playtests, some folks have attempted assembling half-timbered buildings."

"The methods have been creative, inventive, outright mad-scientist-like, but the demo players have really raised the bar!" Pounce Light continues in a July 15 developer diary posted to Steam. "We got so inspired that we figured we have to find time and make them real."

So, they did. Players will be able to use Tiny Glade's straightforward click-and-drag construction to adjust the half-timber style, exactly as they did with the demo's original parapets. 

The only difference is that the "half-timber pattern adapts to where you place windows, and the flat roof gets framed with wooden railings instead of battlements," Pounce Light says in their dev diary. And you'll be able to decorate all of it. Along with this change, Pounce Light has also added flag decorations with customizable colors and patterns, and fixed a "critical bug" where the sheep heart didn't show up on first-person screenshots.

"I feel like it’s a whole new fantasy available in the game now," Pounce Light said.

Make sure to explore Tiny Glade's Manor Lords-style exploration mode, too.

Ashley Bardhan
Ashley Bardhan
Senior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.