- Version 0.9.17 - quick bugfixes - 24 April 2026
Full changelog for version 0.9.17 FIXED: There was occasional trouble with land traps catching anything. This should be now fixed. At the moment the traps seem to catch a bit too much. Will be balanced in future versions. FIXED: The UI panel for animals didn't fully reflect the situation after selling animals at the marketplace. This is now fixed, so that the panel gets calibrated upon returning home from the market. FIXED: The task CONSTRUCT -> COVER A KILN was not available even when all the conditions were met. Also, the conditions displayed an error message. These are now fixed. FIXED: The winter hunt was not available if the player had a spear but no bow and arrows. This is now fixed. Now the minimum requirements are skis, and suitable tools to kill and butcher the catch.
- Ancient Savo goes Medieval Fest - 20 April 2026
50% off the price for the Medieval Fest! A brief introduction of the game for those who might discover the title because of the Medieval Fest Ancient Savo takes place in Finland, some time around 1000 - 1200 AD. At that time the majority of Europe was living Medieval Times, characterized by the feudal society, and the church having a noticeable role and power. Meanwhile in Finland, the local people were still living as loosely organized tribes of farmer-hunter-gatherers. So, Ancient Savo offers you the medieval era technology, without the social hierarchy. The game is about people who want to live away from the humdrum of the bigger settlements, just living off the land in pristine woodlands. It is all about player vs. environment, where cold, hunger and accidents are the main enemy. There are no kings nor knights, you don't fight the other tribes to conquer and expand your territory. Y…
- Version 0.9.16 released - 18 April 2026
After the previous release I started to fully implement the simulation of other families. So far the bottle-neck has been that the actual simulation runs in the background, but the respective changes don't get posted to the game map when the player gets to see the area run by other family. I got the basics of the map update working, and then decided to upgrade the AI, teaching it how to craft tools and items. And that turned out to be a major task, which took months to get working at least somewhat properly. So, here we are, with a fresh version release! The updates to AI are most obvious when choosing the Offspring starting scenario. You can see the AI planning tasks to craft various items, eventually smelting iron to forge metal tools. On the side I updated the hunting story, fixing bugs and adding short notifications to mark the first hunting trip of a family member - in the lore tha…
- Version 0.9.15 released - 4 October 2025
Hunting and fishing are now more realistic and challenging. This affects the seasonal routine, which automatically checks traps and then chooses between fishing, hunting and gathering based on current season and available tools. A most notable visible upgrade is making different water depths look different. Shallow, medium and deep water now have their own hue of blue. Fish traps can only be set in shallow waters, and fish tend to gather at the shallows only at the spawning season, otherwise they prefer deeper waters. Full changelog for version 0.9.15 ADDED: new animal types squirrel, fox, lynx, mallard, and grouse. Also new fish; pike and zander. IMPROVED: The seasonal routine now simulates fishing and hunting with greater detail. Active hunting takes into account the availability of bows and arrows, and occasionally a missed arrow will be lost. The size of animal populations now prope…
- Version 0.9.14 - quick bugfixes - 10 July 2025
No new content, just a bunch of bugs fixed IMPROVED: The persistent log had the bottom rows going outside the window. The log and scrollpane heights are now adjusted and it should now fit into the available space. FIXED: The tutorial stage to speed up the game did not get completed, in the pioneers start mode. This is now fixed. FIXED: NPCs at the marketplace should now have their inventories properly restocked. FIXED: At the market place when bartering for animals the + and - buttons didn't quite work. Now they do. There was also a related confusion with left- or right-clicking plus and minus buttons of the item widgets. With NPC items a right click on the plus button chooses the maximum amount. With the player items a right click on the plus button tries to choose enough of the chosen item to make the barter values meet. FIXED: When quitting to main menu and loading the game again the…
- Version 0.9.13 - polishing the UI - 26 June 2025
This version is all about polishing the user interface. I did a lot of internal testing, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are some minor bugs here and there, so feel free to report any oddities you might encounter! ADDED: The UI panel for main buttons now has a slider to adjust the game speed. This also means that no matter if the game is paused or not, with a quick glance you can check the chosen speed. ADDED: Some of the UI elements show details when clicked. There now is an option to make them display a tooltip info when hovered over. IMPROVED: When bartering or exchanging goods the items are now grouped by category. There is an option to show / hide item groups. And items can be sorted by name or by value. IMPROVED: The market dialog no more shows item values in abstract units, but compared to furs. IMPROVED: The game dialogs now try to adjust themselves so that they won't overl…
- version 0.9.12 - fix loading saved games - 16 January 2025
Oh well, version 0.9.11 fixed loading saves from older versions. But it accidentally introduced a new bug, which - ironically enough - broke loading a save from the current version. This is now fixed, and version 0.9.12 should load both current and old saved without a problem.
- Version 0.9.11 - quick bugfixes - 15 January 2025
This should properly fix the bugs which caused crashing when loading a save from older versions. Also, full screen mode is now fixed on Mac. Together with that I improved the way window size is saved when playing in windowed mode. Behind the scenes I re-organized the process of building distribution versions and uploading them to Steam. According to the logs everything went well, but in case there are some strange problems after this update just post a bug report!
- Mac version published! - 13 January 2025
Now also on Mac Yes, Ancient Savo Mac version is available on Steam. If everything went well, that is. All Mac apps need to be officially signed and notarized by Apple, and it took me several days of work to figure out how to do it. And then some more work to learn how to add a new OS to an existing game on Steam. There were no error messages during the process, so I hope all is fine and things work smooth. If not, please write a bug report. The Mac version is built for x86 architecture, and it should run also on ARM (M1, M2 etc) series. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found out a way to make the full 3D optimization to work on Mac, so it is better to play with 2D, and if using 3D just don't pan the camera; with top-down perspective, not that big portion of the map visible it can be playable. There might also be some oddities with window sizing. Well, I can't promise any breakthroughs with…
- Version 0.9.09 - 7 January 2025
This version adds a visual notification to indicate the game being paused. Routine groups and weekly routines are now accessible directly from the Family panel. And the cycle of the year is presented visually, the current day is at the topmost point of the seasons wheel, and the wheel rotates as the days pass by. Hopefully this makes it easier to estimate when the winter comes or when the snow will be gone. The weekly routine dialog now has proper summaries for all the routines. You can view them by clicking a routine caption in the legend section at the bottom of the dialog And a Mac version is in the works, planned to be released later on this week. Full change log: ADDED: A routines button to the family UI panel, to show the weekly routines dialog. IMPROVED: The weekly routines dialog now allows switching between existing groups, and adding members to the chosen group. IMPROVED: At t…
- Version 0.9.08 - 24 December 2024
Another quick bugfix release ADDED: A new keyboard layout AUTOMATIC which queries the operating system to get the keyboard layout. This is now the default mode. The old system of providing custom keyboard layouts in XML files is still available as a backup in case the automatic mode fails. IMPROVED: If there is a serious error when generating family history instead of merely freezing the game now displays an error message and logs the error to a text file. FIXED: Fixed some occasional crashes after loading a saved game. FIXED: Fixed game freezing on generating family history.
- Version 0.9.07 at 23rd of December 2024 - 23 December 2024
This is a quick bugfix patch FIXED: The find button is supposed to ignore currently focused tile, but look for the nearest starting from there. That didn't work but is fixed now. FIXED: Seems like the hunting story sometimes got terminated too soon. This is hopefully fixed now - or at least there is more debug logging to find the conditions when the bug happens. FIXED: Game save broke if there was a space in a routine group name. This is now fixed. FIXED: There were occasional crashes especially if the player clan has more than one family. Two identified cases are now fixed.
- Version 0.9.06 at 20th of December 2024 - 20 December 2024
Search, autosave and a persistent message log ADDED: SEARCH to look for limonite or clay. If found, a marker posts gets placed at the location, bringing the camera focus there. ADDED: A marker post which can be constructed to help remember interesting locations on the map. ADDED: UI panel to show latest 255 messages. By default the panel is full screen height, at the right of the screen. When minimized the panel disappears completely. To bring it back you can click LOG in the menu. If the message log UI panel is already visible, the LOG button in the menu will bring up the old message log dialog which allows browsing back all of the message history. ADDED: Autosave, which can be turned off or chosen to run once a month or once a year. The default is autosave once a year. This can be configured both in Settings dialog, or in the init.xml file. IMPROVED: When launching the game for the fi…
- Version 0.9.05 at 24th of November 2024 - 24 November 2024
This version got somewhat delayed because of me being busy with my main work, having less free time for indie coding. Well, but here are the bugfixed and new additions; ADDED: In the XML task definitions we can now have specific conditions on who can participate in the task. Currently this is used for the hunting trip - only teenagers and working age adults will participate, elders and kids will stay at home. ADDED: Tooltip info shown when you hover the mouse over a family member. The tooltip will appear after 0.75 seconds. IMPROVED: The SELECT AREA TO indicator now does it best not to obscure the chosen area. IMPROVED: Task area selection no more interferes with the target area of adjacent planned tasks. IMPROVED: The modding script switch-case structure and nested code blocks are now handled in a more robust manner. ADDED: If the map camera is sent to return to a home or to a boo…
- Version 0.9.04 update at 13th of October 2024 - 13 October 2024
Mostly bugfixes and minor UI polish. Although fixing spear hunting sent me upgrading some of the underlying logic. ADDED: switch - case control structure to the modding language. ADDED: The modding language now has basics of (nested) code blocks. IMPROVED: The hunting simulation was either a lethal hit or miss. Now there is possibility of scoring a non-lethal wound. IMPROVED: Wild animals now have the same ailment simulation as humans. Ailment penalty affects their movement speed, so a wounded animal is easier prey for endurance hunting. And, especially with severe wounds it is likely that the wounded animal will eventually just succumb to the injuries. ADDED: skill MELEE - when hunting big game, the effective skill is a combination of the general melee combat skill and the specific skill for the weapon used. So, if you are good at melee combat, you get some advantage even when using a…
- Version 0.9.03 update at 25th of September 2024 - 25 September 2024
Linux version now works! Deconstructing a building triggered a crash. This is now fixed. Improved the launch sequence when running the game for the very first time. It is now more fail-safe also when the latest OpenGL features are not available.
- Quick bugfixes at 23rd of Septemer 2024 - 22 September 2024
FIXED: Craft -> Textiles -> Linen / Leather / Wool / Fur Clothing caused the game to crash. This is now fixed. FIXED: Starting a new homestead caused a crash if the old folks had domestic animals - the crash was because of AI taking control over the old family, but failing to handle animals. The crash is now fixed, although there still is plenty of room to improve the AI and it's ways of animal husbandry. FIXED: Pressing ESC when choosing what to sow caused the game to crash. This is now fixed. FIXED: Butchering now works when selected from the animal info dialog. FIXED: Barter menu no more shows amount select widgets for player items which the NPC is not interested in.
- Raise a family and live off the land - 20 September 2024
Establish your homestead in the pristine woodlands of 1200 CE Finland. Hunt, fish, farm and forage for food. Craft tools, barter for supplies. Raise a family, teach your offspring the skills of the self-sufficient life. Send your adult children to start homestead of their own. Once your clan grows, you can freely switch which family unit you play as. There are no combat elements; cold, hunger and accidents are your only enemy. The UI is mouse-driven, aided by hotkeys. There is both 3D and 2D view, you can change back and forth during the game play Some events are represented as small interactive stories Almost all of the game content is fully moddable by editing XML-formatted text files. This is the first stable release after the beta stage. Despite all the testing it is likely that there still are some bugs lurking there, waiting to be found. Fixing bugs will be the top priority for th…
- To be released at 20th of September - 7 September 2024
Looking forward to raise your family and to live off the land in the pristine woodlands of 13th century Savo? Well, it is time to get yourself ready to craft, build, hunt and barter, for Ancient Savo will be released at 20th of September 2024 There is both 3D and 2D view, combined with occasional text-based mini adventures. All the main game content is already implemented, and more will be added after the release. Windows and Linux versions will be the first to arrive. Mac version is in the works. There are still some technical problems to be solved, so not yet sure if we get the Mac version ready by 20th.
- Skill system and modding script developments - 26 August 2024
Each family member has skills, and their skill level affects the speed and quality of their work. When people work together, the lesser skilled ones (typically children) gain more XP when they are accompanied by more talented persons. Also, they perform better when instructed and guided by others. This is affected by the parenting skill of the teacher and the general skill of the student. Some skills, like smelting iron, are so hard to learn that it might easily take a few generations of accumulating experience to master the secrets. A recent addition is pottery skill, and the related items and tasks. Crafted clay items need to be fired in a kiln to turn them to ceramics. More ailments and accidents are being added. The likelihood of an accident taking place is affected mostly by character fatigue, and partially also by skill. An accident can simply spawn an ailment, or it can trigger a…
