- Bugfixes - 28 March 2026
-Fix bug to custom game start options -Fix alert graphics bug -Fix to map screen being dismissable when a custom start location hasn't been chosen
- Version 1.0: Full Release - 18 March 2026
Version 1.0 is here, along with the new biome, the Badlands.The badlands are an inhospitable region. The only animals there are dangerous when attacked, and plants don’t grow. Any village trying to grow there will need food imported in large quantities, as well as resources like iron and cotton. Despite this, villages here are critical to getting your nation to reach its true potential. Beneath these sun-scorched sands lies liquid magic. When liquid magic is pumped out it can be used to power your industries. Buildings will work faster when their owner has a Magic Powerplant. If they’ve got enough raw materials, the building will repeat its production up to three more times, so you can make four times as many items in a day as you could before. This industrial revolution lets you finally produce enough clothes and high quality food for your entire population. While this can allow prices…
- Game Name Change! - 6 August 2025
Hey everyone, we have some big news! We are changing the name of the game from We Need No Kings to Mercantisle! Alongside this we are also giving the Steam art a new coat of paint, and have made a shiny new logo. We felt that it better represented the game to people who otherwise have no information about it (also to match our growing number of in-game puns). Hope this doesn't cause too much confusion, and Happy Islanding! -Sailor Sam
- The Weirdness Update! - 20 July 2025
Our first large content update is here. Weirdness allows you to slowly build up a population of weird members of your society. Normal people get unhappy when weird people do their thing, which can harm your village’s growth rate, but weirdness comes with its own advantages. They have access to new clothing and entertainment, which if you can provide them makes people happier in general, and certain weird buildings have uniquely powerful effects. Healing both the body and the mind become possible, in limited quantities, allowing your village to endure hardships others couldn’t. Those cured become weird, but that might be your entire goal, adding another weird villager to your little sub-community. The game also begins on more complex animals, with the dodocado. It has a life-cycle, with an egg, slow maturation and eventual death by old age. It can be hunted to extinction, or all its eggs…
- Bugfix: Mouse position - 27 June 2025
Fix for an issue which was being reported on certain monitor setups (including ones with a secondary monitor to the left of the main one) which prevented building placement
- Beta-Branch testing: Weirdness and Dodos - 24 June 2025
After some delays, the beta-branch now has its first content update, testing some elements of the Weird update. Marketing has been a little turbulent, but would could have predicted a major US protest movement would appear with the same name we chose over a year ago? Still, we should now have a path forward and hopefully things can get back to normal progress. The update currently has two major gameplay additions. The first is an animal which has far more complex mechanics than the existing ones, the second is a set of buildings revolving around the concept of ‘weirdness’. Both are intended to explore aspects of capitalism and societal management. The animal, the Dodocado, is a creature which eats, reproduces and dies of old age. It can be hunted to extinction, and its eggs can be harvested. If your villagers get too excited about eating Dodocado Egg Rolls or wearing dodo shoes you can…
- Bugfix - 20 June 2025
Fix to right click not allowing you to access a building's recipes Also changed it so the player character doesn't start with a trait
- Small UI and gameplay fixes - 14 June 2025
Another small set of tweaks and changes. The larger changes (new buildings and newer, more complex animal) are being worked on in the background, and will be on the beta-branch soon. Gameplay: -Buffed enemy insect "tiredness" to increase its effect (reducing enemy evasion over time) -Rebalance to advisor so it wouldn't keep recommending tree farms for starting villages (technically correct but bad long term prospects) -More work on getting AI skill selection working, especially in early game UI: -Slight change to colouring of buy screen, will now have a red tint if the buy price is below market price, and will grey out in more often to remove irrelevant items from consideration -Some warnings from society financial situation (most commonly can't afford salary) won't appear if they're not relevant (especially if they wouldn't have a correlated message on the society management screen its…
- Update notes - 9 June 2025
UI: -Improved click accuracy on buildings -Warning added to world map islands if they lack stone/wood Bugfix: -Fixed missing graphic for tin deposit
- Micropatch: UI for buying screen - 6 June 2025
Just changed the UI for the buy screen to now default to not letting you automatically buy stuff and resell it, because it was a feature I personally rarely used and cluttered stuff up if unneeded. Single button click to re-enable. UI -The buy-to-sell part of the buying spreadsheet is now locked behind a game option, to avoid cluttering up the already complicated buy screen (I personally got confused, so it needed fixing). Can be toggled from the buy spreadsheet directly
- Combat change: Tired Insects - 5 June 2025
Just a minor patch to fix a few things up. Main one is that the insects now slowly get tired while attacking, making them easier to hit. It's set to a fairly low value right now, and the effects of tiredness will be tweaked possibly over the next couple of patches, depending on how playtesting goes. UI: -Society building is now sorted by categories and has lil' icons -Gift UI now has proper grey-out of unavailable options -Build menu now defaults to 'all' if there's nothing in the 'home' tab Gameplay: -Insects now get tired during combat, getting weaker each time they fire Bugfixes: -Fixed hair color changes affecting hair style in character creation
- Hotfix for potion issue - 31 May 2025
Tiny bugfix for an issue which may have been causing games to fail and be unable to progress, which I believe was cause by sailors thinking about drinking witch potions while at sea. Don't drink and sail, folks. Bugfixes -Fixed bug caused (probably) by a sailor thinking about drinking a potion while at sea -The hover-over tooltip shouldn't block mouse clicks any more
- Business-savvy Villagers - 30 May 2025
Following some feedback, the villagers now are a bit more intelligent, to make them less frustrating. They now evaluate the needs of the village before picking skills and building industries. This speeds things up, and reduces the player's ability to exploit the gaps in the market. Following playtesting it, I'd say it does improve stuff (but might make the starting setup a bit less varied). In the future this will hopefully be behind a game option slider so you can adjust how intelligent the villagers are. Gameplay changes: -Villagers now evaluate the market (using the same algorithm the AI advisor uses but with a bias also towards village purchasing requests) to decide which skills to invest in -Villagers will arrive with traits at a higher rate (60% -> 70%) -"Experienced" trait now appears more frequently than other traits -Reduced unhappiness from Wealth Tax (-2 to -1.5 on richest, -…
- UI: Limits on harvesting and better mercenary hiring - 27 May 2025
A few things, a couple of which players felt were critical missing UI bits. There's still work to be done on task prioritisation, to give people better control over their character's daily life, but limits on harvesting are a start. Gameplay -Added UI to allow you to set limits on how much you hunt/harvest so you won't waste time when your inventory and shop are both full -Improved hiring and firing screen to give option to hire with village money or own money -Added new graphics for banners -Added graphic for festival -AI advisor now defaults to off again -Removed UI alert for society having unspent treasury because it was useless and confusing -Expanded tutorial slightly to inform about selling -Reduced spawn rate for enemies in early game (again) Bugfixes -Bugfix wrt log -Fixed a bug where for whatever reason the advisor lamented to having enough roast sandroot (a plant which doesn't…
- Evil Air Thievery and UI improvements - 22 May 2025
Three major things: Firstly, this update breaks saved games slightly (terrain on islands), so it introduces the "previous version" Steam branch so saves can be continued. This branch will be updated whenever the main one is, to avoid anyone losing progress. Secondly on the UI side there's now a panel you can see your buildings on in a much nicer way when building, with hover-over for the useful information. Thirdly there is a new building: the air bottler. This device lets you suck up the atmosphere so you can sell it back for profit. More of a cartoon villain vibe than many of the elements, so it's relegated to the "Evil" skill, which the NPCs can't use. This skill can hold the various ideas we introduce which are more unconventional and don't always fit with the game's main vibe, so people can ignore it if they want. If you do go down this route, it's there to let you create a problem…
- UI Updates + Advisor Price Setting - 14 May 2025
A few much needed UI changes to help people navigate the first few steps. Getting the game a bit more intuitive to play by fixing some issues players have mentioned in their feedback. Changes: -Added option to allow AI advisor to set first buy/sell prices and thresholds automatically -Added crafting button to bottom left buttons -Added alert for if you're trying to buy an item but it's too expensive currently. Added a dismiss for this warning for individual items -Added glow to crafting button when it first arrives -Crafting recipes are now on by default Bugfixes: -Fixed range indicator being twice as large as intended on banners -Fix bug in "Influential" trait
- UI improvements - 7 May 2025
A few changes to make the game easier to follow, and a much needed icon graphics update -Added a bit of recoil when a character fires a bow -Added mention of people failing to make Iron Tools -Added hover-selection circles under units and buildings -Added icons for person buttons
- Graphics Hotfix - 6 May 2025
This update brings the critically needed option to disable the fog shader which was causing major framerate drops on some hardware configurations. It also brings a few other important UI and graphical changes to make combat easier to follow and a few bugfixes Changes: -Shaders can now be enabled/disabled in game options screen -Treasury levels added to village view -Time control buttons now unpause the game -Wave speed now affected by game speed (never stopped to avoid them appearing to be game objects) -Holding CTRL while clicking the cross-for-dismiss button causes the alert to be dismissed properly -Harvestable plants now hide their names when you're in combat mode to reduce clutter -Reordered speed control buttons and changed icon size to match speed Bugfixes -Fixed tutorial animation so shop is stocked properly -Improved damage/hit/block floating text marker -Added hit particle eff…
- Tutorial update and sound bugfix - 5 May 2025
Quick update to tutorials and sound Tutorials: -Added mention of Right Click -Added animated tutorial screens for core game themes Sound: -Fixed building placement sound and possible other sound issues
- VRAM usage hotfix - 2 May 2025
Reduced texture sizes and changed GPU compression to hopefully bring the VRAM usage below 2.0 gig (down from 4.4 gig on 1920x1080) Also added seagull animations Expect minor graphical oddities as a result of these changes (objects may be larger or smaller than anticipated, should all be fixed by next patch)
