Island Restoration

Hi everyone!

I have some absolutely incredible news to share today. Island Restoration has officially reached 4,000 wishlists! 🏝️

I cannot thank you all enough for your amazing support. To celebrate this huge milestone, I've been secretly working behind the scenes to give the WHOLE DEMO a complete, top to bottom overhaul, and it is live right now!

🏝️ Completely Redesigned Tropical Isles Maps

I have completely rebuild the maps of the Tropical Isles region from the ground up! The flow, the visual details, and the overall experience have been significantly improved to better showcase what the final game will feel like.

🐾 New Gameplay & Helping Animals

This update introduces brand-new gameplay mechanics alongside fresh ways to rescue and help the cute little animals.

🌳 Skill Tree Preview

I heard you! A lot of you asked for some sort of upgrades. You can now test out a small portion of the upcoming skill tree! Start unlocking upgrades early and see how it alters your strategy and efficiency while restoring islands.

⚙️ Quality of Life Improvements

On top of everything else, I have implemented tons of quality-of-life adjustments, polish, and optimization tweaks to make the gameplay feel as smooth as possible.

⚠️ IMPORTANT NOTE FOR RETURNING PLAYERS ⚠️

If you have already played the previous version of the demo, please do the following to avoid issues and experience everything perfectly:

1. Launch the game and go to Settings.

2. Scroll all the way down to the bottom.

3. Click the RESET PROGRESS red button.

(Don't worry—this can be done at any time if you ever wish to replay the demo from scratch in the future!) 😊

Thank you again for helping me hit 4,000 wishlists! If you haven't yet, please make sure to add Island Restoration to your Steam Wishlists and if you enjoy the demo please leave a review on Steam.

EliteTheDev

Hello everyone!

The Island Restoration Demo just received its biggest update so far.

The demo now fully supports controllers and Steam Deck, so you can restore islands in a much more relaxed way.

I've been reading through all the feedback, bug reports, and suggestions from players and I spent the past week fixing things up for this patch. It has been a wild week, but I'm really happy with how much smoother the demo feels now.

Thank you to everyone who has played, shared feedback, reported bugs, and helped make my cute little game better (especially my Discord members 💜).

New in this update

*Added full controller support.

*Added Steam Deck support.

*Added controller-specific settings.

*Replaced controller input icons.

*Replaced the Tropical Isles postcard to better reflect the region.

Improvements and quality-of-life changes

*Added the ability to press ESC to exit nozzle selection.

*Added a Dirt Remaining progress bar when cleaning injured animals with soap.

*Added the ability to pause the game while helping an injured animal.

*Added the ability to pause the game while recycling.

*Improved UI popups to better match the game’s style.

*Improved shore garbage recycling so the recycled material now matches the type of garbage collected.

*Added digging particles when removing Mud Piles.

*Increased the Water Gun’s water capacity.

*Increased and balanced the amount of Coral Coins earned on Medium and Large Islands.

*Increased the amount of coral spawned on Large Islands.

*Reduced the number of palm trees spawned on Large Islands.

*Made soap cleaning for injured animals much smoother.

Bug fixes

*Fixed an issue where Mud Piles, Oil Puddles, and Palm Trees could spawn on top of each other.

*Fixed an issue where toggling the Clean/Dirty button did not affect restored Palm Trees and Ivy.

*Fixed an issue where changing the FOV could cause injured animals to appear zoomed out.

*Fixed a rare issue where shore garbage could spawn in areas that were impossible to reach.

For now, I'll be shifting more of my focus back to the main game, but I'll still be keeping an eye on feedback and any issues that come up.

Thank you again for all the support. If you enjoy the demo, please consider leaving a Steam review. It really helps a solo dev a LOT.

EliteTheDev