Dreadwinter - November 2025 Development Update

That is one big owl!

Welcome

Hey! It's that time again, another Dreadwinter development update! There's a quite a lot of small changes added to the game, alongside working on filling out the rest of the game's content, so let's go through it all.

Demo Updates

I recently released another update to the Dreadwinter demo, it's mostly bugfixes, but there's a few little things I added as well! Here's some mini patch notes:

Gameplay updates:

• Move speed increased by around 25%

• Added sprinting (hold Shift)

  • This is mouse and keyboard only right now, but the next update will add it for controllers

• You can buy a special coffee bean from the merchant on Wednesday evenings

  • This was already in the game, but the shop option was bugged (sorry!)

• You can now read books in the library

  • There's only one right now, but I'll be adding more over time

  • The library is located inside the observatory

There's a lot of bugfixes as well, I'll leave them at the end of the post if you want to check what's been fixed. If there's anything missing, let me know and I'll do my best to fix it!

I tend to push updates once there's a lot of things done, since it's a bit of a long process to update the demo, but they should happen regularly enough.

Gifting

An unusual way of sending gifts

I've added a gifting system into the game! In line with the spooky theme of the game, I made the gifting process slightly unusual. There's a gift box you can buy and place in the café, which is really a mimic.

Once per day, you can feed it a drink you make during your shift, and it will deliver it to a person of your choice. Each character has their own set of tastes, with drinks ranging from neutral, liked, loved, disliked and hated. You'll have to do a bit of sleuthing to find out what they like!

I'll also add some other ways to gift items to characters, it's just a matter of fitting it into the game.

Mail System

Remember to check your mailbox!

You can now receive mail! It's a pretty minor feature, but it should be useful from time to time.

New Locations

I'm currently working on filling out the rest of the town, hopefully by the end of the month all of Lunara will be explorable. There isn't too much to do, but it's still quite time consuming.

Here's some screenshots of the new places:

Kazuho's Home

Nought's Apartment

The Mayor's Manor

The Mayor's Manor is also the location of one of the seasonal events that happens in the game, which is what I'll be working on next!

Seasonal Events & Festivals

Each season has a few events and festivals going on, some are just for fun, and others will have practical value, such as things you can buy for the café and your other business ventures.

One example is The Murder of Mayor Moon, a fun little event during the spooky season. It's a murder mystery event, where the Mayor is killed during a dinner party, and you have to figure out who the culprit was.

Take note of the red text to find the killer!

There's also the Coffee Guild Conference during the rainy season, a festival that lasts a few days, and will have special coffee beans and machines available for purchase!

Make sure to save up for the event!

That's it for now, thanks for reading, the grind continues!

-Alex

Demo Bugfixes

Bugfixes:

• Doors can now be interacted with more than once

  • They previously disabled themselves after interacting with them

• The stuck button in the menu should no longer block out tooltips

• Regular customers should only appear once per week

• Demo should end once Monday, day 8 is reached

• Auto brewer no longer replaced with manual brewer when loading saves

• Menus can be opened and closed with their hotkey

• Settings menu can no longer be opened multiple times

• The barriers at the train station now have collision boxes

• Visual (Y-sorting) bugs now fixed (I hope)

• The coffee bean merchant no longer crashes the game when chatting

• Opening the relationship page no longer crashes the game

• Regular customer pages should open properly

• Equipping hats no longer crashes the game

• Interacting with certain objects should no longer cause the interaction sound to loop

• Defense cards should no longer be stackable

• Ghost customers no longer have super fat interaction hitboxes

• Dread and Winter should no longer walk off screen

• Added a cooldown after opening and closing the cafe

• Lilis and Plumpkin dialogue updated when meeting them for the first time

  • Previously assumed you would meet them in their home/business

• Dread no longer disappears after the first day

• You should no longer be able to grind/brew coffee when your hotbar is full

• Autobrewer should now take coffee grounds from the player

• Customers can't be served multiple drinks

• You can switch tabs when looking at skill trees

• Special quests should not be available to see

  • This will be available in the full game

Bugs I am aware of:

• It is possible that customers can sit on the same seat

• Some objects are positioned in a way that you can get stuck between them

• Assorted crashes

  • Leave details of these if you can!

• It is possible for the camera to not follow when moving to another location

  • This will make it seem like you are stuck

• In character creation, hat should be called accessory