The Nintendo Switch version of Garden Guardian launches on October 20th! So exciting!

Hello again, fellow Garden Guardian enjoyers! Welcome to the patch notes for update 1.3.1! This update was mainly structured around providing additional polish to all areas of the game, and really cleaning it up for its October 20th debut on Switch. Humongous shout outs to my close friend Fred Wood (@thatsmytrunks over on Twitter) for his unambigously crucial and relentless support on the Switch version. Without him, who even knows when the Switch version would be coming out? Not me, that's for sure! Lots of changes in this one, mostly to bugs you've hopefully never encountered and little polish issues you've probably never noticed, but we've also added a final little bit of new content to the Art Gallery for you to unlock! Special shout out to @dr_healsgood over on Twitter, who generously loaned us a piece of fanart that really stands out from every other Art Gallery piece in a special little way! I won't fully spoil it for you, but I did have to program some new stuff to make it happen!

As a quick additional note for folks here on itch, we recently published the "Garden Guardian - Extra Materials" package, which any owners of the game on itch can download for no additional cost! It includes tons of concept and key art (most of which you've seen in the game, but at higher resolutions), the game's music (thank you to @LittleVMills over on Twitter/Bluesky) and a few extremely early builds of the game that you can try! They're not great, and they look rough as heck, but for anyone curious about those things, you might find it neat! You can find the Extra Materials package on this page, and over on the main itch store page for Garden Guardian. Anyways, on with the patch notes!

Garden Guardian 1.3.1

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed a longstanding issue where when using a controller, if the user used the face button set to "Confirm" to select "Resume" from the Pause Menu, the user would also simultaneously input a movement for Snippy in the corresponding direction.
• The timer for the "Bug Lugger" Trial now continues to count during hitstop frames.

CONTENT

• Four new unlockables have been added to the Art Gallery.

ART

• Added an animation for MISS icons that plays when the user collects an Extra Life Fruit.
• Fixed an ongoing issue where Fruit would show their final frame of animation for one frame before growing into their unripe (green) appearance.
• Fixed issue where the "Start" button on the Title Screen would not play an animation when clicked on.
• Fixed issue where all Award Art images showed one pixel of art from neighboring Award Art images stored in the same texture map.

AUDIO

• Attempted fix for an issue where the end level stinger will rarely play at the game's current audio speed instead of correctly being played at 100% speed.

MISC.

• Drastically reduced game file size by learning about a drop down menu in Unity I hadn't noticed before.
• The Stats and Awards and Credits menus have been converted to the style of the Art Gallery and Tips menus to improve consistency through the menus.
• Fixed an issue where the Stats Star for Game Time would unlock after 3 minutes instead of the intended 120 minutes.
• Adjusted unlock conditions for four items in the Art Gallery to improve pacing of content unlocks and potentially reduce endgame grind for some users;
  • "Finish five rounds in any mode." -> "Finish 10 rounds in any mode."
  • "Finish 25 rounds in any mode." -> "Finish 20 rounds in any mode."
  • "Finish 50 rounds in any mode." -> "Finish 30 rounds in any mode."
  • "Finish 75 rounds in any mode." -> "Finish 50 rounds in any mode."
• Fixed an issue where the "Start" button on the Title Screen would not be able to be highlighted when swapping input devices from controller to keyboard input.
• Fixed an issue where an image in the "Bonus Fruit" Tip was not rendered correctly, and under certain circumstances the "Classic Full" UI style was not rendered correctly.
• Minor adjustment to animation on Endless and Trials buttons on the Main Menu to reduce flickering when returning to the Main Menu.
• Contents of the Sound Test menu have been properly centered on the screen.
• Swapped placement of SFX (Voice) 06 and SFX (Voice) 07 in the Sound Test menu.
• Minor text adjustments to multiple items in the Art Gallery.
• Adjustments to boot sequence.
• Updated credits.

All that said, did I mention that the Switch version releases on October 20th across North America, Europe, and Australia? I did? Well, one more time couldn't hurt! The Switch version is really nice, and we couldn't be happier to finally have a console game under our belt. All said, this has been a really amazing experience, and I'm happy so many of you found some fun in Snippy's world. For the time being, we'll be putting Garden Guardian in the rearview as we focus on our next title! As usual, let us know if you find any horrible new bugs! Thank you so much for all your support, and I hope you'll check out the Switch release once that drops on the 20th!

Thanks again!

-Liam Allen-Miller