"Love me, Sea Cucumber"

Hello, sea cucumber lovers around the world!

I have a very special announcement for you today: your favorite game is getting a whole new look and feel. I have been working really hard on this update, and I think you're going to love it!

The main change is that I am increasing the price of "Sea Cucumber Pet Simulator" to 12.95$, because it's a whole new game now—you're going to get so much more than before. I know this is a significant change, but I think it's worth the upgrade.

I hope you continue to enjoy playing Sea Cucumber Pet Simulator as much as I enjoyed making it!

I know how important it is to you to have the best experience possible with your pet, and I want to ensure that my customers are happy with their purchases. If you don't know if this update is for you, please try the free demo.

Those who already own the game will of course get every update for free, including this one!

The Patch:

The new version has 8 different food types, has a lot of graphical changes, and adds more animations for eating, petting and playing. Also the food can rot now and the water temperature can change (and be affected by player actions), as well as salinity, pH and cleanliness. The water quality is calculated from the other factors now too and sea cucumbers can get sick from bad water quality so you have to feed them medicine in that case. There is also brand new music and various changes to the display with live updates.

In this update, I added 8 new food types to give your pet a more varied diet:

• Eatit
• Leftover flakes
• Gourmet fix
• Algae cookie
• Granules
• Plankton
• Vitamin worm
• Medicine (not a real food type, I admit, but nevertheless important)

However, not all species of sea cucumbers eat any kind of food. And if you neglect your sea cucumber for too long, its satisfaction will drop. An unhappy sea cucumber may refuse food completely, which will then start to rot!

There are insects that can make your pet sick, so you have to give it medicine. The biggest change though is that you'll need to have a close look on the aqarium values - cleanliness, water temperature, pH scale, water quality and salinity. There are a lot more reasons now how your sea cucumber can die...

There is a new selection menu for different background music! Choose your favorite music from 12 different tracks!

I hope you’re enjoying the new game as much as I am. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below!

Patchnotes in detail:

Gameplay:

- Lots of new features added (feeding, sea cucumber interactions, adjusting aquarium values).

- The new features unlock gradually so as not to overwhelm the player.

  However, there is an option to unlock everything immediately.

  If this is enabled, it will be pointed out at the start of the game to avoid accidentally setting it wrong.

- A tutorial has been added to explain the functions to new players.

  If the tutorial is active at the same time as the option to unlock everything immediately, it will be pointed out.

- Added 8 different types of food, each with different values in saturation, nutritional value and satisfaction.

- Each type of food has a specific nutritional value. 

  At the end of the day, half of the nutritional value eaten is broken down and 10% of that half is converted to health.

  However, if the nutritional value is 0, the sea cucumber's health drops by 1 point.

- The sea cucumber can be petted, which has a positive effect on its satisfaction once a day (after that it has no effect).

- The sea cucumber can be examined to see its exact values, which are otherwise not visible.

- You can play with the sea cucumber. The mini-game consists of 5 units, for which you have to press a certain key.

  The mini-game has once a day effect on the satisfaction of the sea cucumber (positive if managed and negative if not).

  A short wait command has been added between the units so that you don't accidentally press them too quickly in succession.

  A picture is displayed explaining the controls.

- After a certain time (randomly controlled) an insect appears and annoys the sea cucumber.

  At the first sting (which cannot be prevented) the sea cucumber loses satisfaction.

  The insect can be chased away, otherwise the sea cucumber has a 50% chance of getting sick at the beginning of a new day.

- The sea cucumber can have several diseases at once.

- The sea cucumber loses 5 points of health per day it is sick and per disease it has.

- Diseases can be cured by giving the sea cucumber medicine.

- For every 10% lack of cleanliness, the water quality decreases by 1% per day.

- The water temperature changes plus/minus 0-3°C every day (randomly controlled).

  For every degree the temperature deviates from the sea cucumber's comfort temperature, the sea cucumber's health decreases by 1 point per day.

- The pH of the water increases by 0.0 to 0.3 per day (randomized).

  For each point (integer) that the pH is lower than the target value, the health of the sea cucumber decreases by 1 point per day.

  For every point (integer) that the pH is higher than the target value, the water quality decreases by 1% per day  and the sea cucumber has a 50% chance of becoming sick.

- Peat lowers pH by 0.5 and hydrochloric acid fluid lowers pH by 1.5.

- Ventilation increases the pH by 0.3.

- Water quality drops by 1-3% each day (randomized).

- Once quality drops below 90% (10% as a buffer), sea cucumber health drops 1 point per day for every 10% of quality missing.

- Since quality does not have an effect until below 90%, the indicator on the display will not turn orange until below 90%.

- Water purifier increases water quality by 10% and filter bacteria by 30%.

- The salinity of the aquarium decreases every day between 0.0 and 0.1 (randomly controlled).

  If the salinity is too high or too low, the health of the sea cucumber decreases by 5 points per day.

  If the salinity is too low, the salt rings :D

- The pump can be turned on and off manually. The water animation adjusts accordingly.

- If the pump is off, the pH and water quality will go down continuously.

- The pump can break after a certain time (randomly controlled between 15 and 30 minutes).

  If the timer runs out, the chance that the pump will really break is 40%.

  Each time it does not break, the interval decreases by 2 minutes.

  If it does break, the accumulated trigger timer (the cumulative 2 minutes) is halved so it doesn't break too often.

- The sea cucumber's satisfaction decreases by 2 points per day.

  If "Examine" has been unlocked, it drops 4 points each day.

- If the satisfaction drops below 15 (you start with 25), the sea cucumber moves slower and refuses to eat.

- Uneaten food must first be removed (via "Clean") so that new food can be fed.

- Food that is not eaten will spoil after 1-3 minutes and must be removed (via "Clean").

- Cleanliness goes down by 10% per day if spoiled food is lying around.

- The game speed can no longer be changed.

Graphic:

- Added a bar to indicate health.

  If the sea cucumber is sick, the health bar turns green.

- Added a display that shows live aquarium values (cleanliness, temperature, pH, quality, salinity).

  If a value is not in the optimal range, the color on the display changes  and an exclamation mark is displayed behind that value.

- The HUD revised, the buttons redesigned and reordered.

  Buttons that pop up are marked with an arrow.

  The buttons for pH and water quality show how much the value is changed.

- Added new feeding animations.

- Added a petting animation.

- Food that is not eaten spoils and stinks.

- Animations created for chasing the insect, heating and cooling the temperature, increasing ventilation, using peat, salt fluid, water purifier, filter bacteria and salt.

- The help menu has been completely redesigned and is now a book.

- The background of the graveyard has been redesigned.

- There is now a rusty K.R. I sitting in the aquarium :-)

- Every 10 days a starfish appears, which runs over to the pineapple.

- Graphical adjustments made to the title screen.

- Windowskin adjusted.

- Fixed pixel errors in the background.

Music:

- A new piece of music for playing (mini-game) has been added.

- Added a new selection menu for background music. You can now choose between 12 different songs.

- A sound effect is now played when the sea cucumber grows.

Other changes:

- Hints about the controls are displayed when starting the game.

- The loading screen has been revised as there is only 1 slot.

- Autosave right at the start of day 1 has been added back.

- When entering names, a hint is now displayed that you can right click to delete characters.

- Once the sea cucumber's life expectancy is reached, its health drops by 2 points per day (it used to be only 1 point), to avoid that the health can be rebuilt too easily through the eaten nutritional value.

- After the death of the sea cucumber, all values are displayed as an aid to what might have been done wrong.

- The life expectancy of the individual sea cucumber species has been significantly reduced 

  (as an example: the brown-spotted sea cucumber now lives only 200 days instead of 420).

  In return, all species now grow up faster.

- The balancing of all food types has been changed again (from 1.9 beta to 2.0).

  They now fill the stomach much more, so you can't feed as much.

- As the sea cucumber grows up, its food requirements increase a bit.

- The menu has been slightly restructured. The version number and the link to the download are now in the credits.

- The cheat menu that was included for testing purposes has been removed.

Buxfixes:

- Removed the black line that appeared when zooming in.

- Fixed a bug where the music would get louder when clicking on the graveyard.

- Changed the text when quitting 

  (previously: "Really quit without saving?", this was confusing because you can no longer save manually).

- When the sea cucumber died, some values were displayed in the minus range. These are now indicated as 0.

Internals:

- Brought all audio files to a consistent volume.

- Some sound effects made a bit quieter.

- Removed Zion logo and replaced it with the video.

- The link to the (old) homepage now goes directly to itch.

- Replaced the credit entry of Enterbrain with Gotcha Gotcha Games and changed the link.

- Added names of the 2.0 beta testers in the credits.