Summer Breeze Update: Full Furniture Set, Two Dresses, One New Playlist

☀ Hi everyone!

It may be late September, but we're not letting go of summer just yet. Cold setting in? Start Hocus Focus and go back to those long warm summer days with this major content update.

Summer Breeze Furniture Set, Summer Breeze Dresses

🪑 Summer Breeze Furniture features airy, cool blues and whites in designs that might remind you of vacationing on a little island in Greece.

New items for fireplace, bookcase, hanging lamp, cauldron, desk, chair, curtains, shelf, desk decoration, desk lamp, armchair, blankie, wall hanging, and wall texture.

👗 The Summer Breeze Dress is inspired by the same ethereal sun-drenched vibes, and comes in light and dark versions.

Summer Breeze Ambient Playlist

🎶 The Summer Breeze Ambient Playlist gently swirls its way into your ear with calm ambient tracks at a slower tempo. Summery vibes, slow moving grooves, and ethereal pads to help you focus or relax.

Twelve new tracks, adding up to one hour of music:

1. My Horizon (4:15)
2. Apparitions (6:32)
3. Campfire Dream (3:46)
4. Fading (5:51)
5. Everafter (3:20)
6. Loyal Paws (4:53)
7. Rebirth (4:48)
8. Safe Waters (4:40)
9. Sun Dapples (7:00)
10. Warm Winds (4:52)
11. Southward (5:04)
12. Drift On (6:12)

All of the items in this update, whether images, animations or music, were made by hand by us with zero generative AI involved whatsoever.

As always, we appreciate your thoughts and feedback. If something in this update escaped our relentless testing, let us know in the bugs thread and we'll address it ASAP.

Lights On!

A few of you have rightly pointed out that the lights you can turn on in the home screen don't affect the environment enough. You were right! So we've added dynamic lighting and they look so much better now:

It's a small thing, but it does make a difference. We kept the effect subtle, because we want the game to rely more on hand drawn graphics than post-processing, but it's always good to listen to your audience.

We've also received a lot of suggestions regarding the productivity features; the list has been growing at an impressive pace. Once the update has been in the wild for a bit and we've ironed out whatever kinks might have arisen from it we will sit down and see which suggestions are most requested and make sense, we'll prioritize them and start adjusting.

🪔 Cosmetic Items Price Reductions

The plan from the start was to launch the game and wait a few weeks to get a picture of how you're feeling about the customization economy. As you can tell, this is a game that gets updated often, so we figured a month and a half would be enough to understand how we're doing, and it seems most of you guys feel they are a bit pricy.

So we slashed the prices! With this update you should be able to afford more cool stuff for your dorm.

We will keep doing our best to add new content to the game; just keep in mind that because everything is hand-drawn and animated it takes our tiny team (of mostly li'l old me) a lot of time to create everything, and then a bunch of time to implement, test and release.

Thanks for your patience with regard to this aspect, and we hope it works out nicely for you all.

🕑 Passive XP Adjustment

Hocus Focus has very different types of players: some feel passive XP needs to be slower, some want it faster. In order to accommodate everyone, you can now set how much XP per minute you get now, from 0 to 4.

You can find this feature under Settings > Gameplay.

🐱 Set Mitzkin Back On Shelf

We've had a request to be able to set any Mitzkin back on your shelf if you sometimes don't want them on your desk, so we made it happen. Left click to pet the lil guy, right click to send him back to the shelf so you can admire your entire hoard of critters all in one place.

"Yooo we can all hang out together now!"

💸 Near-Mage is 50% off for the first time!

Hocus Focus' sister game, Near-Mage, is half off for the first time since release!

If you love hanging out in Hocus Focus' locations, this is the perfect time to get Near-Mage at a hefty discount, plus the bundle discount, and have a proper, thrilling, magical adventure in its universe!

Watch on YouTube ↗

🍁Companion Falls For You Festival

We're happy to be part of a great Desktop Companion Steam festival called Companion Falls For You! Starting tonight at 10 PM UTC you should see a banner on our steam page that will take you to the festival's page - lots of great games to discover!

👍 Hocus Focus Is Very Positive On Steam

Thanks to everyone who left a review, positive or negative: we are now certified Very Positive on Steam, currently sitting at a 92% positive rating! It means a lot, guys. Thanks.

👋 Over and Out

That's it for this update. Don't let the summer be a fading memory, enjoy the Summer Breeze, and as always let us know what you think and what your questions or suggestions are in the replies.

All the best,

Stuck In Attic