A reworked pedestal menu, more character for the early islands, and a calmer sky. The ring of cards that fanned around the pedestal is now a clean grid you open from an orb that stays at the bottom of the screen, and your cards tell you when there is something new inside them. The early islands each get their own ground and shoreline, and the cloud cover overhead is thinner.
- The pedestal menu is now a grid. Tapping the orb opens a large grid of menu cards instead of a ring fanned around the screen, so every option sits upright and is easy to read at a glance. The menus you reach for most sit along the bottom row, within easy thumb reach.
- The menu orb is always within reach. The button that opens your menus now stays at the bottom of the screen wherever you are — zoomed in, zoomed out, or away on another island — so you no longer have to find the pedestal to open your shops, blessings, and the rest. Tap it again to close.
- Reopening returns you to the pedestal. When you close and reopen the game, the view now opens on your home island with the centre pedestal framed, rather than on whichever island you last had on screen. Your shops and menus are right where you left them.
- Cards tell you what is new. When a new blessing, crop, structure, decoration, or market contract becomes available, its card shows a small red dot until you open that menu. The Items card flags when your bag is full. A matching dot on the orb means something, somewhere, is worth a look.
- Each early island has its own ground. The Meadow is a lush spring green, the Marsh a muddy olive, and the Sunfield a dry sunbaked gold, each with its own scattering of detail — wildflowers, boggy patches, sun-bleached tufts. Your home island keeps its familiar look.
- Shorelines match their island. Every island's beach now takes on the colour of its ground where the two meet, so the new grounds sit naturally against the sand rather than against a single shared edge. The water is unchanged.
- Thinner clouds overhead. The decorative cloud layers drift past about half as often, so the sky reads calmer and less busy above your islands.
- Water clouds are unchanged. The tappable clouds that grant Water Points still arrive at the same rate, so there is just as much water to catch.
The pedestal is how you touch nearly everything in the game, so it was worth making it quicker to reach and quicker to read. Let me know how the new layout and the new-content dots feel.
— Dee