Four Horsemen v1.3 Update "Sorry Cornwall"

Hi all! It's Kevin. No corporate "we" this time. It's just me now. The rest of the team moved on to other things years ago, as have I, so I'd like to introduce this patch not as Nuclear Fishin' Software but as myself.

For those of you who've been wondering why there have been no updates in four years: long story short, Nuclear Fishin' ran out of money, Four Horsemen never made nearly enough to sustain future development, I personally went very broke, I burned out badly shortly after the v1.2 update, I developed some minor chronic health problems that made running an indie studio full time no longer feasible, and seemingly the entire world caught fire both literally and figuratively. I'd be remiss to mention there was also that global tide of horrific ultranationalist xenophobia this game had an absolutely negligible impact in preventing, which brought fascists to power in the United States and almost did the same in the country where I grew up. It also brought fascists to me specifically, who were none too pleased about both the game and my continued existence, and made their displeasure known in person. And then there was an actual plague.

To be completely blunt: Things are so much worse right now for immigrants around the world than when development on Four Horsemen began. The real-life cruelty that spurred me to write this game has expanded without bound, and it is emboldened, normalized, celebrated. It all feels very futile.

Though I was initially happy with the game on its release, in the past four years I've come to realize I have left far too many troubling issues unresolved. As this is the first time in four years I've had the time, energy, money, and peace of mind to properly revisit the game, I've spent about a week and a half of vacation time from my current job in AAA gamedev to get these problems sorted out with a new patch.

This update include fixes to problems that you, the players, have let me know really bother you:

• Some foods associated with some homelands have been changed. My sincere apologies to the people of Cornwall--I learned a lot about your culture, and about how empire can dilute the oral history of a marginalized people after generations in diaspora.
  • If you have an existing save where your Riders are from Angleterre, Adivasiram, or the Green Isles, and you are at a specific point in Pestilence's route where you have platters of home-cooked food in your inventory, you will no longer be able to gift this food, as it no longer belongs to your culture. You should be able to make new food without issue, and this will not block your progression.
• Some linguistic errors have been fixed. My apologies also to the people of France.
• The Shrapnel Plowshare is now properly craftable, but I'm afraid it doesn't do what a lot of you think it does.

It also includes fixes to problems that bother only me (but bother me a lot):

• Many double "the"s are eliminated. (as in "the the Levant")
• Better A/An detection, e.g. it's "an Angleterrish" and not "a Angleterrish".
• A lot of capitalization issues are fixed (probably not all of them).
• Many typos are fixed.
• All snacks are now plural.
• Migrated to Ren'Py 7.4.8.1895, which should fix some compatibility issues on newer PC and macOS hardware (including at least one reported crash on start issue).

And it finishes up some work I abandoned in 2018 and completely forgot about, the absence of which bothers everyone:

POSTGAME

• There's a small amount of new content (most of it involving the postgame musical instruments), and a lot of postgame content that was previously broken or inaccessible is fixed.
• There are new scenes introducing most of the postgame musical instruments.
• Each character's postgame musical instrument has several new abilities when built, all of which are intended to make it less cumbersome to play through a route again (in order to see different endings). A few of them make it much faster to get useful items you would normally find in that route.
• Crafting resource costs for all of the postgame instruments have been significantly reduced.
• Postgame musical instruments are now too powerful for the police to destroy.
• The Hangman's Throne is now the Scoundrel's Refuge.
  

QUALITY OF LIFE

• Once Famine applies for a job in one playthrough, he can apply for a job in all of them. (No more jumping into the dumpster over and over at the start of the game just so he can get a job.)
• Social media now works as intended, and keeps track of all the bullshit you've seen in previous playthroughs.
• Death can no longer enrage herself by reading her own social media bullshit.
• Some small tweaks to make dumpster diving less of a hassle, especially if you need one specific item and are unlucky.
• You can now buy as many shovels as you want.

PROGRESSION

• The path into Pestilence's route in Act I has been reworked to be less confusing and feel less arbitrary.
• For homelands where the Great Tragedy in Pestilence's route is atonement for a genocide, what happened during the Great Tragedy should be less confusing.
• It was possible to start Act II of Pestilence's route twice, which I now understand is where some players got lost.
• Bullshit has improved UI messaging.
• Acts II and III of Death's route begin in different places than they did before.
• The health indicators in the final boss battle of Death's route have been recolored and enlarged so they are harder to miss.
• Changes to the wall of seals are explained better.
• Fixed some bugs in which you could lose access to certain scenes by using quest items to build non-quest things.
• Fixed a bug in which being too meek in Famine's route would cause the game to crash.

Overall, the goals of this update have been to atone for cultural oversights and gaps in my 2015 preproduction research, and to reduce the amount of text without significant choices that you'd have to skip past to play through any route more than once. 

I am deeply humbled to see so much new interest in Four Horsemen this long after its release--whether you were one of the original Kickstarter backers, found the game in one of our recent charity bundles, or just stumbled upon it browsing through itch.io, I'm grateful you're here. I look forward to the day when the kind of immigrant experiences depicted in the game, many of which are drawn from my own life (in a way that I've never felt comfortable centering, to the detriment of the game's marketing), are not so broadly relatable.

Tomorrow together, or not at all.  - The Righteous Die Fighting -

-K