The January and February 2025 newsletter!

Hi folks! For a little over a year, we were doing weekly reviews to tell you about our progress on various aspects of VirtualSociety. Over time, we realized that this format was no longer appropriate, because it was too frequent, and didn't allow us to write enough posts on specific and interesting topics.

So this year, we're changing the format with:

• A monthly update, which will appear here, as well as on Patreon (for “free” subscribers too!). For those who follow us on Patreon (for free or not), this also means you'll receive an email with each monthly review to keep you informed!
• We'll continue to do comprehensive articles (on character, building editing, social interactions, etc.) as we did last year, again on the site and on Patreon.
• Finally, we'll continue to offer a live Q&A every two months or so, with a live demo of the game at the next one!

So, for this long post of the year, let's take a look back at what's been keeping us busy over the last few months!

Setting up our studio and funding applications

The end of last year was marked by the creation of the company (Cats & Foxes SAS!) which signals the concrete start of the studio: we are now a company! Of course, financing a whole team requires a lot (a lot) of money, to rent premises, pay for lawyers, accountants, insurance, equipment and, of course, salaries. So we spent a lot of time drafting funding applications (grants, loans, etc.).

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported us on Patreon. It's an invaluable help that allows us to spend more of our time developing VirtualSociety, which means a lot!

Finalizing construction

We can finally build houses in-game! Of course, there's still some work to be done on the exteriors (terrain editing, lakes, grass, roads, etc.), but our construction tools have made enormous progress. Jimmy has also reworked the tools and camera to make them much easier to use. For example, you can now select several objects to move, resize or delete a group of objects at once. 

A whole host of functions return

The game takes a big leap forward, with a number of new functions, and also the return of a lot of things that had worked for a while, and had temporarily disappeared with the addition of multiplayer and functions like undo/redo, or the new interface. Among the big returns are clocks that indicate the time of day in-game (depending on the world configuration, real time, a fixed time or a day/night cycle set to a specific duration), floor and wall textures with skirting boards and configurable patterns, or weather effects with rain outside, player tracks in the snow, trees that move more or less according to the wind, and so on.

To keep up with the changes to VirtualSociety, check out our changelog ! 

Interface redesign

The game's interface has been completely overhauled, from the phone to the world selector, from the character editor to the developer tools.

Over 350 new items!

We worked with six contractors, who used Chloé's concept art to create a huge number of objects, all of which have now been integrated into the game! By the way, we regularly share glimpses of these objects with you on our social networks. We now have everything we need to build our homes and exteriors in terms of objects, and with quite a few different choices for many of them.

Of course, all these objects keep our graphic style, and our system of masks to let you choose their colors and patterns :) We're trying to update our roadmap as we go along, with the various additions and objects we'd like to add. If you have any special requests, please let us know, for example on our Discord!

Working with healthcare professionals

Finally, we met with a number of healthcare professionals who shared their expectations and ways of working. We went to see psychologists, psychometrists and occupational therapists to ask them all kinds of questions, and to understand how their patient follow-up and sessions went. It was really interesting, and now we're going to be able to co-construct our first healthcare experiences with them at VirtualSociety!

Thank you for your support, and see you soon!