How do you celebrate a game release while also saying a released game isn’t a finished game? By marking an early access anniversary, of course, and that’s precisely what Bellwright is doing this week with an appropriately named anniversary update patch.
The major feature of this patch is the addition of animal husbandry, which lets players purchase a variety of animals like cows and chickens, pen them in special animal husbandry buildings, and reap associated rewards like milk, eggs, and feathers, while meat will come later. For now, players can either skin an animal carcass directly or take it to a new butcher building for better yield.
Another introduction in the patch is fishing, which features a variety of related fishing minigames, various fish to catch, and a fishing hut that lets villagers catch fish as well. It’s kind of like animal husbandry in a roundabout way. Other features include a traveling merchant, a new library building for towns, and a wide assortment of fixes.
In addition to the content patch, Bellwright is also taking signups for a modkit test that is in development. Timing for this test isn’t specified, but the associated signup survey does note that it’s looking for modders of all skill levels, from the advanced users to those who have never touched a modkit in their life.
For those who don’t remember, Bellwright is Donkey Crew’s second early access survival sandbox, which is more focused on co-op and medieval village management. It also was first announced while the studio’s other survivalbox, Last Oasis, entered its fourth year of early access. The newer game has received some larger mechanical and gameplay updates over its last year of development, which started to arrive monthly but have since tailed off to more sporadic timing while also marking over 200K initial sales.
