Dear players,

We kept you waiting, but we finally launched a huge patch for Switch - and we called it version 2.0!

Additionally, we partnered up with the fantastic Kakehashi Games to bring Pine to Nintendo Switch in Japan!

We are proud to have worked tirelessly on revamping the entire port to align it more accurately with the PC version. While the original port was done as best as possible under the circumstances around release, we wanted to take a good look at how far we could come after upgrading the engine and re-aligning the Switch version with the state PC was in at that point.

For months we’ve battled with the Switch’s limited capabilities and built version 2.0 from the ground up. Below is a long list of all the things that were fixed, changed and added! Some of the highlights:

• Big performance stability gains and reduction in stutters because of incremental garbage collection, through upgrading Pine’s engine
  
• Massive memory optimizations - the game does not feature any (known) crashes through playtime anymore
  
• Loading times reduced by ~55%, much faster loading between scenes (interiors and open world)
  
• Increased world density to be on par with the PC version (in other words, lots of trees/bushes/rocks/assets added everywhere!)
  
• Smoother and much more responsive combat: added dodge cancel, kick out of any move and fractional directional control
  
• New languages: Dutch, Korean and Japanese
  

Additions

• Auto camera steering setting added
  
• Support for separate inversion settings on ranged and normal camera aiming
  
• Separate sensitivity for ranged aiming added
  
• Added 'coyote time' for smoother and more forgiving platforming
  
• Dodge cancelling for more responsive combat
  
• Added a loading screen bar to see the progress
  
• Fractional directional control in combat so that you can choose your direction in some parts of some moves, making combat much more responsive
  
• Scouting Lens map radius now showing Key Graphite pickups
  
• Dutch language support
  
• Korean language support
  
• Japanese language support
  

Changes and tweaks

• Complete UI revamp: UI now scales with docked/handheld according to resolution
  
• Removed smoothing from camera aim
  
• Kicking and sliding is now always possible (also in ranged and when nothing is equipped)
  
• Changed quest start and end sound (is now different)
  
• When leaving an interior (cave or Vault) with your Scouting Lens deployed inside, it will automatically return to you
  
• You can now roll and jump out of crouch
  
• Slow motion effect on combat moves tweaked to make it more responsive
  
• Camera collision redone for smoother camera movement, particularly in interiors
  

Fixes

• Garbage collect stutters reduced through implementation of incremental garbage collection, giving a much more consistent framerate
  
• Fixed ‘A Chilling Affair’ quest bug (did not progress sometimes)
  
• Fixed the Tiny Key problem in ‘The Pact’ quest where it sometimes didn’t show up
  
• Fixed player being able to die while in between area transitions
  
• UI revamp with many fixes (such as overlapping quest text, long string overflow, etc.)
  
• Made the monument tower in the Dry Bay a persistent landmark, visible from all angles/distances now
  
• Fixed text appearing with a few frames delay
  
• Improved lock-on/focus camera (was often glitching and disorientating)
  
• Solidified Lumiconda Tooth puzzle logic in the Ancient Stables
  
• Improved dialogue camera
  
• Fixed Hue floating up (as if standing on a box) in certain locations after jumping
  
• Fixed interacts with certain context (such as 'ignite' and 'enter') using incorrect string
  
• Metal and wood footstep parameters added for Hue
  
• Fixed 'The Crossing' cutscene part 2 audio, because it had Alpafants sniffing through it
  
• Cave entrance now drawn behind fog
  
• Fixed a bunch of unlocalized strings, among others in the map menu, Vault title cards and main quest tutorials
  
• Footstep speed parameter now scaled with animation (crouching)
  
• Only footwear covering feet gives 'boots' footstep sounds now
  
• Fixed totem village information UI missing after raiding villages
  
• Grounded several floating assets
  
• Numerous fixes for wrong speaker roles in dialogues
  
• Various questing bug fixes and stability improvements
  
• Numerous optimizations on all fronts
  
• Fixed status modifiers overflowing and being unclear in effect in equipment UI
  
• Fixed broken night visuals on village lanterns
  
• Fixed waterfall and torch particles not being LODed
  

Known issues

• As per the upgrade of our engine, UI tends to glitch a few frames around the first instances within a playthrough in which certain UI is shown. This does not impact gameplay. We are currently investigating together with Unity to find the solution.
  
• In some instances, streaming (loading the world) seems delayed. This should not impact gameplay too much, but can appear jarring. We are currently looking into optimizing this more and reducing the chances of this happening.
  
• In later stages of the game, performance is sub 30 in some areas. We now have a much stronger grip on why this is happening and are looking into these areas to improve these specifically.
  

If you see any other concerns or issues, please let us know and we’ll get on it!

Thanks so much for your ongoing support. You all make it worth developing for! Love,

The Twirlbound team