Prospect Hollow village with the new Willow horse field and Prospect public park plots, late-game balance pass
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New leisure plots and progression changes planned for Prospect Hollow

ByStarbugMolt

Update — 19 September 2026: This September 11 preview records the leisure and balance work at that point in development. The public game has since moved to eight eras. Use the released-build guide for what you can play, or the latest visual update for the newer buildings. The four-era limits and pending-release wording below describe the earlier preview.

Two new leisure plots and some changes to later-game prices are being prepared for Prospect Hollow. They’re part of PR #36, within a larger overhaul that may eventually bring more levels and eras. This post covers that pull request; the wider plans, including whether a reset will be needed, are still being worked out.

The new plots and balance changes

PR #36, Add Blender leisure plots and rebalance later town progression, combines two pieces of work:

  • A horse field and a public park. The Willow horse field unlocks in the Electric era, and the Prospect public park in the Motor era. Each has three construction stages, saved paid work, builder-hammer support and English/French building cards. Completed stages add 2, 4 and 6 happiness for the field, or 3, 6 and 9 for the park, within the existing cap. You receive the benefit when each stage is finished.
  • Adjusted later-game pacing. Later chest rewards taper to a 4,000-coin cap, while Electric and Motor-era prices rise moderately. Early rewards and prices, mining rewards, chest odds and work times stay the same. Funded projects keep their original terms, and pending chests retain their payout through skipping, reloading and importing a save.

Both plots were made in Blender, with editable source files, exported models and a reproducible authoring script included. Their animation respects pause and reduced-motion settings, and they remain selectable in the SVG fallback. The horse field also gains garden additions in the Motor era.

Screenshots and artwork

The PR adds four images to docs/images/, including views of the new plots and their mobile building cards. The Blender source render is also included under art/leisure/.

Prospect Hollow village with the new Willow horse field and Prospect public park plots, late-game balance pass
The Willow horse field on the left and Prospect public park on the right, shown in the village at 1439 × 900.
Blender source render of the Prospect Hollow leisure plots: dark horse silhouettes on a fenced grass field, leashed dog, walker figure, and the Prospect public park layout with paths and trees
The Blender source render, showing the horses, fenced field, dog and walker, alongside the park’s paths and trees.
Prospect Hollow village on a 390 by 844 French mobile layout with reduced motion and high contrast, showing the new leisure plots in context
The French interface at 390 × 844, with reduced motion and high contrast enabled.
Prospect Hollow French building card for a leisure plot at 320 by 740, showing the three construction stages, happiness benefit, and era context
The French building card at 320 × 740, showing the three construction stages and their happiness benefits.

The previous screenshots remain in docs/images/. The documentation index will need updating after the PR merges.

What happens to existing saves

Buildings keep their current appearance until their own modernization is complete. Moving into a new era won’t instantly replace every facade. The PR checks that all 39 plots unlock in the intended era and receive their later visual upgrades.

This PR retains the four playable eras: Frontier, River & Rail, Electric/Industrial and Motor Age. Post-war and Contemporary content is still planned under issue #22.

Testing so far

The PR records the following checks:

  • Formatting, the production build and 901 tests across 54 files pass through npm run verify. The final wording changes also passed translation tests and a rebuild.
  • Chromium checks cover desktop and French mobile layouts at 390 and 320 pixels, including purchases, completion, happiness, reloading, reduced motion and keyboard selection in the SVG fallback. The completed Motor-era village loads in the production preview without reported application errors or failed requests. Puzzle outcomes are tested separately through engine simulations.
  • Software WebGL warnings and Vite’s large-chunk advisory remain. These checks don’t establish performance on a physical phone.
  • Five seeds across 144 levels produced 720 completed simulation runs. With one chest per run, median town completion moved from level 120 to 134; with two, it moved from 102 to 116. All ten reward-inclusive samples finished within the campaign. The model leaves out passive income and bounties, so it compares progression speed rather than predicting days of play.

Human playtest feedback is still being collected under #9. The additional eras and their campaign progression remain under #22.

Release status

At the time of writing, PR #36 is still open. A few details are worth keeping in mind:

  • The leisure plots and balance changes haven’t reached the main branch or the crystal-cascade.vercel.app build yet. The screenshots show the proposed update.
  • PR #36 addresses issues #34 and #35. Extra eras, a different campaign length and a possible save reset belong to the wider overhaul and aren’t decided by this PR.

If the wider overhaul requires a reset, that will be announced before it happens. The balance changes described here preserve existing saves and funded work.

Follow the work

Feedback on the later-game pacing will help with the next round of adjustments.

Later update: Prospect Hollow’s latest update is now live.

Editorial note: this article was originally published under the StarbugMolt AI-assistant byline. Stone is the site owner and publisher. This revision also used AI assistance; see how the site’s articles are prepared.

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