Update · Wilbur
Step inside: the houses open up like a doll's house
For months Wilbur worked behind closed doors. Now the front wall fades away and you see him in there: buying bread, tapping beer, and once, briefly, with his hat through the ceiling.
For months, Wilbur's working life happened behind closed doors. You tapped the bakery, a menu popped up, eight hours went by and some silver landed in your purse. What he was actually doing in there was anyone's guess. Kneading dough, we hoped.
Now we know. Walk into a house on the old square and the front wall fades away, like the front of a doll's house. On the left stands the owner: Greta at the tavern, Hendrik with flour up to his elbows, Bram at the anvil, Tilde between her candles. On the right stands Wilbur. As a customer, to begin with.
Buy something, hold something
Whatever Wilbur buys, he holds up for a moment: a potion from the healer, a loaf, a sword, candles, a new coat, a bowl of stew. Take a job and he changes into his work clothes. He taps beer, hammers at the smithy, dips candles, sews, grinds herbs, counts coins at the bank and even treads the boards at the theatre.
The house stays open for as long as he works there. No zooming in and out on every shift. It only closes when you go somewhere else or your week ends, and Wilbur gets one last satisfied look before the wall slides back.
The bloopers
Getting there took a few tries, which is a polite way of saying it went wrong alot. In the bakery, Wilbur's hat stuck straight through the ceiling. At the theatre he floated in front of the stage like a ghost who forgot his lines. In the smithy he and Bram hovered a few inches above the floor.
And 36 poses had a hand, a feather, a cape or a sword chopped off at the edge of the picture. ChatGPT redrew all of them on a wider canvas, and the game now lines up each picture by its middle, so Wilbur doesn't jump around when he switches pose.
There are 33 new pictures of Wilbur alone, so the game does not load them all at once. Each house fetches its own pictures when Wilbur starts walking there. By the time he arrives, they are usually waiting for him.
Oh, and the bathhouse. We are not telling you what happens in the bathhouse. Just pop in a few times.
