Wheek! 0.4.0 is out. – Tiny Bit Adventures

Wheek! 0.4.0 is out. Play it in your browser now. See the game page for everything else.

At the foot of the mountains on ❄️ Snowcap Peaks a waterfall has frozen solid down the rock face, and warm air seeps from a narrow crack beside it (sniff to find it, and it's on the map).
Squeeze in: the floor of the cave beyond is glassy ice, and on ice you don't walk, you slide until something stops you (a rock, a wall, or the snow by the door). Pick a way at each stop and steer your way across.
Three sprigs of berries are frozen into the walls: stop right beside one and gnaw them out (more freeze every night). At the back, something glitters: slide your way to the Frost Crystal.
It's freezing in there, but there's a little hot spring by the entrance: soak in it and your energy comes back. Stuck on the ice? You can always slide back to the entrance. Your herd waits outside.
New goals: Frost Crystal and Ice Picker (all three sprigs in one day). Snowcap Peaks' checklist includes the crystal, so every place now has its big discovery.

Your house in the park has a pet flap at the foot of its front door (there's a 🏡 on the map). In through it is your corner of the living room: a hidey house to nap in (napping at home saves your game), hay in the rack, a water bottle, and a bowl your humans fill with pellets and pepper every morning. Your herd comes home with you.
Your humans built you a trophy shelf, at guinea pig height. Everything you bring back from your adventures goes on it: the warren's nine curios (a 💝 card for the ones you gave away), the message in a bottle, jars that fill up with your shells and sea glass, the Frost Crystal, a willow leaf from the raft ride, your agility rosette in gold, silver or bronze, the owl's shinies, windmill seeds, the maze's golden sunflower, pet shop pellets and barn hay. Twenty in all; the ones still to find show a "?" card. Walk along the shelf and name tags say what each one is and where it came from.
The journal has a trophy shelf page. New goals: Proud Collector (10 trophies) and A Full Shelf.

Find every burrow in a place and it's linked to the long tunnels (the park, which has the warren too, links once you've found 5 of its 10 burrows). From any burrow in a linked place, the tunnel menu offers a ride to every other linked place: a long scurry through the dark, and out you pop at a burrow there, your herd right behind you. Until a place is linked, its burrows say how many you still need.
A world map: press M again with the big map open (or tap 🗺 World). The nine places as they lie, each drawn from its own terrain once you've been there, with the burrows you've found, a ✓ when you've finished everything there and a 🔗 when it's linked. M a third time closes it.
New goal: The Long Way Round.

🏖️ Sandy Cove has a gull instead of the hawk. It circles, eyeing your snacks, and if it spots you out in the open it swoops and snatches a mouthful of your food. Duck under a beach umbrella, into the driftwood or a bush, or freeze.
❄️ Snowcap Peaks has a snowy owl at night (and fewer foxes): it glides overhead and swoops like the hawk. Hide under the pines, by a snowdrift or in a burrow.
🚜 Sunny Acres Farm has Smudge, the grey barn cat. She prowls the farm by day; get close out in the open and she notices you (watch the meter), then stalks you, crouched low, and pounces. Lose her in the crop rows, under a bush, in a log or by squeezing into the barn.
New goal: Wild Encounters (give all three the slip).

From day 3 the world slowly gets tougher, reaching full strength by day 11: you get hungry faster (up to half as fast again) and need vitamin C a little sooner, plain grass fills you up less (lush patches, hay and treats matter more), the hawk, gull and owl come round more often and spot you sooner, and the foxes and Smudge get keener. Days 4, 7 and 10 say so at sunrise.
Cozy mode, for little ones or a relaxed forage: tick it on the breed picker, or switch it for your guinea pig any time in Settings. Nothing can hurt you and there's no game over (you still get hungry, sleepy and chased, just never harmed), and the days don't get harder. Cozy saves show a 🌼.

A third fewer triangles in the busy places: grass, ferns, flowers, clover and other small plants draw only some of themselves further from the camera (all of them close by), the sunflower maze's walls and the leaf piles thin a little, far-off guinea pigs wear lighter fur, and tiny plants only cast shadows close up. The meadow went from 3.1 to 2.0 million triangles on High, and from 2.4 to 1.6 million on Low.
Graphics has a new Auto setting, the default: it starts at High and, if your device can't keep up, steps down by itself (sharpness first, then shadows, then fur and how far you can see). High and Low are still there if you'd rather choose.

The game's code is split into modules (one for the world, one per place to discover, the herd, the HUD and so on) instead of one 370 KB file, still with no build step. Every module carries the version, so after an update your browser never mixes old and new code.

The camera no longer ends up inside your guinea pig or a herd member. Coming out of a door (the sea cave, the barn, the hollow oak and the rest), your herd tumbles out in front of you instead of lining up behind you into the wall, and the camera looks down from above until you move off. A herd member that wanders right up to the camera fades out instead of filling the screen with fur, and buildings, big rocks and trunks pull the camera in close rather than letting it sink into them.

The frozen waterfall and its rock face, the ice cave from inside, the Frost Crystal and berries frozen in a block of ice.
A gull and a snowy owl in flight, and Smudge the grey barn cat.
The park house's living room, a trophy shelf, an agility rosette, a glass jar and a pet flap.