Comes Alive (HCA)

2026-07-30 — Villagers are now mortal

Death comes to the village

Until now villagers were invulnerable — nothing could hurt them. They now die like any other NPC: struck down, shot, from a fall, burned, drowned, or at the hands of a mob. They are fragile: an adult does not take much and a child takes less, so watch where you swing.

When someone dies it is announced in the world chat, the body stays for a few seconds, and their record is kept forever: they still appear in their family's tree.

Widowhood and mourning

If the villager who dies was married, their partner is widowed:

• On their profile, where it used to say «Married», it now says «Widow» or «Widower».
• They enter mourning for a while, and so do the dead villager's parents, children and siblings. While it lasts they speak differently, they will not pair up with anyone, and they cannot be proposed to.
• A new interaction appears, «Comfort», which only exists while there is somebody to comfort. Depending on their character they will thank you, break down crying, or ask to be left alone. Comforting and hugging someone in mourning raises affinity a lot; telling them a joke does not.
• If you were the one married to the villager who died, your marriage ends and you are free to marry again.

A pregnancy already under way is not lost if the father dies: the child is still born.

If you killed someone, they will not let you forget it

Killing a villager has social consequences, and they are not small:

• Their widow or widower loses almost all affinity with you, their family (parents, children, siblings) loses a great deal, and the rest of the village loses some — in a small village word gets around. If the victim did not live in a village, the neighbours nearby hear about it instead.
• It is on the record. Affinity can be won back by talking; the fact that they know what you did cannot. From then on they speak to you as a murderer and they name their dead: «Murderer. You killed Ana and you still walk around here», «Take your hands off me, murderer», «Sorry does not bring Ana back».
• Trying to comfort the widow of your own victim goes badly. Trying to flirt with her goes worse: you get slapped.
• The game tells you in chat who you have widowed and how many people you have turned against you, so the drop in affinity does not look like a bug.

Family tree

• It now marks the dead with a dimmed card and what killed them: «Deceased - cut down», «Deceased - a fall», «Deceased - poisoned»…
• A marriage does not disappear because one of the two dies: it is still shown, with the partner marked as deceased.
• Deceased siblings now appear too (they used to be hidden).
• Fixed: with three or more children, the cards at either end spilled outside the panel and ended up drawn over the world, out of reach. Four now fit per row and long names shrink to fit.

New: «My family tree»

A large button at the top of your profile (/ca perfil). It opens your tree: you, your partner — a villager, a deceased villager, or the player you married — and all of your children. From there you can click any name to jump to their family, and click your own card to centre the tree back on yourself.

Notes

• All the new content is in Spanish and English, and follows /ca lang esp|eng.
• Villagers you already had become mortal on their own, a few seconds after startup. There is no need to re-summon them.

For server administrators

• New options in config.json: villagersCanDie (set it to false to make them invulnerable again), announceDeaths, mourningMinutes (45), corpseSeconds (20), murderHeartsSpouse (−60), murderHeartsKin (−40), murderHeartsVillage (−12) and murderWitnessRadius (32).
• ⚠️ The dialogue files are re-seeded on startup (catalogue v4). If you had rewritten lines in dialogues/<language>/*.json, they are saved as <name>.json.v3.bak before the new ones are written.