Straitened Times Version 0.56 [FAST]

In 0.56, a new bar appears beneath the choices: . If you starve the Elder, you lose the Water Sourcing blueprint forever. If you starve the Mother, the Collective Sanity buff becomes a Collective Despair debuff (-5 Sanity to all).

The ration dispenser clicks. It produces exactly 1.2 kilos of gray paste. Last week, that fed five people. Today, you have seven. Two are children who arrived in the night, dragging a dead battery between them.

You click it. “You cut the corrupted tissue away with a shard of broken glass. Kaelen does not scream. He has not had the water to spare for tears. You stitch him closed with fishing line and a needle you heated in a candle flame. The wound smells of sweet rot. Your Sanity drops to 31.” Debtor’s Grief – For the next 12 hours, every action costs +0.5 Hunger. You are eating for two now: yourself, and the ghost of the man you almost let die. Straitened Times Version 0.56

If you starve the Stranger… the children watch.

The log updates. A small flavor text appears, new to 0.56: “The Community looks at you. Not with gratitude. With calculation. They have seen you choose who lives. Now they know you are willing to cut.” The ration dispenser clicks

You open the (another new UI panel). It asks you a question the old versions never dared:

In Version 0.55, you would have saved him. A simple Antibiotic Poultice (2 Cloth + 1 Purified Water + 1 Medicinal Fungus) was a guaranteed craft. But the 0.56 patch note lingers in your mind like a splinter: “Recipes now scale with Sanity. Desperation breeds innovation, but fear wastes resources.” Today, you have seven

You pick up the rusted scalpel. The cough from Kaelen’s tent has stopped.