New main menu - your world is no longer hidden behind a black screen. The menu is a sea-coloured column on the left, and your last saved world keeps living on the right while the camera slowly drifts over its biggest village. It's only a view: nothing in your save changes until you press Continue
Continue - one button in the main menu takes you straight back into your last saved world
World card - the menu shows your last world: a minimap, its name, the year and the age, how many people are alive and how many kingdoms there are. Older saves get the minimap and the age after you save them once
Meanwhile in this world - the three latest events from the world's chronicle are shown in the menu
New world preview - while you pick the seed, size and land on the Create world screen, the map behind the menu redraws, so you see the world before you create it
Keyboard control - arrows or WASD move between buttons, Enter or Space presses them, Esc goes back. Works in the main menu and on the Create world and Load world screens. In the pause menu use the arrows and Enter
Reduce motion - a new setting that stops the menu camera and makes panels appear without sliding
Interface scale - make the in-game HUD 125% or 150% bigger, for 4K screens and small windows
Leave confirmation - Menu in the pause menu now asks "Are you sure you want to leave without saving the world?" with Save and leave, Leave without saving and Cancel. If you saved during this pause and the world has not moved since, you leave right away
New pause menu - the same column as the main menu, and the world is no longer covered by a dark screen, so you can see what you paused. The world's name, year and age are at the top, World and Villages show how many people and villages there are, and Save tells you whether it writes over the same file or adds the world to the list. Clicking the world still resumes the game
Settings - a side panel that looks the same in the menu and in the game: language, music, effects, interface scale and reduce motion. Volume is set in 10 steps, clicking the first step again mutes it
Create world and Load world screens restyled to match the new menu
New font - all text in the menu and in the game now uses Rubik. Russian text no longer falls back to a different system font, so both languages look the same
Crisp pixel icons - menu icons are drawn at exact pixel sizes instead of being blurred
New in-game HUD look - the top bar, the powers bar and the World, Villages, History, Laws, Cheats, Plans, Goals and Wiki windows now use the same pixel frames and buttons as the menu. World shows its counters four in a row, so long labels fit on one line, power icons are bigger, and Close in the Wiki is now a real button. Law and cheat checkboxes are easy to see even when they are off
Volume buttons - minus and plus next to the music and effects volume, one step per click, in the menu and in the game
Creature and village cards, the family tree, the list of rulers, the village details and the possession bar got the same new look. Map labels of villages are square and sea-coloured
New loading screen - the same sea colour and logo as the menu, with a pixel progress bar
After you saved your first world and went back to the menu, Load world stayed greyed out and the number of saves was out of date until you clicked it
Settings no longer say that the game has no sound yet
Text in buttons is centred again: game speed, power tabs, brush size, settings and menu buttons had their labels sitting to the left and above the middle
The plot progress bar in a creature's card is visible now, before it was not drawn at all
Follow, Possess and Family tree buttons in a creature's card no longer hide under the powers bar
Long values in a village card (like the dynasty) no longer overlap the next line
A new world saved with the Save button no longer loses everything after that save when you leave to the menu
The hint under Save now says that it writes over the same file after the first save
Clicks in the middle of the screen are no longer swallowed by the hidden loading screen