Untitled Adventure in Cute Fantasy Farm?
I'm officially in my cozy gamedev era with this new prototype.
It's been called a surrealist masterpiece by a real person.
A playable feedback request version is AVAILABLE TODAY.
My Cozy Game Dev Era
In my brief gamedev career, I've become known for short, brutally difficult arcade games. When you're developing a game like that, it adds a certain amount of high stress once you're ready to release. You want the player to like it. You want the game to be difficult. Both of these things align very narrowly on stars when someone is really good at game design. So with the new game, that pressure is something I wanted to take out.
I Purchased an Asset Bundle
Previously I considered cozy games to be outside of my skill level because they require more art and content than an arcade game. I cut this problem out by finding an affordable asset bundle with enough things to keep me extremely busy.
Making a game almost turns into assembling a puzzle once you have all the assets done for you, except the pieces fit together in a very flexible way so you can do anything you can think of with them. It's like playing with action figures or something.
It's a different experience from grabbing the first free thing from open source art and shoving it on the screen and making it survive a horribly difficult encounter.
It's more.... relaxing. But also more work.
Preparing for Larger Scope
Because of having all those assets, you have a lot of things to do. You have to be more focused when at any time you could decide to add graphics for anything in the folders. You could do a dungeon, a bird, and an alien, and then sit back asking, "Well what was I doing again?"
Staying on task and working on what is in front of me instead of what is far off in the distance is one of my specialties as a gamedev. I don't think too far ahead.
However you'll probably be interested in the concept I started with.
Early Concept of the Game
When asked to explain the game to someone back before I really started, I explained:
Several towns connected by world and dungeons. Each town has a farm and resources and people who live there. Based on what the town's farm has produced, you can steal resources from the town and take jobs to steal resources from other towns in exchange for resources. So the gameplay loop is getting into town, seeing what's available, which will have grown with idle mechanics. Then you can plot a trip to another town through the wilds and the dungeons. It would be like ... you know classic zelda ARPG. Kill stuff getting items. But I like the idea that if you die in the field, you lose everything.
The central thing will be whacking stuff. like whether you're whacking a chicken or a monster or a tree or something that you're harvesting. then there should also be a satisfying, "you get stuff."
A lot of my influence is coming from that game Pilot Quest in UFO 50 if you played it. In that game, the resources equate to time that you have to go on a quest before you have to be at your destination (or back to base). So you start off leaving and trying to get somewhere and you can't get anywhere, so you learn to to stay close exploring until you discover how to get farther.
This concept most likely will evolve with the project. But this is the starting point.
Whacking The Chickens
You can whack chickens with the sword. The chickens will knockback when hit, run away from player, and disperse from each other.
When whacked, eggs animate from the chickens into spawning nests whose eggs are collectable. There is only one active nest at a time for all chickens to drop eggs into, and they will fill up the one nest when any chicken is hit until it reaches three eggs, then it will spawn another nest and fill it up.
The nests will despawn after a short amount of time to force a hit and collect loop.
"You have to slap the chickens so hard that their eggs shoot out into nests that manifest from nothing."
Try the Feedback Request Version
Reminders
This is a Feedback Request Version
Mainly what I'm looking for here is feedback about how does my sword slash feel. How does it feel to whack chickens. How does it feel to walk around. I want to have answers for what feels potentially bad and how it could feel better before I move very far on.
There is no point in trying it yet if you're not going to give feedback.
Things to Look For
Controls
- The
akey does the sword swing. - The directional keys move the player.
Content
- Two areas contain chickens to try out the hit and collect loop.
- There are four map screens. Two of those screens have no gameplay content and exist to show how seamless transitions connect the small maps into a bigger world.
- Anything blocked off by a stone fence is because I don't have anything there yet.
- There isn't any sound. You'll have to use your imagination for now.
Questions I Have
- How high was your egg count when you stopped playing?
- What did you think of the egg collection?
- How often did you feel like hits that should have landed did not?
- What do you think would be important to improve about the sword swinging?
- Do you have any other comments?
Try It
You need a desktop sized screen.
Please give me feedback, whether in chat, forums, or the imageboard.