Speak with your heart

The bad being I had to deal with stressful irl personal shit again and that takes more of a mental toll on me than I realise. But also, in the biggest plot twist, it seems I've found someone who is willing to be my code monkey for free (well, I'm returning the favour by doing art for him).

It's been a process getting my project set up for someone else to work on it, and for him to understand my code and how everything is set out. And it's been a process for me to let my guard down and trust that someone will help me lol. I've been burned many times before by wannabe game dev dudes who start out super enthusiastic about helping me but then fizzle out when they realise how difficult it is, hence why I taught myself to program and did so much work by myself. I'm still really wary of this guy, but we'll see how it pans out.

Now that the programming side has been delegated to someone else, I'm free to do art things as much as I want. That has also been a struggle, one, because I don't trust my code monkey yet, and two, because I spent so much time staring at code, I'm back to feeling like I'm not much of an artist anymore. But I just gotta do a bit everyday and work my way back to it again

I managed to design some default farmers.

An original Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game idea has been on the backburner of my brain for a long time, since like ~2011.

I was at university back then, studying animation and interactive media. The degree was much more animation focused than it was interactive media; we learnt a bit of game making stuff, not enough to do anything substantial, but enough to plant the seed that made me want to work on games someday (which I now know actually meant: I just want to draw characters and contribute to the story. lmao game design wtf is that)

The first iteration of my idea was as typical Bokumono as you can get, very anime inspired. I had a list of features that made up my "ideal" Bokumono: gameplay from AP, a plot that extends the gameplay but nothing as tedious as collecting x amount of Sprites/Sunstones/musical notes; heart events; dating from ToTT, and AP's marriage system; clothes and accessories but no player customisation for some reason. I remember I wanted the player characters to have different backgrounds, like the male player grew up in town and the female player was from the city. The bachelor/ette archetypes were similar to what I have now, my favourite kinds of love interests, but some have changed drastically (I used to have a pilot and a writer bachelors).

I never thought I could make a *real* farm sim game though, so I decided on trying to make a visual novel type thing, where you had 30 days to get a date to the Starry Night festival.

Obviously the most I got done was designing characters haha. Also randomly I pictured the feMC riding around on a vespa scooter so it tickled me when PoOT did that (the male MC drove a pick up truck)

I was able to make the barest minimum of interactivity in Flash but this is the only screenshot I have of it now. Then I gave up because I didn't understand how action script worked and making games is hard. But it didn't end there! A number of years later, like 2018 or so, I returned to the idea of making a visual novel type thing again, in Unity this time.

I used some of the same characters, and the premise was the same, getting a date to whatever festival at the end of 30 days, but the focus was more on navigating the different communication styles of the bachelors. I did get the dialogue system to work and I had a lot planned out in terms of gameplay structure. Even though I tried to play it smart, playing to my strengths and limiting the amount of dateable characters, making a visual novel was still harder than I thought so I eventually gave up on this idea too.

I showed off picking up chickens last time, but now characters react to being shown a chicken. Also I've been replaying Animal Parade and basking in the nostalgia (for Research Purposes of course), so I thought I should add mounts to my game. I didn't have/want to make a horse model though, sooo... you can ride your cow instead.

Other than that, I've also been doing some visual development for the environment design. First I drew this rough map of the town

I've always had a lot of difficulty visualising backgrounds and I just find this kind of stuff super boring, so this took a lot of mental effort lol. But now that I have this rough layout, I've started to design the major buildings in town, looking at regional country towns in my state for inspiration.

I made a new beach scene so I could have another area for festivals (plz ignore the date for Valentine's, I didn't want to play through 14 days), added a bug catching mechanic (but I still need to implement the different bug behaviours), then I needed animations for the visual feedback, so I procrastinated by refactoring my player controller into a state machine. Except refactoring didn't take as long as I thought it would, so I eventually forced myself to open Blender and made some bug catching animations, as well as some animal interaction animations. And you can now pick up your chickens too.

Other than that, I added the ability to cook/craft from your storage (plz patch that in SoSGrB) and also, if you try to buy something when your inventory is full, it'll be delivered to your mailbox to be picked up later. Oh and you can manually rearrange your inventory now too

I got back to working on my game consistently sooner than I thought I would. It's been good to have something other than the stressful irl shit to focus on (tho the stressful shit has also gotten less stressful)

Since my game is inspired by Australia, I thought it would be fitting to include a bushland area where you can grind for resources. Just like venturing out into the bush irl, you have to be careful or you might get lost. But luckily a butterfly will spawn after you cut down some trees and it will lead you to the next correct exit towards the secret special end area (which for now is just a fishing pond).

A new system I added was refining materials, which for now works like Stardew/the My Time games where it takes actual in game time. I'm working on implementing upgraded tools as well. Do you prefer tool upgrading to be through a blacksmith NPC and to take x amount of days? I think it fit old school Bokumono games when the player couldn't craft anything, but relying on the blacksmith for upgrades takes me out a bit when you can build furniture and smelt ores yourself in most games now. I've been thinking of ways to include both ways. Like you can refine materials yourself but it takes time + more resources, or you can pay the 'blacksmith' to do it instantly. Same with upgrading - maybe the blacksmith takes a few days and costs money, but requires a lot less materials. I've also made a lot of little changes based on the feedback I've gotten from play testing, like auto picking up dropped resources and other bits of visual feedback. Oh, and you can grow fruit trees now! Anything involving working with the grid probably took be doubly long bc I don't know maths anymore lol Anyway, I'm gonna have to start playtesting more than a few in game days, so I'm starting to think of character events I can add to entice myself to play that long. Most importantly, I'm gonna have to draw some uwu blushy face portraits, like this

I finally started letting other people play test my game so I've spent the last couple of weeks fixing bugs/tweaking some stuff based on the feedback I've gotten. It's been a mildly disheartening process? lol. I know play testing is an important part of development but idk I'm not a real game developer. I've made little prototypes in the past, like before this I was working on a 2D metroidvania, so I had people test out my player controller, but I didn't have any proper levels set up for it or anything. My farm sim is feeling like a real game, so seeing parts of it break really bummed me out. Though on the bright side, bug fixing has been pretty easy. 90% of the time, I've had the solution somewhere in my code already (but also, dear self, why didn't you do it right the first time??) Oh well, doing art makes me feel better about myself at least. As part of adding some polish to my demo, I redrew the npc portraits.

>>Find out about the bachelorettes!<<

>>Find out about the bachelors!<<

As for what I added to the game since my last update, I haven't achieved anything too big this time. I was mostly play testing and fixing bugs. Though there was one important feature I added, and for that I needed to make the doctor.

Procrastinating with 3D modelling is my favourite thing to do. Anyway, here's some footage of Doctor Valerie in game, and the collapsing sequence.

Nathaniel/Nate works at the clinic as a nurse. He moved to town from The City to care for his grandparents - his grandfather recently had a stroke. Nate is gruff and unsociable, but he's actually a big softy deep down, having worked in the children's ward of a hospital back in The City. Apparently, if you go to the clinic late enough, you may catch him in the middle of knitting things which he donates to the elderly/children/pets.

A tribute to my favourite kind of Bokumono bachelor, the blond boy who likes to cook, Reuben is a baker who works in the local cafe. His uncles own the nearby bed and breakfast, and he used to visit them every Summer during school holidays. As a kid, he was bullied, and it still affects him now; he struggles with low self-esteem and insecurity about his skill despite training at a prestigious patisserie school.

Avery is a journalist from The City who's come to town to investigate the corporate takeover. He's charismatic and flirty and watch what you say because this conversation may be recorded. Naturally, he also rides a motorbike and plays guitar in a rock band.

This is Marcus, an astronomer who moves to town because the clear skies make for perfect stargazing. Once aspired to be an astronaut, but he was disqualified from the program because he has a gluten allergy. It seems he's looking for more than just stars out in the night sky though... something that may end up crash landing on your farm.

Sunil/ Sunny, is an avid surfer dude. He was a backpacker travelling the country but he liked the vibes here so much, he ended up staying for good. He volunteers as a lifeguard and can also be found doing other odd jobs around town. Like the water, Sunny just goes with the flow (maybe a little too much).

(Also I can't remember if I mentioned the plot of the game? It's your typical Bokumono story, evil corpo threatens to take over a small town but the player wins through the power of farming and friendship. But more along the lines of Save the Homeland/Hero of Leaf Valley in that the way the story concludes is based on which path you go down. If I can manage to figure out how to actually program it anyway) So first up, here are the bachelorettes!

This is Beatrice, or Bea for short. She's the middle child and only daughter of the local beekeepers. Her great-great-grandmother started the apiary and it's been run by the daughters of the family ever since. Bea's mother, however, seems to be breaking tradition by pushing her older brother into taking over the business, while encouraging Bea to pursue other things. However, Bea is the shy and anxious type, so leaving her comfort zone has been a bit of a struggle.

Andrea (Andie) is the town mayor. Her father was the former mayor and her family name is well known for settling (stealing?) the area. Andie is very confident, driven and ambitious; she wants to use her influence to help the town to flourish, but she seems to think that joining forces with the evil corpo developers is the right way to do it (girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep). On the side, she enjoys dabbling in tarot and astrology.

Here we have Charlotte (Charlie), Andrea's older sister. She moved back to town from The City about a year ago, after her long-term relationship broke down and then she lost her job. She used to work as a lawyer, but now, much to her chagrin, she works as her sister's secretary at the town hall (thanks nepotism). Charlie doesn't feel very fulfilled and happy with life at the moment, but at least she has her cat Holly to help get her through the days.

As you can probably tell from the white coat, Valerie is the town doctor. She was pushed into doing medicine by her strict parents, even though her rebellious teen spirit wanted to pursue music and singing. Her parents' influence won out in the end, but Valerie doesn't resent them for it; she enjoys what she does (but also, she did take a job far away from them). Still, her punk rock spirit never died - you can often hear music blasting from the clinic and she never misses karaoke night down at the pub.

Marisa is a sailing athlete who is just passing through town, but is then forced to stay a while longer because her boat needs repairs. She's independent and free-spirited, almost to a fault; she's been travelling and training alone for so long, she's gotten used to her own company (though she doesn't mind a casual fling here and there). Also she's from a Mediterranean European-analogue country, so the reversed seasons are a bit of a culture shock.