The Herbalist, New Project, and MGDC

Intro

So it's been a while since my last post. In my last post I talked about shipping a smaller game where I could finish it in a few months. I actually didn't end up doing that. Instead I worked on a small puzzle game that I somewhat released on itch.io a few weeks ago. It is based off of the research mechanic in The Herbalist but instead of a square grid it is a grid of hexagons. Since then I've transitioned to working on The Herbalist more and starting to flesh out the NPC and Quest systems. Overall, I've been very burnt-out lately from job searching and I haven't had my usual energy to develop my own projects. I've been more motivated lately to work on The Herbalist partially because I'm attending the Midwest Game Developers Conference this week and I want to have some progress done on the game since GDC earlier this year.

Masyu Hexagon Game

For this project I made around 8 levels of the Masyu game but instead of a square grid it uses a hexagon grid. I mainly started working on it as I wanted to release something on mobile platforms but I realized that the game would need a lot more polish to be something able to be released. I decided to upload it to itch.io as a prototype of which I'll include a link to down below. Not a ton else to mention about this project so I'll move on to the updates from The Herbalist.

Masyu Hexagon Game Itch.io Page

The Herbalist Updates

Most of the game is similar to the previous build I made for GDC. The main updates I've made to the game is fleshing out the Quest system and changing the quest log over to a Canvas system. Besides the programming updates I have made some significant changes to the overall design and setting of the game. I've decided that I want the game to be set in a more modern age with the bulk of society being distrustful of nature and plants in general. The main setting idea that I had for this is the 2012 Lorax animated film. The main narrative drive for the player is to improve the communities trust in nature by giving them potions and remedies for their issues. Each community member will have a trust meter that can fill up as the player helps them and fulfills quests and by filling up the meter the player will be rewarded with items, narrative exposition, or gold.
With this game I want the main themes to be helping the community and improving trust in nature. Similar to Stardew Valley in the sense that there are still machines and other modern luxuries as I don't want the main theme to turn into "natural remedies should replace modern science" but rather that they should be used in tandem with each other. The main way that i'm planning on doing this is having the player create potions to replace some of the modern tech that the community members use and providing solutions to problems using potions. Most of the "modern tech" will be made up items for the game world and not actual technology.

MGDC

So a few months ago I saw that the Midwest Game Developer Conference was being hosted in Madison, Wisconsin. Since I'm based in the Chicago area I thought that it would be a good experience to go and try to talk to some more local companies and developers. I am pretty nervous about going as some on looking to get into the industry but I am looking forward to some of the talks that have been scheduled and being able to learn new things about the industry.

Next Sprint: Gameplay and Artstyle Changes

For the next sprint I'm planning on fleshing out more of the gameplay areas and switching up the artstyle from Isometric to a regular 2D style. I think that the main reason I wanted the isometric look was to stand out more however I don't think that jumping into a new artstyle for me is what i should be doing. I want to focus on my strengths through design and gameplay rather than through the artstyle. Since I don't really have a mechanical or gameplay related reason for it, I'm planning on just going with basic shapes and colors for the art and go from there. In terms of the gameplay updates, I want to make the game loop function more smoothly and implement clearer avenues for how to do certain actions. When I was playtesting the game I found that in the herb selection tab of the research mini-game and the potion making tab it wasn't very clear on what the player was supposed to do. Implementing quality of life features to help players with the main loop I think will be very beneficial.

The Herbalist