Hello all and happy new year!

I'd like to thank everyone that's played and enjoyed Moondrop. My quirky little genre mashup has come a long way from the initial Seven Day Roguelike Challenge. As a small thanks, I'm releasing the soundtrack on Bandcamp for free. Feel free to grab a relaxing cup of tea, put on some headphones, and cozy up during this cold weather.

The album can be found at https://joshgalecki.bandcamp.com/album/moondrop-soundtrack

Cheers,
Josh

The full version of Moondrop is now out!* Here's the latest set of changes:

- Added in the Sunny Trail artwork, decals, and trees.
- Added in a Fox Shell Game puzzle for the Sunny Trail.
- All Sunny Trail puzzles (and so **all** puzzles) now have a second level of difficulty if encountered after already completing two trails.
- All Trails now have small chest caches that give out a few good items based on the theme of the trail.
- Fixed a bug where the AllRock potion failed to create an AllRock if it was used on a regular rock instead of an open space. It now swaps the regular rock to an AllRock.
- Fixed a bug where a normal game would be placed into the Withering Curse challenge.
- Fixed some icons, help screens, and image resolutions for the Steam Deck.
- When playing on Steam Deck, the control scheme help icons default to controller icons.
- (With these last two changes, the game should be rereviewed by Valve and the "Unplayable" designation with the Steam Deck should be removed.)
- Added a delay before accepting input on the Game End screen to prevent players (read: myself) from accidentally clicking through.
- Lowered the chance of mistberry farm inclusions from 100% to 9%, meaning you'll be able to find literally anything else on the farm.
- Tweaked the formula for the cost to leave for the trail on later trails (i.e. 20+ days)
- Fixed a bug where mistberries were not displaying correctly in the plant info box.

And the game is finished! It's finally caught up with what my original vision was for the game, although I definitely took some backtrails to get there. It's been nearly a three-year expedition, and I've learned a lot along the way. Thanks to everyone who came along journey, and I hope you follow along for Moonroof Studios next games!


*If you still see the game labeled as "Early Access" on Steam, there was a slight hiccup with the price increase. Valve needs to approve the increase, which I expect to happen later today. I'm not able to hit the "Release out of Early Access" button on the back end while this pricing request is pending. HOWEVER, I've already updated things so that the Version 1.0 is the default build that Steam plays. You should be able to verify this by looking at the version number on the title screen.

Hello all!

Progress continues! I'm most of the way through programming the last of the trail puzzles for the Sunny Trail, and the game is still on pace to release at the end of July.

The plan has been to increase the price of Moondrop from $10 to $15 once the game gets out of Early Access and has its official release. For the next week or so, it's gonna be part of the Steam Summer Sale. This will be the least expensive time to pick up the game for a loooong while.

Cheers,
Josh

I've been part of this cool game dev project called Tiny Mass Games since the beginning of 2023. We're trying to create small, polished games in a short development cycle. It's been tons of fun so far!

If you like my work on Moondrop, you might also enjoy Within a Dead City, a tiny 4X game inspired by Majesty. It features auto-battling heroes, base building, and (of course) the ability to place rewards on enemy monsters and monster lairs. Each game of WaDC is meant to last 15 - 30 mintues. Give it a shot!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2345910/Within_a_Dead_City/

Small development update! At the beginning of the year, I planned to have Moondrop exit Early Access by the end of this month. Six months later, I'm a little behind schedule! I'm updating the official release date to be in mid-to-late July. I'll use the extra time to create more content and run additional testing. Hang tight, and I'll see you in July!

The Damp Trial is now ready for exploration! This trail includes the world-famous (lol) fishing puzzle, the less-famous river puzzle, and the brand-new lilypad puzzle. New rooms featured on the damp trail include tiny little frog ponds and sunken treasure chests that hold the key to keeping your farm watered for days. The Damp Trail also has a second level of difficulty for all of its puzzles. This more difficult trail occurs if the player has beaten at least two trails on the current farm run.

Other patch notes:
You can now pet the fox on the Dry Trail.
In an inventory or storage screen, a right click will quickly transfer an entire stack of an item.
Moonlight lampposts and moonstone orbs will now show their mist-dispersal radius prior to placement.
Fixed an infinite loop bog that could occur during trial rewards.
Wild mistberries no longer show up with plantovision if the mistberries are covered by mist.
Fixed a bug where trail history was not reset when playing a second time on the same game session.
Fixed a bug with firefly catching. (GET IT?!?!)
Fixed a bug where the river trail had an unsolvable solution.

We've only got one more trail to go before the game is out of Early Access! As I mentioned in the previous update post, I'm part of a project this year to create a small game every two months with a month's break in between. I'll be busy with that for April and May, and I'll be finishing up Moondrop in June!

This is a minor patch that addresses some bugs and player feedback.
-- Upgrading the iron ax now results in a golden ax, as intended
-- Fixed some aspect ratio malarkey that was cutting off portions of the UI in fullscreen mode.
-- Limited target frame rate to 60 FPS
-- Removed some debug text from the Oncewas screen
-- Fixed a bug allowing unlimited houses to be built in Oncewas
-- Fixed up the UI when starting a new game from the village screen.
-- Improved the performance of the mist layer on both farm and mountain.

With these cleared off the TODO list, it's time to buckle down and get the Damp Trail update out!

The 1.4 Update adds a new mountain trail, the Shady Trail, to the lineup. The Shady Trail focuses on the darker and spookier side of the woods. That's not to say it can't be cozy, though! Fireflies will light your way through the dark forest, leading you to new treasure. The dark cover of night provides the perfect opportunity to watch falling stars in the night sky. The shady nature of the trail has also attracted certain dubious merchants to the mountain. ready to sell you all manner of items that were probably acquired in a legal manner.

This update is more focused on adding content than bug fixes, but it has a fair number of bugs squashed and UI improvements still. Also, I've got a native Linux version up and running!

- The Shady Trail appears! The player has a 1 in 4 chance of visiting the Shady Trail when they visit the mountain. The Shady Trail has its own unique set of trials to pass and secrets to discover.
- Added a new star-catching puzzle to the Shady Trail. The Shady Trail is also guaranteed to have the Columns puzzle and the Dark Woods puzzle
- All trails now have their own set of rooms that can appear. The Bee Swarm room will only appear in the Normal Trail, while the Squirrel Scamper room will appear in the Normal and Dry Trails. The Dried Flower room remains exclusive to the Dry Trail.
- New potion: Firefly Potion (replaces the unloved Pollen Potion). A Firefly Potion summons three fireflies that spread out in random directions. Fireflies dispel any mist they fly over. A boon for explorers.
- New trail room (Shady): Firefly Nest. Sends out lots of fireflies to explore the nearby trail.
- New trail room (Shady): Lazy Fireflies. Three fireflies chilling out by a tree. Nothing to see here, nope.
- New trail room (Dry, Shady): Quarry. Lots of rocks to break, and guaranteed to spawn a gem rock in the center. A gem rock is guaranteed to spawn a gem.
- New trail room (Shady): Sloeberry Bush. The rare sloeberry restores 100% of your energy, but gives a 10% penalty to speed for the rest of the day.
- New trail room (All): Herb Cache. A spot of especially alchemical soil has led to a clutch of forageable herbs to gather.
- New trail room (All): Merchant. A merchant (almost definitely a human and not a fox) has set up shop in the mountain! The merchant offers three items for sale, choosing randomly between magic items and rare potions. Trades for money, moonstone, and occasionally iron ingots. Guaranteed to show up on every trail visit, hidden somewhere in the mountain.
- Removed the Idol of Fortune from the crafting workbench. Replaced its art and renamed it to the Golden Statue. Available at your friendly merchant now!
- Added the Firefly Compass to the crafting workbench. If used on the mountain trail, it will spawn three fireflies and each firefly will head in the direction of a trail trial.
- Each mountain trail is now guaranteed to have at least six moonlight flowers.
- The Potion of Rocks now has a chance of spawning at least one gem rock.
- New magic item: Jeweler's Pick. This pick will never harvest any rocks, iron, or gold, but it doubles the chance of finding gems.
- New rare potion: All Rock Potion. This potion will spawn a single elemental rock when used. This rock gives a growth bonus to any of the eight tiles surrounding it.
- New perk: Benevolent Vulpines. This perk grants 20% off of all merchant prices.
- New Perk: Rock Bounty. Chance of gaining multiple rocks when a stone is broken with a pick.
- Mistberries are no longer given out as a trial reward. It is still given as a reward if a trail is cleared.
- The Shady Trail trials all have a second level of difficulty now.
- Higher difficulty puzzles now offer better rewards.
- Potions no longer have randomized colors. This made more sense when potions were unidentified until used, but it makes less sense now that potions start off identified.
- Added icons to the workbench screen to inform the player what each upgrade costs and what the player's current resources are.
- Fixed a cursor offset bug in the Oncewas screen
- Fixed a bug where items stored in chests lost their descriptions on loading a save.
- Fixed a bug where loading a saved game could allow a second visit to the Dry or Shady trails within the first four trail visits.
- Fixed a bug where plants about to be eaten by a vampire plant would wither away. Now the vampire power check happens before the wither check.
- Reduced kegging times to 1 day for berries and 2 days for honey.
- Fixed a bug where squirrels had vastly different speeds from encounter to encounter.
- New icon for items that are keggable.
- Moondrop now has a native Linux build! Tested on Ubuntu.

Moondrop is shaping up nicely! Now that two of the four different trail types are in place, I think you can get the feel for what the final game will look like. There are two more trails to still add - the Sunny Trail and the Damp Trail. I've been maintaining a pretty consistent patch-per-month schedule so far, but I'm planning to slow that down in the new year. I'm excited to be a part of Tiny Mass Games, a project where a bunch of cool game devs are trying to make complete (and tiny) games in two-month time frames. It will be exhilarating, perhaps exhausting, but most definitely a fun time. That will slow down the pace of development on Moondrop, though. I plan to have the next big content update out in March and then the final update in June. With that final update, the game will have four fully-featured trails, another difficulty level for all the trail trials, and a bevy of new secrets to discover on the mountain trail. I'll make sure to do at least one bug-fix-focused patch before each of the big content updates so that the game doesn't go too long without any love.

Finally - do you have a cool idea for something to find on the farm or on the mountain? I'd love to hear about it! I'm at a point now where all the systems are in place and it's much easier to add something new in.

The recent 1.3 introduced Challenge modes for players that have reached the summit in a normal game. This small update adds on Steam achievements for each of those Challenges - Daily Wither, Bomb Rocks Everywhere, and No Village Bonus. Additionally, there is a fourth achievement for reaching Day 30 on the farm.

Happy farming!

The first major content update, the Dry Trail, is fresh out of the oven! This update has a whole slew of shiny new content to check out, including the eponymous Dry Trail. Until now, there's only been a single 'type' of mountain trail that players could go visit. The long term plan for the game is to include four different types of mountains (one for each of the farming elements), where each mountain will have its own proc gen flavor, puzzles, encounters, and tileset. This update includes the first of those trails, the Dry Trail. The festive fall colors will pair well with sweaters, comfy blankets, cups of tea, and the Thanksgiving leftevers.

Here's the full list of new additions:
- New sound effects and sound design by Paige Wynn.
- The player has a 1 in 4 chance to visit the Dry Trail whenever they visit the mountain. It is guaranteed to occur once before the player reaches the summit.
- The Dry Trail will always have the Hide and Seek trial, the Fox Chase trial, and the new Two Phase Maze trial. This new trial has players navigate a two-level maze.
- The Dry Trail has a "Choice of Flowers" encounter. The player may come across a pair of dried and withered flowers on the trail. One is a withered time flower, and the other a withered moonlight flower. The player may choose to water one and gain its benefits, but the other flower will wither away shortly after.
- Added Challenge Modes that can be played once the player reaches the summit. The old "Hard Mode" has been rebranded as "Daily Wither", and two new modes have been added: "No Village Bonuses" and "Bomb Rocks Everywhere".
- There will be three new Steam achievements for beating a Challenge, although those achievements aren't up yet.
- All mountain trails now have shortcut tunnels that can provide quick access to other parts of the trail. The tunnels are guaranteed not to have any rocks or trees blocking the passageway. Each end of the tunnel is blocked by a fence, and I'm leaving it up to you to figure out how to get past those
- All mountain trails now have squirrels milling about, looking for places to bury their seeds for the winter.
- The player now has a smaller Moonlight Lantern radius when they are a sheep.
- Fixed a crash caused by improper initial conditions for the River Dam puzzle.
- If the player attempts to build / till / plant on a farm tile that will be covered by mist overnight, the action highlight square shades to red and a warning pops up at the bottom of the screen.
- Improved the Fox Chase trial so the rock layout is randomized.
- Added a second level of difficulty for the Dry Trail trials. If the player reaches the Dry Trail on trail level 2 or higher, the puzzles will be a little more difficult.
- Fixed a bug with the Steam Deck that prevents player input from being read correctly.
- Bushes now have a 10% chance to drop a potion herb instead of berries / twigs / seeds.
- Fixed a bug where players using controllers or the Steam Deck couldn't interact with sliders in the Options or Settings menu. They can be interacted with, although it's a bit janky.
- Included a new Controller Scroll Speed slider in the Options menu for players using controllers
- Updated art for Oncewas
- The Oncewas screen now allows players to return to the main menu directly.
- There's a file included for players who want to use Azerty Controls. The Steam Page will shortly have directions for how to use this file.
- Earl Grey Potions perk now displays the amount of energy gained when a potion is used.
- Not all perks reloaded properly when loading a saved game. (Whoops.) Fixed.
- Herb boxes now have an increasing wood cost per purchase. The Herbmonger perk no longer applies to garden boxes.
- The Merry Apiary perk now makes players immune to bees.
- The Damp and Dry seed income perks are now always unlocked. They felt kinda boring as an 'unlock' reward, so better to just make them always available. Hat tip to Chris for convincing me of this.
- The Yeast Whisperer perk bonus has been increased from +50% to +150%.
- Fixed a bug where chameleon plants didn't work next to vampire plants.

Happy farming and happy trails!

The new patch adds full controller support to Moondrop. Additionally, you can now remap controls by going to the title screen and going to the Settings menu.

This patch took a little bit longer to come out than I expected (6 weeks instead of 2). I blame the remappable controls for the delay :) In order to implement remappable controls, I ripped out the entire input control system and added in a new Unity library for handling input. Learning the new library took some time, and I'm still haunted by assumptions I made early in the migration process. (It is the spooky season!) It's working now, though. If you do change your control settings, you can hit the Save button on the Rebinding screen and that control configuration will be loaded up each time you start the game.

Other patch changes
-- Added the ability to access the tutorial from the Mists pause menu.
-- Prevent bomb rocks from showing up near the farm for Farmhands.
-- Removed the Azerty Keys button from the Title Settings menu. Azerty keys can be used by remapping the keyboard controls.
-- Count any resources in storage and bring them to Oncewas after mistfall.
-- Added the ability to delete save game files.
-- Made the Alchemy screen less painful to use with a controller

Moondrop supports switching between keyboard / mouse and a gamepad at anytime... but there's a good number of edge cases there that I haven't carefully handled in the code. I haven't had the time to thoroughly test all the possibilities. If you come across a bug with remapping controls or with input switching, let me know! I want to fix any bugs that are causing issues for players.

I haven't tested this out on the Steam Deck yet, but I'll get access to one next week and I can see how the game plays.

One last thing: I feel bad about removing the Azerty keys. Dsol, France! I hope to have something in the next patch that makes it quick and easy to switch to Azerty.

It's been a little over two weeks since launch, and I've been hard at work incorporating your feedback! Two of the biggest issues, the short farm day and the lack of daily saves, have been fixed. Thanks to everyone who commented and left suggestions - I couldn't address everything in this short amount of time, but I've got a good list of things to work on. Here's the big changes for this patch.

• Longer farm days! Days are now four minutes long instead of two. It should make the farm day more relaxing :)
  
• Daily autosaves! Now you can exit the game at any time and restart your farm at the beginning of that day.
  
• There's a new "Mists" tab on the in-game menu screen. You can see how far away the next Twilight Hour is, how much it will cost, and there's a button that immediately ends your farm and sends you back to Oncewas with your goods.
  
• Added a "Hard Mode", available under the Settings menu on the title screen. On Hard Mode, daily Withers start afflicting your plants after you beat a trail level. They start with a +0 wither and increase with each trail victory
  
• Introduced a couple of magic items! The Rock-Growing Hoe can create rocks anywhere, and the Mist-Busting Pick allows you to carve a path through the mist. You can find these when you beat trail trials, and either one can open up new gameplay strategies.
  
• Fixed a bug where tools would degrade if moved off of the primary row
  
• Fixed a bug where a bunny would sometimes spawn outside the trial area, preventing completion of the bunnies trial.
  
• Fixed a bug where only the rare Sunny seed would show up as a trial reward
  
• Fixed a bug where the game crashes if you reach the summit twice in one game
  
• Rejiggered the initial gameplay so that unlocking new seed types is more rewarding. Now players start with a random seed income of 2 instead of 4. On reaching the first two ranks (unlocking dry and damp seeds respectively), players gain a permanent +1 to random seed income. To make sure that players have sufficient seeds at the beginning of a farm, everyone starts off with +2 random seeds on the first day.
  
• Players that run out of time on the mountain trail now gain a little energy if they have finished some of the trail trials
  
• Combined the different levels of seed perks - each type has one perk that grants +2 seed income.
  
• Fixed a bug involving the Waxing Crescent perk when the moonlight orbs were close to the border fence.
  
• Crops now wither before plant powers are fired.
  
• A withered fully-grown crop will now drop its harvest instead of just disappearing
  
• Warper and Mole crops now switch their arrows to ALL type arrows after their first harvest.
  

It's been a wild development journey, but I've made it to release! Moondrop is now available on Steam for Windows.

Early Access is a wonderful program, and it means that I'm far from done with the game. I'll be adding in new puzzles, perks, and potions, new magic items and NPCs, and more upgrade options at the village to stuff the game to the brim with content. I can't do it alone, though! Let me know what you think of the game, what your winning builds look like, and what you'd like to see in future versions. The best is yet to come!

Watch a few runs of Moondrop played by Josh, the game's developer. AMA during the stream.

A couple runs of Moondrop played by Josh, the game's developer. Ask me anything during the stream.