Hello Saeges!

It has been a little while. It is 2024 now, and lots of things are happening with the game. It took us a while longer to put together this devlog since, as luck would have it, we started the new year sick.
Nasty stomach flus and regular flus aside, we have managed to get back on track and have started working on lots of new content for the game and have tons of plans for what we want to get done this year. But there is something else we want to talk about, something very important to us and that we believe will make Farmwand a quite unique experience in the cozy sphere: Worldbuilding. Buckle up, it's a long one!

The world of Farmwand

We LOVE fantasy worlds. The idea of a unique land where things can be familiar yet fully magical, places and creatures that would be impossible in our world...it's just great to simply let our imagination run wild. When designing Farmwand we wanted to create a world that felt alive and fully realized, one that was fun to explore and where the fantasy elements were more than just a coat of paint applied over familiar tropes. That's why this whole time, from before the first model was made, we've been carefully writing the stories that make the world of Farmwand work. From the legends its people tell as part of their history and the spirits and deities different groups believe in (and how they shape their festivals and traditions), to the many creatures that you see roaming around, we want you to feel truly immersed in a brand-new place from the moment you step in.
The world of Farmwand is a land where elves, fairies, dwarves, goblins, forest trolls, humans and saeges coexist alongside many other unique creatures and spirits. Each faction has its own particular history, culture and place in the world, and you can see it through your interactions with them and the many locations and items you will discover through your adventure.
Because while the game will start and revolve mainly around Lunahweld town, there are many other locations we are developing and hoping to add over time. Even if you may not be able to visit them early on, you will still learn about them, and even meet some of their inhabitants as they make their way into the Ocean Mare Inn for a couple of drinks and to share their stories.

Adding life to the world

While you can find many common plants and animals in the game (all the standard crops and farm animals, bears, deer and many others) you can also find plenty of unique magical creatures and vegetation. How do we come up with them? We have a small list of requirements that every new creation for the game has to meet before it is added:

• Make the story better and/or the game more fun.
• Have a cozy aesthetic or, if it is spooky, fit the rest of the style and have a point to it.
• Fit the general themes of the story we are telling.

When we want to add a new creature to the game we can divide them mostly into groups: functional creatures (creatures that fill a specific gameplay purpose, like magical farming animals or some of the aggressive and challenging creatures like spiders) and lore creatures (which enrich the world and story, like the blinkatts or the nomnoms). If the creatures are functional, we usually try to find a real-life inspiration that matches what we need (a cow for example) and mix it with something unique, usually a completely unrelated group of things (fruits, maybe), resulting in a brand new thing (a Plumpberry cow).

Once the initial design is ready and we know its function, we begin writing how these creatures fit into the world, how they would affect it, and how can they coexist with their more normal counterparts. If the creatures are lore based, we usually start from a theme. The world of the game is deeply spiritual, with magical beings and ethereal creatures roaming it, especially at night. It is a world of beauty, but also of mystery. Exploring these themes, we wanted a creature that embodied that slightly otherworldly, almost spooky beauty. Jellyfishes are strange, strange animals. The way they move, the way they glow...they seemed to us like a perfect fit for the themes we wanted to explore. And by reimagining them as graceful little ballerinas, the designs came flowing until we ended with our very own Meadow dancers. A group of small creatures that float around near the fields, drinking the dew of magical flowers and humming songs that entrance the travelers that hear them. And they make for a pretty good omen!
Little pieces of folklore were built around them, small events designed for when you encounter them for the first time, and even some dialogues for other characters who've seen them. [previewyoutube=hbMSgahZV_k;full][/previewyoutube] Every detail, every new creature, every small new piece of the game is carefully set into the whole, in that cozy world where everything and everyone just fits :)

The contrast of cozy and the "not so cozy"

Fairy tales are a curious thing, at times wholesome and at times scary, depending on the kind of lesson you want to teach children. The number of stories with creatures that steal children or lure them away for example is quite surprising. And we knew that Farmwand needed to have one as well. The Acorn Cloak came from this idea, a small child-like creature that offers sweets to kids and treasures to adults, luring them deep into the forests and trying to make them get lost. With their friendly yet naughty smile, they can look slightly creepy and are a common monster in the bedtime stories that kids at Lunahweld town are familiar with.
But that, turns out, is not a very cozy element. Yet somehow, it fits. It is a balancing act in the end, to write stories and a world that feels wholesome but at the same time has some spookiness and more mature themes to it. Maybe we can only truly appreciate the happy parts and the beauty of a world when we can also see the slightly darker or scarier parts of it. Still, this is a cozy game first and foremost, so those shades are never going to get too dark. We LOVE fantasy. And like any fantasy story worth telling, we feel it has to have something meaningful to say and a big world to get lost in. Will we succeed at it? We're doing our very best, and can only hope that by the time you play the game you enjoy its world as much as we have enjoyed creating it :) Please let us know if you want to hear more about world-building, as there are plenty of things to explore. The cultures, the towns, the locations, the different factions, the festivals and traditions... And it is something we've been dying to share with you all! :D *Font used in some images : Stanberry, by Jayvee D. Enaguas (Grand Chaos) 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 GrandChaos9000. Some Rights Reserved. Under a license from Creative Commons (CC-BY-SA 3.0)