BUG FIXES - Fixed crash with some spore cultivators - Fixed quantum dye monograph having no tooltip - Fixed some overlapping on a couple mushroom entries in some languages - Fixed decor in flooding rooms not showing their flooded sprites sometimes - Fixed magic mud not sorting alphabetically based on the primary mushrooms inside - Fixed pinned pocket items not keeping their relative menu position - Possible fix for farmers sometimes going over 100%, but have no steps to reliably replicate

[ 2025-04-14 11:37:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is now all the features/QoL stuff I had on my list to add based on all the feedback I've gathered since release! Thank you to all of you who submitted suggestions and talked about issues you had, it's all been so helpful in being able to polish up all the edges of the game. Although this is it for new stuff, I'll still be doing bug fixes as and when they're reported, so if you do find anything breaking please do still report it! Thanks again to all of you for playing <3 CHANGES - Added a new 'Mud Analyser' machine, which lets you view mushrooms inside magic mud, and recycle the powders (You can find this new mud analysing machine in the Mud Analysis building - shocker I know) - Added a new chapter to 'Breaking The Seal' to specifically teach you about Holding R to Respawn back to your last pool/bed BUG FIXES - Fixed a couple sprites with Frogham text being incorrect - Fixed FF frogs not counting for a few 7X checks - Fixed one of the climate control pool positions covering a bridge on the map - Fixed tooltip of frogs working with filters not showing correct gen - Fixed being able to highlight rooms on gamepad - Fixed respawning to a pool immedietely making you use that pool - Fixed some solid tiles not staying solid when loading a second save in the same session

[ 2025-04-11 10:56:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Hotbar lilypad icons now have a different color when you have unlocked all variants for a species BUG FIXES - Fixed quantum-painted frog furniture applying the quantum pink to the frogs themselves - Fixed alchemist hybrid selections showing combined effects in tooltips rather than all listed (like hybrid powders/mushrooms do) - Fixed not being able to place carpet sometimes on gamepad - Fixed flute marker tooltip names not recaching on gamepad - Fixed X to clear for alchemist picks not clearing the hybrid set on gamepad - Fixed being able to double-tap stone chests on gamepad to get multiple chests when removing them

[ 2025-04-09 10:37:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

MUDBORNE, IT IS TIME TO WIKI UP Some lovely news today - the Official Mudborne Wiki, (aka GameFROQS) is now live, and anyone who wants to contribute to it can sign up and get started!! screamyfrog https://mudborne.wiki.gg/
You can all thank @Sonia_k for getting us our own wiki.gg, along with @Crabaret, @mothic, and @LovableMeadow. These 4 players them have spent the last couple weeks setting up templates and example pages for every part of the game - and got it all looking very nice and shiny in the process! fancyfrog Now it's up to the rest of you to add your knowledge of frog game and get it finished off. If you want to start making new pages be sure to read the Contributing page, and join the new mudborne-wiki discord channel to chat with other contributors <3 ~ Ell

[ 2025-04-09 07:29:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:2178 attempt to concatenate field 'mushroom2' (a nil value) - Fixed regressor not always setting the correct ancestor traits to the reverted frog - Fixed regressor not using a fallback species if it can't find a species that matches the specific ancestor traits - Possible fix for steamdeck sometime having weird interactions due to the touchscreen 'mouse' position

[ 2025-04-08 10:00:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Added color-coding buttons to crates and storage boxes, which add small coloured icons to the overworld (Open a crate menu to see the options on the RHS) - Added tooltip to Matriarch Jellies that have had their fragment retrieved to make it clearer you have already got the fragment - Added hover-preview icon to nurseries to show magic mud inside (if any) - Added ability to hold backspace for clearing text in signs/post-it notes - Increased the amount of time that an eaten bug gives you for the well-fed speed bonus (x3) - Reduced no. of background flora in the Kindergarten region - Made the broken lift in climate control not-selectable and more clearly just part of the scenery BUG FIXES - Fixed frozen chests in climate control loading as a bugged frozen version if you previously melted them in a previous session without looting - Fixed frozen chests in climate control that you already melted AND looted, showing as a closed chest sprite - Fixed quick-target menu not resetting quick-target if you left the menu open and walked away from it to close it - Fixed item pickup sound not playing - Fixed harvester placed in 1 world showing harvested items in other world - Fixed pet frog getting in the way when using hammer on floors/icepick on ice on a gamepad - Fixed gamepad not being able to select ice with an icepick - Fixed loading between several saves causing some tiles like algae to render incorrectly - Fixed shadows for some items showing in the wrong world - Fixed filters still running when the game is paused

[ 2025-04-07 19:50:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed some hybrid mushrooms in the alphabet sorting

[ 2025-04-04 16:42:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed unpinned backpacks not appearing when opened - Undo for pinned backpack position fix, will try again next time!

[ 2025-04-04 16:20:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Added numbers to mushroom's environment section in book to match the ones shown on the book art - Mushrooms will now sort alphabetically when sorted agaisnt other mushrooms - Tweaked Farmer sprite to be a bit clearer to Spore Cultivator sprite BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_world.lua:1446 attempt to index field 'player' (a nil value) - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_conduit.lua:75 attempt to index local 'placement' (a nil value) - Fixed backpack chest in climate control not having shallow water underneath it - Fixed backpack pinned position not saving between games - Fixed plushies not recaching tooltips when looking at different ones - Fixed beds outright lying saying sleep until 7am when it sleeps you until 5am - Fixed overlap of !!! with totals in encyclopedia - Fixed not being able to eat while on stepping stones, for important mid-jump snacks - Fixed map chapters not scrolling on Steam Deck - Fixed bug traps sometimes not working if placed in a world you're no longer in - Fixed quantum-painted bug traps not attracting bugs from either dimension - Fixed map stickers carrying over to a new game within the same session - Fixed books reopening if you pressed another key while the book shortcut was just held - Fixed Pondmother's Pool chapter having no tooltip name - Fixed accessibility pool hints for Pondmother's Pool showing some wrong hints - Fixed some decor and objects in the opposite world preventing floor placement - Fixed a certain NPC not completely disappearing under some conditions (maybe?) - Fixed blueprints spelling Hopert's name wrong

[ 2025-04-04 14:51:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Added NPC icons to the maps next to the NPC locations - Added extra gateway icon to restricted research/memory works to make it clear how you get to that small area - Added new 'goal' markers for the 3 lifts / 3 pumps / 3 sensors, that tick off green when each is done - Added some extra contrast to all markers on maps - Added region names to the main gateway tooltips in the gateway nexus (not 'bonus' areas) - Added flooded visual to quarries not yet pumped on the map - Added a specific 'sort' button to backpacks, like crates/boxes have - Cleaned up some excess scribbles on the maps not needed now the goal markers exist BUG FIXES - Fixed the pillar + gateway inside a certain room being interactable, as they should just be decor - Fixed Hibernators not correctly sleeping you until rain - Fixed open pools/gateways showing as the wrong 'color' for some waking/dream maps - Fixed being able to shift-click backpacks into themselves or other backpacks - Fixed respawn position carrying over from last loaded save when making a new save in the same session - Fixed Icy Gale not being attracted by bug traps - Fixed precipitators not always stopping rain - Fixed weather icon showing 'rain' on clear days in the snowy region - Fixed demo converter not syncing all of the crates in the spawning pools demo

[ 2025-03-31 18:06:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed precipitators not always starting weather with the 1.0.15 forecast changes - Fixed link crate + regressor monographs being wrong way round - Fixed menus not keeping their initial pinned position if you moved them THEN pinned them - Fixed frogs in quantum zen objects not being pettable in both worlds (literally unplayable) - Fixed being able to open the flute menu while already flying - Fixed predictor prediction outcome looking at the 4th trait column not the 5th

[ 2025-03-30 19:29:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

BUG FIXES - Fixed breeders not keeping their frogspawn/tadpole counts on a reload - Fixed weather than runs past midnight into early morning not raining the full duration - Fixed 'use a cultivator' prompt showing on critter pages - Fixed snap-to-grid placement being affected by objects in the opposite world - Fixed Sealmaker not showing the placed frogs on the object itself, like gateways/pools

[ 2025-03-30 10:35:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed cultivators not showing the compost sprite sometimes

[ 2025-03-29 22:59:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Added prompt to use cultivators to undiscovered mushroom entries BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_progress.lua:291 table index is nil - Fixed tngine/modules/tn_draw.lua:32 bad argument #2 to 'draw' (Quad expected, got nil) from sorting cultivators with empty buckets - Fixed a stack overflow that can happen with spore cultivators - Fixed Filling Oyster showing 'EDACITY' all caps in some tooltips - Fixed Deep Storage marker covering the lock icon on the map - Fixed pinned menus not saving as being pinned - Fixed order of the two variant icons not being consistent in the frog book entries - Fixed magic mud tooltips not updating correctly when switching between multiple if the first mushroom matched - Fixed Towering Prince missing a sprite in the dream - Fixed random invalid mod showing in mod list

[ 2025-03-29 22:37:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:2032 attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'mhp' (a nil value)

[ 2025-03-28 14:46:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Steam Trading cards are now live! - Flute map markers now say the name of the region rather than just saying 'Marker' BUG FIXES - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_revertor.lua:135 attempt to index field 'ancestors' (a nil value) - Fixed other compost recipe hints being missing from overworld - Fixed quick-store not working on other types of storage boxes or link crates - Fixed spore cultivator blooms resetting if you added/removed an item from it's open menu - Fixed steamdeck trading still not using up items sometimes - Fixed quantum-painted feeders/breeders not drawing their tadpoles/frogspawn in overworld - Fixed quantum-painted cultivators getting confused what world they're in - Fixed a post-credit NPC not being selectable at night - Fixed flooring/algae/ice/void not loading correctly when switching between multiple saves - Fixed a few typos

[ 2025-03-28 14:18:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed NPCs on the central pad not being interactable

[ 2025-03-27 20:37:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey froggy friends!!! Well it's been almost a week since release now - and what a crazy week it has been! As of writing there has been OVER 15,000 FROGS playing Mudborne!!! wtf!! Hearing all your feedback and messages I'm so relieved and happy that you have been loving the game, I am truly overwhelmed with the response <3
Some of you might already know from the old devlogs, but there was definitely a period of time when I was doubting the game and so many of the core mechanics, or agonizing over the story. When you spend too much time working on something creative it's very easy to get in your head about it. So THANK YOU ALL so so much, to all of you, from those that played the first janky gamejam version, to the beekeepers who have been buzzing for the next game, to those who bought the game on day 1 with no idea what to expect. Please bear with me on any outstanding bugs you might have reported! 15,000 of you vs 1 of me was extremely rough for a bit, so I appreciate all of your patience while I worked through fixes and caught up on everything. Thanks to everyone who's been reporting the issues! You are the real MVFs. I still have a couple v. minor bugs on my list, along with some small bits I'm waiting on locale for, so expect a couple more patches soon. As you also might have seen, Mudborne is now Steam Deck verified, and I've also been invited to setup Steam Trading Cards - so those will be live soon once they are approved! If you enjoyed your time playing Mudborne (I know some of you had 100% it in the first few days!!! so incredible), or are still enjoying playing, be sure to give the game a review on Steam so that I can keep making these silly weird maths games!!! Once again, thank you all - so much. Now I think it's time I go and hibernate for several cycles... ~ Ell

[ 2025-03-27 14:42:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Increased contrast of stepping stone 'number' icons - Modified player position on maps in a few sections of Residential, Climate Control, and Central Junction BUG FIXES - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_barrel.lua:87 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/events/ev_mouse.lua:811 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed 'Archive Pool' show incorrect hints for the mushroom hints accessibility option - Fixed 'Dream Pool' and 'Defragmentation Pool' having their hints swapped - Fixed picker menus staying open if closing the alchemist via the X button - Fixed not being able to place drainer's inside for rooms that still had flooded elements - Fixed trait column UIs not resetting properly if you'd used That Specific Frog in them before - Fixed not being able to write on postit notes if you closed another postit first - Fixed precipitator usage on gamepad, and arrow keys not working on MKB - Fixed being able to use an equipped backpack while on stepping stones on gamepad - Fixed objects placed on nat. spawn positions not being priotised over the spores - Fixed map not opening to correct region if you opened it as soon as you left a room

[ 2025-03-27 13:12:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Added a new control remapping for RESPAWN in Settings > Controls for MKB - You can now click on gateways to use them, like you can with pools - Reverted Weeny Sponge variant back to Hungry Sponge, as that WAS correct in the first place, just broken in the species checking code (sorry Calcium you'll have to update the guide AGAIN my bad) - Tweaked Kindergarten map to make the 3 broken lifts clearer - Changed 'Infinite Possibilities' so it accepts Stout Funnel x Flat Stinkhorn OR Flat Stinkhorn / Stout Funnel, as both are the same mechanically BUG FIXES - Fixed game/ui/ui_cultivator_tank.lua:49 attempt to concatenate a nil value - Fixed game/modules/md_world.lua:1028 attempt to index field 'props' (a nil value) - Fixed game/classes/cl_book.lua:95 attempt to index field 'book' (a nil value) - Fixed pets not following through gateways immedietely - Fixed Pondmother's Pool entry not unlocking if you just opened the pool menu rather than magnifying it - Fixed some red carpet tiles sometimes showing a weird blue square with a pink dot on it - Fixed some of the carpets not having a tooltip - Fixed alchemist missing it's button text and help overlay text - Fixed alchemist hybrid submenu staying open if you select another input picker - Fixed gamepad not being able to select alchemist 'mix' button or preview easily - Fixed frogs in quantum painted furniture not having an outline - Fixed bugtraps not updating if they loaded in offscreen initially - Fixed NPCs seeing double when it came to trading on steamdeck - Fixed opening a backpack with a backpack open resetting the inventory on steamdeck, allowing for dupes - Fixed opening multiple backpacks on steamdeck stacking them on top of each other - Fixed using a bed from a stepping stone putting you in a weird control state - Fixed missing bridge collision on a broken bridge in memory works

[ 2025-03-26 12:04:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fix for local vs workshop mod loading for modding

[ 2025-03-25 18:38:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Reduced frog boundaries on furniture a little bit BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:2049 attempt to concatenate field 'blend' (a nil value) - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_revertor.lua:137 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_dauber.lua:100 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_harvester.lua:35 attempt to compare nil with number - Fixed some missing stairs + incorrect door on climate control maps - Fixed magic mud that was made using glitched powders from old alchemy bugs breaking the dauber - Fixed icepick not using up durability - Fixed hybrid magic mud not always caching correctly in tooltips - Fixed being able to place carpet outside, or outside room boundaries - Fixed not being able to place carpet somtimes if decor was nearby - Fixed calculateSpecies not looking at modded frogs for predictor/projector/feeder/revertor functionality - Fixed some weirdness with dreamcrates - try hammering them and replacing them all if you still get it - Potential fix for resyncing the local achievements menu with steam - Potential fix for some dualsense controllers not being seen as playstation controllers

[ 2025-03-25 12:37:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed final quest of 'Breaking The Seal' having the wrong text

[ 2025-03-24 22:24:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed dream crates not sorting correctly

[ 2025-03-24 14:50:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

BUG FIXES - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_dreamcrate.lua:45 attempt to compare number with nil - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:212 attempt to compare nil with number - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_dauber.lua:99 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/events/ev_gamepad.lua:454 attempt to index field 'highlighted_ui' (a nil value) - Fixed 'Breaking The Seal' not marked as complete inside the book - Fixed 'The Completionist' not marking correctly - Fixed gateway quest in breaking the seal having the wrong text - Fixed questbook showing X/15 instead of X/14 - Fixed 'The Long Road Ahead' showing 11/11 instead of 11/12 for final chapter - Fixed not being able to use the rain precipitator in memory works / gateway nexus - Fixed textinput handler not reactivating when save+quitting back to main menu - Fixed two pillars not showing on the map in residential district - Fixed quantum painted environment machines not applying changes in either world - Fixed some overlapping on mushroom entries in BP - Fixed being able to place flooring outside of room boundaries - Fixed being able to drop 1 of singular items on gamepad to get a 2nd one - Fixed Pondmother's font not having "-" and "'" - Fixed random screenshaking inside nexus gateway lodge after raising the central pad - Fixed Pondmother pool sequence not completing if it was night-time - Fixed walking on bridges not playing the wood walking sound - Fixed cultivators by stagnator not detecting stagnant water if it was activated after placing them - Fixed dream/defragmentation pool names on map being flipped - Fixed some bugs having missing icons in the bug trap - Fixed being able to click on boats through a menu - Fixed sorting link crates from moving the link frog

[ 2025-03-24 14:12:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

BUG FIXES - Fixed 'Breaking The Seal' achievement not unlocking when the quest is complete - Fixed one of the sets of trait changes in pool entries being overlapped oddly

[ 2025-03-23 15:21:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you used a lift key on the broken lift in climate control, you can now go and get it back by clicking on the lift. There are only 3 lift keys, all found in Kindergarten and intended to all be used there! CHANGES - Hybrid powder/mushroom tooltips will now correctly list all seperate effects from the two mushrooms rather than a combined calculation. (This is to prevent confusion about how all the mushrooms will react together inside the magic mud) - Dauber can no longer be used with plain mud to clear your colors - you will have to use a new magic mud if you want to change your changed colors. - "Frog On A Hot Tin Roof" achievement will retrigger if you up the workshop ladder - All NPC 'meeting' achievements will retrigger if you speak to that NPC - Added indicators to alchemist pickers to show which mushrooms have a hybrid submenu BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:2212 attempt to compare nil with number - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:334 attempt to index local 'def' (a nil value) - Fixed game/modules/md_genetics.lua:93 attempt to index local 'def' (a nil value) - Fixed game/ui/ui_pick.lua:26 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/ui/ui_picker.lua:38 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/ui/ui_buff.lua:44 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/classes/cl_book.lua:546 attempt to index field 'chapter_def' (a nil value) - Fixed tngine/tn_core.lua:303 attempt to index local 'menu' (a nil value) - Fixed game/ui/ui_mudpreview.lua:25 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_dauber.lua:102 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed alchemist sometimes having 'empty' options - Fixed alchemist pickers not resetting the 'hybrid' selection when right-clicking to clear the pick - Fixed picking a hybrid and then a normal mushroom of the same base species not clearing the 'hybrid' selection in alchemists - Fixed alchemist still using mushrooms you cleared - Fixed alchemist preview not respecting hybrid mushroom effects (even tho the mud made would) - Fixed pool entry trait 'leaps' overlapping in Simplified Chinese - Fixed gateway menu help overlay not matching up - Fixed achievement checks for "Reinvent The Wheel" and "Swotting Up" - Fixed some of Annura's stock not having a count and being infinite - Fixed Annura's third dialogue option remaining on a key story option - Fixed a copy of Annura appearing in the bed asleep if you wake her from the hibernator at night - Fixed 'common' bugs not spawning in the nexus - Fixed a later NPC giving multiple keys in dialogue - Fixed game crashing when using the scrapbook icon button on the residential sealmaker - Fixed textinput not registering when opening blank signs - Fixed being able to use lift buckets on the broken lift in climate control (intended always broken) - Fixed bug traps not picking up some common nexus plants - Fixed bug traps not picking up some nature objects, like flowers - Fixed bug traps not showing potential bugs until you added frogs/fuel - Fixed a couple incorrect stepping stones showing on the residential dream map - Fixed cleared fragments still prevent access on some objects behind it - Fixed some typos

[ 2025-03-23 14:05:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

BUG FIXES - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_alchemist.lua:280 attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_nursery.lua:55 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/ui/ui_alchemist_tank.lua:23 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:1940 attempt to concatenate field 'species' (a nil value) - Fixed a later NPCs dialogue being in the wrong order if you went and uncovered some secrets first - Fixed 'Find Progenitor' req not letting you use a freshly made progenitor from hopert - Fixed Frosted Weevil / Icy Gale not spawning - Fixed Dream Weaver spawning but being hidden behind the doors lol - Fixed Grubby Parachute spawning in the rain, that is not intended (if you're trying to use them to open Northern Pool you should instead look at INVERSE N along with the earlier mushrooms)

[ 2025-03-22 17:16:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Expanded the area behind the Empty Lodge in the Nexus Gateway for a bit more build room - Turned off autoscrolling for the map book when clicking map entries as was annoying - You can now 'use' the magnifying glass on frogs + critters to open their respective book entries, like mushrooms - Added magic mud preview slot to alchemist, same as cauldrons BUG FIXES - Fixed game/classes/cl_book.lua:168 attempt to perform arithmetic on field 'scroll' (a nil value) - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:559 attempt to concatenate field 'species' (a nil value) - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:669 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_farmer.lua:92 attempt to index local 'targets' (a nil value) - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_farmer.lua:87 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/ui/ui_buff.lua:20 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_harvester.lua:91 attempt to get length of local 'items' (a nil value) - Fixed game/mobjs/mo_alchemist.lua:276 attempt to perform arithmetic on a nil value - Fixed game/classes/cl_book.lua:256 attempt to index field 'current_chapter' (a nil value) - Fixed variant repopulation frogs not having any different traits to the standard variant (only applies to new frogs from this patch) - Fixed variants in frog furniture not showing correct trait values in the tooltip - Fixed visual issue near the central pondmother's pool - Fixed pocket predictors / pocket projectors items not re-opening correctly after the first open - Fixed 4-slot furniture items not removing the 4th placed frog when hammered - Fixed menus staying open when you walk far away - Fixed keyboard input prompts showing for macos when not needed - Fixed single mushroom tooltips not showing correct +/-/x symbols in chinese/japanese - Fixed Annura's dream stock having some missing recipes for quantum items - Fixed being able to skip over Dendro's first meeting if you ignored him and just barrelled straight into central junction (If you were rude and did this, it should get marked correctly when you start the game, and he'll drop the ancestry lab key near himself)

[ 2025-03-22 14:56:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Updated scaling logic for more boxy resolutions like 2880x1800 or 3000x2000, should feel more correct and less eye-strainy now let me know BUG FIXES - Fixed an issue with some MacOS/Linux users seeing two instances of the game (?!? wtf) when starting the game fullscreened - Fixed game/ui/ui_ficon.lua:33 attempt to index local 'targets' (a nil value) - Fixed seedling sprites going empty/pinkcube when frozen - Fixed frogs in frog furniture not showing correct generation in their tooltip - Fixed menus staying open / targeted when entering/leaving rooms - Fixed well-fed buff ticking down when game is paused - Fixed bucket quick-use on farmers putting compost in wrong slot - Fixed being able to click on seats through menus - Fixed farmer help menu having incorrect labels - Fixed printer help menu having incorrect highlights - Fixed an issue with mod mounting for workshop items

[ 2025-03-22 10:03:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Had a couple people see a weird issue with Steam launching two versions of the game in the same window! Seems to be a caching issue, if you see this, quit the game (don't save), restart Steam, and reverify your game files! Please DM me on Discord @ellraiser if you're still seeing this on 1.0.4! BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:552 attempt to concatenate field 'species' (a nil value) - Fixed predictor help overlay not matching up with the menu - Fixed algae not visually clearing in the first session - Fixed convert demo file button being visible after converting or makine a new world in that empty slot

[ 2025-03-21 18:00:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fix for Apple Silicon devices getting a framerate issue

[ 2025-03-21 11:12:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

CHANGES - Tweaked bothersome fungus spore sprite - Made auto-mechanism speed for cauldron a bit slower (you can also use arrow keys!) - Auto-mechanism for cauldron will only run when you're not hovering over a slot BUG FIXES - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:2025 attempt to index a nil value - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:953 attempt to get length of a nil value - Fixed tngine/classes/tn_particlesystem.lua:45 wrong number of arguments to 'insert' - Fixed being able to interact with nat. spawns through menus - Fixed farmer showing wrong error message - Fixed 'Critter Connoisseur' achievement trigger - Fixed bucket quick-use putting mud in the wrong slot for cauldrons - Fixed nat. spawn spores not showing the 'Not In Bloom' tooltip warning - Fixed a missing boundary in residential district - Fixed Kroaka's barrels not having a trade recipe - Fixed coolers/heaters selling as non-stackable items - Fixed variant achievements counting standard variants - Fixed cauldron mechanism progress not resetting when all powders are removed - Fixed quick-store using up empty slots before matching slots - Fixed communing with Pondmother on gamepad leaving the bed menu selected but invisible

[ 2025-03-21 10:13:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:953 crash - Fixed game/modules/md_ui.lua:550 crash

[ 2025-03-21 00:52:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed game/ui/ui_composter_tank.lua crash - Fixed achievements not triggering in the overlay - Fixed clear skies sometimes showing a forecast of 00:00 - 00:00

[ 2025-03-20 23:27:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

- Fixed 'ev_key' crash if pressing keys before splashscreen - Fixed demo convertor not setting correct slot for future saves

[ 2025-03-20 22:41:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! It's World Frog Day, which means Mudborne is now officially released!!! :D It's been a long time in the works since the original gamejam entry, and I'm really happy with how it's all ended up! I can't wait for you to all get your slimy green hands on it <3 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne_Frog_Management_Sim/ There's a 10% release discount for the next two weeks - plus APICO players who own the game on Steam can use this bundle to get 10% off, as a thank you for all your support over the years: If you find any nasty tasting bugs, please report them! You can use the Steam forums here, or the feedback form (link is also in the settings menu!) My number 1, 2, and 3 priorities now are making sure you all have the best possible experience, but there's only one of me - so let me know ASAP if you run into any issues and I can start fixing them immediately! If you're enjoying the game, pls leave a review! I need 10 reviews before the Steam algorithm will see this is a Cool GameTM and start showing it to other players <3 If you'd like to chat with other players at the same time to experience the game together, I've setup some new channels in the Discord specifically for Mudborne. Be sure to also check the FAQs for anything else I might have missed here! Finally - a big THANK YOU to everyone who's been so hyped throughout development, I truly appreciate every single one of you. Now, off to the ponds with you! ~ Ell <3

[ 2025-03-20 21:43:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends - it's been a hot minute since the last devlog, 4 months to be exact! Let me catch you up on the everything that's been going on. [hr][/hr]

Finishing Touches

In the last post I was finishing up the final region and mapping everything out in Tiled. After that was done I then went and placed all of the flora - grass, trees, shrubs, algae etc.
I still needed to add all the decoration for each region, as well as populate all of the indoor rooms - and I needed to draw all of that too! Here you can see the entire world map, plus all of the rooms. At this point I was playtesting things with Ash (who previously did QA for APICO!), so she was testing all the mechanics and all the routing. Even though the world was pretty 'empty', what was needed to play and beat the game was there, it just didn't have all the setpieces I wanted yet.
[hr][/hr]

Story Time

December was a lot of testing and playtesting and SO much writing - up until this point most dialogue and notes in the game were just stubs, but I needed to send off everything to Warlocs who would be localising the game in the new year. Usually I have a bunch of screenshots and videos p. much for every week of the year piling up on my desktop, but December was mostly empty due to me just writing for the whole thing. I did a few fixes here and there as they came up so Ash could continue when she got stuck. I'd written out the entire story in one document, and from that taken pieces to put in the game through dialogue or environment decor or notes - my hope being people can then piece it all together themselves without some minor points being spelled out exactly.
Towards the end of December I'd finished off pretty much everything, and had Future Friends and my brother Jamie, have some proofreading and also just generally picking the story for any holes or stuff that didn't quite make sense. In the end the final word count is somewhere between 35k - 37k! [hr][/hr]

Interior Decorator

With the writing finished up, I took some time to enjoy the christmas break and the new year, then I started working on the decoration and room designs. I already had a bunch of stuff drawn for the first region, as that was already decorated, so I started with those rooms using all the stuff I'd already drawn then adding new things as needed until I was happy with the look of them.
I wanted to make sure interactable items were super clear, but also make the rooms feel lived in and used. Some later rooms would have some storytelling clues in them too, so I just wanted to have a broad range of stuff I could put inside to build the scenes I wanted.
Seeing the rooms start to shape up was really satisfying, it finally felt like it was all coming together. While designing the rooms I also updated the overworld areas with some of the new decor I was drawing, just to make it all fit together. At this point I knew all of the story, all of the notes and what they'd say, the routes the player can take - so all of that helped shape what things I needed to draw and where to put them.
At this point I also was planning to do a playtest of the game. I knew the first tutorial area was solid, but I wanted to test a bit further than that and see how players got on with the first 'main' region of the game. So I prioritised designing and decorating the central area, that links the first region to the 3 main ones, and the first of the main regions - Kindergarten.
I tried to work on a single region at a time only, so I could focus on the story being told in that area and the day-to-day that would of happened in the pond before the storm that would then shape the functionality needed there.
Once I finished up those 3 regions, the game was starting to be ready for playtesting! However I still had a lot of time left - this was around the second week of January still, so I spend pretty much the whole of January designing and decorating every other region in the game.
The way the game is setup is it pulls all objects from the main map, then only loads in what's needed - so all the time I added new decoration objects, I could see those changes in game right away without needing to make a new save every time. This meant Ash could keep plugging away testing the game and slowly see all the rooms and overworld get populated as she went. Early on when making a game it can get pretty easy to build things in a really unflexible way, so for a long time we all had to just wipe our saves and make new ones whenever I added some new stuff and it was a while before that was annoying enough to be worth spending time on changing.
Around the middle of January I got the playtest build approved by steam and then spent a bunch of time testing and retesting it to make sure nothing big broke immedietely, as well as added the gamepad functionality to the game! [hr][/hr]

Playtesting

Now it was time for the playtest! In the end a few 1000 frogs took part in playing, and I got some really lovely feedback. I was pleasently surprised that the parts of the game I was most worried about (the ancestry genetics), people didn't really have a problem with - I was getting reports from people in the Kindergarten region so they'd already aced the ancestry stuff to get to that point. A lot of the feedback was signposting stuff clearer, routing tweaks, and adding some extra hints to certain things. There is a certain amount of mystery to Mudborne - you find a lot of things that you won't be able to make sense of until later, so it was a balance trying to keep that mystery while making sure players were not entirely frustrated.
Some stuff added based off player feedback included: added clearer genetic 'jumps' to the book entries so you could quickly see what you needed to do without hovering the actual trait column UIs, adding your own custom markers to the map, and some tweaks the basic machines that people use most commonly.
Overall I was very happy with the playtest - it made me feel a bit better about the game as until this point like 10 people had played the game in it's entirety, and working on something for so long by yourself you start to have... Doubts. [hr][/hr]

Demo Upgrade

With the playtest ended I spent some time working through all the bugs and features that came from it, and then with the changes made, I split off the first region of the game to make the new demo. The existing demo was fine, and had it's own different 'spawning pools' region, but the game had come so far, both visually and mechanically, that I wanted to upgrade it and make sure that it represented the game now. I had also got things working nicely on Steam Deck, so I wanted that to be an option for the demo too.
The new demo was released alongside the announcement that the game would be dropped on March 20th, World Frog Day! I also spent some time getting new screenshots for Steam, as well as a bunch of clips from the game to use for trailers later on. [hr][/hr]

Final Stetch

This was around the start of February now, and I still had quite a few things on my to-do list. I needed to add the languages to the game so Warlocs could test the localisation properly, I needed to finish adding the mod support, I needed to write about 8 more music tracks (i did the music myself this time!), I had a lot of art to draw, and I had a list of bugs to fix longer than both my monitors combined!
I'd say it's definitely around here the real stress started, and lots of sleepless nights, as I tried to get through all of the stuff left outstanding. After a few very long weeks I managed to get on top of everything though. The LQA went well, with minimal changes needed for the game to account for all the languages, the bugs ended up all being mostly quick to fix and finished up all the art over the course of a week!
[hr][/hr]

NextFest

Steam NextFest was fast approaching, so I spent some time triple-checking the new demo - it had been live for a few weeks already but never hurts to check again (and again). Overall nothing major came out of nextfest (apart from a lot of wishlists!) so it was honestly quite a relief that I didn't suddenly have another 100 bugs to fix, as it was now getting to the end of February, and while I was feeling better about what was left to do I really did need all the time I had.
The end of february I had to do some APICO stuff for consoles, with the 4.3 patches finally coming to Switch + PS, then I came back and finished up some last bits of the game. I was also able to work through a list of "nice-to-haves", mostly small details or polish that I didn't know if I'd have time to do, so they were put to the side during development to focus on the important stuff - but I had some time now to work through them, including the very silly 'fly fishing' mechanic.
[hr][/hr]

End In Sight

I finished up all the music - I'd already sat down and created the 'main' parts of each of the tracks, I just needed to actually compose the full tracks, so I spent a few days finishing all of them up.
I then ran through the entire game end-to-end, once on PC with MKB, and once on Steam Deck. The PC run was mostly fine, couple small bugs, but also some routing stuff that I wanted to change as it didn't feel like it flowed nicely to me. The Steam Deck run showed up a lot of bugs, I hadn't really played through on gamepad much at all tbh, so that's what I get! However they were all mostly easy to fix, and on the second playthrough there was some other small things I tweaked on the routing of the game - to the point where I finally felt happy about how it all felt.
I had already added the mod support at this point and wrote up a small modding guide, but I also wanted to have some example mods to get people started as Mudborne modding is a bit more technical and you're left to work out what you want to do using the games own code. I added an example language mod, a new frog mod, and a mod that autoplants acorns when you chop trees - each showing some different areas of the game code and how you can change things.
At that point, with a few days left, I was done! Nothing left on my list, no more bugs to fix. Very close now... [hr][/hr]

One Day Left

So here we are! One more day before I press the button and release this game, a game that started as a silly gamejam entry 2 years ago, a game I've spent almost 9 months working on solidly.
I feel a lot of things right now. I'm stressed over bugs I don't know exist, like I'm straight up expecting people to play it and the game crashes in the first minute, even though I've put so many hours into playing and testing and retesting. I'm nervous of what people will make of this game. Will they love it, will they hate it, will I be greeted with a wave of negative reviews over things I never considered, am I actually just a fraud, will it just be lost to the algorithm and flop.
I'm also worried in general about my gamedev future, this is the first time I'm releasing a game I am actually financially depending on - the whole time I was working on APICO I had a job, even with the content updates I was working part-time. This will be the first game since quitting all of that and working on game development full time, and so it's success decides how long I get to keep doing this stupid job I hate and love so much. It's been quite different doing something creatively with that threat looming over you.
But I am happy with what I've made. I think it's such a fun little game, a blend of lots of different interesting mechanics. The story is interesting, and rewarding for those who like to explore and piece together a puzzle. It's a game that I wish I could of played growing up. And it's been so rewarding to look back at APICO and see how I've grown as a developer and artist and make something I never thought I'd be capable of doing. I very much want to sleep for like a month, and never look at a computer again, but also I'm already looking forward to the next game - a glutton for punishment! For everyone who's played the old demo, the new demo, joined the playtest, is excited for the release tomorrow - thank you all so much for your support and excitement. I can't wait for you to all get your slimy green hands on it. ~ Ell <3

[ 2025-03-19 10:58:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey all! Some exciting news today! First off, I can officially announce that Mudborne will be releasing on March 20th, aka World Frog Day!
In just over a month you'll be able to experience the world of Mudborne and uncover it's secrets - however if that's still too far away, I've also released a new demo for Mudborne that you can play right now!
This demo takes you through the first area of the game - the Spawning Pools, and contains all the lovely feedback and QoL changes that came from the playtest (thanks again for everyone who got involved in that!)
Whether you played the old demo or not, there's plenty of fresh content for you to experience. (Playtesters - this is just the first region of what you already played so you're not missing anything!) Be sure to wishlist the game if you haven't already to be notified of release - and I'll see you all at the pond in just under 5 weeks! :D ~ Ell

[ 2025-02-12 14:05:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mudborne works natively with Steamdeck! Just run the game as normal, and enjoy :) The device's own gamepad will be selected by default, but you can change the controller used in the settings. Once the game has enough traction, Valve will let me submit the game for an 'official' rating, until then you'll just have to take my word for it! ~ Ell

[ 2025-02-06 15:35:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! I will shortly be granting access to the Mudborne Playtest for all of those waiting in the queue! I'll keep granting access to any other signups each morning. You have until 2nd February to enjoy it! <3 You can signup from the store page here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/ While/after playing if you have any feedback, or you came across any gross bugs that didnt taste nice, you can report both in this form (also linked in-game when you pause) https://forms.gle/VwecUhTgKqpGK6c46
If you want to chat with other players, the "-mudborne-playtest" in Discord is there for discussions while you play so other players who are waiting for the full release do not get any spoilers - do also still use spoilers for any puzzle solutions so others can work things out themselves! :D If you're a well-travelled beekeeper coming from a foreign land, it's worth noting that while you'll recognise the UI system and feel at home, the genetics mechanics do not work like you'd expect from your experience with bees! New frog species in Mudborne are trait driven rather than condition driven - froget everything you know See you soon! - Ell

[ 2025-01-25 09:07:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! Excited to say that the playtest for Mudborne is launching now on Steam! You can request access over on the the store page here, just scroll down a bit to the "Join the Mudborne Playtest" section and click the big button! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/ The playtest will unlock starting this weekend <3
This will be a playtest of the full game, limited to the first 3 regions - Spawning Pools, Central Junction, and Kindergarten. If you've played the demo this will still be quite different, as the demo has it's own map. If you can't wait to play Mudborne this is the time to get a froggy fix!

Why Playtest?

The goal of the playtest is mainly just to see how people find it, both APICO players and new players alike, and check you're all having fun. I have no expectations for anyone who wants to try it out, however there is a feedback form linked in-game that I'd appreciate you filling in when you're done! Any bug reports are also appreciated <3
The playtest is limited to 3 areas and only contains 1/3 of all frogs, mushrooms, and bugs of the full game. I'd say there's maybe 10 hours of content-ish but I genuinely have no clue! If you want to chat with other players, you can use the new shiny channel "mudborne-playtest" channel in the discord to discuss the playtest and help avoid other players getting spoilers.
It's worth noting that playtest saves will NOT be able to be used in the full game, as like the demo they also have their own map.

When Playtest?

I'll be granting access to anyone waiting in the queue starting this weekend! If you're a streamer or content creator it's okay to make streams/videos, just make sure it's clear to your viewers this is part of the playtest not the final release If you're still holding out for release to play everything then 1. I applaud your resolve and 2. you won't have to wait too much longer...

[ 2025-01-22 14:16:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends, and happy new year <3 I hope you all had a lovely break and are ready for the 2025! Here's a little recap of what I've been up to this past year: [hr][/hr]

Personal

2024 was the first year of me doing gamedev full-time, for the whole year! It's certainly different to back when I was making APICO on the side of a full-time job (and later freelance work). I feel a lot more pressure that what I make has to be 'good', and by 'good' I mean good enough to pay the rent.
With a lot of APICO's gameplay, I just did what I personally thought would be fun, and the end result is a weird combination of things but those who get it, love it. With Mudborne I've been trying to do the same thing, but I have a lot more worries about certain mechanics or moments that I wouldn't have if it wasn't tied to keeping the lights on. I can't say I'd ever go back to my old job all the time I can sustain myself making games (the big red date on my whiteboard tells me I have until October 2026 until I run out of money!), but it definitely has been a noticeable change doing art for money instead of hobby.
With APICO done, all the games I'm making are all in my own engine built on top of the LVE framework, and it's made things so much quicker to create. At the time of writing Mudborne is very nearly finished up, and it's taken only 8 months in total working full-time on it. I'd love to get into a place where I can comfortably making a game every year or so, without feeling rushed. I have so many different ideas I'd love to make, and only so much time!
[hr][/hr]

APICO

APICO had it's 3rd and final (sorry) content update, "A Hive Of Industry". This update added a bunch of automation machines, plus a lot of stuff you all asked for, including pets, decoration and a butt-tonne of QoL tweaks.
I've also done a few little bug fix patches here and there which I'm sure gave you all a bit of false hope on new content when the download queued! It was nice to finally 'finish' up APICO - sometimes I wish I never did any of the content updates but I think looking at it now I'm happy with where it ended up, even if it's still a lil janky and bloated and I think all the art looks wack.
I'd love to come back to it one day, in a seperate game. When I drew up the new credit postcards (above) I had fun invisioning a game where you do go to the mainland and help clean up the environment using your bees. I think it'd be nice to take the same APICO gameplay, streamline some of it and make it all fit better (especially the money making side), and then expand the bees to all have functions in restoring nature. However I think that'll need to wait a while as I have 2 game children screaming at me to finish, and a bunch of other ideas I want to get started on! [hr][/hr]

Synthesis

I don't often join gamejams, mostly because of the time limits they have, or I just don't personally have any time - but in 2024 I joined the LVE Jam, for games made with the framework. I was still learning the framework at the time and tinkering with the engine I'd made to create the Snacktorio demo, so I thought it'd be a good opportunity to have a break from the APICO stuff that was getting me down at the time, and learn a bit more of the framework.
I was really happy with the end result - 'Synthesis'. I wanted to make a puzzle game with different modules like what you get with old patch synthesisers. As you mess with the different modules it changes the patterns drawn until you eventually come across the combination needed to match the required shape. I also made a point not to ever explain any module's function - you just learn through doing very basic levels and then the rest you just learn overtime by doing. I wanted it to feel very experimenty for the player.
It was really fun to put this together! I had 10 days and pretty much used them all. I also did the music for it because I wanted to start practicing music creation for Mudborne, and was interesting in having the music 'evolve' with the puzzle progress.
I think it'd be cool to revisit one day as a 'full' game, as you could have lots of different module types and interactions, and let players connect modules themselves in different orders which then affects the outcome. If you want to check out the game you can get it over on itch.io here: https://ellraiser.itch.io/synthesis [hr][/hr]

Mudborne

Ah Mudborne, my beloved. I've spent what feels like an eternity working on this game, when it's only been 8 months. I think I've stared at frogs more than I have the real world, but I've enjoyed pretty much every part of it.
It's been an interesting process, first I did like concept art for the rough game, and worked on all the individual mechanics - then I worked on the actual world development and story and tied it all together. After the new demo was finished up, I spent a long time just designing the entire world and how everything connects, then piecing together the story. The writing in this one was definitely a killer as I've never written like a proper big story, let alone one with a few twists and turns.
I wanted something players could piece together themselves, and get clues from all over the place to work out certain things, so there was a lot involved in making sure it all fit together nicely. At the time of writing this I've just finished up all the final dialogue lines, and now it's just a lot of drawing and polish left to go. I'm planning to do a private playtest in the Discord this month for the first time, so I can try and streamline any tutorialisation stuff and see if I've made things a bit _too_ difficult. I'm pretty confident it's a fun game but it's weird how hard it gets to judge that the longer you work on making the game.
Once the playtest is over it'll just be some last little bits to tweak and any changes to make and it'll be ready to release! Crazy to think it'll be my second published game. If you haven't already be sure to give it a wishlist! You can also check out the demo still: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/ [hr][/hr] As for 2025, I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing! The only thing I do know is Mudborne will be released this year, which is very exciting, I just can't say when yet. After that, I'm not sure - I'll need a long break that's for certain. I'd like to start working on Snacktorio proper and get that finished, but it depends on my brothers workload (he still has a 'real' job). He did a lot of the work on the game design of Snacktorio and has a good idea for the levels, so I wouldn't want to really do it without him.
If he is free, then I imagine Snacktorio will get polished off this year, maybe an early 2026 release! If not then I'll just have to work down the list to the next game idea and get started... A big thank you to everyone who played any of my games in 2024, all of the new APICO players, returning players for the 4.0 update, froggy friends excited for mudborne - without all of you I wouldn't be able to do this and I'm extremely grateful. Here's to 2025! ~ Ell

[ 2025-01-02 09:13:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! Another month whizzing by, but I managed to get a lot done for Mudborne - here's what I've been up to. [hr][/hr]

Cold As Ice

Towards the end of last month I started designing the 4th region, where things are a bit colder.
At the start of this month I finished up that area, spending some time to make the snow look pretty, or add some details like the player breathing or skating around on the ice. I then decided the colors and plants for the 'dream' version, I wanted to keep the more turqoise color and boost the saturation, and then make the ice more of a lilac color to match the dream "white" i use a lot already.
The main mechanics of this area (apart from yeeting around on the ice) is using heaters and coolers - heaters so you can melt frozen paths or objects (or frogs), and coolers so you can create new ice. As you might have noticed in the screenshots above, the deeper water has ice too, which normally isn't passable by the player. By freezing the deeper water you can then cross over to areas you couldn't access before and find all sorts of places and secrets!
There'll be a few puzzles to work out using the heaters/coolers, but they also affect the nearby environment, allowing you to make the extreme ends of temperature for your mushrooms to find some new species. This means I can 'gate' off a few types of mushrooms and trait modifications until you've come to this region and gained access to the machines.
I also wanted a way to let the player turn on/off weather, as it does have some uses and although you can sleep until the next day for a different weather pattern, I like to give players full control over stuff like that as they progress. It also fits within the theme of the region, which is very much like a sort of 'climate control' type area - plus the idea of changing weather fits with the existing climate control machines. I tried to design the machines to be similar, but still have their own unique style.
I finished up some other bits and bobs and then that area was good to go! Now it was time to move onto what I thought would be the last area... [hr][/hr]

Central Hub

After getting past the 'tutorial' region of the Spawning Pools, you end up in a large central area that leads to all other areas, and it's where your main goal of the game is that you have to come back to. I wanted this one to be more unique and stand out to the other areas, and seem much more important (because it is!), so I went with a more purple palette to emulate some feelings of it being more 'connected' with the dream world.
I've tried to make all regions have some unique characteristics but I wanted some extra stuff with this region, hence the large purple lilypads and special pink trees, and the light pink pollen falling over the area. This is also the area that will have the large central 'temple', that is a giant version of the smaller gates you use in the game - will take me a while to finish drawing it, I reckon it'll probably still be one of the last things I'm tinkering with right down to release...
[hr][/hr]

Yet Another Region

I thought I was done at this point with adding regions and was relieved as there's a lot of setup involved in getting everything in and working - there is a 6th area but it felt like an extension of the central region at the time so I thought I'd use the same region style. However at the same time of doing all this I was also working on designing the full map for the game, and realised that this area would actually be a bit bigger than I thought initially, and also connects with the starting area so I wanted to make sure it had a different style to make it clearer that its not just part of the central area.
This region has a lot of different research labs, and is focused more in the dream area with lots of 'dream' research being done - there's a few different machines for this area but I don't want to spoil them too much so I'll just show their designs instead.
There's also quite a few big important lore things here, so you can't actually access it right away and instead have to come back later when you've progressed enough. With this region done I did some last little tests with each of the regions to make sure I was happy with how they looked - this is how my "developer" map looked by the end of it:
With that done I was about halfway through the month - now it was time for the biggest task of the entire game's development, actually designing the full world map. [hr][/hr]

Game Cartography

Trying to start tackling this was definitely one of the harder parts of making this game for me - I had all the pieces, the mechanics were all done, I knew roughly what each area would have and do, but trying to put that alltogether in a giant interconnected world is very daunting. I decided to do this all on paper first so it'd be quicker to iterate, starting with really rough sketches of each region and the things that should be there guiding me on what the structure should roughly be like.
I then taped together a bunch of grid paper so I could have one 'main' map rather than keep swapping between what was already like 7-8 sheets of sketches, and started to pencil out the first couple regions together. After sketching I then started to color in the areas, which was some nice screenbreak time but also let me think more about the regions and how the player would progress through them all.
As a final step I then went over the area with a pen to mark some key stuff - where lilypad crossings would be, gates, doors to rooms etc. I could then use this later for mapping the actual content or paths. I didn't really need to color in all the darker water for most regions, but tbh it was just fun to do and baby ellraiser used to draw custom rayman 1 overworld maps when they were young so who am I to deny my inner child!
It took me about 8 days but eventially I had the final map! Technically it's still not the final map as there's a couple areas I didn't want to put on the map for spoiler reasons and I knew I'd be taking photos of it and posting it around. However its good enough to keep me on the right track and remind me of what goes where - I'm also really happy with some of the routing of the areas, I think it should be really fun to explore and unlock and backtrack!
With that done I could start plugging it into Tiled - I tried to not be too strict with blocking out the areas, at first I was doing like exact square by square, at great eye-straining cost, but then I realised really I just needed to make sure the regions were roughly where I expected them to be and got a bit more loose with some island shapes. Just this blocking stage along took some time, as I was first just blocking in the islands and water, then I was going and doing the 'proper' tiles, then the stone tiles and the grass/mud on top - this was so I could stop having to keep looking at the bigger map all the time.
Blocking out all the other regions took me all the way to pretty much the end of the month, on paper (lol) it doesnt sound like much to have a 500x400 map, but after actually drawing it all I can say it really is!
With all that done there was still lots to be done - for each region I need to add all the stone + grass "decor" (cracks, bricks, grass patches, posters etc). Then I need to add the actual flora objects to the islands (grass, shrubs, trees), then add all the water plants for both the shallow and deeper areas, add all the world decoration, and then block out all the rooms! Then I need to do the collision layers for the bottom and top floors...
It took me about 2-3 days to go from the blocked out version of the first area, to a 'finished' area (that still needs a few last bits added to it) - to give an idea on the scale, there's about 15,000 objects in the screenshot below, including all the plants and grass and decoration, all placed by hand. I'm not going to do every single decoration and scenery piece for every other region right now, as thats something that can be done later - the main thing is making sure it all fits together and is walkable and all the doors lead to the right places.
Adding all the extra decoration and scenery is something I can do quickly at the end while doing playtesting/qa/localisation, so I don't want to spend too much time on it, but I wanted to get at least the first area fully finished off so that it's clear what each area will look like when finished up! [hr][/hr] Big old month really! I'm a lot further ahead in my rough plan than I expected to be, I was thinking I'd be deciding the last 3 region designs in November and had expected to do all the final designing in December - but with this approach I'm finishing an entire area at a time and the first one is nearly done now, so I'm feeling a bit less stressed than I was, just a 'normal' level of stress now :') Next I'll be going through the other regions, roughly placing some of the scenery (but not all), and just focus on the actual gameplay and the routes the player will take so that I can start doing some internal playtesting! ~ Ell

[ 2024-11-01 12:02:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! The last month I was able to work on Mudborne pretty much full-time, so I got a whole lot designed and implemented - let's get into it all. [hr][/hr]

Biodiversity

After finishing the designs for all of the mechanics, I also spent some time trying to design how each of the 5 main regions would look and feel.
Originally when doing the overworld design I didn't think much more than what the waking vs dream world, but now I knew roughly the size of the world and the areas in it I knew I couldn't get away with just using the same "biome" style throughout the game - sure I could do a few different flora/fauna and setpieces to match the utility of that area in-game, but I wanted to make each of the regions more unique and interesting. I went through a lot of different styles before settling, here's a few of them! 1. Initial idea, blue/greens for waking and then more vibrant for the dream
2. More detailed flora + grass that you can see in the first two green areas, can also start to see more interesting tree designs + stone decoration for the islands
3. Settling on the third "residential" area and the dream counterparts for the first three regions, plus starting to narrow down the snowy + central region styles
4. The current designs, with the first 4 regions implemented while I still tinker with the final central region
Lots of the color changes were tweaked slightly over time too - the first concept was drawn towards the start of september, the fourth one is what is currently used in-game (although still working on the 5th one)
The main thing I wanted was to have lots of variety and interesting plants and flora to make each region feel more unique outside of just palette changes - some areas also go a step further with some larger unique stuff, like the algae in the swamps or the flooded rooms in the residential district.
As I was designing them I changed the grass style to be an actual texture - darker blades that are part of the tiles themselves, and then lighter blades that I actually individually place. I think this was a nice middle ground as I can get some unique grass patterns that are not tiled and dont look too repetitive. I also added a lot more stone tile decoration stuff, like the bricks or the vines - just to help make those sections more interesting as in contrast to the water they were very flat and empty. For comparison this is what the demo had for a standards building:
And here is a normal building in the full game with the newer designs:
It's a bit more work to create the levels now as I have a lot more stuff to place manually - but I think the end result is worth it and let's me have much more interesting and pretty areas to explore, which is important for a game where I want players to explore and find all the secrets. [hr][/hr]

Spore Printing

While working on and off on the actual world style, I started to work on implementing some of the new mechanics for the full game - the main one not really covered by the demo in any way is spore printing and hybrid mushrooms. As it stands in the demo you farm mushrooms, each with a special effect to modify traits. You can then combine 3 of these together into 1 "magic mud" to modify your frogspawn.
With hybrid mushrooms the idea is that you can combine any two standard mushrooms together to make 1 mushroom with the effects of both - this means you could have up to 6 modifications within one generation! To do this you collect spores from either natural spawns or your farms, and then you make 'prints' of the spores to paper, which lets you print two different mushrooms to the same piece of spore paper.
You can then use this paper in your farms - so instead of waiting for spores to form naturally you can just set the spores you want. You wouldn't even need to use a hybrid spore paper for this either, so it's a bit more control on exactly the spores you're farming. Once the mushrooms bloom (as hybrids either mushroom's conditions can be met), you gather them as normal and grind them into powder as normal - but they are now a hybrid mushroom/powder with both effects applying to them when used.
This will get a bit complex, but it will be useful for a bunch of reasons - you can counteract 'bad' modifications you don't want into one mushroom, you can do more changes quickly in less generations, and then the main reason to solve more complex genetic puzzles. It also gives the player a lot more options to approach making a genetic key, as there will be more than 1 'correct' answer or combination to meet the trait changes required across generations. [hr][/hr]

The Kindergarten

In the demo you're just in an area based off the 'Spawning Pools'. In the full-game, after leaving this area to a central hub region, one of the first main regions you can go to is the Kindergarten.
This is the region where frogspawn+tadpoles are raised at the pond, as well as where mushrooms and bugs are farmed for resources and food. Because of that the gameplay focus of this area is on learning about hybrid mushrooms, getting some better farming options, and upgrading the bug collection mechanics to make it easier to get bugs en-masse - like the bug traps that let you use extra-stinky frogs to attract and catch bugs automatically while you're away.
It also introduces the first overworld "obstacle" (not counting the puzzles like the gates or the pressure pads or lilypads) - algae blooms.
These deadly blooms can't be crossed, so you need to clear them. Luckily you have a whole hoard of frogs at your disposal, and by boosting the "Edacity" trait you can make some very hungry frogs that'll eat anything not nailed down. Placing them in filters will slowly clear the algae nearby and let you pass through to the areas they're blocking off.
When you come to this region you'll get to learn about how to handle algae and given the tools to clear it - but you would of already come across some smaller blooms in other regions. So once you have the machines and the frogs from this region you can go back and explore those other areas. I also wanted some stagnant water pools to this area as it seemed fitting with the theme that certain areas would be blocked off to make stagnant pools for certain bugs or flora to grow in - not entirely sure what I'll use these for yet but it's nice to have some stuff open ended for when I come to the actual real world design and playtesting to tie everything together.
While testing all of this I've been using a "dev" map - which is just a bunch of different regions slapped together each with a mini-island.
It's helping me visualise the look+feel of each region and means I've already implemented the gruntwork for adding that region - when it comes to designing the map of the full game I won't have to do much more work outside of just creating the areas, the rest is ready to go. [hr][/hr]

Residential District

Moving onto the next main area, the residential district - this focus on two main things, Saturation, and Croakwork. Saturation is one of the frog traits, the higher the trait the wetter the frog, the lower the trait the dryer the frog. This is taken to extremes in this region, as you will get the ability to make a 1S frog that is so dry it absorbs water, and a 7S frog that is so wet is seemingly makes more water. Together this frogs can be used with a Dehumidifer + a Hydrator to effect the nearby environment.
This is hinted at in the demo with the standard cultivators - that there'll be mushrooms that require the extremes of moisture and temperature, and this is the first region to cover those extremes. Using these machines lets you make the environment a lot wetter and dryer than it should be - for example making extremely damp indoors regions, or extremely dry water (has science gone too far?).
An even more extreme use of this trait comes in with "croakwork" machines - automated machines powered by the sound of frogs, created by the Engineer. The first of these machines is the Drainer - a powerful croakwork machine that uses minimum saturation frogs to drain the flooded rooms of the residential district.
You can enter these rooms at first, however you can't interact with any of the flooded objects until you drain the room - revealing the objects plus anything else that might have been hiding under the water... By draining the rooms you're helping to restore the region ready for the hibernating frogs to return, as well as uncovering some pathways to get around the area and find other secret places or basements.
Other croakwork machines introduced here include the "Masher" - an automated grinder upgrade, and the "Harvester" - an automated machine that will harvest nearby blooming mushrooms and renewables automatically.
There's not a lot in Mudborne that needs to be automated, so there's not too many machines, but there's a few that should be useful and as I play more I'll be able to spot any processes that might need an upgrade that can be added to the Engineer's stock. [hr][/hr]

Fancy Flooring

While implementing these two regions I was also messing around with some flooring designs. Both the algae and the flooded room water are types of flooring, so I was already having to implement that system and the auto-tiling stuff, so it was easy enough to then start adding more decorative flooring. These will go alongside a whole host of decorative items and furniture to allow you to make any area you're own.
I tried to give both the wooded flooring and wooden piers a bit more interesting textures to them too rather than being perfect repetitive planks, as the original texture (ripped from APICO) no longer matched with all the new design stuff I'd done with the environment.
I had to do some messing around with the flora in the water and the new grass, as due to how I render the order of certain things the flora would be on top - so when placing tiles you temporarily disable any flora underneath so it's not causing issues. This is similar to how the algae disables any plants underneath it, meaning that you can't get bugs or mushrooms on any areas of water covered in algae - and also what I'd use with ice to decide whether to show a frozen/snow covered variant of the sprite instead of the default one. [hr][/hr]

Ice Frog Cometh

After finishing up those two areas and all the mechanics in them, towards the end of this month I started working on the icy region, Cold Storage. This is where the residents of the research pool store their food and genetic materials, using the cold to keep things preserved. This area introduces temperature extremes (hot+cold), as well as ice that can be thawed out - or created to allow you to cross deeper water by freezing it.
I've only just now started to get the region loaded into the game - there was a lot of design stuff I was doing first. However now it's here I can work on the new machines that utilise the temperature and let you freeze water or melt ice. There'll be other things to unfreeze too - frogs, gates, and NPC...
As it's the region themed around storage you'll also get a whole bunch of new storage themed upgrades and advancements, like a big box to store all your frogs and search them easily, or an upgraded cauldron that can store all of your powders inside. [hr][/hr] While doing all of this there was a few other odd bits and bobs I was working on, like polyps which are growable jellyfish for the dream world - or huge mangroves which will have a special use in the dream.
I was hoping to have done all the mechanics this month and implement them all, but I ended up not getting through them because I was sidetracked by adding the actual regions themselves - I didn't need to for most of the mechanics (and even flooding/ice I could of tested without the region itself), but I think it helped me see how the region would look and tweak things with the mechanics to fit better into the world that I wouldn't of done otherwise. Over October I'll be finishing up the cold region and the central region, and getting through the last lot of machines to implement (orange, purple and brown sections below)
With that done I'll then be able to leave the developer map behind and start designing the actual world itself - which is going to be most of the game development time I think! ~ Ell

[ 2024-09-30 15:10:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changes - Increased stack size from 99 to 999 - Updated some sprites (mainly overworld grass) to keep in line with the full game's style changes Bug Fixes - Fixed genetics tooltip not refreshing with correct data on same-species frogs - Fixed water wading sound fx missing - Fixed particles initial position being wrong (more noticeable on jelly pfx)

[ 2024-09-30 11:48:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mudborne's new demo is finally out, and it's been lovely to see how much you've all been enjoying it <3 Now that the dust has settled and the demo is stable enough for the time being, I can get started on actually building the full game - no pressure me! [hr][/hr]

World Building

It's a bit daunting having to just sit down and make the rest of the game, and hard to know roughly where to start. I spent a few days just picking at random areas, and trying to combine various notes that I'd written while making the demo - both physical ones and random ones on my phone when ideas hit me. After getting nowhere with that approach apart from some bigger, slightly more organised lists, I decided I'd start with trying to plan out the world map, and the regions inside it. I thought this might help me narrow down the journey the player will take, and the different mechanics/frogs/npcs/story that would tie into that region.
For each region I narrowed down the details seperately to give me a rough starting point, as well as a list of the items/machines the player would find there.
From here I could then plot out all the new items + machines as well as their related mechanics, and start drawing them all out. This helped me a lot as I could focus on one specific region and worry about the whole picture later. I made little sections in aseprite for each region, and drew out all the machines for each one, as well as any other items. While some of the machines will probably change a lot when I actually implement them and start playing with them properly in-game, it gave me a good starting point - as well as letting me make sure all the machines were consistent with each other with the different concepts + layouts introduced.
Each of the coloured regions in both the scribbled map and the aseprite image above represents an area of the game, which will introduce the player to certain concepts... [hr][/hr]

Spawning Pools (Light Green)

The demo is loosely based on this area, will be a few less quest introduced as i needed to pack more into the demo, so will be a bit more chill in the real game, but still take you through the basics of getting new frogs + making magic mud.
There'll be a few tweaks to some of the machines that exist in the demo, like the cultivator having a seperate output bucket slot, and a few new bits too, like a new "breeder" machine for making lots of frogspawn/tadpoles for a given species.
(Sidenote: the bright green outlines in the larger screenshot of all regions isn't part of the game - it's actually just to help me keep track of what I've implemented/changed so I can quickly see what I still need to do!) [hr][/hr]

Grand Gate (Brown)

This will be a central temple area with a GIANT version of the little gates you see (like you're standing on a huge platform thats the tiny little stone step of the normal pools).
This is the "goal" of the game to open to help bring back the Pondmother and all the frogs in hibernation, with one really big genetic lock to open, but you have to go do a bunch of stuff in three "key" areas to open the path first - will be one of the salvage team here to speak to and teach some advanced stuff like ancestry (which I introduce a bit "earlier" in the demo just to show where things are going) For the most part the "machines" here are like the reflection gates, specific one-off structures with their own fancy interface and requirements - I won't get into details here and let you try and interpret the designs yourself!
[hr][/hr]

Kindergarten (Green)

The first "key" area, kindergarten, mentioned in the demo - this is where you meet the botanist and learn about mushroom hybrids, also where you come across deadly algae blooms you need to remove by using v. hungry frogs (edacity/energy trait), and get some improved bug stuff, like bug traps to gather more bugs quickly using stinky frogs.
The algae blooms are a physical thing that prevent you moving past them as well as stop any growth or bug spawns, nasty stuff! But once you get the mushrooms of this area and boost your frogs you'll be able to eat it up in no time, and also go remove some of the algae you find in other areas that you might have already come across.
Hybrids essentially let you combine any two standard mushrooms, meaning 1 powder can have 2 effects (so up to 6 effects in one magic mud!) - lots of brain melting in your future I'm afraid :D
[hr][/hr]

Residential District (Blue)

This is where you meet the engineer and have to help fix the flooded houses with min. saturation frogs to help "drain" them - unflooding the houses then leads to other areas you couldnt access and some lore stuff.
There'll be some other uses too, by mastering saturation you'll be able to provide extremely dry and extremely wet environments for your cultivators, giving you access to some new mushrooms you couldn't get before.
This is also the region you'll be introduced to "croakwork" machines - some lite automation machines powered by ribbets that remove a bunch of the "manual" labour from the game (harvest mushrooms, grind mushrooms, chop trees etc).
[hr][/hr]

Cold Storage (Yellow)

Cold storage is the region where the pond stores their food and resources, as well as where the caretakers have their own special residence. Things here have gone a bit haywire without anything looking after stuff, and so you'll be met with a much colder environment that usual.
By mastering the "Umbrage" trait, you'll be able to produce some very angry frogs that give off so much heat you can start to thaw the region, and access stuff that's been frozen over for a while now.
You'll also be able to access the climate extreme mushrooms (1/7 temp), plus better storage upgrades thanks to the blueprints in this area.
[hr][/hr]

Dream Lab (Purple)

A sort of dream "skunkworks" lab area with some interesting prototype machines, and some more exploration of the dream world and it's properties. You'll need to have got the mushrooms/machines from at least 2 of the key areas to access - this will have some more useful stuff like the predictor/analyser type machines of the demo, cloning machines, generation reversal etc
By this point you'll have also come across "forgotten" sections of the dream, places where the memories of the hibernating frogs have failed. You'll be able to restore these regions with memory fragments, allowing you access to stuff that's been forgotten, or repressed...
I haven't 100% narrowed down exactly how this mechanic works yet, but I don't need to right now - I just know there'll be these "barriers" to restore and you'll have a few tools to do so. Whatever it ends up being I'm sure there'll be some puzzle elements/maths involved, as you know I love to do!
[hr][/hr]

Everything Else

While those are the main "areas" there'll be plenty of other smaller locations and set pieces to visit, and the mechanics introduced by each region are not limited to that area - so there'll be lots of places to explore and unlock by revisiting an area once you've got access to new machines or frogs (frogvania? frogtroidvania?)
There's also a story to follow along and history to uncover, so exploring will reward you in not only new stuff but new secrets too! It'll be a lot to design but it'll be worth it in the end.
It's also not 100% set in stone, I'm sure a lot of stuff will change, like who you meet and where, or how certain machines work, or how some of the mechanics might work - but in general this is roughly what I'm thinking right now. Once I start implementing stuff it's easy to see what's wrong/missing, so I'm not too worried that I don't have it all nailed down!
I also have a list of like 100 odd misc. stuff, like decoration or your own house or fast travel or pets or fancier frog furniture which all has to go somewhere too, but that's a future ell problem :D
[hr][/hr] For the next month or so I'll just be working solidly on implementing all the machines + items to cover the mechanics I've talked about above - by the end I should be able to make a new map with all the new mechanics so I can playtest them all properly together, and then can go from there! ~ Ell

[ 2024-09-02 11:12:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes - Fixed crash with some fx being created OOB - Fixed name entry crashing when using backspace while empty

[ 2024-08-23 09:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changes - Added a respawn button for emergencies (hold R for 5s) - Added pin buttons for menus, toggling these on will keep the menu pinned to it's last position when re-opening - Turned off auto-pausing when window loses focus as mostly complaints about this (i thought it'd be nice soz) Bug Fixes - Fixed cultivators in the opposite world making PFX visible in your current one - Fixed frogs spawning from a feeder not being in the same world as the feeder - Fixed absorbant compost given by quest book being infinite - Fixed Saltgrove acorns being placeable in the dream world - Fixed incorrect bounding boxes on tree saplings

[ 2024-08-22 18:06:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changes - Updated natural spore quest+tooltip to make things clearer Fixes - Fixed issue with some dream frogs/flowers bleeding into the waking world + vice-versa - Fixed issue with jellyfish duplication when swapping world a bunch - Fixed composter giving 2 compost per cycle, no free buckets for you this isnt a charity - Fixed progress bars growing wider than the sprite size - Fixed hotbar slot sort putting items in the first hand slot - Fixed spawner/nursery pfx showing in the opposite world

[ 2024-08-16 14:19:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changes - Increased book text contrast Fixes - Fixed crafted Progenitor items being infinitely placeable - Fixed z-index of highlight arrow for frogs in decor - Fixed bbox of smaller spas making it hard to highlight frogs inside - Fixed gate progress persisting from an old save to a new save - Fixed some special characters causing a crash in name entry

[ 2024-08-15 08:53:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Bug Fixes - Fixed chapter icons having no tooltip title - Fixed not being able to bind controls properly on non-QWERTY keyboards - Fixed not being able to bind arrow keys to movement - Fixed trashing empty slot counting for quest progress - Fixed pillars disappearing near camera boundary - Fixed backpack menu showing ontop of the pause menu - Fixed issue with opening book after multiple notifications

[ 2024-08-15 07:41:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Mud Born! I'm excited to announce that new demo for Mudborne is out now and live on Steam!!! I'm also excited to announce I'm teaming up with Future Friends on this one to help me publish it. Whether you played the original gamejam version or not youre in for a treat, as this is a completely new game, new art, new mechanics, new music, new engine - the whole works. Im really looking forward to you all getting your slimy green hands on it <3 Check the trailer out below for a sneak peak: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJq7u9hcAUg&ab_channel=TNgineersOfficial I've also updated the roadmap for the game so you can see what stuff is planned for the full-game! https://steamcommunity.com/app/2355150/discussions/0/4429939323286608245/ Hop you enjoy!! ~ Ell

[ 2024-08-15 07:40:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends - IT'S NEW GAME TIME! Im excited to announce that Mudbornes new demo is out RIGHT NOW on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/ Im also excited to announce that the lovely folks at Future Friends will be helping to publish your new fav froggy game with me. Check out the trailer below for a sneak peak of what you're in for: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJq7u9hcAUg&ab_channel=TNgineersOfficial A spiritual successor of sorts to APICO, Mudborne instead focuses on genetic manipulation and generational puzzles to create and discover all sorts of frog species, that act as keys to let you travel between the waking and dreaming worlds - the demo takes you through the main mechanics and creating 8 different species. If you love APICO I think youll love this, theres a lot of stuff Im doing differently but you should still feel right at home. Whether you played the original gamejam version or not youre in for a treat, as this is a completely new game, new art, new mechanics, new music, new engine - the whole works. Im really looking forward to you all getting your slimy green hands on it, I hop you enjoy!! <3 Dampest regards, Ell

[ 2024-08-14 14:04:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! I've been busy working away at the demo this month, and basically got the whole thing finished up >:D All that remains is to do some more QA and bug hunting, so let's get into what I've been doing. [hr][/hr]

A Whole New World

So like I mentioned in the last devlog the main thing now was to actually design the whole demo area - not exactly a quick job! To try and make a start I went back to the paper sketches I did originally of the islands, then simplified them and started planning out what items went where and what paths the gates led to.
Each gate takes you to the dream world, for now there's no gates that take you back into a seperate waking area so for the demo at least it was a bit simpler as the gates would just take you to a smaller area to explore and then come back to the waking world - however there were still a few specific 'treasures' I wanted to hide, along with some lore notes to discover if you explore.
One thing I ended up doing too is deciding that the demo area will be different to the full-game starting area - I don't have the time right now to plan the whole world properly, and I spent a lot of time worrying how the demo area would fit in with stuff I hadn't even designed yet. By saying, okay actually this will just be a special demo area, loosely based on what the full game will have, meant I could take some pressure off and experiment. It'll mean that demo worlds can't be used for the full-game but honestly im okay with that, APICO did the same - I'll probably just do some starting items/unlocks for players that played the demo as a reward if they want it.
Once I had the world sketched out I then, moved things over to tiled, sketching out the large sections of water + land first and then slowly going in and adding all the objects.
I think it took about 3 days of solid work to get the final demo world in a way that worked, there were some bits that I had to stop, go draw some scenery, and then come back to Tiled - but this let me setup some nicer little areas and rooms to explore, with plenty of secrets/hints hidden in the environment. The game is set in a research pond, so I wanted there to be plenty of notes + journals and information left lying about, which made it super fun to fill out each of the rooms and areas and actually think about what they were/are used for, as well as what hints I could show rather than tell.
Once I finished designing the world in Tiled I didn't actually have to do much coding to get it working - there were a couple of 'locked' things that you need keys to open, but Tiled let's you set properties on any of the objects so I just added something to handle that and the rest just loaded in!
Plus now I had the finished world done I could draw the map! For Mudborne I wanted to do things a little bit different yet again, and this time not have a pixel perfect map - instead something a bit more drawn out, with some notes jotted over it as clues.
This means I can have a bit more artistic license with the map and the proportions, to emphasis certain areas over others - as well as have multiple different maps in the full-game that you have to find to unlock (plus the dream equivilents!) [hr][/hr]

Playtesting

With the world fully designed, now it was time to just... play the game a shit-tonne. I also needed to do the SFX, which I always enjoy, but I also needed to do the music - sadly for Mudborne's full-game I haven't got Mothense around, so this time I took a stab at the music myself! If it ends up sucking ass I can always get a composer for the full-game, but I've also always wanted to try doing some myself so seemed like a good opportunity to try it.
So while playtesting I'd jot down any SFX needed and add them as I went, along with some nice ambience tracks for day/night. Then after playtesting each day I tried to attempt making a little bit of music, even if it was just staring at the piano for a few hours - eventually I came up with a couple of tracks that I felt fit in with the general atmosphere of the game (although to call it full music would be a bit generous, muzak might be a better term haha!) While playtesting I also tweaked the quests a bit, just to make sure everything was clear enough - while still leaving a few bits for players to discover themselves. I also got my friend Ash to help - she's done the QA for APICO and Snacktorio, and she's very good at breaking my games now too :')
For the most part there wasn't too many major changes to the gameplay - a bunch of QoL stuff for sure but nothing that deviated from the original plan that much. One thing I tweaked was preventing the natural mushroom spores blooming as it was really easy to just gather them and never make your own mushroom farms. Instead I made spores still form naturally, and my using the magnifying glass on them it'd store where you saw them so you could easily replicate that later with your cultivators - so they act more like clues of where you can cultivate rather than being easy farms.
Another change was the later gates need a couple generations, which introduces the concept of 'ancestry' to the demo. I didn't want to have this super hand-held to the player, it's something I think is very visual that you learn as you go - however I still wanted something to make it easier. Luckily I'd left some space in one of the rooms to turn it into an 'ancestry research' place - with a new machine that allows you to view any frogs last 7 generations (shown below on the right), along with a lore note on how the system works.
I also added it so you could use the magnifying glass on gates to store their unlock requirements - this was you can easily revisit them in the book without walking all the way back to try and remember what you needed. In the demo there is only 1 and 2gen gates, but later on you'll find ones all the way up to 7gen, which would be extremely hard to just remember or even write down yourself on paper.
With that all done it just left a lot of testing and bug hunting/fixing - something I'm still doing now as it's easy to overlook stuff when there's only a couple of you playtesting! [hr][/hr]

Finishing Touches

With the new demo ready outside of more testing, I then spent a bunch of time cleaning up the old steam page, getting some new screenshots and trying to explain the game and show off the gameplay a bit better than what the original gamejam text did - esp. showing the 'dream' world.
I'd also been in talks with a publisher for a lot of this year about Mudborne - sadly I never heard anything back in the end and they ghosted me last minute, which was unfortunate as I'd met up with them a few times so felt like it was pretty close to happening and was relying on them for a big push around the new demo. With that no longer happening I also spent this month frantically getting in contact with all sorts of people, first to try and decide the best thing to do in the limited time I had, and then find people who actually had the time to do something last minute without breaking the bank - I was extremely fortunate to ended up contacting someone who managed to turn things around very last minute, I can't say anything just yet but keep an eye out for more news!
[hr][/hr] So now begins the last little stretch - lots more playtesting and QA, some performance tests and optimisation, and just generally trying to make sure this new demo really shows off what the game is going to be about. Testing it with some more people helped me feel a bit more confident about it all - I think because so much is done differently from APICO I started to second guess myself but now everythings finished off and I can play it end to end I'm really happy with where it's ended up. I can't wait to let you all get your slimy green hands on it, and, by the time you read the next devlog - you already would have :D ~ Ell

[ 2024-07-28 17:33:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Been a little while! APICO kept me very busy over May with the new update and bug fixes that came with it but I think I'm nearly finished with it all now (sorry beekeepers!) I kept doing Mudborne stuff on and off throughout though, and then June has been a lot of build on top of the prototype I had to start to form the demo - lots of stuff to cover! [hr][/hr]

Froggy Friends

Mudborne's actual story has already been written out at a high level, with the main threads and discussions planned out - as part of that I have 5 different characters to introduce.
APICO definitely suffered from "talking shop" NPCs, so to try and avoid that this time I've tried to spend more time thinking about each NPC's role in the story and different ways you can interact and help them rather than just a simple shop. Unfrotunately, the first NPC above, Hopert the Carpenter, is also the 'crafting station' of sorts for the game, you bring items to trade (like bugs they like) or raw materials and they make what you need. Some of the other NPCs have some very different interactions, but they're met a lot later in the story.
However unlike APICO there is actually things you can help the NPCs out directly with, Hopert has a couple things they need a hand with if you're up for some extra work!
There's also a bit more involvement with the actual story in their dialogue rather than just commenting on progress like APICO did - just overall trying to make them more interesting characters you want to talk to. [hr][/hr]

Guiding Light

I still wanted some guide books in Mudborne, as I think it works well in this sort of game with lots of different mechanics to master - experiment as much as you like but if you're stuck here's some guides. However I wanted to make them more visual and less wordy - APICO definitely suffered from WoT overload. For the 'quests' I grouped them all into key areas - controls, tools, frogs etc, and then had individual one-pager 'chapters' make up the quests.
By using icons on the LHS instead of the chapter titles it makes it a bit less overwhelming to look at, and easier to flick between chapters you want to do. The little lilypad / pond quest overview helps to make it clearer the order you're doing things and how to progress. I was actually dreading implementing the books just because of how much they were a pain in APICO before I remembered I'm in a different engine now and it was actually such a breeze.
For the frogs/mushrooms/critters I thought it'd be overkill to have seperate books for each, so instead settled on one single encyclopedia with all of them together.
I went through a few design options but ultimately ended with something like the above. Icons again for each chapter make for a much nicer collection view as you progress and save you an awful lot of scrolling. My only issue now was how to approach the drawings for the books. I wanted to have a little scene for each entry, for helping build a picture of the world and as a little reward for finding each species as you progress, however I haven't really had to do larger pixel art scenes ever so it's been a bit difficult to accept that what I'm doing now isn't as good as what's in my head.
Some I'm happy with - others not so much. But with how much time I have to work on the full game all I can do is just keep at it and keep drawing and eventually get to where I want to be. Regardless of how much I hate my work, the more detailed scenes also let me show some of the game in way more detail than you see in the cute pixel rendition of the overworld - and are another place I can sneak some little hints/clues into for people to find. The other "books" come in the form of a map, and a notebook - which acts as not only a store for random scraps of notes + journals you come across but also allows you to add your own notes to keep track of things.
Haven't quite settled on exactly how these will be laid out yet as I'm waiting to design some of the notes you discover - I'm thinking vaguely RE style, text on top of a faint rendition of what you're reading, page entry, journal etc. But however it ends up it'll be a nice way of giving you more hints of the world and what happened, as well as some clues to unlocking certain frogs or mushrooms or items. [hr][/hr]

Grow Your Own

As I was playing around with the prototype more, the more I realised the existing mushroom mechanics wouldn't be enough for the demo. I was planning on doing the mushroom farms and the spore gathering (hybrids) stuff for the full game, but as it stood there was too much waiting around + rolling the dice with natural spawns. So I needed to add something, and spore gathering was a mid-late game thing so it had to be mushroom farms - which I hadn't even thought about at this point, and needed to design.
I ended up developing a two-step process - firstly you create compost from different flora items you find, different combinations for different compost that will have their own effects. Then you use that compost in 'cultivators' that allow you to have more of a controlled environment. Mushrooms require a specific temperature + moisture AND environment to form and then bloom. Temperature is mostly based on the day, but other factors can change that. Moisture is based on where the mushrooms are, as well as weather and other factors.
While the compost is a bit experimental at first, you'll find hints and clues to other useful combinations - for example a 'wetter' compost that increases moisture levels by 1, or one that increases the amount of mushrooms you harvest. Later on you'll also be able to use frogs to boost temperature + moisture to extremes - it's no accident that two of the frog genetic traits are UMBRAGE and SATURATION. By adding this process the player can then setup a bunch of cultivators in places to get the right conditions to farm a bunch of mushrooms they need, rather than wait for mother nature to take her sweet time. I also think it's a nice base mechanic that gives me flexibility later to make more complex, like with spore harvesting to create different hybrids to remove genetic modifications you don't want - as well as give you something to be checking on while you wait for your frogs to finish... kissing. [hr][/hr]

Spice Of Life

One thing I also had on the list was 'variants' - slight variations of frog species that have different patterns + colors. However I didn't want to just have these as shiny variants that you get from rolling the dice, as 1. you'd already have this for bugs and 2. it's just not that interesting.
However in a game about genetics it's pretty easy to squeeze in variations of different species. If every species has a set genetic "key" that forms it, (i.e. 4744444) I know all the 'gaps' between species. So if you take the common green species (4444444) and boost the AMPLITUDE to the max you get a new species (7444444) - but if you don't boost it to the max (6444444) you technically still have a common green (as no other species match the key), but I can use that as criteria for a 'variant' of that species.
This was I can increase the rewards for experimenting even more than the base gameplay, and also reward 'mistakes' as you might not get a whole new species but you might still get something new for your efforts. [hr][/hr]

What Next?

There was lots of other bits I did too - a backpack you can equip that will hoover up bugs instead of them going into your inventory, or a settings menu (now with an actual borderless window option what a treat), or a proper file system + home screen.
I also wrote up all of the dialogue + lore entries, did all the descriptions+hints for all the frogs/mushrooms/critters, wrote all the quests (already at about 8000 words oops) - which all helped me find different bits of the demo to tweak and improve. However there's still a LOT left to do - I need to design the actual demo 'map' and all the areas, I need to implement the notebook and the map, control remapping, gamepad support, finish drawing all the book art, draw some cutscenes, add sfx, write music... it's definitely feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment.
It's also super hard to judge the demo right now because I need the world designed with all the different areas to explore and work on unlocking because it's the key motivation - you find new species of frogs to use their genetic 'keys' to unlock portals between the waking/dreaming worlds and get to different areas and treasures. Without that it's hard to tell how much fun the demo is when I'm stuck in the same little prototype area, so I'm also feeling a bit demotivated around whether it will be 'fun' - you know, what a game is supposed to be lmao
I think all the mechanics work well together but still just hard to see the full picture, so for july my first task is to design the actual demo world with all the areas and portals and secrets - then I should be able to actually play the whole thing properly and see where we're at and tell my imposter syndrome to piss off lmao ~ Ell

[ 2024-06-30 18:58:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Been awhile since I opened up Steam to write something - I've been trying not to add the pressure to make myself post every single month, as half the time I don't have much to say and the other half making it something I HAVE to do prevents it from being something I WANT to do But it's been a little while of working on Mudborne stuff in between all the final APICO update stuff, and I wanted to share where I've got to so far with your new fav frog game [hr][/hr]

Back To The Drawing Board

So if you haven't already seen, one of the main things I'm doing with Mudborne is updating the style and the art. The gamejam version was made in a week, and a lot of that was shameless art rips of APICO with some reskins - which was still cute but after working in the APICO "style" for nearly 5 years now I wanted something different. For that I'd already played with a few ideas
The game is set in a pond, so I wanted it to be mostly water. This meant thinking about what the landmass or even buildings would be like - I've always found the land style I did for APICO really weird as it's severe top-down but all the sprites are like sortof side view? So I wanted to work with that in mind and have the land match that perspective more. I also really liked the idea of the stone slabs as the land instead of dirt, as it had a nicer overall vibe and helped the mud stand out from the "dirt" of the early ideas. I also wanted to have lots of plants and nature stuff that wasn't necessarily interacted with but added to the overall scene. One thing I really hated with APICO is it relied on the trees/shrubs for balance of the overall palette, so this time I wanted enough flora scattered across the waters to make it look pretty all the time not just before the player has a killing spree with their axe. What I ended up settling on after a few weeks was this:
As you can see it's mostly water, with some large stone slabs to act as "land" and break it up, and lots of green. I wanted a consistent darker outline for anything you can interact with, which then let me have a lot of "background" flora and scenery. The stone slabs also felt like a perfect place for buildings - I'd tried an attempt at a few building designs, but overally didn't really like how they fit in with the world
Having the stone slabs as the buildings felt more natural and the little extra details of grates and drains and windows I think helps sell it more as lived in. Also by having a fixed "size" of the blocks in tiles, I could match that for the inside so all the spaces matched up when going in and out (and also means I'd be able to show "hidden" rooms while inside that give you a clue to how to get into them)
To finish it off, I worked on the menu designs to see how the UI would fit in - there's some similarities to APICO's basic UI style but I changed the colors a bit and added more space around all the elements. I also wanted some clearer slot stuff, so like mushrooms and their powder/magic mud to have a small icon for the mushroom, buckets to have a liquid icon - I'd made a few sprites in APICO that were far too similar, so I wanted to avoid that this time round.
I also wanted to keep the main UI as minimal as possible, just some indicators, a current quest log, and then the tooltips if hovering something - this means I've got some flexibility later to add some more stuff. Once I got this coded up I'd tweak a few things, including the design of the titular mud itself, but overall things pretty much match those final concept arts above.
[hr][/hr]

Lost In A Dream

With that done I wanted to work on the next main part of the design - the dream world. In the gamejam when you dream you visit the big frog god and they tell you your progress, but what I actually want is a whole dream world that acts as an "opposite" to the waking world.
With APICO I always felt like the gameplay was fun but the NPCs and story and exploration was pretty non-existant. In Mudborne I wanted to expand that, have a similar "maths for fun" genetic puzzle to work on as the core game but then have a much richer world to explore.
With the dream world I could have things change between the worlds - new doors and rooms appearing, broken bridges now fixed, stone lilypads disappearing. By using the big froggy pools the player can switch between the two, and access new areas they couldn't before, along with new frogs or mushrooms or NPCs. This ends up with a sort of APICO x Metroidvania in a way, you find different mushrooms, create new frogs, and based on the frog genetics you can "unlock" these gates to get to new areas - some part of the main story, others optional to learn more about the secrets of the world, but the different frogs will gate your progress and exploration. It also gives me a lot of scope to do fun things with the differences between the two worlds, whether thats trees turning into jellyfish that float around, or NPCs being different and saying/selling different things.
It also has some importance within the story itself so I think it should end up as a nice mix of fun gameplay, cool vibes, and a nice story to tell. [hr][/hr]

Something Old Something New

With the overworld itself I'd done a lot of changes, looking at the gamejam you can see just how much differs, not just colors but the world objects too.
Some of the items I still liked, like the mushroom designs or the basic tools, some I think make for a fun "nod" to APICO, (like the frogspawn being the honeycomb sprite but modified), with the objects themselves though I wanted to try and match that new "perspective" shared by the stone buildings and the trees.
I also wanted to start using some more colors and have things less flat, so it was nice to finally move away from a lot of the stuff I'd drawn for APICO. When it came to the menus though, I still think the rough style of menus worked really well - it's been battle tested and I know what worked and didn't, but the UI has always been pretty solid. The main changes I did was update the spacing between elements to give the slots + UI inside menus more space, and then I wanted to change some of the border/header styles slightly and have the tiny lilypad icon in there too. To start with I just fleshed out a bunch of the machines I had in the gamejam plus a few extra ones (also yes thats a slightly different shade of brown to APICO, you have good eyes!)
I really liked some of the menus have these sort of "mini" interfaces inside that showed a bit more of what is going on in the overworld, so wanted to lean into that a bit with some of the other machines. I also still liked the idea of having some mechanism stuff - for APICO players I appreciate it's lost the charm, but anyone new to Mudborne thats never heard of ol' bee game can still appreciate it! [hr][/hr]

Maths For Fun

As I started implementing the mechanics some of the menus changed a bit - for the current "vertical slice" I'm making for pitches, the main machines I needed were:

• Spawner (frog+frog = frogspawn)
• Grinder (mushroom = powders)
• Cauldron (mud+powders = magic mud)
• Nursery (magic mud + frogspawn = tadpole)
• Feeder (tadpole + bugs = frogs)
• Bed (skip ahead time)

The main differences to the gamejam version is the extra step with mushrooms (so that you don't have to find + pick as many mushrooms as you'll get multiple powders from one), the cauldron accepting up to 3 powders that can be the same or different (so one magic mud can have 3 buffs), and the nursery having multiple layers (so you could do 3 different genetic changes or use a +1 mushroom 3 times for a +3 in one step) The nursery change is the most important here, as being able to do 3 buffs at the same time is important as it's part of the genetic puzzle I'll explain later - but it also removes some grindyness, instead of needing to do 3 cycles for a 4 trait to become a 7 trait using a +1 mushroom, you can do just 1.
The feeder expands the process to include bugs you find to feed the tadpoles - once they grow they'll appear in the overworld as actual frogs again to catch, but this time they might be some new species depending on the genetic modifications you made with the mud. I'm still playing with what the different bugs might do or how which bugs are decided as needed, but I think it gives me a lot of room to play with from a mechanics standpoint. The final "new" machine I needed was the actual teleportation pools - these would have the genetic "lock" that you need to make a frog to match.
The puzzle starts off simple enough, get a frog that matches the 7 traits the pool requires. Putting a frog in the pool starts the little coloured lines to "move" from left to right, stopping if the number the frog has doesn't match whats needed. Once you have a frog with all numbers matching, all the dots can join up, and the pool unlocks to be used to travel between worlds. "That's easy" I hear you say, and yes! To start with this is easy enough, sure you might need to combine different mushrooms to counter certain modifications you don't want, but you can cycle frogs as much as you want to keep modifying until you get there. However this is me making a game so obviously I need to then show you something that makes you cry - which is when I introduce the concept of ancestors to the genetic locks
Instead of just looking at the traits of the frog, it also looks at the traits of the frog of the previous generation, and maybe even the generation before that! So starting from the first "column" you need to jump to the next one in a single frog cycle, using the right mushrooms to modify the numbers in one leap (ha). You then might need to do that again (and again) until you have a frog that has each previous generation matching whats expected. There'll be some tools to help you "predict" this, as well as lots of different mushrooms you'll find as you explore that do different things, +1, -1, *2 AND -1 etc. Planning this out is a nightmare as you can imagine...
Also having 7 traits each with 7 values means a lot of combinations (823543?!?), which means I can "hide" a lot of frogs to be discovered. For example go scroll back up and look at the "finished" concept art without UI for both the waking and dream world - notice that piller on the left? By travelling to the dream you can get the missing numbers that give you a trait "key" you could make to find a new frog. In this way there can be a bunch of frogs you have to find to progress through the pools to new areas, some frogs you can get through experimenting (what if I do 777777?) and some found through clues in the world. [hr][/hr]

What Next?

So right now I've planned out all the mechanics and I've been starting to implement them into a prototype of sorts (in my new favourite engine LVE) to make sure it all feels fun and has the right vibe, so lots of little bugs/critters roaming around, a cute day/night cycle, weather etc
I'm trying to spend more time on little details and effects in the world, all very small stuff but all adds up without the player realising, reflections or pollen or subtle movement. The goal is to then finish that as a vertical slice I can use to pitch to publishers, cos although APICO did well that was a couple years ago now, and outside of this final update I essentially have no releases until Mudborne is done so money is pretty tight :')
While doing that, I'll be continuing on with the game, starting with the first "training" area that will essentially become the demo. My plan is to release the demo later this year showing that first area, while I continue finishing the game to release in 2025 - right now the demo on Steam is still the gamejam version, which while it has some of the vibes it's not the full concept of what I want Mudborne to be, so I'd like to get that updated to really show people what they can have to look forward to. I have a lot of the full game mapped out now, in terms of the story, areas, npc, general mechanics etc. I'm also literally mapping it out, each area on some graph paper, so will be interesting to see how closely I follow this for the demo + full game, esp. as I've already changed the houses (and is a nice analogue break for my poor eyes)
[hr][/hr] As I mentioned at the start, having to force a devlog every month didn't work great for me, I'd rather do larger devlogs now and again to catch you all up with what I've been doing over a couple of months otherwise it feels like I'm scraping the barrel some months when I've been busy on other stuff. I do share the odd video + sketch in Discord now and again, so if you want to come chat about it I'd love to see you there, but I'm committing to do devlogs when I can so you can keep up with everything <3 ~ Ell

[ 2024-04-29 10:58:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi friends, hope youre doing well! Its already the beginning of a new month, and you know the drill: its time for a new recap! [hr][/hr]

Celebrating Black History Month

APICO took part in Humble's Exceptional Indie Allies Bundle, along with 6 other amazing games, to celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower. Big thanks to everyone who supported the cause - so far youve helped raise over $25,000! (Also if youre quick you can still grab the bundle today!) [hr][/hr]

LVE JAM 2024

Ell took a little week break from finishing APICOs Honeycore Update to join this years LVE game jam with their submission, Synthesis! In Ells own words; [quote=ellraiser]this year the theme was interface so you know I had to! I wanted to make a bit of an abstract puzzle game where the player isn't taught any controls and has to learn through trial and error, and I'm happy with how it all ended up! It was also my first time making music for a game so... enjoy that lol[/quote]
You can try out the jam game over on itch.io here! [hr][/hr]

Whitethorn Winter

Whitethorn Games, APICOs publisher, held a celebration of gaming across all the games in their catalogue through a showcase and Steam event (you can catch the vod here) While we didnt have anything to show, there was some nice sneak peaks at our sibling games, like Magical Delicacy and Botany Manor! [hr][/hr]

Final Countdown

Its been a bit of a slow year so far, with not much to share while Ell plugs away at finishing the final update, however we have got some lovely things planned for the 4.0 launch to look forward to, so be sure to keep an eye out. Well also havs the Steam Spring Sale coming very soon (March 14th!) with the deepest discount to-date for APICO and the soundtracks, so a perfect time to pick up APICO and catch up with everything before the last update [hr][/hr] Aaand that was February at TNgineers! As always, thank you so much for your support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie

[ 2024-03-01 18:55:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi friends! A new year is upon us, and its been a bit of a manic start with Ell moving house but were back on track now! [hr][/hr]

APICO Pet Competition

As you may have seen on our socials, pets are coming to APICO along with the final Honeycore update! To celebrate, we held a design-your-own-pet competition (which receieved over 200 submissions!), and narrowed down the cuties to just five finalists, which were put up to a vote by all of you.
Although the dino was the vote winner by a small margin, everyone found it super difficult to pick - and why should they have to? Weve decided that all five designs will be winners, so youll be able to enjoy all of them as pets in the final update - congratulations to all the artists! <3 [hr][/hr]

APICO 4.0 WIPS

Ells been working hard on the Honeycore Update, and you might have seen some bits and bobs on our socials and on Discord!
New cute decor and furniture, light automation, moving crates & beeboxes without emptying them we've been very glad to see your reactions to all the new things weve planned for this last update and cant wait to let you all get your hands on it! [hr][/hr]

APICO Prime!

For those of you who use Amazon Prime Gaming, APICO is currently part of the free Prime games you can claim! You have until February 14th to claim it - once you do itll be added to your library indefinitely! This is the same as the latest Steam / PC release, so you get all of the same nautical goodness. [hr][/hr]

Coming Very Soon

Coming very shortly after this recap, Whitethorn Games (APICOs publisher!) will be having their Whitethorn Winter Showcase! This is a celebration of gaming magic across all the other sister games, so be sure to check it out to see what other new games are coming that might bee off interest to you. Theres also a new Humble Bundle where you can get APICO along with some other fantastic games, all to help celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower, so if youre still looking to pick up APICO as well as support a wonderful cause this is your chance! [hr][/hr] And thats it for this first recap of 2024! Big thanks for your amazing support <3 Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie

[ 2024-02-07 08:50:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

2023 is almost at an end, and its been a busy ol year looking back! Heres a lil ellraiser/TNgineer wrapped [hr][/hr]
Started the year off strong dropping a demo for Rift Breach, an experimental lil dungeon crawler. This was super fun to make, and helped me get better at scoping small as well as got my out of my usual pixel art comfort zone! [hr][/hr]
Then FletchMakes hosted a 7 day gamejam + I couldnt resist making the APICO but frogs Id always joked about Mudborne was born(e) + I was overwhelmed with how much people loved it. It also showed me just how much I can get done with a super strict scope and detailed plan! [hr][/hr]
APICO had its 1st birthday! From a silly concept made in HTML to now published on all platforms with over 50,000 beekeepers playing - truly never thought it would go anywhere Im forever grateful to everyone whos played and shared this funky bee game [hr][/hr]
At this point trying to keep up with socials for 3 different games was getting far too much and I needed help - enter @mibyledraws who joined as the first official TNgineer! Thank you for all your hard work, wonderful videos, and helping me keep on top of everything <3 [hr][/hr]
I got round to releasing the 2nd free content update for APICO, "What Lies Beeneath, with all sorts of weird and wonderful ocean friends Its been tough to keep working on this mess of a game, but its worth it to see how much people have been enjoying all the new content [hr][/hr]
Decided that I wanted to take the Mudborne concept into a full-game, and started planning out everything along with a new art style and vibe for it (theres only so far a sprite-rip of APICO can go lmao) Its wild to see how far Ive started to come from tiny rectangle trees! [hr][/hr]
Towards the end of the year I left my freelance contract + went full-time gamedev, not quite by choice but it was something I wanted to do for a while Ill now be able to spend all my time on the games, as well as all the other little concepts Ive had bubbling away... [hr][/hr]
I moved from GameMaker to LVE, built a small framework for future games like Snacktorio + Mudborne, and contributed to the engine itself Was the first time actually helping making a substantial contribution to an open-source project and I learnt a lot! [hr][/hr]
After a couple years in + out of development and a last minute engine change to LVE, I finally finished + released the demo for Snacktorio Weve had some amazing feedback and its been so gratifying to finally get it out and see people enjoy it [hr][/hr]
Looking ahead to 2024, itll be my first year as a full-time gamedev (as well as reaching lvl 30!) Im planning to release the final update for APICO, as well as releasing either Mudborne or Snacktorio - might even have to drop some new demos too, as a treat [hr][/hr] Thanks for everyone who has supported me and TNgineers throughout the year. Whether that was playing the demos, buying the games, sharing your progress, joining the discord, posting wholesome reviews, sending me cute bee pics - Im truly grateful to you all <3

[ 2023-12-20 11:41:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi friends! Its almost December, which means its time to recap what happened last month! [hr][/hr]

Snacktorio: Ready To Order!

The demo for our factory-cooking simulator, Snacktorio, has finally been released! Thanks so much to all of you chefs, players and content creators for your support <3 If youd like to get a taste of whats in store you can watch the trailer below, or just go try out the demo on Steam! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIsDeQQokwM [hr][/hr]

Cozy Quest Steam Festival

In the middle of the month we snuggled up and celebrated cozy games through the Cozy Quest Festival hosted on Steam, with APICO and Mudborne!
The organizers, Secret Mode, hosted a lovely stream to try out some of the games and demo taking part in the festival, and played the Mudborne demo while interviewing Ell, which you can watch here. [hr][/hr]

10,000 FROGS

Our little froggy nature-sim reached 10,000 wishlists last month! We are so happy and thankful to each and every single person whos supported Mudborne, played it, and wishlisted it on Steam. Heres all 10,000 of you, live in-game:
[hr][/hr] Aaand thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping the soups coming :) Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie

[ 2023-11-30 15:57:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi friends! A month passed by since our last newsletter, heres whats been going on! [hr][/hr]

FROG CON

We joined the Frog Con, an online convention for frog lovers that mixes educational panels with creative works, in the middle of the month. Mudborne was one of the froggy games and got played during the convention! For the occasion, we shared more about the game on our socials, as well as some redesign work-in-progress sneak peeks!
[hr][/hr]

APICO Checklist Tracker

A fellow beekeeper created a checklist tracker & guide spreadsheet for APICO! Its truly an amazing resource, and includes the Ocean Update (3.0) new content.
Thank you so much DeluxeGremlin for this! [hr][/hr]

APICO Community Spotlight

Fellow beekeeper Hazel shared this screenshot of her base in our community discord! Between the rainbow hive garden and the Mothense concert for the NPCs, its a dream place to bee. If you want to share youre own cute pics you should come join us!
In other APICO news, the lovely Chelsea, that you may know as myPotatoGames on Twitter, wrote a very wholesome review of our beekeeping sim! Its always heartwarming to hear such nice feedback <3 [hr][/hr]

Beemoji Mashup!

Last month, our discord bot beebot started sharing a beemoji mashup everyday, and that gave us an idea: what if you could make your own mashup, and beebot could send it to the server?
You can now submit your mashup by filling this form, and itll get added to the bots daily posts! :D [hr][/hr] Thats it for this months recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping these hives buzzing, its been a quiet month but we have some exciting stuff coming next time! Take care! Manon, Ell and Jamie

[ 2023-10-31 20:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi friends! September is already gone and oh boy, what a month! APICOs second major update came out - What Lies Beeneath :D [hr][/hr]

APICO 3.0 Makes A Splash!

What Lies Beeneath launched on September 26 on PC! Beekeepers can now explore the ocean, restore coral reefs, clean the seabed, fish and, of course, discover all the new bees (including underwater ones!!). You can check out the patch notes here to see all the new stuff added. If youre a console player, no worries! The update will eventually come to you, and well make sure to let you all know when it happens <3 [hr][/hr]

APICO Steam Sale

To celebrate the new update, APICO and its amazing soundtracks (Im not the one who composed it so I can say it) are currently on sale on Steam! The game is 45% off, and the soundtracks are each 50% off until October 10th [hr][/hr]

Bee Butts?!

We experimented a bit with the discord server this month: after a short career in sending cute bee pics, beebot switched to beemojis creation. Some are cuter than others, but its a little surprise everyday! Weve also been very happy to see the players enjoy the update and sharing tips (and bugs) in the server, feel free to stop by! <3 [hr][/hr]

Whats Next?

In October, well join Frog Con, a lovely online convention for frog lovers that raises funds for amphibian conservation. In the middle or froggy cams, the artist alley and educational streams, Mudborne will take part to the con as a froggy game, October 13-23 Be sure to check it out, along with the other amazing froggy games well be alongside! [hr][/hr] And thats a wrap for September! We wish you all a good spooky month! Take care, Manon, Ell & Jamie

[ 2023-10-02 17:44:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! August came and went, my first month technically doing gamedev full-time! Both exciting and terrifying :'D [hr][/hr]

APICO 3.0 Coming Soon

Unless youve been living in a pineapple under the sea, youve probably seen that the APICO 3.0 update, aka, What Lies Beeneath has been announced as coming soon! Bee sure to check out the new trailer! If youre a content creator or streamer interested in trying out the new content you can also fill in our creator preview form. [hr][/hr]

MibyleDraws Joins The Gang

Pleased to say that the lovely Manon (also known as MibyleDraws) will be joining us as our PR & CM! If you've been enjoying anything posted on socials this last month (like all the new cute tiktoks), then you have Manon to thank for it! [hr][/hr]

G.Round Playtesting

G.Round is a playtesting platform where you can get your hands on a bunch of different indie games and feedback directly to the developers! Currently you can playtest both Mudborne and Rift Breach, and give us feedback as well as chat with other players in the G.Round discord! [hr][/hr]

Socials Consolidation

Now that weve got 4 different games being juggled about, its impossible to manage 6 different accounts on each platform (we know, weve tried) Weve now combined all games into a single TNgineers account on each platform, so be sure to follow to not miss anything! (Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram, Steam) [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on August, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie & Manon

[ 2023-09-02 13:48:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! Another month flies by, it feels like I was only just writing the June recap! Here's whats been going on. [hr][/hr]

APICO Wholesome Games Sale!

The lovely people at Wholesome Games have organised a Steam Sale thats host to all sorts of cosy games, with some sweet discounts on offer! As part of the sale, APICO will be 40% off until 7th August, with both OSTs 50% off as well. [hr][/hr]

APICO at /r/place

For the redditors among you, you might have heard of a little thing called /r/place - a community canvas where everyone can get involved. Thanks to the help of the community, we were able to get APICO immortalised in a small section with a bunch of other indies you might know! [hr][/hr]

Itch.io Selects

We were lucky enough to have APICO selected for the Itch.io Summer Selects Bundle, a special bundle containing APICO and 5 other cool indies! Thanks to everyone who bought the bundle and supported us, we hope you enjoy all your new sweet games <3 [hr][/hr]

APICO 2.2.3 for Xbox/Playstation

For our console friends, 2.2.3 is now live on Xbox / Playstation. This was a small update but contained some important fixes and means the consoles are now in-line with PC! Unfortunately Nintendo wasnt as kind with approval and still wont let the patch through, however youre not missing out on anything major! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on July, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie

[ 2023-07-31 20:49:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! We're now halfway through the year, which is a scary thought given all the things I still want to get done in 2023... better get to it! [hr][/hr]

APICO releases on Xbox!

So after a very long time, APICO has finally released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. This is the latest version of the game, and includes all the beeautiful butterfly content! We hope all the new beekeepers enjoy their stay at Port APICO <3 [hr][/hr]

Rift Breach at NextFest

Rift Breach got a bunch of new updates, and the demo was re-released for Steams Nextfest, which you can still try out! Unfortunately it didnt really gather any response or interest, so itll be going into cold storage for a bit while we work on the other games. [hr][/hr]

Mudborne Indie Cup Nominee

Mudborne got nominated for the Rising Star award in the 2023 UK Indie Cup! We didnt win in the end, but the fact that a little 1 week froggy demo managed to get a nomination is still amazing to see! [hr][/hr]

Hello Snacktorio

Feed The Beasts is now Snacktorio! We had to change the name for legal reasons and we asked the Factorio team as a joke, but they said yes. Its weird having to call it something different after 3 years but here we are - you can find us in all the same places just a different name and logo. [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on June, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie

[ 2023-07-02 09:32:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! May has flown by, and it's an important anniversary month for both APICO and myself personally, marking the start of me making games 3 years ago. Here's whats been going on: [hr][/hr]

APICOs Birthday

May 20th was APICOs birthday! We had lots of deals and sales to celebrate - dont worry if you missed out though as we have an Itch.io one still to come! The hive doubled in size in just a week, so thank you to all the newbees that have joined us - we hope you enjoy <3 [hr][/hr]

Butterfly Design Winner

Voting has now ended for the Design A Butterfly competition, and the winner was @Hollibees Sunset Butterfly Everyone had such a difficult time deciding, thank you for all the artists for their wonderful entries! [hr][/hr]

APICO On Xbox

So its been confirmed APICO will be coming to Xbox soon, stay tuned next month for some date announcements! Xbox initial release will include the 2.0 butterfly update by default <3 [hr][/hr]

APICO 3.0 Beegins

The groundwork for 3.0, aka What Lies Beeneath has started, with a hefty devlog you can read over on Ko-Fi or Steam! No dates to announce yet but were still aiming for Q3/Q4 this year <3 [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on May, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie

[ 2023-05-31 12:07:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! April has been and gone, finally bringing some sunshine and bumblebees to the garden! Here's what we've been up to: [hr][/hr]

2.0 Update For Consoles

In case you missed it, a release date for consoles for the 2.0 Butterfly Update has now been announced! I Cant Beelieve Its Not Butter(flies) will be fluttering over to Nintendo Switch & Playstation on May 11th - save the date! [hr][/hr]

Butterfly Competition

The Design A Butterfly competition has now ended! Thanks so much to everyone who took part. Well setup a post soon for voting to let you all decide your favourite that will be added into the 3.0 update! [hr][/hr]

Mudborne

Mudborne has now already reached over 1000 wishlists! Thanks so much to everyone whos checked out the demo - well absolutely be coming back to this one later in the year, and start planning a full game! <3 [hr][/hr]

Family Gaming DB

Were super happy to say that the Family Gaming DB gave APICO the family gaming award + recommendation for 2022 Weve spent a lot of time making sure APICO is enjoyable for all ages, so it means a lot to be given this! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on April, bee safe and well see you next month! Love,Ell & Jamie

[ 2023-05-01 09:09:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! March has flown by, and with it the weather has slowly turned from wet and rainy to... well still wet and rainy cos it's the UK baby!!!! Here's what's been going on [hr][/hr]

Mudborne

Another friend joins the gang! Ell took part in a week long game-jam, and the result was Mudborne, an APICO-like focused around frogs + mushrooms. You can read more about the development of the game over the 7 days, or just try the demo out for yourself on itch.io or Steam! [hr][/hr]

Beenus

Speaking of friends joining the gang, we have a new TNgineer! Some of you might recognise StarVenus/Beenus from Discord or /r/APICO, were delighted to announce shell be joining us as a social + community manager! Its getting a bit hectic managing 3 (now 4) games, so reinforcements were needed, and have arrived! [hr][/hr]

FTBS Steam Page!

Feed The Beasts finally has a steam page, so you can get those wishlists in and follow us for updates on the progress of the game! Were slowly edging towards a demo release, and cant wait to share it with you all! [hr][/hr]

Butterfly Competition!

Some of you may remember our Design A Bee competition back before the butterfly update - well were doing another one, and this time its for designing your own butterfly! The winning design will be added to the game, plus the designer will win a bunch of prizes too - check the announcement post for more info! [hr][/hr] So thats a wrap on March, bee safe and well see you next month! Love, Ell & Jamie (AND BEENUS) <3

[ 2023-03-30 12:21:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey friends! As some of you might know, Mudborne was the result of me taking part in #FletchFest, a 1 week creative jam hosted by @FletchMakes! I've always joked about making "APICO but frogs", but it's never been much more than that. With the jam having a theme of "pond" I felt like it'd be a great opportunity to imagine what that concept could be like, and the sort of things I could do differently within a similar menu-heavy crafting sim world. And so, Mudborne was borne!
(NB: This is a summary blog of the development, but if you're interested in more details I live tweeted during the entire week in this thread here! You can try the demo right now here on Steam or over on itch.io) [hr][/hr]

Day 1

To start with I planned out the basic gameloop: ur a frog, u catch frogs, breed frogs, get more frogs etc until ur drowning in frog. I wanted to play more with the trait + inheritance stuff APICO has to have traits directly effect the frog you get - you can see some of the ideas here in my AAA-rated game design doc:
In APICO I've always done everything together, BeeA + BeeB might = BeeC if conditions are right. I wanted to try breaking this down to split out the conditions + new species gameplay into two distinct halves - first gather mushrooms that only bloom in certain conditions, then use the mushrooms combined with mud to make a potion of sorts that would buff a give frog trait +1 or -1. Rather than have diff. frogs combine to form diff. species, I wanted those traits to be the cause - getting a 1 or 5 in a trait would turn your frog into a new species.
With that out the way, I started drawing out a small concept sketch! I like to try and visualise how the game will look at the end so I can try and make the general palette all cohesive as well as see all the different mechanics and extras I'll need to code.
my son is borne The idea of you actually being a small frog keeping smaller frogs was hilarious to me so kinda ran with it - I also had a vague idea of making it clear the game is set inside a giant pond but never got that far! I then drew out all the items I would need for the game, borrowing generously from APICO where appropriate (I did only have 7 days after all!)
a bunch of the final sprites changed for the items but the frogs/mush stayed the same for the most part! As I mentioned originally i was thinking it'd be cute to show several progressively zoomed in scenery shots showing the game takes place at a tiny scale inside a pond - but I didn't think it was something i could realistically do in the time! (this whole jam was a great exercise in ruthless scope cutting) Instead I changed tactics and decided that I'd have the player sleeping when the game starts + in their dream they have an overly dramatic vision of some deity that gives them both the book (the in-game guide) as well as the general goal (find all my frogs pls) thus space frog god was born
possibly the most high res pixel art i've done to-date? Outside of the menus for the various "machines" in-game, at the end of day 1 I basically had everything drawn ready to go, which meant I could just fully get stuck into the mechanics while already having a great picture of what everything would look like! [hr][/hr]

Day 2

So with my sprite work done I opened up GameMaker and got to work! First up I setup a tilemap of all the different grass/mud/water tiles, plus some scenery, and fleshed out a rough game map
this is the standard GM "room editor"! For the mushroom spawns, I wanted there to be a clear distinction between a mushroom patch, and a mushroom in bloom, so for each mushroom I drew a scenery tile that would represent that mush
truly the pinnacle of animation I then added lil foliage patches to the game where mushrooms could potentially spawn (inheriting the tile they are on). The game then checks occasionally if there should be more of each mushroom, and if so places a baby one ready to bloom when the conditions are right (i.e. night-time + mud + raining, or day-time + shallows + not raining)
When in-game these foliage patches would just be generic scuffed terrain pixels, but then once a mushroom baby spawns it shows the tile mushroom, then when blooms creates a mushroom. You can see the distinction in-game here, along with some trees I added to help finish off the basic nature scenery!
blue + red mushrooms in bloom (black outline) then various mushroom babies waiting for the right conditions I added a basic mouse + highlighting system, a basic day/night cycle with a shader to make a nice blue night-time shade, and then some rain and fog to give some atmosphere to the swamp! Every day the game would rain - originally I planned to have a little weather radio you could check but due to time this got replaced with a small tooltip in the bottom-left of the screen.
starting to feel like an actual world now! I then added the start of the show, our little frog player! As the game was using tiles I could easily check which tile the player was under, and show walking / wading in water / wading in mud animations respectively (and later little PFX splashes) I then also added in some little "spores" to the mushrooms when they bloomed just to really bring attention to them
To finish the day off, I then coded the most important feature - tiny little frogs!! I spent a bunch of time messing around with different AI patterns but eventually landed on something that was silly and effective. They'd jump randomly on their own, do occasional ribbets (that would later have a SFX), and also jump when the player tried to get near them - just to add a bit of fun to catching frogs with the net later!
also some speed slowdown when walking in mud! [hr][/hr]

Day 3

After a long sleep dreaming of frogs I got started drawing up the various menus I need - my game style is very menu heavy so the core mechanics are usually in them! First up a bed to let people skip time, as well as revisit dream frog for a progress check
Next up i wanted a large storage option as I already knew just how many frogs + spawn people will hoarde, so I designed a little "barrel" will let people have multiple sections of storage to use as they like (frogs or items or both)
why doesnt APICO have this? i dont know honestly To get into the "meat" of the game, the cauldron lets people take buckets of mud and the mushrooms they found and stir together into magic mud that would be used to affect traits later! I wanted to add one of my "mechanism" minigames here just cos its like my whole schtick and i thought it'd be a cute way of including one! the spoon stirs as you drag left + right on your happy cauldron friend
he's just happy to be here For getting frogspawn I did a simple breeding box (which i have named a "spawner" because you can't be going around having an item called the "breeder" online in the year of our lord 2023) Frogspawn will take a mix of trait vals from both parents used, Punnett Square style as i'm contractually obligated to do - but ultimately it's not a big part of the game in a way it really needs to be talked about much, as the mushroom modifications are how you ultimately get new species
Then for the final step in the process, I wanted a nursery where you put water, magic mud + frogspawn together and sort of "layer" them (like the sand in a bottle crafts!) Based on the mud used, the frogspawn will get a +1 or -1 to one of the 5 traits. if the trait is now a 1 or a 5 (min. or max.) a different species of frog will appear instead, with a guide in-game giving hints of what frogs you might get, and what mushrooms might do.
With all the menus done I could again just get stuck into coding - this is generally the pattern I have with all my gamedev, try and perfect a visual of what it'll look like in-game, then work on making that in code. I setup some basic menu/slot objects + the player hotbar/inventory - slots were just instances that store the item info data + sprite to draw (if any). I then did some basic interaction stuff to make it clear the tool you're using will have an effect based on what you're hovering cos I love an icon
later magnifying glasses would also show you the item sprite for a given mush/frog too! I then spent a big chunk of time messing with some smaller things, like being able to move items around, drop items etc - bit fiddly but luckily ive done this before lol I also worked on the frogs to give them some extra fx, like an "in mud" visual, and their little ribbet frame! I also did a lot of stuff that doesn't look cute or fun behind the scenes, mainly around getting all the menu slots to work nicely and let items have a total or durability - plus added in all the usual mouse suspects; right-click to split stack , middle click to gather all etc
I then added in menus - I had very lofty goals for getting through all menu logic in one day lmao! I managed to finish off the bed, which in it's defense was always going to be a more "complicated" one as not only did I have to first add the concept of buttons to all menus first, but then also do some special fx with the sleeping transition Unlike APICO, sleeping would move the time ahead entirely - along with any "machines" running. For example if you had a spawner with frogs breeding in, and slept for a few hours, the spawner would now be "done" - it's a small game so i didnt want a lot of empty time waiting around, and I didn't think there was any downside to letting people choose to skip ahead as they needed!
and the tiny little Zs so precious omg I did manage to get out another menu, the spawner, towards the end of the day. Here you can put two frogs together to get some frogspawn (sped up for the vid). I also worked on some general "error" message + state bubbles for the objects cos you know i love a system status visual With that done Day 3 was done, and while I hadn't done everything I'd hoped for I'd made a big jump ahead and setup a lot of stuff that'd make the other menus easier to create!
now kiss.... [hr][/hr]

Day 4

So I might have underestimated how much time it was gunna take to do the menu system setup, but with it done I was confident I could get through the last 4 menus on day 4 and then be able to test the proper loop all the way through I felt that'd be a good midway point to check the whole thing end to end and be able to be like okay yes this is Confirmed FunTM or whether it was naff and still have time to tweak things before submitting. First up I added the barrel menu, for which I already had the concept of "active" slots from the player inventory. When open all slots are active, when shut only the hotbar slots are. Using the same idea I could create "pages" of slots for the barrel, activating and deactivating the slots on each page as needed - the rest just worked magically!
seriously why doesnt APICO have this I then moved onto the cauldron, which was probably the most complex menu of them all as I needed to add some new types of GUI for the tank and the mechanism, plus make the mechanism move left and right when dragging! plus I had to get that lil cauldron man stirring just right for the vibes
I also went and finally gave the magnifying glass a purpose now I had all the drawing stuff I needed for it - hovering any frog, mushroom patch, or mushroom gives the "item" sprite shown so you know exactly whats what (plus its super cute running around with a lil mag glass) I then spent a bunch of time writing actual words not code (gross), which was basically just fleshing out the names of all frogs, their "likes" (a reward flavour text for discovering them), the mushrooms, and basically just mapping out what mushrooms would do what and where they spawn etc
zoom.... enhance.... Once I was done with that I added in my fav game mechanic - tooltips! I'm a big fan of showing the "status" of any system, so tooltips are a no brainer for me. While adding them I also added a basic little trait panel popup for the frogs/frogspawn so people could see the values they currently had VS what they might want to achieve (i.e. catch some frogs and see which ones have 2s or 4s already to save buffing multiple times)
the 5 traits are Pizazz, Ribbet, Chonk, Stink, and Grump I then finished off the nursery menu! This was the final piece of the loop, letting you use the magic mud you made in a cauldron + frogspawn to get new frogs and modify traits in the process! I also added some extra tooltip info just so it's clear as mud (the mud, that is)
look at them go!! As you can see in that last GIF there was also a little house now! This was just a static scenery sprite with some layering trickery to make look real when walking around/into it plus some basic collision tiles to make it all feel correct and solid! I didn't really want to spend time adding placable walls/tiles, as I definitely wouldn't have the time and I didn't think it was important for the core concept
You can see some of the menu objects here that changed from the original drawings! I then pissed around a bit getting all the different frogs in the game as well as their tiny overworld counterparts to work properly, and also had to change how some stuff worked to use a seperate "dictionary" with all the info in I liked the idea of not only picking up frogs but being able to place them down, sort of like an unlimited overworld storage (that admittedly hops slowly to a different location over time but it's still cute)
I then finally built out the world and all the resources, as well as added, lilypads, that would act as the main resource with logs for crafting everything! Similar to the mushroom "foliage" i just did little lilypad spawner tiles to create new lilypad items as needed, based on a global count - that way they always respawned and you always had enough.
the mostly final world design in the room editor in GM, pink are foliage/lilypad spawners, red is collision I also then made an attempt at the "discovery" animation - it was basic but my plan was if I have time I'll add some easing/bounce to various elements to make it a bit more jazzy, however I did lo-key love it being terrible for it to then reveal the silliest looking frog (which, spoilers, I ended up keeping and leaning into by adding a really ridiculous sad party blower sound on the reveal) I think i struggle a lot with stuff i can't easily visualise, and for bigger animation stuff it's easier to make it inside gamemaker - all the other things I've done so far have p. much all been taken directly from aseprite, so more animated stuff i find a lot harder! I ending the day with a little crafting! It was super basic but it did the job and meant the base game had everything in it to play through the core mechanics, so I could do some testing of the main loop and check if it was fun (for me at least)
[hr][/hr]

Day 5

To start with on day 5 I sketched up all the book design! I only really needed 3 pages, one to explain the main mechanics, one to keep track of frogs and view hints/progress, and one to keep track of mushrooms and their preferences (day/night/weather). Later I'd add a 4th just to explain the 5 traits and re-iterate how you got new species.
truly a masterpiece For frogs/mushrooms I just wanted a simple page with all of them visible, black if not discovered, and hoverable for info/hints. For the "mechanics" page i wanted a sort of diagram with the same hoverable stuff, but instead it's game items, so you can see how everything fits in with a little flowchart style set of arrows to give you an idea of how to follow the process. I got to work drawing up the sketches into what they'd look like in the game! First up the frog book:
i added little background sketches of in-game items to give it some vibes I did the same thing with the mushrooms, and added little hints at what the effects would do of the mushroom. Even though discovering a mushroom would unlock the tooltip to tell you outright "+1 Grump" or whatever, I liked the idea of having some symbolism for certain traits shown on both the frog + mushroom pages
For the final (and actually first) page, I wanted the discovery / guide page to have a tree of sorts that you could follow along, each icon giving you info on that thing/obj/mechanic Then I'd have some little unlock states for that sweet sweet game progression, there's quite a few steps but broken down this way I felt would prevent things being unclear OR overwhelming (APICO's books truly suffer with the latter)
I wasn't decided whether I'd do a bunch of "random" blobs as the backings for the icons, or just go with circles to have some neatness The blobs had some some charm to be sketched out but overall I felt it might feel too messy, so I turned them into circles in-game to make it a bit clearer/neater on the hoverable sections. The book was essentially just another menu, so it was easy to just define the menu and add the gui (hoverable bits) and buttons (left/right page arrows)
plus some classic ell pun quest names I set up a basic script that checked the stuff for the "quests" to be unlocked, and then linked the mushroom/frog status to being picked up - later on I'd add little notifications to encourage you to check the book when you did and to make it clear when you'd found something new! With that done I felt like the game was in a good place - all the core gameplay was in and there was an actual guide to help give you a path to follow and progress to check so next up was the GOD FROG, which ended up being the most painful part of the whole game tbh!
A lot of tears later, I had a sequence done for the dream mechanic - I needed two things in this, one was the "intro" for the first time someone plays to give the player the book, and to general set the stage for the game, I then also needed it for the general "check my progress" option which was when you choose to dream at the bed. This needed to be a shorter sequence and then just a summary of the 10/10 frogs you'd found (which would then also be the trigger for the "win" and credits roll once you get all of them). I had a font I'd drawn for another concept a while back that was bigger and more gothic than my standard font and loved the idea of having the god speak in a different font (ala Terry Pratchett)
With that done, and the save/load being sorted, I did a basic lil home screen! Outside of music/sfx/testing i was actually p. much done at this point, so it meant I could then start to work through a list of "nice-to-haves" that I'd been putting aside while working on the main stuff, while Jamie did some testing for me!
[hr][/hr]

Day 6

So with everything that had gone on yesterday I kinda had everything done for now! I added a small settings menu mainly to allow the game to be paused, SFX/music volume, and have a small controls panel just to make sure it's clear whats what. I definitely spent way too much that i should have checking all possible pause game fuckups (+ still prob missed some lmao)
With those done my day was essentially just adding in the SFX for everything (for which i'd kept a list during development of all the things + interactions that would need a sound!) plus adding in placeholder music tracks to check the game's "jukebox" system of auto playing tracks at different times, and then finally some testing! When it comes to music i'll be the first to admit that I suck ass at it, so I didn't even try and instead enlisted the help of my dear friend @MothenseMusic who you may recognise from being the composer of APICO! You can listen to a couple of the tracks they made here and here.
the final night shader + classic twin circle indie game lighting I didn't (and still dont) have a good way to record sound so you'll just have to take my word for it that the ambience + general SFX were all done and sounding lovely (I mean you could just go check out the demo rn too) I then polished off some last little bits and little FX, and then spent some time creating some nice screenshots for the itch.io page! It was wild to think at this point I'd finished off a small concept game that was only a sketch a week before!!
Later in the day Moth polished off the last track, so I added them in the game, built the game for Windows/MacOS/Linux, and uploaded everything for itch.io and posted it publicly to submit to the gamejam! [hr][/hr]

Day 7

And finally, I rested! One thing I'd been undecided on during the jam was whether I'd want to turn this into a full game at some point, but I'd already had so much fun working on it the first 2 days I was like sod it I'll make a steam page for it. Worst case, it'd be 70 down the drain (steam page fee), but best case if people like the game I could funnel people to wishlist it on Steam so I that I'd a good idea of interest. I setup a basic page and submitted - I mentioned before you can get away with some really rough looking screenshots and still get a page approved, so I was able to get the steam page up in time for the game being released on itch, and add a little "wishlist" button to the homepage!
After the initial wave of people playing, I fixed a couple bugs and then submitted it to Steam also, meaning I could get the demo up on Steam too and have a wider audience start checking it out, might seem wild for just a gamejam game but I really think the concept has (frog)legs, and there's lots of ideas I have for a full game, including:

• mud pools / nursery pools for tadpoles (so splitting out the nursery into 2 distinct processes, the first for frogspawn to mess with traits, and the second to care for the tadpoles and give them the conditions they need to grow into big stronk frog)
• more expanded nursery puzzle to let you add multiple layers of things that all effect the final frogspawn outcome
• ways to display your cute frogs, like little scenery pieces you can place that when you put a frog on them they won't hop away, essentially acting as overworld storage of frogs (tiny frog spas, tiny frog zen gardens etc)
• custom houses with upgrades but also decoration stuff (build smaller houses, bridges between islands, terraforming etc)
• digging more into mushrooms, specifically the spawning positions. I'd like to look into making it the players responsibility to create small patches mushrooms can bloom on, as well as collect spores to experiment with growing your own mushroom combinations
• mushrooms that have multiple effects, i.e. not just +1 or -1 but could do like x2 A but -1 B
• expand frog traits to be 1-7, and have new frog conditions be all sorts of different combinations, i.e. max stink, max grump and max chonk, or like a 6666 frog
• something more indepth with the biology of frogspawn, perhaps being able to use a microscope and modify some traits to remove some of the recessive ones
• exploring the "dreaming" mechanic and perhaps have an alternative dream world you can visit to do things that effect the real world + vice-versa (ala Link To The Past)
• pet frogs that can follow you???

[hr][/hr] So there we go, making a small game from start to finish in (just under) 7 days! I had so much fun making this demo, and really learnt a lot (especially in comparison to the way things APICO does stuff!) If you're interested in checking out the result you can get the demo right here on Steam! Would love to hear your feedback if you do, and would love to turn this into a full game if people are interested! <3 ~ Ell https://store.steampowered.com/app/2355150/Mudborne/

[ 2023-03-30 09:06:30 CET ] [ Original post ]